Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and '60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk. Their eponymous first record and" London Calling" still rank in Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his iconic status. Music journalist Chris Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career and the entire punk movement from its inception. With exclusive access to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, Salewicz penetrates the soul of an icon. He uses his vantage point to write the definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. In the process, Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural influence.

    But few could have expected that a young Canadian would pen some of the most distinctively American songs, music that seems soaked in the mythology of the Old South. With songs like The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and Up on Cripple Creek, Robertson and his partners in The Band fashioned a new popular music lexicon that has endured for decades, influencing countless musicians.In this captivating memoir of The Band's storied career, Robertson weaves together his half-Jewish, half-Mohawk upbringing on the Brantford Six Nations Reserve and in Toronto; his odyssey south at sixteen and rollicking early years on the road with rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins; the slow formation of The Band, their trial-by-fire with Bob Dylan on his 1966 world tour, and the forging of their unique sound. He recounts being catapulted to fame with the success of their groundbreaking debut, and takes us through the astonishing run of albums that culminated in one of history's most famous farewell concerts: the movie The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorcese. This is the story of a time and place--the moment when rock 'n' roll became life, when electric blues legends like Muddy Waters and Otis Rush criss-crossed the circuit of clubs and roadhouses from Texas to Toronto. It's the story of exciting change as the world tumbled into the '60s, and figures like Dylan and The Band redefined music and culture, with a little help from sex and drugs. And it's the moving story of the profound friendship between five young men who together created a new kind of popular music.

    In Dream Brother, music critic David Browne offers an incisive portrait of the ill-fated father and son, examining their deaths and their short, though accomplished, careers. Browne's keen reporting and strong sense of the complex relationship between Jeff and Tim Buckley create a gripping account of a young artist hurtling toward his own destruction and a lyrical story of two lives adrift on the same churning river. Too discerning to simply attribute Jeff's death to some otherworldly, shared destiny with his father -- who died in 1975 at 28 -- the author instead paints a compelling picture of two valuable artists who never should have left the world so early. Dream Brother avoids dwelling on the similarities between father and son, but its focus on their individual paths makes the coincidences all the more haunting.Despite looking and sounding uncannily like a man who came a generation earlier, Jeff Buckley did not embrace his father's legacy. As Browne points out, the son was already without his father long before Tim's fatal heroin dose. For the rest of his life, Jeff resented his father for his absence and rejected the drug habit and self-destructive lifestyle that had ensnared Tim. And yet, both father and son possessed a daring that led them to premature, accidental deaths.Painting vivid images of the art and business of music in two very different eras, Dream Brother makes it clear that the common thread linking the deaths of Tim and Jeff Buckley is a sense of profound loss -- youth cut short, talent unexplored, music extinguished.Indeed, pervasive throughout Dream Brother is the feeling of something seductively ethereal. Maybe it's the presence of the Wolf River, which lured Jeff to his death. Maybe it's the foreknowledge of how the story will end. But probably, long after the Buckleys are gone, it's the music they left behind. (Karen Burns)

    The recording engineer heard a car pull into the lot, and soon the biggest man he had ever seen walked through the door. Six foot three, 500 pounds, the guy looked like a house carrying an 'ukulele. When he stepped into the studio, the floated floor shifted unnervingly beneath the engineer's feet. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole engulfed the engineer's hand in his and said, "Hi, bruddah." The product of that impromptu late-night recording session, a delicate medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World," has driven sales of 1993's Facing Future to nearly two million copies. Each time the medley is licensed to appear in advertisements, in movies, even on American Idol, Mainlanders embrace it anew as a touch of the unfamiliar in their otherwise staid record collections. But in Hawai'i, a state struggling like no other with the responsibility of its native heritage, Facing Future is much more. Gaining unprecedented access to Israel's family, friends, bandmates, lawyer, and label, Dan Kois tells the remarkable story of Bruddah Iz and the album that changed his life--and his death.

    I didn't. They were there already. They only wanted exploiting. They were all bad boys when I found them. I just brought out the worst in them.' Andrew Loog Oldham was nineteen years old when he discovered and became the manager and producer of an unknown band called The Rolling Stones. His radical vision transformed them from a starving south London blues combo to the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band That Ever Drew Breath, while the revolutionary strategies he used to get them there provoked both adulation and revulsion throughout British society and beyond. An ultra-hip mod, flash, brash and schooled in style by Mary Quant, he was a hustler of genius, addicted to scandal, notoriety and innovation.

