It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent

    But even more than any of their eminent peers, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young channeled and broadcast all the radical anger, romantic idealism, and generational angst of their time. Each of the members had already made their marks in huge bands (The Hollies, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds), but together, their harmonies were transcendent. The vast emotional range of their music, from delicate acoustic confessionals to raucous counter-culture anthems, was mirrored in the turbulence of their personal lives. Their trademark may have been vocal harmony, but few—if any—of their contemporaries could match the recklessness of their hedonistic and often combative lifestyles, when the four tenacious, volatile, and prodigal songwriters pursued chemical and sexual pleasure to life-threatening extremes. Including full color photographs, CSNY chronicles these four iconic musicians and the movement they came to represent, concentrating on their prime as a collective unit and a cultural force: the years between 1969, when Woodstock telegraphed their arrival to the world, and 1974, when their arch-enemy Richard Nixon was driven from office, and the band (to quote Graham Nash himself) “lost it on the highway.” Even fifty years later, there are plenty of stories left to be told about Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young—and music historian Peter Doggett is here to bring them to light in the meticulously researched CSNY, a quintessential and illuminative account of rock’s first supergroup in their golden hour for die-hard fans, nostalgic flower-children, and music history aficionados alike.

    Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are never-theless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong."No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why." At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures.

    In 2001, at the age of thirty-three, Ekow Eshun-born in London to African-born parents-embarks on a trip to Ghana in search of his roots, and in this rich narrative he evokes both the physical and emotional aspects of his travels. Eshun makes his way to Accra, Ghana's cosmopolitan capital city; to the storied slave forts of Elmina; to the historic warrior kingdom of Asante. He reflects on earlier pilgrims who followed the same path-W. E. B. DuBois, Richard Wright, Malcolm X-and on the millions of slaves shipped to the West from the Ghanaian coast. He recalls the racially charged years of his youth, and he considers the paradoxes and possibilities in contemporary Britain for someone like himself. Finally, he uncovers a long-held secret about his lineage that will compel him to question everything he knows about himself and about where he comes from. Written with exquisite particularity of place and mind, and with rare immediacy and candor, "Black Gold of the Sun" tells a story of identity, belonging, and unexpected hope.

    A year out of college, he had been biding his time as a tutor at a local high school in Sitka, Alaska, without any particular life plan. That evening, Coffin joined a ragtag boxing club. For the first time, he felt like he fit in.Coffin washed up in Alaska after a forty-day solo kayaking journey. Born to an American father and a Thai mother who had met during the Vietnam War, Coffin never felt particularly comfortable growing up in his rural Vermont town. Following his parents’ prickly divorce and a childhood spent drifting between his father’s new white family and his mother’s Thai roots, Coffin didn’t know who he was, much less what path his life should follow. His father’s notions about what it meant to be a man—formed by King Arthur legends and calcified in the military—did nothing to help. After college, he took to the road, working odd jobs and sleeping in his car before heading north.Despite feeling initially terrified, Coffin learns to fight. His coach, Victor “the Savage,” invites him to participate in the monthly Roughhouse Friday competition, where men contend for the title of best boxer in southeast Alaska. With every successive match, Coffin realizes that he isn’t just fighting for the championship belt; he is also learning to confront the anger he feels about a past he never knew how to make sense of.Deeply honest and vulnerable, Roughhouse Friday is a meditation on violence and abandonment, masculinity, and our inescapable longing for love. It suggests that sometimes the truth of what’s inside you comes only if you push yourself to the extreme.

    Asked about her experience during the war, Helga quietly revealed she had been a "Jugend," a member of Hitler's child army, "trained to revere and obey the Fuhrer." When Riehl asked how children were recruited, she replied, "Clever seduction." Helga's seduction begins with an invitation from Hitler she cannot refuse. The ten-year-old is ordered to attend weekly meetings of the Hitler Youth movement. Lies and tasty treats are employed to entice her allegiance to the Fuhrer. Helga is sent away to Hitler Youth training camps as the war draws nearer her home in Berlin. She is caught between loyalty to her family, suffering under Nazi rule, and loyalty to the Fuhrer, who keeps her safe and well-fed. Helga's gradual disillusionment, followed by her harrowing escape home, is a powerful coming-of-age story of a young girl's survival of Nazi mind control.

