My Happy Days in Hollywood: A Memoir


Garry Marshall - 2012
    His work on the small and big screen has delighted audiences for the last three decades and has withstood the test of time.  In My Happy Days in Hollywood, Marshall takes us on a journey from his stickball-playing days in the Bronx to his time at the helm of some of the most popular television series and movies of all time, sharing the joys and challenges of working with the Fonz and the young Julia Roberts, the “street performer” Robin Williams, and the young Anne Hathaway, among many others. This honest, vibrant, and often hilarious memoir reveals a man whose career has been defined by his drive to make people laugh and whose personal philosophy—despite his tremendous achievements—has always been that life is more important than show business.

Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye


David Ritz - 1985
    With a cast of characters that includes Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder, this intimate biography is a definitive and enduring look at the man who embodied the very essence of the word soul.

Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir


Jimmie Walker - 2012
    Starting in small clubs and eventually opening for Black Panther rallies, he ultimately became an icon playing J. J. Evans on Good Times. Walker was the first successful young black sitcom star, and his catchphrase--“Dyn-o-mite!”--remains an indicator of the era. He saw sudden and enormous fame in everything from comic books and a talking doll to pajamas, trading cards, a bestselling album, and TV Guide covers. In Dyn-o-mite!, Walker candidly talks about his rise and the considerable tensions on the set of Good Times that contradicted the show’s image of a close-knit, blue-collar family struggling to survive in the projects. Walker made “Dyn-o-mite!” a catchword for the Baby Boomer generation. Today, Dyn-o-mite! will inspire that same generation to rediscover what once made America great--the freedom of thought, the freedom of speech, and the belief in the individual.

Wrong Family: For Every Secret, There Is A Family


Charisse Dahlke Peeler - 2018
    In order to break the dysfunctional cycle, Charisse needs to overcome the chaos caused by generations of family secrets, extreme poverty, fanatical religion and sexual abuse all of which leaves her ill equipped to make her own adult decisions. Can she overcome a legacy of lies?

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny


Bob Newhart - 2006
    Those basset-hound eyes. That bone-dry wit. There has never been another comedian like Bob Newhart. His comedy albums, movies, and two hit television series have made him a national treasure and placed him firmly in the pantheon of comedy legends. Who else has a drinking game named after him And now, at last, Newhart puts his brilliant and hysterical world view on paper. Never a punch-line comic, always more of a storyteller, he tells anecdotes from throughout his life and career, including his beginnings as an accountant and the groundbreaking success of his comedy albums and The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart, which gave him fifteen years on primetime television. And he also gives his wry, comedic twist to a multitude of topics, including golf, drinking, and family holidays. Today, Newhart appears on Desperate Housewives, in hit movies such as Elf, and in theaters around the country. Reruns of his shows air constantly on Nick at Nite -- have recently been released with great success for the first time ever on DVD. With this book, Bob Newhart gives his millions of fans a first ever opportunity to sample his unique brand of humor -- including excerpts from some of his classic routines -- on the printed page.

To Be Loved


Berry Gordy - 1994
    From Detroit to Hollywood, here is the story of the music great who changed American popular culture with artists such as Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, the Jacksons, Stevie Wonder, and more. 32 pages of photos.

The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After


Julie Yip-Williams - 2019
    What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more--a powerful exhortation to the living.That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it--a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion--this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep--an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously.With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life.