    Though she kept her private life a mystery, for some years Agatha had secretly written her autobiography, and when it was published after her death, millions of her fans agreed - this was her best story!From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, this book reveals the true genius of her legendary success with real passion and openness.

     Anthony had a special feeling about Jonathan Larson's rock musical from his first audition, so he was thrilled when he landed a starring role as the filmmaker Mark Cohen. With his mom's cancer in remission and a reason to quit his newly acquired job at Starbucks, his life was looking up. When Rent opened to thunderous acclaim off Broadway, Rapp and his fellow cast members knew that something truly extraordinary had taken shape. But even as friends and family were celebrating the show's success, they were also mourning Jonathan Larson's sudden death from an aortic aneurysm. By the time Rent made its triumphant jump to Broadway, Larson had posthumously won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. When Anthony's mom began to lose her battle with cancer, he struggled to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family. Here, Anthony recounts the show's magnificent success and his overwhelming loss. He also shares his first experiences discovering his sexuality, the tension it created with his mother, and his struggle into adulthood to gain her acceptance. Variously marked by fledgling love and devastating loss, piercing frustration and powerful enlightenment, Without You charts the course of Rapp's exhilarating journey with the cast and crew of Rent as well as the intimacies of his personal life behind the curtain.

    But what were the influences that shaped his life and intellectual development? And who inspired him to become the pioneering scientist and public thinker now famous (and infamous to some) around the world?In An Appetite for Wonder we join him on a personal journey back to an enchanting childhood in colonial Africa. There the exotic natural world was his constant companion. Boarding school in England at the age of eight, and, later, public school at Oundle introduce Dawkins, and the reader, to strange rules and eccentric schoolmasters, vividly described with both humorous affection and some reservation. An initial fervent attachment to Church of England religion soon gives way to disaffection and, later, teenage rebellion. Early signs of a preference for music, poetry and reading over practical matters become apparent as he recalls the opportunities that entered his small world.Oxford, however, is the catalyst to his life. Vigorous debate in the dynamic Zoology Department unleashes his innate intellectual curiosity, and inspirational mentors together with his own creative thinking ignite the spark that results in his radical new vision of Darwinism, The Selfish Gene.From innocent child to charismatic world-famous scientist, Richard Dawkins paints a colourful, richly textured canvas of his early life. Honest self-reflection and witty anecdotes are interspersed with touching reminiscences of his family and friends, literature, poetry and songs. We are finally able to understand the private influences that shaped the public man who, more than anyone else in his generation, explained our own origins.

    The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child. This certainly doesn't mean that I'm quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it's like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.

    By any definition, Mick Jagger is a force of nature, a complete original—and undeniably one of the dominant cultural figures of our time. Swaggering, strutting, sometimes elusive, always spellbinding, he grabbed us by our collective throat a half-century ago and—unlike so many of his gifted peers—never let go. For decades, Mick has jealously guarded his many shocking secrets—until now. As the Rolling Stones mark their 50th anniversary, journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen tears the mask from rock’s most complex and enigmatic icon in a no-holds-barred biography as impossible to ignore as Jagger himself. Based on interviews with friends, family members, fellow music legends, and industry insiders—as well as wives and legions of lovers—MICK sheds new light on a man whose very name defines an era and candidly reveals: —New details about Jagger’s jaw-dropping sexual exploits with more than four thousand women (including Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Uma Thurman, and France’s First Lady Carla Bruni)—as well as his encounters with several of rock’s biggest male stars. Also, the day Mick’s wife Jerry Hall and Keith Richards pleaded with Jagger to seek treatment for sex addiction. —The backstage drama surrounding Mick’s knighthood, and Jagger’s little-known ties to Britain’s Royal Family, including Prince William and Kate Middleton. —What he really thinks of today’s superstars—including Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber. —Never-before-revealed, behind-the-scenes accounts of his often turbulent relationships—from his band-mates, ravenous groupies, and rabid fans to such intimates as Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Jackie Onassis, Bill Clinton, and others.  —Cocaine, LSD, hashish, and speed—the flabbergasting truth about the extent of Jagger’s substance abuse, and how long it really went on. —A rare glimpse into Mick’s business dealings and the killer instinct that has enabled him to amass a personal fortune well in excess of $400 million. —The stormy “marriage” between Mick and Keith that nearly ran aground over Keith’s searing comments—and all the scandal, mayhem, excess, madness, and genius that went into making the Rolling Stones “the world’s greatest rock-and-roll band.” Like its subject, this book is explosive and riveting—the definitive biography of a living legend who has kept us thrilled, confounded, and astounded. THIS IS MICK.

