Book picks similar to
One Voice by Christy Moore


music
non-fiction
memoir
memoir-biography

Live Lead Learn: My Stories of Life and Leadership


Gail Kelly - 2017
    The first female CEO of one of Australia's big four banks, listed by Forbes in 2010 as the 8th most powerful woman in the world, and mother of four (including triplets), Gail is celebrated as one of our finest, most innovative thinkers on leadership and workplace culture.In these personal, practical chapters, Gail Kelly shares what she's learned over her remarkable career, drawing from her personal and professional life. As a leader, she argues passionately for the importance of putting people and customers at the heart of a business; of leading with courage and generosity of spirit; and of resilience. Some of those lessons were learnt at times of high pressure, and Gail takes us into her thinking as she led Westpac through the global financial crisis and the merger with St. George.But Gail's voice speaks to each of us, whatever our role in life. She explores the absolute importance of loving what you do; learning to learn; backing yourself; and most importantly, placing your family above all things.At the heart of Gail's refreshing, authentic, integrated approach is how both individuals and companies thrive when they openly address the meaning of what they do, and understand the need to live a whole life. Live, Lead, Learn is the inspiring story of one of the world's most prominent business people, who started as a Latin teacher and became mother of four and CEO of Westpac - and everything she has learned along the way.

Loopers: A Caddie's Twenty-Year Golf Odyssey


John Dunn - 2013
    The lifers - as in "caddies for life" - that plied the loops were an ensemble of misfits and degenerates that made the caddy yard look more like an OTB parlor than anything near a country club.  But Dunn came of age in those yards and on those courses, and after an eye-opening experience caddying in Aspen during college the magnetism of the game and the lifestyle proved irresistible. One adventure after another kept him coming back summer after summer, until - out of college - he found himself migrating with the seasons, looping at some of the most exquisite and exclusive golf locations in the world; Sherwood, Augusta, Bandon Dunes, Shinnecock, and St. Andrews to name a few. Dunn criss-crossed the country on his own big loop; working inside the privet hedges while camping on the mountains; following the back roads and stumbling across unexpected moments of profound natural beauty; embracing the freedom of what he calls the last vagabond existence in America, all while trying to decide whether to quit the loop and get a real job. Maybe next season...

Meet Me in Paris


Juliette Sobanet - 2015
    Or at least this is what Juliette Sobanet did upon making the bold, heart-wrenching decision to divorce the man she had loved since she was a teenager. This is the story of the passionate love affair that ensued during the most devastating year of Sobanet’s life and how her star-crossed romance in the City of Light led to her undoing. Meet Me in Paris is a raw, powerful take on divorce and the daring choices that followed such a monumental loss from the pen of a writer who’d always believed in happy endings…and who ultimately found the courage to write her own.

Waiting to Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, Alt-Country's Brilliant Wreck


Thomas O'Keefe - 2018
    Lumped into the burgeoning alt-country movement, the band soon landed a major label deal and recorded an instant classic: Strangers Almanac. That's when tour manager Thomas O'Keefe met the young musician.For the next three years, Thomas was at Ryan's side: on the tour bus, in the hotels, backstage at the venues. Whiskeytown built a reputation for being, as the Detroit Free Press put it, "half band, half soap opera," and Thomas discovered that young Ryan was equal parts songwriting prodigy and drunken buffoon. Ninety percent of the time, Thomas could talk Ryan into doing the right thing. Five percent of the time, he could cover up whatever idiotic thing Ryan had done. But the final five percent? Whiskeytown was screwed.Twenty-plus years later, accounts of Ryan's legendary antics are still passed around in music circles. But only three people on the planet witnessed every Whiskeytown show from the release of Strangers Almanac to the band's eventual breakup: Ryan, fiddle player Caitlin Cary, and Thomas O'Keefe.

Girl To City: A Memoir


Amy Rigby - 2019
    For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.

The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam


G. Willow Wilson - 2010
    Willow Wilson—already an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East at just twenty-seven—leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course that leads to her shocking conversion to Islam and sends her on a fated journey across continents and into an uncertain future.She settles in Cairo where she teaches English and submerges herself in a culture based on her adopted religion. And then she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. They fall in love, entering into a daring relationship that calls into question the very nature of family, belief, and tradition. Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow records her intensely personal struggle to forge a “third culture” that might accommodate her own values without compromising the friends and family on both sides of the divide.