    In 1965, after a notorious family feud, Robert Mondavi––then 52 years old–– was thrown out of his family's winery. Far from defeated, Mondavi was dedicated to a vision of creating a superior wine. What has happened since that fateful day is one of the greatest sucess stories of American business. The Robert Mondavi Winery is respected around the world, and Mondavi is the man who is most responsible for the worldwide recognition of American winemaking, as well as changing America's palate for fine wine and fine food. In Harvests of Joy, Mondavi shares how, through his passion for excellence, he achieved this extraordinary position, one he reached not without pain and sacrifice. With invaluable insider tips on his approach to both winemaking and to running a business, Mondavi's story is "a grand example of the fact that in America you can pretty much be, do, or accomplish whatever you set out to." (Ventura County Star)

    Wolf, a member of one of New Orleans's oldest Jewish families, recreates the sights, sounds, tastes and simultaneously provides an insider's look at this fabled city, so damaged and changing in the wake of Katrina. Reflecting the yearnings and anxieties of a generation that came of age after World War II, this is the iconic journey of a restless man who leaves the hometown he loves to discover the world and in so doing, to find himself.Wolf recalls his idyllic though anxious southern childhood, the emotional remoteness of his nighttime-loving parents that leaves him with a tenuous sense of security. He turns to his neighborhood and school buddies, to the embracing warmth of his family's African-American housekeeper, and to the weekends he spends with his adoring grandparents at their home in Pass Christian on the gulf coast of Mississippi.During undergraduate years at Yale, the author's close friends come to include Calvin Trillin, the humorist-to-be; Henry Geldzahler, the future celebrated art historian; and Gerald Jonas, who would become a writer for The New Yorker magazine. Each from a more traditional Jewish family, through exposure to these important people in his life, Wolf becomes acutely aware of his city's inflexibly stratified religious and racial structure.After a year of medical school at Columbia, and continuing his journey of self-discovery, as he briefly works for his father's cotton brokerage, Wolf reveals the last vestiges of the cotton business in the south. In spite of a spicy love affair, his residence in the French Quarter, and growing prominence in his community, unwilling to remain in New Orleans, Wolf returns to the east to earn a doctorat and become an architectural historian, a profession in which he earns great distinction.Written with humor and telling detail, My New Orleans offers direct and memorable insight into a lost period of America's evolution, turbulence and possibilities as unique and to-be-longed-for as the city of Wolf's memory.

    Cohen is also a man of complexities and seeming contradictions: a devout Jew, who is also a sophisticate and a ladies' man, as well as an ordained Buddhist monk whose name, Jikan—"ordinary silence"—is quite the appellation for a writer and singer whose life has been anything but ordinary.I'm Your Man is the definitive account of that extraordinary life. Starting in Montreal, Cohen's birthplace, acclaimed music journalist Sylvie Simmons follows his trail, via London and the Greek island of Hydra, to New York in the sixties, where Cohen launched his career in music. From there she traces the arc of his prodigious achievements to his remarkable retreat in the mid-nineties and his reemergence for a sold-out world tour almost fifteen years later. Whether navigating Cohen's journeys through the backstreets of Mumbai or his countless hotel rooms along the way, Simmons explores with equal focus every complex, contradictory strand of Cohen's life and presents a deeply insightful portrait of the vision, spirit, depth, and talent of an artist and a man who continues to move people like no one else.

    Across five decades, Prine has created critically acclaimed albums--John Prine (one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), Bruised Orange, and The Missing Years--and earned many honors, including two Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His songs have been covered by scores of artists, from Johnny Cash and Miranda Lambert to Bette Midler and 10,000 Maniacs, and have influenced everyone from Roger McGuinn to Kacey Musgraves. Hailed in his early years as the "new Dylan," Prine still counts Bob Dylan among his most enthusiastic fans. In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine's musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine's best-known songs and discusses all of Prine's albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records. This thorough, entertaining treatment gives John Prine his due as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.

    Interviewing countless friends, advisers, family members, teachers, coworkers, business partners, neighbors, intimates, and employees, Andersen paints a mesmerizing, often shocking, portrayal of the Man in the Mirror.

