Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Greg Giraldo was one of the most admired standup comedians of the 21st Century. This book tells his story, from his boyhood in Queens to his Ivy League education, to his decision to drop a law career to pursue standup comedy. The authors have researched his life and interviewed more than 60 people who knew Greg well - family, friends, standups, managers, and more - to produce a full picture of the brilliant yet complex figure who left the stage too soon.

Cosa Nostra is the compelling story of the Sicilian mafia, the world's most famous, most secretive and most misunderstood criminal fraternity. The mafia has been given many names since it was founded 140 years ago: the Sect, the Brotherhood, the Honoured Society and now Cosa Nostra. Yet as times have changed, the mafia's subtle and bloody methods have remained the same. Now, for the first time, Cosa Nostra reconstructs the complete history of the Sicilian mafia from its origins to the present day. 

London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding's modest home, china flies off the shelves, eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle materializes on her lap. The culprit's incorporeal. As she cannot call the police, Alma calls the papers instead. Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist.

As a medical detective of the modern world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal’s chief goal is to bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book. In Autopsy he covers the hard lessons learnt as a rookie pathologist, as well as some of the most unusual cases he’s encountered. During his career, for example, he has dealt with high-profile deaths, mass disasters, death by lightning and people killed by African wildlife.

Twenty-four sensational docu-dramas based on real-life historical murder cases, presented by Nick Ross. In these four series, Nick Ross introduces two dozen true tales of murder from days gone by - complete with gory details. As he recounts infamous crimes from the 1900s to the 1960s, he transports us to a time when police cars had bells and the men from the Yard wore Trilby hats.

What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?

Valorie, Veronica, Vance, and Vincent’s perfect world turned into a nightmare one hot afternoon in 1959 in Cebu, Philippines. What was to be a quick lunch with their father turned into a flight to America, where four dreadfully long years of running from state to state, hiding, and vanishing into the night followed. Kidnapped from the only world they knew, confusion quickly set in. 

This collection brings together Finkelstein’s greatest writings from The Times, ranging from the personal - with his articles on growing up Jewish in Hendon Central and on the deaths of both of his parents - to the political, with columns on how to predict elections, the way political science showed us Ed Miliband was on his way to defeat and why the base rate of coups meant Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t be ousted before an election. 

People love and remember the novels of Bobbie Ann Mason because they ring so true. This dazzling memoir has the same power. In it, Mason tells the story of her own family — a multilayered saga of three generations, their aspirations, their conflicts, and the ties that bound them to one another.

En 1942, a una joven trabajadora social, Irena Sendler, se le concedió acceso al gueto de Varsovia como especialista en salud pública. Una vez dentro, fue de puerta en puerta para rescatar a los niños de las familias judías atrapadas en el gueto. Empezó a sacarlos a escondidas del distrito amurallado, convenciendo a sus amigos y vecinos de que los ocultaran en sus casas. Impulsada a tomar medidas extremas y con la ayuda de una red de comerciantes locales, residentes del gueto y su amante, perteneciente a la resistencia judía, ella logró salvar a miles de niños de los nazis.

Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking presents the author’s often provocative and always engaging thoughts on sexuality. Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac. 

Paul Verhoeven's ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. What unfolded in Loose Units was a goldmine of true-crime stories, showcasing John's dramatic experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s and brilliantly twisted sense of humour. But what happened next in John's career was twice as weird. Electric Blue spans the final years of John's stint in the New South Wales police force, when he took up an offer to move into the grimy, analytical world of forensics.

In March 1969, eight young men were indicted by the federal government for conspiracy to incite a riot. Some of them barely knew one another, having come together briefly to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the war in Vietnam. First dubbed the "Conspiracy 8" and later the "Chicago 7", the group included firebrands like Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale, but also a little-known community activist and social worker named Lee Weiner, who was just as surprised as the rest of the country when his name was called.

Kiyo's father arrived in California determined to plant his roots in the land of opportunity after leaving Japan. He, his wife, and their nine American-born children labored in the fields together, building a successful farm. Yet at the outbreak of World War II, Kiyo's family was ordered to Poston Internment Camp. This memoir tells the story of the family's struggle to endure in these harsh conditions and to rebuild their lives afterward in the face of lingering prejudice.

He has been called the greatest surgeon of the 20th century. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey rose from humble beginnings in a backwater Louisiana town to dominate the landscape of modern medicine. His contributions to our understanding and treatment of cardiovascular disease, in particular, were innumerable and epoch-making. DeBakey led a life of high drama, from the streets of Jazz Age New Orleans and the operating theaters of pre-war Europe, to the battlefields of World War II and the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.  

Wide-ranging yet intimate, The Lives of Isaac Stern is a portrait of an artist and statesman who began as an American dreamer and left a lasting inheritance to his art, profession, and the world. 

From Katie Vaz, author of Don’t Worry, Eat Cake, the beloved Make Yourself Cozy, and The Escape Manual for Introverts, comes My Life in Plants. Her newest book tells the story of her life through the 39 plants that have played both leading and supporting roles, from her childhood to her wedding day. Plants include a homegrown wildflower bouquet wrapped in duct tape that she carried on stage at age three, to a fragrant basil plant that brought her and her kitchen back to life after grief. The stories are personal, poignant, heartwarming, and relatable.

As the data economy grows in power, Carissa Véliz exposes how our privacy is eroded by big tech and governments, why that matters and what we can do about it. The moment you check your phone in the morning you are giving away your data. Before you've even switched off your alarm, a whole host of organisations have been alerted to when you woke up, where you slept and with whom. As you check the weather, scroll through your 'suggested friends' on Facebook, you continually compromise your privacy. 

A trenchant yet sympathetic portrait of Lee Miller, one of the iconic faces and careers of the 20th century. Carolyn Burke reveals Miller as a multifaceted woman: both model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and mother, and, in later years, gourmet cook - the last of the many dramatic transformations she underwent during her lifetime. A sleek blond bombshell, Miller was part of a glamorous circle in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading Vogue model, close to Edward Steichen, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso.

Unfinished takes listeners from Priyanka's childhood in India, where she was raised by her grandparents and her parents - two army doctors committed not only to their children but to their careers and to philanthropy - before being sent away to boarding school at an early age; through her formative teenage years in the US living with extended family in the Midwest, Queens, and suburban Boston, where she endured bouts of racism; to her return to India, where she unexpectedly won the national and global beauty pageants (Miss India and Miss World) that launched her acting career.