Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe


Anthony Summers - 1985
    Her rollar-coaster life. Her deception - shrouded death. Her divided secret life. Her legion of lovers. Her intimacies with JFK and Bobby Kennedy. Her mafia connections. This is the one book that tells the whole naked, deeply moving truth about the all - too-beautiful talented, and tormented woman who played a role in public and in private that was too much for flesh and spirit to survive.

Johnny Cash: The Life


Robert Hilburn - 2013
    Johnny Cash's extraordinary career stretched from his days at Sun Records with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to the remarkable creative last hurrah, at age 69, that resulted in the brave, moving "Hurt" video.As music critic for the Los Angeles Times, Hilburn knew Cash throughout his life: he was the only music journalist at the legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968, and he interviewed both Cash and his wife June Carter just months before their deaths. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-seen material from the singer's inner circle, Hilburn creates an utterly compelling, deeply human portrait of a towering figure in country music, a seminal influence in rock, and an icon of American popular culture. Hilburn's reporting shows the astonishing highs and deep lows that marked the journey of a man of great faith and humbling addiction who throughout his life strove to use his music to lift people's spirits.

Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored


Richard Cole - 1992
    The band's tour manager for more than a decade, Cole was there when they burst onto the music scene, achieved cult status, cut platinum records, and transformed popular music. Second only to the Beatles in sales for years, Led Zeppelin was rock's premier group. But unlike the boys from Liverpool, the excitement of this band"s music was matched by the fever pitch of their antics on and off the stage....In hotel rooms and stadiums, in a customized private Boeing 707 jet and country estates, Richard Cole saw it all -- and here he tells it all in this close-up, down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred account that records the highs, the lows, and the occasional in-betweens. This revised edition brings fans up to date on the band members' lives and careers, which may be a little quieter now, but their songs remain the same.

Bridge Over Troubled Dreams


Delta Goodrem - 2021
    From the touching account of her birth – two months premature – to battling bouts of missing home and many incredible self-discoveries along the way, Bridge Over Troubled Dreams is truly the book of the artist’s life. She speaks candidly about love, family, highs and lows, patience, freedom, faith, hope and survival, and how she uses lessons learned to drive herself forward. Delta’s heartfelt stories are accompanied by never-before-seen pictures from her personal collection: candid behind-the-scenes shots, unreleased tour photos and even personal snaps from her childhood.

Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business


Danny Goldberg - 2008
    He did PR for Led Zeppelin; he managed the career of Nirvana; he ran Atlantic Records, Mercury Records, and Warner Bros. Records; he launched Stevie Nicks’s solo career. In Bumping into Geniuses, Goldberg shares his stories about performers who represent a broad and powerful portion of the psychic real estate of the rock and roll kingdom: Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, Bruce Springsteen, KISS, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Hole, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle, Led Zeppelin, and more. But there’s more to this story than just Goldberg’s varied career. It’s also a look at the industry itself: a business that was neither the romantic vehicle for self-expression that its most naive fans imagined, nor the purely crass money machine depicted by its most cynical critics. It was complex and chaotic—a mixture of art and commerce, idealism and selfishness—and sometimes, rock’s most gifted and influential musicians were able to transcend it all. For anyone interested in the rock and roll industry, or simply the mores and temperaments of the musicians themselves, Bumping into Geniuses is an incredible insider’s tale that only Goldberg could tell.

Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family


Derek Malcolm - 2017
    The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.

Yzerman: The Making of a Champion


Douglas Hunter - 2004
    Drawing on the insights of coaches, teammates and league insiders, award-winning writer Douglas Hunter charts Yzerman's career as "the player's player," the embodiment of skill, dedication, sacrifice, and leadership.Yzerman went fourth overall to the Detroit Red Wings in the very strong 1983 NHL entry draft, which included such prospects as Tom Barasso, Cam Neely, and Pat LaFontaine. He made an immediate impact in the NHL with his dazzling offensive skills. In 1986, having just turned 21, he was made the youngest captain in league history.Despite his individual success, including being one of the only three players in NHL history to record a 155-point season, Yzerman's team struggled and Detroit's devoted hockey fans wondered when he would reverse the Red Wings' fortunes. When Detroit was unexpectedly bumped from the playoffs in the '95 Stanley Cup final, many fingers, pointed at the captain. Determined to bring a championship back to Detroit, shrugging off persistent trade rumors, Yzerman continued to adjust his game for the good of the team. While his finesse as a playmaker and goal scorer remained in evidence, the gritty centerman blocked shots, drove to the net, and worked tirelessly along the boards in the corners. He led by aggressive example on the ice and with quiet confidence in the dressing room.In 1997, when the Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup since 1955, Yzerman proved he was a winner. He proved it again the next season, when he raised the Cup for a second time and was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player. In 2002 the team captured its third Stanley Cup in seven seasons and that same year Yzerman was pivotal in Team Canada's Olympic gold medal victory.