    She interviewed everyone from fame-averse Seattle rock musicians to vapid celebrities and politicians, asking the taboo questions no one else would as she navigated between true artists and phony poseurs. In The Kennedy Chronicles, she gives us a backstage pass at the last golden years of the cable network that defined a generation.As only Kennedy can, she takes us back to unforgettable moments such as Nirvana's seminal performance on MTV Unplugged, the unbridled bacchanalia of the MTV Beach House and Woodstock '94 festival, and the game-changing "Rock the Vote" campaign. We read of priceless moments—on and off set—with such performers as Bjork, Pearl Jam, Weezer, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Oasis, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And Kennedy dishes on behind-the-scenes antics with MTV colleagues including Jon Stewart, Bill Bellamy, Kurt Loder, and Tabitha Soren.Straddling the line between witness and participant, Kennedy recounts a blitz of surreal encounters: Dragging Stewart to a strip club. Getting naked with Jenny McCarthy. Playing dice on the men's room floor with Michael Jordan. Wrestling with Trent Reznor. Taking "Puck" Rainey from The Real World to church—and living to regret it. Making out in a coffin with Dave Navarro. Dodging calls from Courtney Love. Serving as John Rzeznik's muse for the Goo Goo Dolls hit song "Name." And there was that…incident…with New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the Video Music Awards. Finally, Kennedy intersperses her riotous narrative with priceless, candid interviews with Navarro, Henry Rollins, Billy Corgan, Pat Smear of Nirvana, Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, former VJ John Sencio, and more.In her characteristically edgy and irreverent voice, Kennedy delivers a juicy and revealing narrative perfect for Gen X and beyond—and for anyone who wants to know what really went on at MTV.

    In Part I, Heller depicts the lives of her mother, father, uncle, and their close friends, who were all at the center of the Jewish literary and intellectual cafe culture in Prague during the 1930’s. Heller recreates the time and place in vivid detail—the expressions and clothing, the dialogue and gestures, thoughts, and emotions; her extensive historical knowledge transformed into a gripping narrative. As Hitler’s power continues to grow, the world and culture Heller’s family and friends treasured is destroyed forever, and they are all forced to flee the country and continent. Heller’s father, however, is captured at the border and imprisoned in Buchenwald for six years: his powerful letters to Heller’s mother and uncle form the centerpiece of the book.Part II begins at Caroline’s birth, and follows her childhood and coming of age, as she struggles to understand the mysteries of her parents’ lives, and her own life’s relation to the momentous historical events that shaped her family’s story. Poignant and moving, Heller’s memoir is a family history that reimagines the possibilities of the genre, a book for anyone who ever longed to know what life was like for our family and loved ones, in a world very different from our own.

    He has been lauded by everyone from Prince ('His album Replicas never left my turntable . . . There are people still trying to work out what a genius he was') through the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails to Lady Gaga ('[He] proves music has always been really inventive for the masses'). (R)evolution is Numan's long-awaited memoir; one that charts his two lives. The first: from growing up in west London, where he was expelled from school and beaten up daily for looking different, before discovering his first synthesiser and conquering the music world in rapid time; to the extravagance, the undiagnosed Asperger's and the slow decline of a career that faded into near obscurity. The second: a twenty-plus year renaissance, catalysed by the date with a super-fan, which has allowed Gary to rediscover his creativity, produce some of his best music and become the true Godfather of electro-pop. This will be the story of one man, several dozen synthesisers, multiple issues and two desperately different lives.

    Grant, his parents, Bobby Orr and the rest of the Canadian hockey team were ontheir way to Game Three of the famous Summit Series -- seven games played between Russia and Canada in 1972, during the height of the Cold War. It was at this point -- at the age of one -- that Grant's life-long entanglement with hockey began.In this deeply personal, yet incredibly witty memoir about Grant's relationship with hockey, the narrative passes back and forth between tales of Grant's life and a fascinating history of hockey, complete with lively anecdotes about the many colourful characters of the NHL. Through Grant's early life, he struggled with the idea of hockey. He was an undersized child who wore thick glasses and knee-braces, and he understood, first-hand, what it was like to be in the attack zone of the hockey-obsessed jocks at his school. For Grant, bullying and the violent game of hockey seemed to go hand-in-hand. Yet he was also enamoured with the sport, and eventually learned that playing goalie on a hockey team isn’t all that different from playing in a band and that artistically-minded wimps find just as much joy in the game as their meathead counterparts.In The Lonely End of the Rink , Grant Lawrence brings the allure of hockey into a zone where it can impress upon the nerds and geeks as well as the jocks. Grant is a highly original writer, and with this book, he tells a quintessentially Canadian story about the nation’s favourite sport.