John Wayne: The Life and Legend


Scott Eyman - 2014
    He became a symbol of America itself. He epitomized the Western film, which for many people epitomized America. He identified with conservative political causes from the early 1930s to his death in 1979, making him a hero to one generation of Americans and a villain to another. But unlike fellow actor Ronald Reagan, Wayne had no interest in politics as a career. Like many stars, he altered his life story, claiming to have become an actor almost by accident when in fact he had studied drama and aspired to act for most of his youth. He married three times, all to Latina women, and conducted a lengthy affair with Marlene Dietrich, as unlikely a romantic partner as one could imagine for the Duke. Wayne projected dignity, integrity, and strength in all his films, even when his characters were flawed, and whatever character he played was always prepared to confront injustice in his own way. More than thirty years after his death, he remains the standard by which male stars are judged and an actor whose morally unambiguous films continue to attract sizeable audiences.Scott Eyman interviewed Wayne, as well as many family members, and he has drawn on previously unpublished reminiscences from friends and associates of the Duke in this biography, as well as documents from his production company that shed light on Wayne’s business affairs. He traces Wayne from his childhood to his stardom in Stagecoach and dozens of films after that. Eyman perceptively analyzes Wayne’s relationship with John Ford, the director with whom he’s most associated and who made some of Wayne’s greatest films, among them She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. His evaluation of Wayne himself is shrewd: a skilled actor who was reluctant to step outside his comfort zone. Wayne was self-aware; he once said, “I’ve played the kind of man I’d like to have been.” It’s that man and the real John Wayne who are brilliantly profiled in Scott Eyman’s insightful biography of a true American legend.

Wildflower


Drew Barrymore - 2015
    It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today.

Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater


Gail Simmons - 2012
    Toronto-born before becoming a dedicated New Yorker. As a child, on family visits to South Africa she developed a great love of the food. She also spent time in Spain and on an Israeli kibbutz.. Returning to North America, Simmons enrolled in culinary school and became a chef. Her love for writing led to a career in food journalism, and she became an editor at a food magazine. The author also writes of the devastation wrought by her elder brother's mental illness.

Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them


Frank Langella - 2012
    With sharp wit and a perceptive eye, Mr. Langella takes us with him into the private worlds and privileged lives of movie stars, presidents, royalty, literary lions, the social elite, and the greats of the Broadway stage. We learn something, too, of Mr. Langella’s personal journey from the age of fifteen to the present day. Dropped Names is, like its subjects, riveting and unforgettable.

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs


Jennifer Finney Boylan - 2020
    It’s in the love of dogs, and my love for them, that I can best now take the measure of the child I once was, and the bottomless, unfathomable desires that once haunted me.There are times when it is hard for me to fully remember that love, which was once so fragile, and so fierce. Sometimes it seems to fade before me, like breath on a mirror.But I remember the dogs. In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking column went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love.Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.

The Wild Truth: A Memoir


Carine McCandless - 2014
    Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

The Moon's a Balloon


David Niven - 1971
    One of the bestselling memoirs of all time, David Niven's The Moon's a Balloon is an account of one of the most remarkable lives Hollywood has ever seen.Beginning with the tragic early loss of his aristocratic father, then regaling us with tales of school, army and wartime hi-jinx, Niven shows how, even as an unknown young man, he knew how to live the good life.But it is his astonishing stories of life in Hollywood and his accounts of working and partying with the legends of the silver screen - Lawrence Oliver, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Noel Coward and dozens of others, while making some of the most acclaimed films of the last century - which turn David Niven's memoir into an outright masterpiece.An intimate, gossipy, heartfelt and above all charming account of life inside Hollywood's dream factory, The Moon is a Balloon is a classic to be read and enjoyed time and again..

The Price of Illusion: A Memoir


Joan Juliet Buck - 2017
    When Joan became the first and only American woman ever to fill Paris Vogue's coveted position of Editor in Chief, a “figurehead in the cult of fashion and beauty,” she had the means to recreate for her aging father, now a widower, the life he’d enjoyed during his high-flying years, a splendid illusion of glamorous excess that could not be sustained indefinitely.Joan’s memoir tells the story of a life lived in the best places at the most interesting times: London and New York in the swinging 1960s, Rome and Milan in the dangerous 1970s, Paris in the heady 1980s and 1990s. But when her fantasy life at Vogue came to an end, she had to find out who she was after all those years of make-believe. She chronicles this journey in beautiful and at times heartbreaking prose, taking the reader through the wild parties and the fashion, the celebrities and creative geniuses as well as love, loss, and the loneliness of getting everything you thought you wanted and finding it’s not what you’d imagined. While Joan’s story is unique, her journey toward self-discovery is refreshing and universal.