Open Book


Jessica Simpson - 2020
    Along the way, she details the struggles in her life, such as the pressure to support her family as a teenager, divorcing Lachey, enduring what she describes as an emotionally abusive relationship with musician John Mayer, being body-shamed in an overly appearance-centered industry, and going through bouts of heavy drinking. But Simpson ends on a positive note, discussing her billion-dollar apparel line and marriage with professional football star Eric Johnson, with whom she has three children.

Street Justice


Chuck Zito - 2002
    From Hells Angel to celebrity bodyguard. The revealing autobiography of an American man.Chuck Zito comes by his reputation honestly as one of the toughest, most uncompromising men ever to sit astride a Harley. Now, with tales both hilarious and chilling, violent and truthful, Zito tells his life story in his own words.From growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where fighting was a way of life, to becoming president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels, to the wild and crazy life of protecting some of the world's biggest celebrities, Zito might be seen as a latter-day outlaw, the last of a dying breed of men. But throughout his tempestuous days, one thing defined him: his unfailing sense of justice, of what's really right and what's really wrong. That's how Zito found himself facing his biggest challenge: refusing to cooperate with a federal investigation into his brothers, the Hells Angels, and in the process losing the very thing he cherished most-his freedom.Zito's astonishing recovery from this experience, and the unique kind of stardom he forged based on hard work and sheer will, is a testament to his courage, his ambition, and his indomitable heart-a testament now recorded unflinchingly in Street Justice.

Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings


Ron Burgundy - 2010
    His life reads like an adventure story complete with knock down fights, beautiful women and double-fisted excitement on every page. He has hunted jackalopes with Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford, had more than his share of his amorous exploits, and formed the greatest on-air team in the history of televised news. Along the way, he hobnobbed with people you wish you knew and some you honestly wish you didn't -- celebrities, presidents, presidents' wives, celebrities' wives, dogs, and, of course Veronica Corningstone, the love of his life. Walter Cronkite, Barbra Streisand, Katie Couric, the list goes on. Who didn’t Mr. Burgundy, or “Ron” as he is known to his friends, rub elbows with in the course of his colorful and often criminal life? This may well be the most thrilling book ever written, by a man of great physical, moral and spiritual strength and not surprisingly a great literary talent as well. This book deserves a real shot at a Pulitzer Prize. In fact if it doesn’t win one then we will finally have proof that the Pulitzer is rigged. Ron Burgundy has taken the time to write a book. We owe it to him, as honest Americans, to read it.

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady: A Memoir


Florence King - 1985
    Florence may have been a disappointment to her Granny, whose dream of rearing a Perfect Southern Lady would never be quite fulfilled. But after all, as Florence reminds us, no matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.

