With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like “Buying the Plot” and “Nodding Off,” Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life, from entertaining his relatives as a kid in Long Beach, Long Island, his years doing stand-up in the Village, up through his legendary stint at Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally, and his long run as host of the Academy Awards. Readers get a front-row seat to his one-day career with the New York Yankees (he was the first player to ever “test positive for Maalox”), his love affair with Sophia Loren, and his enduring friendships with several of his idols, including Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. He lends a light touch to more serious topics like religion (“the aging friends I know have turned to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prozac”), grandparenting, and, of course, dentistry. As wise and poignant as they are funny, Crystal’s reflections are an unforgettable look at an extraordinary life well lived.

    In On Time, the renowned funkster looks back on a life of turbulence and triumph. He chronicles his creative process with an explosive prose that mirrors his intoxicating music. Morris' story is a fast-paced page-turner replete with unexpected twists and shocking surprises. A major and fascinating theme is his lifelong friendship and years of musical partnership with Prince, from their early days on the Minneapolis scene to selling out stadiums and duking it out as rivals in Purple Rain. Eventually, Morris went on to release four albums with a new band of his very own, the legendary Time. He battled his addictions and came out victorious. But not before increasing tensions and embittered rivalry between Prince and the Revolution and Morris Day and the Time led the two performers towards separate paths. Through the years, the fierce brotherly love between Morris and Prince kept bringing them back together, over and over again -- until pride, ego, and circumstance interfered. Two months before Prince's untimely death, the two finally reconnected and started to make amends. But Morris could've never imagined it would be the last time he'd ever see his friend again.This is Morris Day's singular story in which the magic of music is the ultimate healer. On Time is also a deep meditation on friendship, Morris' poetic method of reconciling the loss of his close friend and longtime collaborator, and a way to commemorate an incendiary life cut short. But this book is more than just a walk down memory lane -- it's a metaphorical means to bring Prince back to life. Throughout the narrative, Morris allows Prince's "voice" to protect his own legacy, to counter Morris's interpretations of events, and to essentially breathe new life into a tale as old as time -- of two brothers, two bands, and a musical culture that even today pulsates with fresh energy.

    Their romance on and off screen made them Hollywood's most celebrated couple and together they produced some of the most electric scenes in movie history. But when Bogart died of cancer in 1957, Bacall had to find a way of living beyond the fairytale and ironic way she had evolved. In a time of post war communism, Hollywood blacklisting and revolutionary politics she moved with the legends: Hemingway, the Oliviers, Katharine Hepburn, Bobby Kennedy, an engagement to Frank Sinatra and a second turbulent marriage to Jason Robards. Now at 80, BY MYSELF AND THEN SOME brings her story up to date including her recent films and Broadway runs, fond memories of her children and many close lifelong friendships, not least the greatest love of her life, Humphrey Bogart.

    Spock in the cult television series that launched the Star Trek phenomenon, Leonard Nimoy has written the definitive Star Trek memoir. In this long-awaited autobiography, Nimoy opens up to his fans in ways the Vulcan never could.Having played the pivotal role of Mr. Spock in the original series, in six motion pictures, and in a special two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as having directed two of the movies, Nimoy is well suited to tell the true story behind what was seen by the public. He provides an intelligent and insightful book about the creative process and the actor's craft - and gives his own unique insider's view of the creation of both the character, Mr. Spock, and the Star Trek phenomenon.

    Through decades of music by one of the best-selling musicians of all time, who created classics like "Fire and Rain" and "Carolina in My Mind," James Taylor has doled out his history in the poetry of his work. Taylor says his early life is, "the source of many of my songs," and Break Shot is a tour of his first 21 years in rich, new detail. Praised by Forbes magazine as going "beyond the spoken word," Break Shot combines storytelling, music and performance to create a one-of-a-kind listening experience. Longtime fans will savor a crop of musical gems, including an unreleased recording of the beloved hymn "Jerusalem," selections from his newest release American Standard, as well as new original scoring by Taylor specially recorded for Break Shot and more from the Grammy Award-winning artist.Recorded in his home studio, TheBarn in western Massachusetts, Taylor tells the deeply personal story of his youth, which is entwined with the story of his family. What started as an idyllic tight unit soon became a family sent to different emotional corners—like a break shot in the game of pool, he says, when you slam the cue ball into the fifteen other balls and they all go flying off. By the time Taylor released his breakout second album in 1970, Sweet Baby James, he had seen the disintegration of his parents’ marriage and his family crumble in the aftermath. He had committed himself twice to a psychiatric hospital, battled depression, a heroin addiction, suffered a relapse, and traveled far away from the wood smoke and moonshine of the North Carolina landscapes in which he came of age. Despite it all, he was also on the cusp of superstardom and on his way to bringing light and joy to millions. He was 21.Journey with James Taylor to a time before he became a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts—and a beloved voice to millions.

    Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

    Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.The question you’re probably asking yourself right now is: What does Kevin Hart have that a book also has?According to the three people who have seen Kevin Hart and a book in the same room, the answer is clear:A book is compact. Kevin Hart is compact.A book has a spine that holds it together. Kevin Hart has a spine that holds him together.A book has a beginning. Kevin Hart’s life uniquely qualifies him to write this book by also having a beginning.It begins in North Philadelphia. He was born an accident, unwanted by his parents. His father was a drug addict who was in and out of jail. His brother was a crack dealer and petty thief. And his mother was overwhelmingly strict, beating him with belts, frying pans, and his own toys.The odds, in short, were stacked against our young hero, just like the odds that are stacked against the release of a new book in this era of social media (where Hart has a following of over 100 million, by the way).But Kevin Hart, like Ernest Hemingway, JK Rowling, and Chocolate Droppa before him, was able to defy the odds and turn it around. In his literary debut, he takes the reader on a journey through what his life was, what it is today, and how he’s overcome each challenge to become the man he is today.And that man happens to be the biggest comedian in the world, with tours that sell out football stadiums and films that have collectively grossed over $3.5 billion.He achieved this not just through hard work, determination, and talent: It was through his unique way of looking at the world. Because just like a book has chapters, Hart sees life as a collection of chapters that each person gets to write for himself or herself.“Not only do you get to choose how you interpret each chapter, but your interpretation writes the next chapter,” he says. “So why not choose the interpretation that serves your life the best?”

    Like generation-defining albums before it, PLAY was ubiquitous, and catapulted Moby to superstardom. Suddenly he was hanging out with David Bowie and Lou Reed, Christina Ricci and Madonna, taking esctasy for breakfast (most days), drinking litres of vodka (every day), and sleeping with super models (infrequently). It was a diet that couldn't last. And then it fell apart.The second volume of Moby's memoir is a classic about the banality of fame. It is shocking, riotously entertaining, extreme, and unforgiving. It is unedifying, but you can never tear your eyes away from the page.

    She grew up Black and weird, before weird was cool, in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York, which created its own identity crises. Under the eye-rolling, foul-mouthed, loving tutelage of her unapologetic grandmother--and the horror movies she obsessively watched--Danielle grew into a tall, awkward, Sassy-loving teenager who wore black eyeliner as lipstick and was struggling with the aftermath of her mother's choices. But she also learned that she had the strength and smarts to save herself: her grandmother gifting her a faith in her own capabilities that the world would not have most Black girls believe.

    She struck a chord with bluesy jazz ballads like "Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and powerful protest songs such as "Mississippi Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," the anthem of the American Civil Rights movement.Here are the many lives and loves of Nina Simone, recounted in her unshakable voice.

       For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite work nemesis and beet farmer. Viewers of The Office fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. Rainn founded a website and media company, SoulPancake, that eventually became a bestselling book of the same name. He also started a hilarious Twitter feed (sample tweet: “I'm not on Facebook” is the new “I don't even own a TV”) that now has more than four million followers.   Now, he's ready to tell his own story and explain how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. He explains how he grew up “bone-numbingly nerdy before there was even a modicum of cool attached to the word.” The Bassoon King chronicles his journey from nerd to drama geek (“the highest rung on the vast, pimply ladder of high school losers”), his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures and insights about The Office, and finally, Wilson's achievement of success and satisfaction, both in his career and spiritually, reconnecting with the artistic and creative values of the Bahá’í faith he grew up in.

    At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office, where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and old-time agents doze at their desks after martini lunches. At night she goes home to the tiny, threadbare Williamsburg apartment she shares with her socialist boyfriend. Precariously balanced between glamour and poverty, surrounded by titanic personalities, and struggling to trust her own artistic instinct, Rakoff is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. But as she reads the candid, heart-wrenching letters from his readers around the world, she finds herself unable to type out the agency’s decades-old form response. Instead, drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the template and begins writing back. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms. Rakoff paints a vibrant portrait of a bright, hungry young woman navigating a heady and longed-for world, trying to square romantic aspirations with burgeoning self-awareness, the idea of a life with life itself. Charming and deeply moving, filled with electrifying glimpses of an American literary icon, My Salinger Year is the coming-of-age story of a talented writer. Above all, it is a testament to the universal power of books to shape our lives and awaken our true selves.

    But Folds will be the first to tell you he's an unconventional icon, more normcore than hardcore. Now, in his first book, Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller.In the title chapter, "A Dream About Lightning Bugs," Folds recalls his earliest childhood dream--and realizes how much it influenced his understanding of what it means to be an artist. In "Measure Twice, Cut Once" he learns to resist the urge to skip steps during the creative process. In "Hall Pass" he recounts his 1970s North Carolina working-class childhood, and in "Cheap Lessons" he returns to the painful life lessons he learned the hard way--but that luckily didn't kill him.In his inimitable voice, both relatable and thought-provoking, Folds digs deep into the life experiences that shaped him, imparting hard-earned wisdom about both art and life. Collectively, these stories embody the message Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you've got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds.

    What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her singular calling.Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name for herself.Addario finds a way to travel with a purpose. She photographs the Afghan people before and after the Taliban reign, the civilian casualties and misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against women in the Congo and tells the riveting story of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless. She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear.As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys’ club of a profession. Rather than choose between her personal life and her career, Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become her husband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take away from it, and as a new mother, she gains an all the more intensely personal understanding of the fragility of life.Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It’s What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war.

    This version of the Beatles legend smoothed the rough edges and filled in the fault lines, and for more than forty years this manicured version of the Beatles story has sustained as truth - until now.The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for -- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves -- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where -- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills -- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road Studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe...all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read -- Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.