The Magic Lantern


Ingmar Bergman - 1987
    . . . At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern.More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . . . . Many gripping revelations.”—New York Times Book Review“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”—New Republic“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”—New York Times“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”—Library Journal

Born to Run


Bruce Springsteen - 2016
    In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.” —Bruce Springsteen, from the pages of Born to RunIn 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized. Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The River,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “The Rising,” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats


Grandmaster Flash - 2008
    Theirs was a groundbreaking union between one DJ and five rapping MCs. One of the first hip hop posses, they were responsible for such masterpieces as “The Message” and “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.” In the 1970s Grandmaster Flash pioneered the art of break-beat DJing—the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as musical instruments. Disco-era DJs spun records so that people could dance. The original turntablist, Flash took it a step further by cutting, rubbing, backspinning, and mixing records, focusing on “breaks”—what Flash described as “the short, climactic parts of the records that really grabbed me”—as a way of heightening musical excitement and creating something new. Now the man who paved the way for such artists as Jay-Z, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and 50 Cent tells all—from his early days on the mean streets of the South Bronx, to the heights of hip hop stardom, losing millions at the hands of his record label, his downward spiral into cocaine addiction, and his ultimate redemption with the help and love of his family and friends. In this powerful memoir, Flash recounts how music from the streets, much like rock ’n’ roll a generation before, became the sound of an era and swept a nation with its funk, flavor, and beat.

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story


Chuck Klosterman - 2005
    He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock ‘n’ roll all the way. Within the span of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end—one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing...and what this means for the rest of us.

Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital


Mark Andersen - 2001
    punk rock music scene that led to the rise of such bands as Positive Force, Riot Grrrl, Fugazi, and Bikini Kill.

Freaky Dancin': Me and the Mondays


Bez - 1998
    This is a book that became an instant cult classic.

Conversations With Myself


Nelson Mandela - 2010
    Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela's personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the postapartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency--a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice.While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with Myself allows, for the first time, unhindered insight into the human side of the icon.

Ali Rap


Muhammad Ali - 2006
    From a narcissistic self-promoter who eventually became a man of enduring spirituality through a journey of formidable tests, Ali has emerged as a true superhero in the annals of American history, and the Worldwide Ambassador of Courage and Conviction. This fresh, first-person book serves as a hilarious and moving hands-on autobiography by Muhammad Ali, the intrepid man of action who spoke in soundbites, all wittily and powerfully visualized by the provocateur graphic designer, George Lois. Important Dates: ? Dec. 11, 2006: 25th Anniversary of Ali's last fight ? Jan. 17, 2007: Ali's 65th birthday Co-published with ESPN Books, the launch of Ali Rap will be supported with an unprecedented marketing and publicity blitz from ESPN, America's #1 sports media outlet: ESPN Television: ? Ali Rap, The Movie: original 1-hour special based on the book. Through actual Ali clips as well as celebrity performers, the show will feature the most colorful and powerful quotes from him over the course of his life. (debut follows the Heisman Trophy Awards: Dec. 9, 2006, 9 p.m.) ? Ali's Dozen, The Movie: original 1-hour special featuring Ali's 12 most important boxing rounds. (debuts Dec. 9, 2006, 10 p.m.) ? Ali's 65, The Movie: original 2-hour special tied to Muhammad Ali's 65th birthday, celebrating Ali's unique life and career.Fresh off his Emmy-winning ?Rhythm of the Rope, ? Johnson McKelvy will be the producer for this show. (debuts Jan. 3, 2007, 10 p.m.) ? Ali Rap Vignettes: 30-second shorts of Ali's most memorable declarations (running daily, Dec. 9, 2006 ? Jan. 17, 2007) ? TV Advertisements: 10- and 15-second spots for Ali Rap to air on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic and ESPNEWS (late Nov. 2006 ? early Jan. 2007) ESPN The Magazine: ? Substantial book excerpt (Nov. 2006) ? 5 ? 6 featured ads for the book (Oct. 25, Nov. 8, Nov. 22, Dec. 6., Dec. 21, 2006) ESPN Radio: ? Author interviews (Nov. 2006) ? On-air promotions and giveaways (Nov. 2006) ESPN New Media: ? Prominent feature on ESPN.com and ESPNBooks.com: book cover, description and excerpt, plus link to online retailer (Nov. 2006) ? Fully customizable E-card available for download ? Selected Ali Rap Vignettes featured on Mobile ESPN, ESPN Motion, ESPN Radio and ESPN 360. Facts about ESPN: ? ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic and ESPNEWS Television networks have a combined average audience 2,011,000 households in America during primetime (average of 971,000 households over a 24-hour period). ? ESPN.com celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2005 with nearly 19 million visitors monthly, and has been the leading sports Web site every year since launch. ? ESPN Radio is now heard on more than 300 full-time affiliates covering 85% of the United States; 750 stations carry some ESPN programming, including the top 50 markets and 99 of the top 100. The author: Advertising communicator George Lois is known for dozens of marketing miracles that triggered innovative and populist changes in American and world culture. His most famous work includes the ?I Want My MTV? campaign, JiffyLube and Tommy Hilfiger ads, USA Today's breakthrough ?singing? TV campaign, and ESPN's ?In Your Face? campaign. He is also known as the legendary creator of the iconic Esquire covers of the 1960s. Lois is the author of five books of his work; his previous book is $ellebrity, dealing with his campaigns using celebrities in fresh and outrageous ways. Contributor: Ron Holland worked alongside George Lois in the glory days of the Creative Revolution as a pioneer copywriter of Big Idea advertising. They continue their never-really-separated lives working on their matchless kind of advertising to this day.