Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith


Michael Stipe - 1998
    Offers a behind-the scenes, photographic look at a 1996 concert tour with the legendary Patti Smith, presenting more than one hundred images that capture life on the road with the artist.

Half Past Autumn


Gordon Parks - 1997
    Photographer, filmmaker, novelist, poet, and composer, Gordon Parks is one of the most inspiring success stories of our time. Now in a trade paperback edition, Half Past Autumn gives us the first complete retrospective of his photographic career, along with his own account of his amazing life. Half Past Autumn chronicles Parks's remarkable documentary images for the Farm Security Administration, his hard-hitting work for Life magazine, elegant fashion photos for Vogue, insightful portraits of notables, and his more recent abstract color images. With engaging anecdotal text that gives us the stories behind the images, this is an inspiring memoir of Parks's life and his struggle against racism.

Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained


August Kleinzahler - 2004
    We witness scenes of passionate, even violent intensity that give rise to meditations on eros and literature, the solitariness of travel, and the poetics of place.These individual pieces, most of which first appeared in The London Review of Books and won an international cult following, are by turns "poignant, surreal, down home and lyrical, a mixture of qualities that inheres in his language with uncommon delicacy and effect" (Leonard Michaels). Together they make up an intellectual and emotional autobiography on the run. The book's final section, about Kleinzahler's adored, doomed older brother, is unforgettable, and since its appearance last year in the LRB, has already entered the literature as one of the most moving contemporary memoirs.

A Roald Dahl Selection


Roald Dahl - 1980
    Includes:Man from the South, Lamb to the Slaughter, The Landlady, The champion of the World, Galloping Foxley, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat, The Ratcatcher and The Hitchhiker.

Bon Iver


Mark Beaumont - 2013
    This book tells the story of Bon Iver's main man Justin Vernon via exclusive and extensive original interviews with those around him throughout his rise from his failed Wisonsin bands to the illness and isolation that forged his breakthrough album For Emma, Forever Ago.  Examines his subsequent critical and commercial success as the latest US alternative icon.

Kiss and Sell: The Making of a Supergroup


C.K. Lendt - 1997
    The unauthorized behind-the-scenes story of the making and marketing of one of rock's original supergroups, viewed from the perspective of an executive from Kiss's business management team.

I Wrote This Crap for You


Edward Savio - 2012
    It’s all right here in these words. Everything you ever need to know. That’s because I use all twenty-six letters, and you can make anything out of those twenty-six letters. So, you see, this book encompasses everything." — PleaseHelpMeRumored to be penned by the brother of the best-selling author of “I Wrote This For You,” this new tour de force in poetry is sure to stab at your heart, or, at least, make you want to.If you loved the international best-selling collection of poetry, “I Wrote This For You,” you’ll probably hate this. But even those admirers of the free-verse artistry of that work will get a laugh from this classic parody. Author and screenwriter Edward Savio put together a spot-on send up of the poetry best-seller with “I Wrote This Crap For You.”It’s a quick, fun read that we hope you enjoy.“It touched my heart and moved me to tears.”“It’s as if he knew my inner thoughts and fears, and—come to think of it my diary is missing.”

You Don't Look Your Age...and Other Fairy Tales


Sheila Nevins - 2017
    Women need this kind of honest excavation of the process of living.” —Meryl StreepAn astonishingly frank, funny, poignant book for any woman who wishes they had someone who would say to them, “This happened to me, learn from my mistakes and my successes. Because you don’t get smarter as you get older, you get braver.”Sheila Nevins is the best friend you never knew you had. She is your discreet confidante you can tell any secret to, your sage mentor at work who helps you navigate the often uneven playing field, your wise sister who has “been there, done that,” your hysterical girlfriend whose stories about men will make laugh until you cry. Sheila Nevins is the one person who always tells it like it is. In You Don’t Look Your Age, the famed documentary producer (as President of HBO Documentary Films for over 30 years, Nevins has rightfully been credited with creating the documentary rebirth) finally steps out from behind the camera and takes her place front and center.In these pages you will read about the real life challenges of being a woman in a man's world, what it means to be a working mother, what it’s like to be an older woman in a youth-obsessed culture, the sometimes changing, often sweet truth about marriages, what being a feminist really means, and that you are in good company if your adult children don’t return your phone calls.So come, sit down, make yourself comfortable, (and for some of you, don’t forget the damn reading glasses). You’re in for a treat.