    Her life changed utterly with his unexpected inheritance of the title and vast estates after the wartime death of his brother, who had married “Kick” Kennedy, the beloved sister of John F. Kennedy. Her friendship with that family would last through triumph and tragedy.In 1959, the Duchess and her family took up residence in Chatsworth, the four-hundred-year-old family seat, with its incomparable collections of paintings, tapestry, and sculpture—the combined accumulations of generations of tastemakers. Neglected due to the economies of two world wars and punitive inheritance taxes, the great house soon came to life again under the careful attention of the Duchess. It is regarded as one of England’s most loved and popular historic houses.Wait for Me! is written with intense warmth, charm, and perception. A unique portrait of an age of tumult, splendor, and change, it is also an unprecedented look at the rhythms of life inside one of the great aristocratic families of England. With its razor-sharp portraits of the Duchess’s many friends and cohorts—politicians, writers, artists, sportsmen—it is truly irresistible reading, and will join the shelf of Mitford classics to delight readers for years to come.

    Mark Lewisohn uses his unprecedented archival access and hundreds of new interviews to construct the full story of the lives and work of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Ten years in the making, Tune In takes the Beatles from before their childhoods through the final hour of 1962—when, with breakthrough success just days away, they stand on the cusp of a whole new kind of fame and celebrity. They’ve one hit record ("Love Me Do") behind them and the next ("Please Please Me") primed for release, their first album session is booked, and America is clear on the horizon.  This is the lesser-known Beatles story—the pre-Fab years of Liverpool and Hamburg—and in many respects the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. Here is the complete and true account of their family lives, childhoods, teenage years and their infatuation with American music, here is the riveting narrative of their unforgettable days and nights in the Cavern Club, their laughs, larks and adventures when they could move about freely, before fame closed in.  For those who’ve never read a Beatles book before, this is the place to discover the young men behind the icons. For those who think they know John, Paul, George, and Ringo, it’s time to press the Reset button and tune into the real story, the lasting word.

    In her late 20s, Sharon finally made the painful decision to break with her family. Always irrepressible, Sharon flourished, creating a loving family of her own while becoming a legendary manager and rockband promoter. In rock star Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon found her soul mate, yet Ozzy's drug and drink-fuelled excesses which culminated in his attempt to strangle her made their marriage a white knuckle ride from the start; only her devotion to their three children gave her the will to survive. From the tremendous highs of the hit show The Osbournes to the lows of Ozzy's near-fatal quad-bike accident and her own bout with colon cancer, Sharon's tenacity, honesty, and humour have triumphed again and again.

    As small children, they watched their grandfather become president; just twelve years later they stood by their father's side when he took the same oath. They spent their college years being trailed by the Secret Service and chased by the paparazzi, with every teenage mistake making national headlines. But the tabloids didn't tell the whole story of these two young women forging their own identities under extraordinary circumstances. In this book they take readers on a revealing, thoughtful, and deeply personal tour behind the scenes of their lives, with never-before-told stories about their family, their adventures, their loves and losses, and the special sisterly bond that fulfills them.

    Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Naifeh and Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials to bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist: his early struggles to find his place in the world; his intense relationship with his brother Theo; and his move to Provence, where he painted some of the best-loved works in Western art. The authors also shed new light on many unexplored aspects of Van Gogh’s inner world: his erratic and tumultuous romantic life; his bouts of depression and mental illness; and the cloudy circumstances surrounding his death at the age of thirty-seven.   Though countless books have been written about Van Gogh, no serious, ambitious examination of his life has been attempted in more than seventy years. Naifeh and Smith have re-created Van Gogh’s life with an astounding vividness and psychological acuity that bring a completely new and sympathetic understanding to this unique artistic genius.