With candor he takes us behind the scenes on the set of Three's Company, and behind the sets of his hugely successful film comedies. And he shares bittersweet memories of The Mayberry Reunion, and affectionate recollections of his professional and personal relationships with such legends as Andy Griffith, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Orson Welles, Lou Costello, and Arthur Godfrey.

    I'm Maureen O'Hara and this is my life story.-- From Chapter One of 'Tis HerselfIn language that is blunt, straightforward, and totally lacking in artifice, Maureen O'Hara, one of the greatest and most enduring stars of Hollywood's "Golden Era," for the first time tells the story of how she succeeded in the world's most competitive business.Known for her remarkable beauty and her fiery screen persona, Maureen O'Hara came to Hollywood when she was still a teenager, taken there by her mentor, the great actor Charles Laughton. Almost immediately she clashed with the men who ran the movie business -- the moguls who treated actors like chattel, the directors who viewed every actress as a potential bedmate.Determined to hold her own and to remain true to herself, she fought for roles that she wanted and resisted the advances of some of Hollywood's most powerful and attractive men. It was in the great director John Ford that she first found someone willing to give her a chance to prove herself as an important actress. Beginning with the Academy Award-winning How Green Was My Valley, she went on to make five films with Ford and through him first met the great John Wayne, with whom she also made five films.In O'Hara, Ford had found his ideal Irish heroine, a role that achieved its greatest realization in The Quiet Man. And in O'Hara, John Wayne found his ideal leading lady, for she was perhaps the only actress who could hold her own when on screen with "The Duke." Ford, however, was not without his quirks, and his relationship with his favorite actress became more and more complex and ultimately deeply troubled. The on-screen relationship between Wayne and O'Hara, on the other hand, was transformed into a close friendship built on mutual respect, creating a bond that endured until his death.Writing with complete frankness, O'Hara talks for the first time about these remarkable men, about their great strengths and their very human failings. She writes as well about many of the other actors and actresses -- Lucille Ball, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, John Candy, Natalie Wood, to name a few -- with whom she worked, but ultimately it is about herself that she is most revealing. With great candor and a mixture of pride and regret, she reflects on just how this young girl from Ireland made it to America and onto movie screens all around the world. There were missteps, of course -- a troubled and deeply destructive marriage, a willingness to trust too readily in others -- but there were triumphs and great happiness as well, including her marriage to the aviation pioneer Brigadier General Charles F. Blair, who tragically died in a mysterious plane crash ten years after their marriage.Throughout, 'Tis Herself is informed by the warmth and charm and intelligence that defined Maureen O'Hara's performances in some sixty films, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Miracle on 34th Street to The Parent Trap to McLintock! to Only the Lonely. 'Tis Herself is Maureen O'Hara's story as only she can tell it, the tale of an Irish lass who believed in herself with the strength and determination to make her own dreams come true.

    Her sisters included Nancy, doyenne of the 1920s London smart set and a noted novelist and biographer; Diana, wife to the English fascist chief Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity, who fell head over in heels in love with Hitler; and Deborah, later the Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica swung left and moved to America, where she took part in the civil rights movement and wrote her classic expose of the undertaking business, The American Way of Death.Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford's upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, not exactly conventional. . . Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen's face when it is laying an egg. . . . Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the grown-ups). But Mitford found her family's world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford's funniest, and most pointed, pages.A family portrait, a tale of youthful folly and high-spirited adventure, a study in social history, a love story, Hons and Rebels is a delightful contribution to the autobiographer's art.

    Bet you wouldn't have put money on that three years ago, eh?! Please don't stress yourself out too much though, it's actually socially acceptable nowadays that you're interested. Firstly I'd like to emphasise that I have WRITTEN THIS BOOK MYSELF, so be assured you're getting the TOOTH, the WHOLE TOOTH and NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH! (Which was my original choice of title, but babe, we're so over that) This book documents my story, year by year, from my humble beginnings growing up in the East End of London, becoming one of the nation's most talked-about people overnight to finally moving up the spectrum from guilty pleasure, and getting nearer to national treasure. It will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly you'll discover who I really am. If it doesn't do any of those things you're not legally entitled to a refund - just clearing that up ;-). I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it. This book has been like therapy, and LORD was I in need. Enjoy!