I'm (No Longer) a Mormon: A Confessional


Regina Samuelson - 2012
    This is not as easy as one would imagine: She was born in the church, educated at BYU, married in the temple, and is raising more Mormons. She faced a serious conundrum: keep quiet (and avoid losing everything dear to her), or tell the world what being raised LDS does to a person's psyche, especially when they realize that everything they were taught and everything they hoped to believe is a lie. To expose the difficulty faced by Mormons who leave the Church and to seek support for their plight, Regina offers a first-person confessional memoir recounting her many atrocious experiences, managing to weave in enough humor to keep you turning pages, and enough brutal honesty to bring you to an understanding of what it is to be a Mormon, and to try to leave it behind...

Another Alice: An Inspiring True Story Of A Young Woman's Battle To Overcome Rheumatoid Arthritis


Alice Peterson - 2008
    In the midst of shock and denial, and the enduring question, 'Isn't it old people who get arthritis?', Alice had to learn to live with what quickly turned from the odd ache and pain to a very aggressive form of the illness, and rediscover a new path in life. "Another Alice" is at times utterly heart-breaking, and at others laugh-out-loud. Here is her story of how, armed with humour and courage, she left behind a world she loved to overcome the pain of a degenerative illness. Told with wit, charm and frankness, "Another Alice" is also a story of friendship, family, growing up and the desire to be 'normal'. But, above all, it celebrates the power of the human spirit.

Spinning Plates: Music, Men, Motherhood and Me


Sophie Ellis-Bextor - 2021
    

Shadow of My Father


John Gotti - 2015
    But now in "Shadow of My Father," the real story of the King of the Volcano is revealed for the first time. John A. Gotti, who survived four trials and a parole violation hearing, in four years, without a guilty verdict, now takes up his pen to tell the story of his father’s unwavering dedication to the street, and how, as his son, he entered that life, and then, with his father’s permission, left the life of crime, and put the “Family” behind him to live a legitimate life with his real family. It is a saga of betrayal and redemption, and an insider’s view of how, at times, those who are tasked with upholding the law readily broke it to further their careers.

Open Book : the life and death of Amy Winehouse


Andy Morris - 2011
    Amy lived a rock-star lifestyle to the max, replacing an addiction to drugs with a battle against alcohol. When she died, aged 27, she joined a long list of musicians whose lives had been tragically cut short at the same age - the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison. She burst onto the scene with her debut album, "Frank," in 2003. But it was her follow-up, "Back To Black," in 2006 that won her millions of fans right around the world as she won five Grammy Awards for the album. Her chart success, though, would always be measured against a personal life full of trauma. She wrote "Back To Black" about Blake Fielder-Civil, who she married in 2007. But they spent little time together as a married couple as Blake was sent to prison. Theirs was a stormy romance, and despite divorcing they would remain in love with each other until she died. There were always plenty of other men in Amy's life, though. In the end she died alone in her bed. A bodyguard kept her protected from the outside world, but nobody could protect her from herself...

Backstage Pass


Paul Stanley - 2019
    Paul shows you how you can rock ‘n’ roll all night and party every day—without missing a beat.

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes


Elizabeth Bard - 2010
    Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch In Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate souffle) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart. Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.

Buck Em: The Autobiography of Buck Owens


Randy Poe - 2013
    Born in Texas and raised in Arizona, Buck eventually found his way to Bakersfield, California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers, songwriters, and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville, the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2 000 miles away from Music City - racking up a remarkable twenty-one number one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center. In the latter half of the 1990s, Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years, he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours, recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory, Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend, Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma, Washington, to his co-hosting the network television show Hee Haw; and from his comeback hit, "Streets of Bakersfield " to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In these pages, Buck also shows his astute business acumen, having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings, his acquisition of numerous radio stations, and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace, one of the most venerated musical venues in the country. Buck 'Em! is the fascinating story of the life of country superstar Buck Owens - from the back roads of Texas to the streets of Bakersfield. Click here to watch a video extra on YouTube for Buck 'Em.

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs


John Lydon - 1994
    Enjoy or die..." --John LydonPunk has been romanticized and embalmed in various media. An English class revolt that became a worldwide fashion statement, punk's idols were the Sex Pistols, and its sneering hero was Johnny Rotten.Seventeen years later, John Lydon looks back at himself, the Sex Pistols, and the "no future" disaffection of the time. Much more than just a music book, Rotten is an oral history of punk: angry, witty, honest, poignant, crackling with energy. Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, Chrissie Hynde, Billy Idol, London and England in the late 1970s, the Pistols' creation and collapse...all are here, in perhaps the best book ever written about music and youth culture, by one of its most notorious figures.