Book picks similar to
On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide by Ethan Mordden
non-fiction
musical-theatre
theater
music
Ariana: The Unauthorized Biography
Danny White - 2017
Less than a fortnight after a terrorist killed twenty-two people at her Manchester show, the petite princess stood tall at her tribute concert that united and healed a shaken nation. She was the emotional core of a powerful evening that reminded us all of music's redemptive power.But who is Ariana Grande? This candid book traces the US pop star's story from her childhood in Florida, through her teenage years on Broadway and Nickelodeon, and onto her gleaming pop career which has seen her described as 'the new Mariah Carey'. The only biography of the songbird, it tells her eventful and inspirational story in full for the first time, and shows how she became an award-winning, chart-topping pop idol, as well as an empowering inspiration for a generation of girls. It reveals that there is more to Ariana than the celebrity we all think we know, explaining how her smooth transition from a squeaky-clean teenage pop product to a sophisticated, bold artist was powered by a restless and resilient personality. A must read for all her fans, this is a full, unflinching portrait of a pop sensation and inspiring, uncompromising woman - the small, sassy girl with the ponytail who conquered the world.
Double Life: A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood
Alan Shayne - 2010
The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life: A Love Story, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a 50 plus year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century. At the same time, they share inside stories from film, television and media featuring the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Truman Capote, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, Lee Radziwill and Frances Lear.“We both grew up at a time when homosexuality was not even spoken about,” the couple writes. “There were certainly no books that could help a young person understand that two people of the same sex could build a happy, productive and loving life together. When we entered our 50th year, another same sex couple told us we were ‘an inspiration’, so we began to feel we had the responsibility to make what we’ve experienced available to others. We also wanted to show people who were not gay that our life was not unlike theirs. We are all pretty much the same, so we deserve equal protection under the Constitution.”Alan Shayne retired as President of Warner Brothers Television in 1986, following a career that included Broadway, playing opposite Lena Horne and spanned forty years. As a leading casting director, he worked on such films as Catch 22, All the President’s Men and many others. At Warner Brothers, he shepherded such long-running television series as Alice, Night Court and The Dukes of Hazard.Norman Sunshine was a successful magazine illustrator in New York who went on to be a painter and sculptor whose works are in museums and in important collections. In the early years of his career, he was vice president, creative director of an advertising agency, and coined the phrase, “What Becomes a Legend Most?” as well as “Danskins are not just for Dancing.” He interrupted his painting career when Frances Lear asked him to spearhead Lear’s Magazine in the 1980s.Upon the two men meeting in New York in 1958, “We didn’t want to live together,” says Shayne. “We didn’t have any examples of what a good love relationship between two men could be. And there was always the problem of hiding so no one would know we were gay. There was no question that if I were known to be gay, living with another man, it would make it more difficult for me to get work as an actor.”As an artist, Sunshine was able to maintain a moderately out lifestyle. But when the first exhibition of his paintings in New York brought on a profile in The New York Times in 1968, he was photographed in the apartment that he admitted sharing with Shayne. At both his advertising agency and Shayne’s television production company, the article was met with absolute silence.Even in the 1970s, when Sunshine won an Emmy for the graphics and title design he had created for one of Shayne’s television productions, “Alan and I agreed it was not a good idea for us to be seen together at an industry event,” he remembers. “Alan, after all, was one of the very few homosexuals who had such a powerful, high profile job, and who lived openly with a man. Homophobia had its adherents and some ruthless climber up the executive ladder would certainly love an opportunity to use it…’Better to be seen with a woman,’ we were advised by a very trusted friend, ‘Makes everyone more comfortable.’”Happily, in 2004, the State of Massachusetts allowed the opportunity for the couple to be married on a beach in Nantucket. “We were like a long, empty, closed-up house where the windows have just been opened,” writes Shayne. “The fresh air thrilled through us, and after years of only being who we were in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending. We were at last free.”Double Life is a trip through the entertainment world and a gay partnership in the latter half of the 20th century. As more and more same sex couples find it possible to say “I do,” the book serves as an important document of how far we’ve come.
Stand by Your Man
Tammy Wynette - 1979
An autobiography with Joan Dew - illustrated with photo section - Burt Reynolds Ode to Tammy
Great Balls of Fire : The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis
Myra Lewis - 1982
Paperback Book
Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince- The First Decade (Revised Edition)
Per Nilsen - 1999
Illustrated with previously unseen photographs and drawing on over 300 hours of interviews with band members, producers, friends, former lovers and associates, this biography traces the artist's life from his Minneapolis roots through controversial stardom to his rejection of the Prince persona.
Four Meals for Fourpence
Grace Foakes - 2011
With a child’s uncluttered eye, she describes the small details—shopping in the market, men waiting for work at the dock gates, the rituals of washday, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the old East End of London. She also describes the fear—of illness, of unemployment, of the workhouse—that hung over her family and thousands like them, and her determination that her own children would never know the kind of poverty she had experienced.
Monkee Business: The Revolutionary Made-For-TV Band
Eric Lefcowitz - 2013
Everything but control over their careers. Author Eric Lefcowitz chronicles the kaleidoscopic journey of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, following each of the four Monkees, together and apart, from 1965 to the present day. A must-read for music fans, “Monkee Business" is the definitive biography of a rock and roll legend.