    But she left behind a notebook in which she recorded her thoughts, fears and dreams. Now, after 60 years, that notebook hs been recovered, opening a unique, moving window into everyday life of Polish Jews caught in the throes of Adolf Hitler's Final Solution.

    The whole world followed with bated breath the searing custody trial over young Gloria that pitted mother against daughter and shook the Vanderbilts and society. While much has been written from the outside about all of this, the two principals have never before disclosed the real truth behind the rumors and the headlines. And exciting as are their personal adventures and escapades, their story is also a portrait of an era.In every age there have been certain women who through a combination of beauty and personality have attracted the love and admiration of rich or famous men, and who seem to be the embodiments of the feminine charm of the period. The Edwardian era had its Lily Langtry, the Napoleonic its Josephine, the eighteenth century its Du Barry and its Lady Hamilton—and so on back to antiquity. In our time, among those women who have come close to fitting this role are Lady Furness and Gloria Vanderbilt.From childhood each had the elusive qualities that characterize the femme fatale. Both knew the love of many men, both suffered deeply, and now both have happily risen above the vicissitudes of their checkered careers and face the future with gallantry, humor, and without rancor or bitterness over the past. In this spirit, and with all sincerity, they have set down the story of their lives.In Double Exposure, we are given a matchless picture of life among the great—and the near-great—in the now-vanished world between the two wars. Above all, we come to know the minds and hearts and philosophy of life and love of two fascinating women, and something of the nature of fascination itself.

    Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are never-theless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong."No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why." At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures.

    In the rain.In this compelling memoir, comedian and actor Alan Davies recalls his boyhood with vivid insight and devastating humour. Shifting between his 1970s upbringing and his life today, Davies moves poignantly from innocence to experience to the clarity of hindsight, always with a keen sense of the absurd.From sibling dynamics, to his voiceless, misunderstood progression through school, sexuality and humiliating 'accidents', Davies inhabits his younger mind with spectacular accuracy, sharply evoking an era when Green Shield Stamps, Bob-a-Job week and Whizzer & Chips loomed large, a bus fare was 2p - and children had little power in the face of adult motivation. Here, there are often exquisitely tender recollections of the mother he lost at six years old, of a bereaved family struggling to find its way, and the kicks and confusion of adolescence.

    He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces -- John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" -- and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and pictures by an extraordinary man.

    She tells of the friendships she made with many of her leading men and with women such as Joan Crawford whom she met as a youngster in a chorus line and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose President husband had a well-known crush on Myrna. Myrna Loy was not only an actress but also a woman who had political interests, championing the UN and Democratic presidential candidates from Truman onward, and was even for a time a "Washington wife". In her memoirs she presents a personal analysis of post-war politics up to and including Ronald Reagan.

    "I'm exactly as I appear," he once said of himself. "There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water." Michael Mewshaw's Sympathy for the Devil, a memoir of his friendship with the stubbornly iconoclastic public intellectual, is a welcome corrective to this tired received wisdom. A complex, nuanced portrait emerges in these pages—and while "Gore" can indeed be brusque, standoffish, even cruel, Mewshaw also catches him in more vulnerable moments. The Gore Vidal the reader comes to know here is generous and supportive to younger, less successful writers; he is also, especially toward the end of his life, disappointed, even lonely. Sparkling, often hilarious, and filled with spicy anecdotes about expat life in Italy, Sympathy for the Devil is an irresistible inside account of a man who was himself—faults and all—impossible to resist. As enlightening as it is entertaining, it offers a unique look at a figure many only think they know.

    This biography charts the dramatic rise of the country boy who became head of the Free State and commander-in-chief of the army, before his death in 1922 aged only 31.

    Beryl Markham’s life story is a true epic. Not only did she set records and break barriers as a pilot, she shattered societal expectations, threw herself into torrid love affairs, survived desperate crash landings—and chronicled everything. A contemporary of Karen Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa), Markham left an enduring memoir that soars with astounding candor and shimmering insights. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She trained as a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Markham’s successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all told here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed as “one of the greatest adventure books of all time” by Newsweek and “the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything” by the New York Times, West with the Night remains a powerful testament to one of the iconic lives of the twentieth century.

    Along with the story of her triumphant comeback, after being stabbed by a deranged Steffi Graf fan, Seles provides readers with an insider's glimpse of big-time international tennis. of photos.

    It is full of glamorous moments, heart-warming episodes, and exciting personalities.