Don't Shoot, It's Only Me: Bob Hope's Comedy History of the United States


Bob Hope - 1990
    He has counted among his friends an amazing group of notables--from Rita Hayworth to Brook Shields, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George Bush. In this honest and touching book, he recounts the laughs and heartaches of his exceptional show business career.

Up Till Now


William Shatner - 2008
    And it seems as if Shatner is everywhere. Winning an Emmy for his role on Boston Legal. Doing commercials for Priceline.com. In the movie theaters. Singing with Ben Folds. He’s sitting next to Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s practically a regular on Howard Stern’s show. He was recently honored with election to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. He was a target on a Comedy Central’s Celebrity Roast entitled “The Shat Hits the Fan.” In Up Till Now, Shatner sits down with readers and offers the remarkable, full story of his life and explains how he got to be, well, everywhere. It was the original Star Trek series, and later its films, that made Shatner instantly recognizable, called by name---or at least by Captain Kirk’s name---across the globe. But Shatner neither began nor has ended his career with that role. From the very start, he took his skills as an actor and put them to use wherever he could. He straddled the classic world of the theater and the new world of television, whether stepping in for Christopher Plummer in Shakespeare’s Henry V or staring at “something on the wing” in a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. And since then, he’s gone on to star in numerous successful shows, such as T.J. Hooker, Rescue 911, and most recently Boston Legal. William Shatner has always been willing to take risks for his art. What other actor would star in history’s first---and probably only---all-Esperanto-language film? Who else would share the screen with thousands of tarantulas, release an album called Has Been, or film a racially incendiary film in the Deep South during the height of the civil rights era? And who else would willingly paramotor into a field of waiting fans armed with paintball guns, all waiting for a chance to stun Captain…er, Shatner? In this touching and very funny autobiography, William Shatner reveals the man behind these unforgettable moments, and how he’s become the worldwide star and experienced actor he is today.

Boys in the Trees


Carly Simon - 2015
    Don't miss it." - People Magazine"One of the best celebrity memoirs of the year." -The Hollywood ReporterRock Star. Composer and Lyricist. Feminist Icon. Survivor.Simon's memoir reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters performing folk songs with her sister Lucy in Greenwich Village, to a meteoric solo career that would result in 13 top 40 hits, including the #1 song "You're So Vain." She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, for her song "Let the River Run" from the movie Working Girl.The memoir recalls a childhood enriched by music and culture, but also one shrouded in secrets that would eventually tear her family apart. Simon brilliantly captures moments of creative inspiration, the sparks of songs, and the stories behind writing "Anticipation" and "We Have No Secrets" among many others. Romantic entanglements with some of the most famous men of the day fueled her confessional lyrics, as well as the unraveling of her storybook marriage to James Taylor.

Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song


Sara Bareilles - 2015
    In this candid book of essays, Sara pulls back the curtain to expose her songwriting process, revealing all the struggle and joy inherent in creating great work while staying true to yourself.Showcasing her stripped down and confessional writing style, Sara's entertaining and inspirational book tells the inside stories behind her most popular songs and offers insights into finding balance between making art for herself and commercial music for her listeners.

Vivian Leigh


Hugo Vickers - 1988
    For this part alone she has earned a lasting place in film history. She was hardly ever in a bad film or a bad play and she tried a wide range of parts - scoring notable triumphs in A Streetcar Named Desire, as a convincing Lady Macbeth and as Sabina in The Skin of our Teeth.There have been many biographies of Vivien Leigh, invariably Hollywood filmographies, most of which have been inaccurate and incomplete. Hugo Vickers approached his subject as a human being, according her the same detailed research that the readers of his Cecil Beaton and Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough have come to expect of him. He examined the previously uncharted story of Vivien Leigh's antecedents, making surprising new discoveries. He was able to bring Vivien's parents to life as real people with the help of a great number of family documents, letters and diaries, made available by Vivien's daughter for the first time. These give the first clear account of the atmosphere in which Vivien was raised.He traced the progress of her relationship with Leigh Holman, from their first meeting through the period of their engagement, marriage and divorce, and showed how they formed an important, lasting friendship, helped by the complete set of letters Vivien wrote to him between 1932 and 1967. He made extensive use of the Oswald Frewen diaries, an essential source not only on that marriage but on Vivien's elopement with Laurence Olivier and their subsequent adventures.Hugo Vickers also examined Vivien's film and stage career, writing of her as a person and not as the 'property' of a film company or a name on a contract. He examined her films and drawing on a great number of interviews with famous figures of the stage, he recreated her part in the life of English theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. An important feature of the book is, of course, her love for Laurence Olivier and their twenty year marriage, so much of it made difficult by recurring bouts of tuberculosis and manic depression. Hugo Vickers, drawing on many hours of conversation with her devoted friend, the actor John Merivale, explained how Vivien re-established her life after the divorce.Vivien Leigh emerges as a more real and more intelligent person than in previous accounts, a spirited and courageous actress brought down by ill-health.

My Way of Life


Joan Crawford - 1971
    Even when the cameras quit rolling, her life never stopped being over-the-top. In My Way of Life, a cult classic since it was first published in the early 1970s, Crawford shares her secrets.Part memoir, part self-help book, part guide to being fabulous, My Way of Life advises the reader on everything from throwing a small dinner party for eighteen to getting the most out of a marriage. Featuring tips on fashion, makeup, etiquette, and everything in between, it is an irresistible look at a bygone era, when movie stars were pure class, and Crawford was at the top of the heap.

Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood


Danny Trejo - 2021
    He’s been shot, stabbed, hanged, chopped up, squished by an elevator, and once, was even melted into a bloody goo. Off screen, he’s a hero beloved by recovery communities and obsessed fans alike. But the real Danny Trejo is much more complicated than the legend.Raised in an abusive home, Danny struggled with heroin addiction and stints in some of the country’s most notorious state prisons, including San Quentin and Folsom, from an early age, before starring in such modern classics as Heat, From Dusk till Dawn, and Machete. Now, in this funny, painful, and suspenseful memoir, Danny takes us through the incredible ups and downs of his life, including meeting one of the world’s most notorious serial killers in prison and working with legends like Charles Bronson and Robert De Niro.In honest, unflinching detail, Danny recounts how he managed the horrors of prison, rebuilt himself after finding sobriety and spirituality in solitary confinement, and draws inspiration from the adrenaline-fueled robbing heists of his past for the film roles that made him a household name. He also shares the painful contradictions in his personal life. Although he speaks everywhere from prison yards to NPR about his past to inspire countless others on their own road to recovery and redemption, he struggles to help his children with their personal battles with addiction, and to build relationships that last.Redemptive and painful, poignant and real, Trejo is a portrait of a magnificent life and an unforgettable and exceptional journey through tragedy, pain, and, finally, success that will transfix and inspire.

The Beauty of Living Twice


Sharon Stone - 2021
    In The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life and writes about her slow road back to wholeness and health. In a business that doesn’t accept failure, in a world where too many voices are silenced, Stone found the power to return, the courage to speak up, and the will to make a difference in the lives of men, women, and children around the globe.Over the course of these intimate pages, as candid as a personal conversation, Stone talks about her pivotal roles, her life-changing friendships, her worst disappointments, and her greatest accomplishments. She reveals how she went from a childhood of trauma and violence to a career in an industry that in many ways echoed those same assaults, under cover of money and glamour. She describes the strength and meaning she found in her children, and in her humanitarian efforts. And ultimately, she shares how she fought her way back to find not only her truth, but her family’s reconciliation and love.Stone made headlines not just for her beauty and her talent, but for her candor and her refusal to “play nice,” and it’s those same qualities that make this memoir so powerful. The Beauty of Living Twice is a book for the wounded and a book for the survivors; it’s a celebration of women’s strength and resilience, a reckoning, and a call to activism. It is proof that it’s never too late to raise your voice and speak out.

Room to Dream


David Lynch - 2018
    Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

Just as I Am


Cicely Tyson - 2021
    It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. Here, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.

American Prince: A Memoir


Tony Curtis - 2008
    A prince of the silver screen. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. His good looks, smooth charm, and natural talent earned him fame, women, and adulation—Elvis copied his look and the Beatles put him on their Sgt. Pepper album cover. But the Hollywood life of his dreams brought both invincible highs and debilitating lows. Now, in his captivating, no-holds-barred autobiography, Tony Curtis shares the agony and ecstasy of a private life in the public eye.No simple tell-all, American Prince chronicles Hollywood during its heyday. Curtis revisits his immense body of work—including the unforgettable classics Houdini, Spartacus, and Some Like It Hot—and regales readers with stories of his associations with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, director Billy Wilder, and film industry heavyweight Lew Wasserman, as well as paramours Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe, among others. As forthright as he is enthralling, Tony Curtis offers intimate glimpses into his succession of failed marriages (and the one that has endured), his destructive drug addiction, and his passion as a painter. Written with humor and grace, American Prince is a testament to the power of living the life of one’s dreams.

Why Not Me?


Mindy Kaling - 2015
     In "How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet's Confessions", Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, ("Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn't the land of appropriate-this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman s traditional hair color is honey blonde.") "Player" tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. ("I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.") In "Unlikely Leading Lady", she muses on America's fixation with the weight of actresses, ("Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they're walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.") And in "Soup Snakes", Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak ("I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.") Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who's ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who've never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

Clark Gable: A Biography


Warren G. Harris - 2002
    He was a gambler among gamblers, a heavy drinker in the days when everyone drank seemingly all the time, and a lover to legions of the most attractive women in the most glamorous business in the world, including the great love of his life, Carole Lombard.In this well-researched and revealing biography, Warren G. Harris gives an exceptionally acute portrait of one of the most memorable actors in the history of motion pictures—whose intimates included such legends as Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, David O. Selznick, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, and Grace Kelly—as well as a vivid sense of the glamour and excess of mid-century Hollywood.

Nerd Do Well


Simon Pegg - 2009
    Having blasted onto the small screens with his now legendary sitcom Spaced, his rise to nation's favourite son status has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronnic, but mostly just plain great.From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with Star Wars, his often passionate friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his 12-year-old classmates, this is a joyous tale of a homegrown superstar and a local boy made good.

Little Girl Lost


Drew Barrymore - 1990
    At ten she took up marijuana, and by twelve she began snorting cocaine. Here is her gripping, heart-wrenching story--a story of a childhood gone awry and a young woman battling to restore order to her chaotic life.