Morrissey: The Albums
Johnny Rogan - 2007
Features a song-by-song analysis, a song index for easy reference, and details of compilations and live albums.
Sinatra and the Jack Pack: The Extraordinary Friendship between Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy—Why They Bonded and What Went Wrong
Michael Sheridan - 2016
Kennedy, Jr.’s gang. He had his own famed “Rat Pack,” made up of hard drinking, womanizing individuals like himself—guys like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford—but the guy “Ol’ Blue Eyes” really wanted to hang with was Lawford’s brother-in-law, the real chairman of the board, John F. Kennedy.In Sinatra and the Jack Pack, Michael Sheridan delves deep into the acclaimed singer’s relationship with the former president. He shares how Sinatra emerged from a working class Italian family and carved out a unique place for himself in American culture, and how Kennedy, also of immigrant stock, came from a privileged background of which the young Frank could only have dreamed.By the time the men met in the 1950s, both were thriving—and both liked the good life. They bonded over their mutual ability to attract beautiful women, male admirers, and adoring acolytes. They also shared a scandalous secret: each had dubious relationships with the mafia. It had promoted Frank’s career and helped Kennedy buy votes. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had, over two decades, compiled detailed and damning dossiers on their activities.From all accounts the friendship thrived. Then, suddenly, in March 1962, Frank was abruptly ejected from JFK’s gang. This unique volume tells why. It will release shortly after a television documentary inspired by the book airs, is filled with a beloved cast of characters, and is the compelling, untold story of a tumultuous relationship between two American icons.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
The Tyrants
Clive Foss - 2006
It presents a chronology of the moments in history when the principles of government and law were corrupted by the vanity of the ambitious and unscrupulous.
Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye
Dave Lory - 2018
Written by his manager Dave Lory, Jeff Buckley includes interviews with others who worked closely with him who have never spoken before. For the first time since Jeff Buckley’s untimely death on May 29, 1997, his manager Dave Lory reveals what it was like to work with one of rock’s most celebrated and influential artists. Go on the road and behind the scenes with Jeff, from the release of his debut EP Live at Sin-é to the second album Buckley never completed. Jeff Buckley includes testimony from the many people who worked closely with Jeff both on and off stage and includes never-before-shared intimate scenes that only Lory witnessed, including what went down immediately after Lory got that fateful call, “Jeff is missing.”
Venus Envy: A Sensational Season Inside the Women's Tennis Tour
L. Jon Wertheim - 2001
They are the stars of professional tennis -- the young, brash, and often reckless women who hold court, and serve.The last several years have seen such a seismic explosion in women's tennis that you might be surprised to learn there's still a men's game. Fans flock to the high-voltage matches, which come packaged with tales of infighting, family squabbles, and, of course, Anna Kournikova's micro-miniskirts. In Venus Envy, Sports Illustrated investigative reporter and tennis columnist L. Jon Wertheim draws back the curtain on the soap opera that is the women's professional tennis tour, with its primal plotlines driven by ambition, sex, and revenge.Here are the stories behind the stories: the tragic Garbo-like star who whiles away hours in a midwestern hotel room because she's afraid to go outdoors; the teenager who tries to cope with the pressure of the big time as well as an abusive father; the brilliant number one who plays out her adolescent tantrums on the public stage; the coquette who launched a thousand Web sites; and a little-understood African-American family who proved that they could play by their own rules and still win the game -- not to mention the endorsements.The biggest story in sports in 2000 was Venus Williams. Forced to the sidelines for the early months by injuries to both her wrists and her psyche, she stormed back to win Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and two Olympic gold medals. Not since the glory days of Martina Navratilova -- and the historic days of Althea Gibson -- has women's tennis seen such a dominant champion with the rare combination of athleticism, intelligence, and competitive fire. By the time Venus signed the biggest endorsement deal ever for a female athlete, her opponents' sentiments could be described in just two words: Venus Envy.
The Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War
Ian R. Gardiner - 2012
It caught the public's imagination during this short but bitter campaign and epitomized the grim determination and professionalism of our troops...Called to action on April 2, 1982, the men of 45 Commando Royal Marines assembled from around the world to sail 8,000 miles to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentine invasion. Lacking helicopters and short of food, they "yomped" in appalling weather carrying overloaded rucksacks, across the roughest terrain. Yet for a month in mid-winter, they remained a cohesive fighting-fit body of men. They then fought and won the highly successful and fierce night battle for Two Sisters, a 1,000-foot-high mountain which was the key to the defensive positions around Stanley.More than just a first-hand story of that epic feat, this book is the first to be written by a company commander in the Falklands War. It offers a vivid description of the "yomp" and infantry fighting, and it also offers penetrating insights into the realities of war at higher levels. It is a unique combination of descriptive writing about frontline fighting and wider reflections on the Falklands War, and conflict in general."This is the real thing, from someone who gave the orders and led from the front, from beginning to bitter end. His account is articulate, poignant and precise, even though thirty years have elapsed . . . highly recommended." --Military History Monthly
When the Meadowlark Sings: The Story of a Montana Family
Nedra Sterry - 2003
Prize-winning novelist Cai Emmons praises Sterry by saying she really knows how to tell a story. Sterry grew up in a succession of isolated one-room schools in northern and central Montana, where her mother, a teacher, eked out a living. A must read for anyone who loves Montana and its rich history.