He was a celebrity during the height of America’s Gilded Age. In this book, you will read about his friendship with Mark Twain, his furious competition with his former employer Thomas Edison, his uneasy relationship with billionaire J.P. Morgan, and his rivalry with Albert Einstein. During his lifetime, Tesla revolutionized the field of electrical engineering with his most famous invention: the induction motor. But that wasn’t all he contributed to the world of technology. His coils, turbines, robotic boats, and mysterious “death ray” continue to beguile the imagination and inspire the inventors of the 21st century. But who was Tesla really? This book will take you from his early childhood in Croatia, where he experienced strange optical visions and “luminous phenomenon” that gave him near super-human powers of memory and visualization, to the “War of the Currents”, Thomas Edison’s bizarre campaign to ruin Tesla’s reputation. From trying to fight the Spanish American War with robots, to electrifying the skies of the Colorado desert, and to starting an earthquake in the middle of New York city, learn how Nikola Tesla shaped the world we live in today.

    Randy Taraborrelli comes the definitive biography of the most enduring icon in popular American culture. When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was not true. In fact, her mentally ill mother was very much present in Marilyn's world and the complex family dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes is a story that has never before been told...until now. In this groundbreaking book, Taraborrelli draws complex and sympathetic portraits of the women so influential in the actress' life, including her mother, her foster mother, and her legal guardian. He also reveals, for the first time, the shocking scope of Marilyn's own mental illness, the identity of Marilyn's father and the half-brother she never knew, and new information about her relationship with the Kennedy's-Bobby, Jack, and Pat Kennedy Lawford. Explosive, revelatory, and surprisingly moving, this is the final word on the life of one of the most fascinating and elusive icons of the 20th Century.

    Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words. “I hope fans of comedy will get a kick out of the stories behind my work, and really enjoy taking this remarkable ride with me.”—Mel Brooks For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.All About Me! charts Mel Brooks’s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers’ room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks’s stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers. All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft. Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.

    and Orange County Choppers a household name. Paul's smart, commonsense business wisdom works for businesses both big and small in any industry. Here, he shows you firsthand how he built a uniquely successful business by working hard and demanding it from others; encouraging and embracing unfettered creativity; establishing well-defined roles for every team member and demanding they support each other; and using honest conflict and confrontation to solve problems and constantly innovate.Paul and his sons build the best one-of-a-kind choppers in the world with unrivaled passion, creativity, and honesty. The Ride of a Lifetime shows you how they do it.Offers an inside look at the business practices that built Orange County Choppers into a massively successful business Reveals a different side to the OCC family patriarch Full of practical, real world business principles that lead to unlimited success for any business The Ride of a Lifetime is a smart, tough-as-nails guide to business success that every entrepreneur should read.

    At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer’s war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov. Sajer's German footsoldier’s perspective makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.

    Joe Ricketts always had the gift of seeing what others missed. The son of a house builder, he started life as a part-time janitor, but by the age of thirty-three he saw the chance to challenge the big brokerage firms by offering Americans an inexpensive way to take control of their own stock trading. Nowadays, we take for granted that Main Street is playing right there on Wall Street, but Ricketts made that happen. His company, begun with $12,500 borrowed from friends and family, took off like a rocket thanks to an early embrace of digital technology and irreverent marketing. But Ameritrade also faced a series of near-disasters: the SEC almost shut him down; his partners tried to force him out because of his relentless risk-taking; penny brokers swindled the company; the crash of 1989 nearly cost him everything; and he was almost shut down again when a customer committed massive fraud. By the time of the dot-com bust, he had proven that his strategy based on frontier values could survive just about anything. The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get offers a view inside Joe Ricketts’ mind, giving readers a visceral understanding of how entrepreneurs think and act differently from the rest of us—how they see the horizon where we just see a spreadsheet. As unvarnished as the prairie he comes from, Ricketts also talks honestly about his shortcomings as a manager, the career sacrifices his wife made for his business, the complexity of being a father, and the pain of splitting with his mentor and of his brother’s death from AIDS. Overcoming these and other challenges, he built a company now worth $30 billion. A must-read for anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting their own business, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get is the ultimate only-in-America story.

