Book picks similar to
Harrington Street by Jerry Garcia
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Three Years with Quantrill: A True Story Told By His Scout
John McCorkle - 1992
After serving briefly in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, he became a prominent member of William Clarke Quantrill’s infamous guerrillas, who took advantage of the turmoil in the Missouri-Kansas borderland to prey on pro-Union people.McCorkle displayed an unflinchingly violent nature while he participated in raids and engagements including the massacres at Lawrence and Baxter Springs, Kansas, and Centralia, Missouri. In 1865 he followed Quantrill into Kentucky, where the notorious leader was killed and his followers, McCorkle among them, surrendered and were paroled by Union authorities. Early in this century, having returned to farming, McCorkle told his remarkable Civil War experiences to O.S. Barton, a lawyer, who wrote this book, first published in 1914.
Detours
Tim Rogers - 2017
He's a contradiction: a hard drinking rock star with the soul of a poet; a wordsmith and a raconteur, a romantic and a realist, a bon vivant op-shop-dressed dandy. He's the wild man of Australian rock n' roll, a man who loves footy, who was brought up in the wild emptiness of Kalgoorlie, but he's now an urban hipster - a legend of Australian rock music, more at home in St Kilda than the bush.In this offbeat and immensely charming literary memoir, Tim Rogers talks about what it is to be a man, about accepting who you are, about masculinity, love, drinking, footy, his father, being a dad, anxiety, and above all, his continuing, magical, ever-present muse - music.It is by turns revealing, warm, self-deprecating, intimate, shocking, confessional, sharp, funny and immensely engaging.
Is There Anybody Out There?: A Journey from Despair to Hope
Mez McConnell - 2001
But this is not just another harrowing story about an excruciating childhood and the ravages on a life it produces. The difference is that Mez not only escaped from his 'trial by parent' but he discovered a hope that has transformed his life. He in turn has helped others find hope in their lives. Mez's story is told with a frankness and wit that hides much of the pain and despair that was his everyday experience. Nevertheless, although his story at times may sicken you, his first brushes with the faith that restored him will make you laugh out loud! Mez's life involved abuse, violence, drugs, thieving and prison - but you don't have to fall as far as him in order to climb out of the traps in your life. Do you like happy endings? Mez still suffers from his experiences but you'll be amazed at how far you can be restored from such a beginning.
On to the Next Dream
Paul Madonna - 2017
Suddenly finding himself yet another victim of San Francisco’s overheated boomtown housing market, with its soaring prices and rampant evictions, Madonna decided to use his comic as a cathartic public platform to explore the experience, and to capture the complex, highly charged atmosphere of a city—and a life—being forced through a painful transition.In a series of drawings and stories, Madonna evokes the sense of vertigo induced by being forced from his home, and the roil of emotions that ensue as he enters into the city’s brutal competition for a place to live. The line between reality and surreality begins to blur almost immediately, in real life and in his comic. Absurd, maddening, and all-too-poignant, these drawings and stories capture the spirit of not just San Francisco, but a cultural epidemic that has now spread to cities around the world."For years I've been intrigued and charmed by Paul Madonna’s careful and thoughtful drawings of overlooked nooks and by-ways of San Francisco. In his new book he now combines them with manic, delirious, and increasingly paranoid writings as he struggles with the all-consuming City dilemma of gentrification; of who came first, who gets to stay, which wave of usurpers is more 'real' and deserving than the next, and finally, what happens when someone decides it’s your turn to go. Beautiful and engaging."--Sandow Birk, visual artist"Madonna has created a kind of San Francisco Realism, details so absurd, cruel, and beautiful that they can only come from our infuriating home. If Charlie Kaufman squatted in an illegal sublet in Armistead Maupin's mind, this would be the lovely tenant."--Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life"Paul Madonna's On to the Next Dream is bleak, terrifying, hilarious and lovely."--MariNaomi, author and illustrator of Turning Japanese"Simply delightful. I really don't like much out there, I really don't, but On to the Next Dream I couldn't put down. It was sharp, clever, honest, and maybe the funniest book on eviction ever written."--New Yorker cartoonist and New York Times bestselling author, Bob Eckstein, Footnotes from the World's Greatest BookstoresPraise for Everything is its own reward by Paul Madonna:"The book is fantastic. Of time and tenderness. Beautiful drawings. Beautiful text. Ethereal and serious at once. The book is its own reward."--Maira Kalman, illustrator"Mesmerizing . . . When his international images are paired with his sparse, poetic words—sometimes thought-provoking one-liners such as 'You don't get anywhere without searching' and sometimes long, meandering sections of dialogue and story—the effect is haunting."--Oprah.comPaul Madonna is a San Francisco-based artist and writer. He is the creator of the comic series “All Over Coffee” and the author of two books, All Over Coffee and Everything is its own reward. His drawings and stories have appeared in numerous books and journals as well as galleries and museums, including the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Oakland Museum of California.
Planet Joe
Joe Cole - 1997
Tour journal documenting the final Black Flag tour and first Rollins Band tour.
