Journal en miettes, 1973, Eugène Ionesco

    Traces the long career of the popular rock guitarist, discusses the influences of his music, and assesses each of his albums.

    His last album was his most critically lauded and commercially successful. He had fulfilled a lifelong dream by collaborating with his first and greatest musical hero, his brother Jimmie. His tumultuous marriage was over and he was in a new and healthy romantic relationship. Vaughan seemed poised for a new, limitless chapter of his life and career.Instead, it all came to a shocking and sudden end on August 27, 1990, when he was killed in a helicopter crash following a dynamic performance with Eric Clapton. Just 35 years old, he left behind a powerful musical legacy and an endless stream of What Ifs. In the ensuing 29 years, Vaughan’s legend and acclaim have only grown and he is now an undisputed international musical icon. Despite the cinematic scope of Vaughan’s life and death, there has never been a truly proper accounting of his story. Until now.Texas Flood provides the unadulterated truth about Stevie Ray Vaughan from those who knew him best: his brother Jimmie, his Double Trouble bandmates Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton and Reese Wynans, and many other close friends, family members, girlfriends, fellow musicians, managers and crew members.

    This was the New York of Palladium; of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo; of unchecked, drug-fueled hedonism in pumping clubs where dance music was still largely underground, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby--not just a poor, skinny white kid from Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play.At once bighearted and remorseless in its excavation of a lost world, Porcelain is both a chronicle of a city and a time and a deeply intimate exploration of finding one's place during the most gloriously anxious period in life, when you're on your own, betting on yourself, but have no idea how the story ends, and so you live with the honest dread that you're one false step from being thrown out on your face. Moby's voice resonates with honesty, wit, and, above all, an unshakable passion for his music that steered him through some very rough seas.Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it, and hating it. It's about finding your people, your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, somehow, when you think it's over, from a place of well-earned despair, creating a masterpiece. As a portrait of the young artist, Porcelain is a masterpiece in its own right, fit for the short shelf of musicians' memoirs that capture not just a scene but an age, and something timeless about the human condition. Push play.

    When "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong" exploded in the US charts, worldwide success looked inevitable. Critics compared them musically to the Beatles and fans adored them for their warmth and humour on stage. Four brilliant albums later, their roller-coaster ride of achievements and disappointments came to an end on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, in front of one of the largest audiences in Australian history. The dream was over, the band broken up, their enormous promise only partly fulfilled. In this definitive account, New Zealand journalist Chris Bourke has written the true story of Crowded House. With unparalleled access to all band members, their families, friends, musical collaborators, managers, and record company personanel, he has captured their essence. It is a unique tale of musical chemistry, family bonds and the personal costs of pursuing an artistic vision. From the manic energy of the recording studio to the machinations of the record industry, this riveting account is a book for every Crowded House fan.

    This book looks at Grohl’s career to date, placing the singer/guitarist/drummer in the context of his contemporaries and those who have influenced him. It covers all the recordings—from the monumental Nevermind, which rocketed Nirvana to superstardom, to the Foo Fighters’ million-selling album One by One, and its Grammy-winning single, All My Life. Finally, he looks at the lawsuit initiated by Kurt Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and Grohl’s emergence as the touring drummer for underground hard-rock outfit Queens of the Stone Age.

    But the story of her own life was no less dramatic and moving than her most powerful fiction.With her family, she escaped Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris, where she met and married fellow Jewish émigré Michel Epstein. In 1929 she published her highly acclaimed and controversial novel David Golder, the first of many successful books that established her stellar reputation. But when France fell to the Nazis, her renown did her little good: without French citizenship, she was forced to seek refuge in a small Burgundy village with her husband and their two young daughters. And in July 1942 Némirovsky was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died the following month.Drawing on Némirovsky’s diaries, previously untapped archival material, and interviews, her biographers give us at once an intimate picture of her life and turbulent times and an illuminating examination of the ways in which she used the details of her remarkable life to create “some of the greatest, most humane, and incisive fiction [World War II] has produced” (The New York Times Book Review).From the Hardcover edition.

    Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.

    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.

    Van Gogh's letters lay bare his deepest feelings, as well as his everyday concerns and his views of the world of art.

    It is a candid retrospective of the extraordinary success achieved, and the prices that had to be paid.“After ‘Snowbird’ hit, I was swept up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and catapulted into a strange new universe … If I thought for a moment that I was really in control of events, I was deluded.” Anne MurrayAn unflinching self-portrait of Canada’s first great female recording artist, All of Me documents the life of Anne Murray, from her humble origins in the tragedy-plagued coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, to her arrival on the world stage. Anne recounts her story: the battles with her record companies over singles and albums; the struggle with drug- and alcohol-ridden band members; the terrible guilt and loneliness of being away from her two young children; her divorce from the man who helped launch her career, Bill Langstroth; and the deaths of two of her closest confidantes. The result is a must-read autobiography by Canada’s beloved songbird.

    Here he tells his inspirational story, from his early rejection as an Spurs youth player, right through to his match-winning contributions to successive European Ryder Cup Triumphs. Poulter went from an Assistant Professional staffing the club shop to a global superstar, turning pro when he still had a handicap of 4 but the drive and self-belief to make it to the top. His infectious optimism, will power and flair have ensured he remains one of the biggest names on the tour. As well as insights into the crucial moments in his career, and the life of a professional golfer, he talks about his passions outside the game, including his own riotous brand of clothing. Just as Poulter's appearance on the scene came as a refreshing antidote to a sport that was staid and stuffy, so his own book is as forthright and passionate as Poults himself.

    This is the bilingual edition with German verso, English recto.

    Her stories of being single in middle age, marked by stylish writing and stunning candor, left readers bent double with laughter when they appeared in her column, rated "Best of Baltimore" by Baltimore Magazine.Highs in the Low Fifties follows Winik’s attempt to rebuild her world as a once-widowed, once-divorced single mom. With her signature optimism, resilience, and poor judgment, Winik dives into a series of ill-starred romantic experiences. Her clarity about her mistakes and ability to find humor in the darkest moments—in love, and in all parts of life—has won her a growing crowd of devoted followers . . . and a few voyeurs.

    Perry Groves spent over a decade in the footballing spotlight. Sometimes he was at the top, often he was at the bottom and that's half the reason the fans loved him so much--and still do. This is the most truthful and hilarious book about professional football you will ever read. Perry Groves was the first signing by the legendary Arsenal manager George Graham, and that unmistakeable figure with his Tin-Tin haircut and cheeky grin was a player in one of the Gunners' greatest sides. Now he has decided to tell all about his rollercoaster years of booze binges, girl-chasing and gambling sprees. He's a nonstop fund of of hilarious anecdotes, recounting top-flight games played with a hangover, 125 mph motorway chases with international stars, visits to a brothel with an England World Cup hero and revealing how one drunken escapade ended with a group of internationals beting questioned over an attempted murder charge. This is a unique chance to find out what top-flight footballers really get up to off the field and how they behave when the dressing room door is closed.