Second-Chance Mother


Denise Roessle - 2011
    She felt as if she were 19 again, the age at which she got pregnant out of wedlock and relinquished her newborn son for adoption. Suddenly, he was back — this stranger she had given birth to — and he wasn’t just searching for his roots. Joshua was looking for a mom. Eager to embrace the second chance she had been granted, Denise leapt wholeheartedly into the role. “It’s a BIG boy,” she announced to her family and friends, setting free her twenty-six-year secret. But Joshua was not a boy. He was a grown man, with a history that fell far short of what she had envisioned for him when she’d been assured he would be “better off” without her. His adoptive parents had essentially given up on him at age thirteen, sending him away with only an eighth-grade education. He drifted through a series of institutions and group homes, and ultimately onto the New York City streets, where he fell into drugs and crime. When an early marriage failed, he and his young wife surrendered an infant and toddler to adoption. By the time Denise and her son reunited, he was in his second marriage to a teenaged runaway who was six months pregnant with their first child. Despite her disappointment and his obvious problems, Denise was determined to restore their severed bond and give him the unconditional love that had been lacking in her own childhood.At the same time, she struggled with her parents’ adverse reaction to her reunion and their refusal to acknowledge their grandson’s existence. The shameful event that they had worked so vigorously to bury was back to haunt them. They could not accept their daughter’s happiness at having found her lost child.Still reeling in the overwhelming mix of joy and grief, gratitude and guilt triggered by reunion with her son, Denise received a letter from an aunt she never knew existed. Aunt Mabel revealed some startling information about Denise’s mother, who had claimed to be an only child raised by a kindly couple after both her parents passed away. In truth, she was one of nine siblings tossed to the winds by their mother after the death of their father in 1929. As she got to know her new-found aunts, uncles and cousins, Denise became obsessed with understanding how her grandmother could desert her children and how her mother, who so clearly bore the scars of abandonment, could then force her own daughter to give up a child.A year into their reunion, after Josh’s wife left him with their ten-month-old daughter, the rage that he had initially denied surfaced. Denise went from feeling like a new mom to the frustrated parent of an out-of-control teenager. In the face of his angry outbursts and threats to cut her off, she remained intent on “fixing” him, believing that, in time, she could heal his wounds. Once more, she put her own pain aside and stood by him as he married twice more and fathered another child.Only when Josh and Denise reached an impasse in year five, did she recognize how emotionally shutdown she had been since relinquishing her son — and how she had let her fear of losing him again hold her hostage. In the silence of their estrangement, she began the hard work that ultimately allowed her to resolve her own issues, reclaim the young woman she had left behind after surrendering what turned out to be her only child, and make peace with the past. She found acceptance and forgiveness for her mother, her son, and ultimately herself.

My Week With Marilyn


Colin Clark - 2000
    The film united Britain's leading actor, Laurence Olivier, with Hollywood's most glamorous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe - and clashes between them entered film legend.For one glorious week, the world's biggest star sought comfort in the arms of the set's most junior employee. This is the frank, fresh and comic story of how Clark came to share Monroe's confidences - and her bed!This edition combines Colin Clark’s acclaimed 'The Prince, the Showgirl and Me' (191995) and his 'My Week with Marilyn' (2005).'More illuminating than the millions of words and pictures pumped out to expose or dish the dirt on the Monroe legend.' - Sunday TelegraphClark’s extraordinary experiences on and off set have now been turned into a major film starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh and Dominic Cooper.

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love


Dava Sobel - 1999
    Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest. Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.

My First Five Husbands... And the Ones Who Got Away


Rue McClanahan - 2007
    Some I knew only slightly, some quite well. Some I’ll love always, some I no longer like very much, and there are a few I’d like to strip naked, tie to a Maypole, smear with sweet syrup near a beehive, then stand back and watch. I’ll describe a goodly number of these hot dudes—and duds—keeping the nicest man for last because—if for nothing else—I’d like to leave you, dear reader, with a good taste in your mouth, and Hubbies #3 and #4 might make you want to rush to gargle. There were times I truly wondered, Lord, will I EVER get it right? Thank God I thrive on variety.” —From My First Five Husbands . . . And the Ones Who Got AwayPeople always ask me if I'm like Blanche. And I say, 'Well, Blanche was an oversexed, self-involved, man-crazy, vain Southern Belle from Atlanta -- and I'm not from Atlanta!’” -- Rue McClanahanWho can forget Rue McClanahan as the sexy Southern vixen, Blanche Devereaux, on the Emmy-award winning series The Golden Girls? With her breezy sex appeal and sharp comedic timing, Rue infused her character with a sassy joie de vivre that captured the hearts of women everywhere. Now, the actress behind the magic reveals her life in and out of the spotlight in a laugh-out-loud funny memoir about love, marriage, men, and getting older that is every bit as colorful as the characters she plays. Raised in small-town Oklahoma in a house “thirteen telephone poles past the standpipe north of town,” Rue developed her two great passions—theater and men—at an early age. She arrived in New York City in 1957 with two-weeks worth of money in her pocket, hustled her way into a class with the legendary Uta Hagen, and began working her way up in the acting world against the vibrant, free-spirited backdrop of the sixties. That’s when she met and married Husband #1—a handsome rogue of an aspiring actor who quickly left her with a young son. Still, she was determined to make it on the stage and screen—and in the years that followed, rose to the top of the entertainment world with a host of adventures (and husbands) along the way. From her roles on Broadway opposite Dustin Hoffman and Brad Davis, to her first television appearances on Maude and All in the Family, to the Golden Girls era and beyond, My First Five Husbands is the irresistible story of one woman’s quest to find herself. Now happily married to her soul mate, Husband #6, Rue is proof that many things can and do get better with age—and that, if she keeps her wits about her, even a small-town girl can make it big. Told with Rue’s saucy wit and Southern charm, My First Five husbands is a deliciously entertaining take on life and love from an irrepressible star.