Justin Bieber: Uncovered!: Unauthorized


Tori Kosara - 2010
    An Internet phenomenon, the R&B cutie has nearly two million followers on Twitter and three million on Facebook, and his music videos have gained more than 130 million hits on YouTube. Signed by music legend Usher, his second album shot straight to the top of the charts, and he found himself singing at the White House Christmas celebration and appearing on Saturday Night Live. This brilliant book gives fans the low-down on the whirlwind rise of the world’s hottest teen star. Crammed with cool quotes, top trivia, fun quizzes, gorgeous photos, and fantastic facts, fans can find out everything about their favorite star.

The Tiniest Mansion - How To Live In Luxury on the Side of the Road in an RV


Tynan - 2012
    The Tiniest Mansion will teach you how to convert a small RV into a rolling palace with all the comforts of your home, plus the freedom to live anywhere you want without paying rent.The Tiniest Mansion covers everything from the essentials like choosing an RV, generating power, and dumping your tanks to more extravagant projects like installing marble floors and building an entertainment system.This book is a practical guide for anyone who is living in an RV or is considering it. Tynan, who has been living in an RV since 2006, shares all of his hard won secrets of RV living in this book.

Going Bare!


John David Harding - 2012
    The book is short - around an hour of reading - and details everything from when I first decided naturism appealed to me, to my thoughts after the holiday.

Half Time


Nigel Owens - 2008
    Nigel is the first openly gay rugby personality. He came out in 2007 and has since won Sports Personality of the year by Stonewall, was the only Welsh referee at the 2007 Rugby World Cup and is respected as one of the best refs in the world. His autobiography tells of his tormented life as a teenager in a Welsh village and his attempted suicide in his 20s. Nigel also became a heavy user of steroids and suffered with bulimia. But this is a story of triumph as he overcame everything and became o highly respected referee, and is now a favorite personality in the rugby world rugby. He's also a Welsh language t.v. personality and comedian

Preachin' the Blues: The Life & Times of Son House


Daniel Beaumont - 2011
    So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

Paula, Michael and Bob: Everything You Know Is Wrong


Gerry Agar - 2003
    When their lives collided, the events that unfolded were too bizarre even for fiction; the very public seduction and intense love affair, the fights, the drugs bust, heartbreaking custody battles, financial deals and the deaths of Paula and Michael were front-page news for months. But the vital facts of the web the lovers wove together were kept secret, and the reasons for their deaths were never clear, even to their family and friends.Only one person was there to witness every aspect of the story - Gerry Agar. A former publicist and Paula's long-term friend, Gerry's life, both personal and professional, became inextricably tied to those of the star-crossed lovers, and to the one who would be left behind.This is the stuff of modern legend; a red-blooded tragedy played out in the merciless glare of the media spotlight. Here are the facts, divulged in painful and deeply moving detail, and told with an intimacy that could only be disclosed by one caught in the centre of the storm. This is Gerry Agar's story of Paula, Michael & Bob.

Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1


Jim Morrison - 1988
    Opens all the doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." -- Jim MorrisonAs the lead singer and song writer for The Doors, Jim Morrison brought the poetry of the damned to rock'n'roll. As a poet, he infused verse with the wild lyricism and mesmerizing beat of rock. By the time of his death in 1971, Morrison had become one of the most haunting voices in the collective unconscious of America, echoed by performers such as Patti Smith.This book, compiled from the Morrison literary estate by his beloved friends, presents Morrison's unpublished work for the first time--poems that celebrate the juju of sex, the touring musician's labyrinth of highways, airports, and motel corridors, and the shamanistic power of rock'n'roll, as well as photographs, drawings, facsimiles from Morrison's diaries, and a self-interview that reveals him as he has never been revealed before. A genuine literary event, Wilderness is the last testament of a writer of liberating ferocity and tenderness whose tremendous impact on an entire generation is still being felt.Cover photo by Frank LisciandroCover design by Wendy Bass