    The result is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they need to win.Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s best-liked and top-ranked cyclists—a fierce competitor renowned among his peers for his uncanny endurance and epic tolerance for pain. In the 2003 Tour de France, he finished fourth despite breaking his collarbone in the early stages—and grinding eleven of his teeth down to the nerves along the way. He started his career with the U.S. Postal Service team in the 1990s and quickly rose to become Lance Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenant, and a member of his inner circle. For the first three of Armstrong’s record seven Tour de France victories, Hamilton was by Armstrong’s side, clearing his way. But just weeks after Hamilton reached his own personal pinnacle—winning the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics—his career came to a sudden, ignominious end: He was found guilty of doping and exiled from the sport.From the exhilaration of his early, naïve days in the peloton, Hamilton chronicles his ascent to the uppermost reaches of this unforgiving sport. In the mid-1990s, the advent of a powerful new blood-boosting drug called EPO reshaped the world of cycling, and a relentless, win-at-any-cost ethos took root. Its psychological toll would drive many of the sport’s top performers to substance abuse, depression, even suicide. For the first time ever, Hamilton recounts his own battle with clinical depression, speaks frankly about the agonizing choices that go along with the decision to compete at a world-class level, and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong.A journey into the heart of a never-before-seen world, The Secret Race is a riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France.

    As a lifelong member of "The Nerd Herd," as he calls it, Chris Hardwick has learned all there is to know about Nerds. Developing a system, blog, and podcasts, Hardwick shares hard-earned wisdom about turning seeming weakness into world-dominating strengths in the hilarious self-help book, "The Nerdist Way."From keeping their heart rate below hummingbird levels to managing the avalanche of sadness that is their in-boxes; from becoming evil geniuses to attracting wealth by turning down work, Hardwick reveals the secrets that can help readers achieve their goals by tapping into their true nerdtastic selves.Here Nerds will learn how to: Become their own time cop Tell panic attacks to go suck it Use incremental fitness to ward off predatorsA Nerd's brain is a laser-it's time they learn to point and fire!

    Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

    Thorp invented card counting, proving the seemingly impossible: that you could beat the dealer at the blackjack table. As a result he launched a gambling renaissance. His remarkable success--and mathematically unassailable method--caused such an uproar that casinos altered the rules of the game to thwart him and the legions he inspired. They barred him from their premises, even put his life in jeopardy. Nonetheless, gambling was forever changed.Thereafter, Thorp shifted his sights to "the biggest casino in the world" Wall Street. Devising and then deploying mathematical formulas to beat the market, Thorp ushered in the era of quantitative finance we live in today. Along the way, the so-called godfather of the quants played bridge with Warren Buffett, crossed swords with a young Rudy Giuliani, detected the Bernie Madoff scheme, and, to beat the game of roulette, invented, with Claude Shannon, the world's first wearable computer.Here, for the first time, Thorp tells the story of what he did, how he did it, his passions and motivations, and the curiosity that has always driven him to disregard conventional wisdom and devise game-changing solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. An intellectual thrill ride, replete with practical wisdom that can guide us all in uncertain financial waters, A Man for All Markets is an instant classic--a book that challenges its readers to think logically about a seemingly irrational world.Praise for A Man for All Markets"In A Man for All Markets, [Thorp] delightfully recounts his progress (if that is the word) from college teacher to gambler to hedge-fund manager. Along the way we learn important lessons about the functioning of markets and the logic of investment."--The Wall Street Journal"[Thorp] gives a biological summation (think Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!) of his quest to prove the aphorism 'the house always wins' is flawed. . . . Illuminating for the mathematically inclined, and cautionary for would-be gamblers and day traders"-- Library Journal