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
Adrian Tomine - 2020
When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades, awards, and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it's the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he's experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory.But as those memories are delineated in excruciatingly hilarious detail, a different, parallel narrative plays out in the background. In between chaotic book tours, disastrous interviews, and difficult interactions with other artists, life happens: Tomine fumbles his way into marriage, parenthood, and an indisputably fulfilling existence. While mining his conflicted relationship with comics and comics culture, Tomine illustrates the amusing absurdities of life and how we choose to spend our time. Through these cringe-inducing moments, a deeper emotional story emerges, and we see Tomine’s life develop into something much more robust than the blunders. In a bold departure in style from his award-winning Killing and Dying, Tomine distills his art to the loose, lively essentials of cartooning. His stripped-down lines communicate effortlessly, with each pen stroke economically imbued with human depth. Designed as a sketchbook complete with place-holder ribbon and an elastic band, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist shows an acclaimed artist at the peak of his career.
Meow! My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat’s Teen Idols
Ann Moses - 2017
The only difference between Ann and every other eighteen-year-old in the United States was that she was the editor of Tiger Beat, the hottest teen magazine in the country. Ann traveled the world, interviewing the Monkees, Paul Revere and The Raiders, David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, the Bee Gees and the Osmonds. She schmoozed with the rich and famous in Hollywood, Hawaii and London, visited Elvis on the set of one of his movies, and joined the hottest rock stars in the recording studio. As a correspondent for the London-based New Musical Express, Ann covered America’s “British Invasion” from these shores. She jetted to San Francisco with Jefferson Airplane, and photographed the Rolling Stones and the Who. She made dinner for Harry Nilsson, rode in Bobby Sherman’s Rolls Royce, and had her heart broken by a superstar—a story she’s kept to herself until now. In Meow! My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat’s Teen Idols, Ann Moses is breaking her silence—about that heartbreaking rock-star romance, as well as what it was like to spend every day with the stars we all loved as kids, besides. She’ll squeal on Bobby Sherman (was he really that nice?), David Cassidy (was he really that snotty?), and the Monkees (which of them was a big meanie?). She’ll tell you everything she couldn’t tell you in the pages of Tiger Beat, back when it was her job to fuel your fantasy about your fave raves.
Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame
Erin Williams - 2019
As she moves through the world navigating banal, familiar, and sometimes uncomfortable interactions with the familiar-faced strangers she sees daily, Williams weaves together a riveting collection of flashbacks. Her recollections highlight the indefinable moments when lines are crossed and a woman must ask herself if the only way to avoid being objectified is to simply cease to draw any attention to her physical being. She delves into the gray space that lives between consent and assault and tenderly explores the complexity of the shame, guilt, vulnerability, and responsibility attached to both.
The Music Room
Namita Devidayal - 2007
There, in a cramped one-room apartment lives Dhondutai, the last living disciple of two of the finest Indian classical singers of the twentieth century: the legendary Alladiya Khan and the great songbird Kesarbai Kerkar. Namita begins to learn singing from Dhondutai, at first reluctantly and then, as the years pass, with growing passion. Dhondutai sees in her a second Kesarbai, but does Namita have the dedication to give herself up completely to the discipline like her teacher? Or will there always be too many late nights and cigarettes? And where do love and marriage fit into all of this? A bestseller in India, where it was a literary sensation, The Music Room is a deeply moving meditation on how traditions and life lessons are passed along generations, on the sacrifices made by women through the ages, and on a largely unknown, but vital aspect of Indian life and culture that will utterly fascinate American readers.
Flying for France: With the American Escadrille at Verdun
James R. McConnell - 1917
This version has the original photographs returned.
The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class
Dan Ryckert - 2016
Whether through his writing, live appearances, tweets, or thousands of hours of videos and podcasts, his work has been seen by many. He’s set two Guinness World Records, earned the ire of legendary baseball players, penned two novels about an alligator fighter pilot, raised thousands for charity via custom Super Mario Bros. levels, and works a side job as a professional wrestling manager. These are the stories that people already know. Before jumping headfirst into the public eye, Ryckert’s history was just as unique. He’s been a Catholic schoolboy and an insufferable movie theater employee. He’s befriended the insane and almost been stabbed. Time and time again, he’s taken long shots that have inexplicably paid off in ridiculous ways. Dan Ryckert’s history of unlikely events didn’t start in 2009. They were happening for 25 years prior to that, and the details can be found in The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class.
Dior by Dior
Christian Dior - 2007
This autobiography gives a fascinating and detailed insight into the workings of a great fashion house, while revealing the private man behind the high-profile establishment.
Fast Forward: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist: Volume II
Stephen Morris - 2020
My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir
Shirley MacLaine - 1995
In My Lucky Stars Shirley MacLaine talks candidly and personally about her four decades in Hollywood, especially about the men and women--her "lucky stars"--who touched and challenged her life.
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History
Jonathan Franzen - 2006
The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its midcentury idealism and became a more polarized society.The story Franzen tells here draws on elements as varied as the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother's house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.These chapters of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood are warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen's fiction, but here the main character is the author himself. Sparkling, daring, arrestingly honest, The Discomfort Zone narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.