How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale


Jenna Jameson - 2004
    With never-before-seen photographs from Jenna's private collection, exclusive photos taken for this book, and original cartoon strips, this memoir is an unparalleled exploration of sexual freedom.

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography


Mary V. Dearborn - 2017
    A revelatory look into the life and work of Ernest Hemingway, considered in his time to be the greatest living American novelist and short-story writer, winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Mary Dearborn's new biography gives the richest and most nuanced portrait to date of this complex, enigmatically unique American artist, whose same uncontrollable demons that inspired and drove him throughout his life undid him at the end, and whose seven novels and six-short story collections informed--and are still informing--fiction writing generations after his death.

The Devil in Pew Number Seven


Rebecca Nichols Alonzo - 2010
    In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him--with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca's father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family's kitchen . . . And Rebecca's life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family's faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.

American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee


Karen Abbott - 2010
    Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America’s coming-of-age—told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered.America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free. But then, almost overnight, the Great Depression leveled everything. When the dust settled, Americans were primed for a star who could distract them from grim reality and excite them in new, unexpected ways. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a preternatural gift for delivering exactly what America needed. With her superb narrative skills and eye for compelling detail, Karen Abbott brings to vivid life an era of ambition, glamour, struggle, and survival. Using exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, she vividly delves into Gypsy’s world, including her intensely dramatic triangle relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, Rose, a petite but ferocious woman who seduced men and women alike and literally killed to get her daughters on the stage.American Rose chronicles their story, as well as the story of the four scrappy and savvy showbiz brothers from New York City who would pave the way for Gypsy Rose Lee’s brand of burlesque. Modeling their shows after the glitzy, daring reviews staged in the theaters of Paris, the Minsky brothers relied on grit, determination, and a few tricks that fell just outside the law—and they would shape, and ultimately transform, the landscape of American entertainment.With a supporting cast of such Jazz- and Depression-era heavyweights as Lucky Luciano, Harry Houdini, FDR, and Fanny Brice, Karen Abbott weaves a rich narrative of a woman who defied all odds to become a legend—and whose sensational tale of tragedy and triumph embodies the American Dream.

Hell


Jeffrey Archer - 2002
    I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting – his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain ‘s most violent criminals. This is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.

Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake


Frank W. Abagnale - 1980
    I partied in every capital in Europe and basked on all the world's most famous beaches'. Frank W Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams and Ringo Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and co-piloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as a member of hospital management, practised law without a licence, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks all before he was twenty-one. Known by the police of twenty-six foreign countries and all fifty states as 'The Skywayman', Abagnale lived a sumptuous life on the run - until the law caught up with him. Now recognised as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play, Abagnale is a charming rogue whose hilarious, stranger-than-fiction international escapades and ingenious escapes - including one from an aeroplane - make CATCH ME IF YOU CAN an irresistable tale of deceit.

Coming Clean


Kimberly Rae Miller - 2013
    Kim Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that she spent her childhood hiding behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house, navigating between teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room—the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding. In this coming-of-age story, Kim brings to life her experience of growing up in a rat-infested home, concealing her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and of the emotional burden that ultimately led to an attempt to take her own life. And in beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents that has thrived in spite of the odds. Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where we come from and the relationships that define us—and about finding peace in the homes we make for ourselves.