    With Roger Miret as front man, legendary band Agnostic Front’s focused fury and aggression defined the times and continue to resonate today.Born in Cuba, Roger Miret fled with his family to the US to escape the Castro regime. Through vivid language and graphic details, Miret recounts growing up in a strange new land with a tyrannical, abusive stepfather and the roles that poverty and violence played in shaping the toughness that became critical to his survival. In his teen years, he finds himself squatting in abandoned buildings with other runaways and victims of similar childhood trauma. Soon he becomes a respected and feared kingpin of the scene, and a protector of its misfits and outcasts.Miret’s gripping memoir is a testament to the perils of growing up too young too fast and finding redemption through sheer strength, perseverance, and courage.Roger Miret is the godfather of the New York hardcore scene. He joined Agnostic Front in 1982. Jon Wiederhorn is the co-author of Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, Ministry (with Al Jourgensen), and I’m the Man (with Scott Ian). He has written for Revolver, Rolling Stone, and SPIN, among others.

    Here is the enlightening memoir of the industrialist as famous for his philanthropy as for his fortune.

    In this jaw-dropping expose, Oliver Shah uncovers the truth behind one of Britain's biggest business scandals, following Sir Philip Green's journey to the big time, the wild excesses of his heyday and his dramatic demise.Sir Philip Green was once hailed one of Britain's best businessmen. As chairman of Arcadia Group, home to brands such as Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, Green had prime ministers and supermodels on speed dial. But the retail magnate's reputation came crashing down when Shah, a Sunday Times journalist, uncovered the methods Green used to amass his gigantic offshore fortune, and the desperation that drove his doomed BHS deal.In 2015, Green sold British Home Stores for £1 to Retail Acquisitions, owned by Dominic Chappell, a charlatan who siphoned off BHS's remaining millions before filing for administration. By the time it went under in April 2016, BHS had debts of £1.3bn, including a pension deficit of £571m. Its collapse left 11,000 employees without jobs and 20,000 pension fund members facing the loss of their benefits, prompting the government to launch an inquiry into Green's sale of the company. While one of Britain's oldest department stores boarded up its shop fronts, former employees and shoppers protested in the streets and MPs rallied in parliament, demanding Green be stripped of his knighthood. The furore over the sale subsided in 2017 when Green agreed a £363m deal with the Pensions Regulator, but with revelations surrounding Topshop's pension deficit now surfacing, could tragedy strike again?Oliver Shah is the award-winning Business Editor of the Sunday Times and one of the most respected national commentators on business and the high street. He was named business journalist of the year at both the Press Awards and London Press Club Awards in 2017 for his investigation into Sir Philip Green. Shah studied English at Cambridge University and journalism at City University before joining City AM in 2009 and the Sunday Times in 2010. Aged 34, Shah lives in east London.

    And like Job, Ramsey was destined for great affliction, as many of the most precious things in his life were cruelly taken from him.First came the death of his eldest daughter in a car accident in 1992. Then, four years later, his beloved six-year-old, JonBenét, was murdered; Ramsey was the one who discovered her body, concealed in the basement of his family's home. The case drew international media attention, and—compounding Ramsey's woe—suspicion unfairly focused on Ramsey and his wife, Patsy. Although they were ultimately cleared of any connection with the crime, Ramsey's sorrows did not end. In 2006, Patsy died, at 49, of ovarian cancer.In this remarkable book, Ramsey reveals how he was sustained by faith during the long period of spiritual darkness, and he offers hope and encouragement to others who suffer tragedy and injustice.

    . . The Kardashians are famous for letting it all hang out. Whether they’re moving cross-country, settling a family feud, dealing with heartbreak, or just having fun with one another, their lives are utterly relatable. No wonder America can’t get enough. But what have Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and the rest of the Kardashian clan got that we haven’t got? Off-the-charts beauty, millions of dollars, and Kris Jenner—the superstar mom and manager who made them into the family we can’t resist. On Keeping Up with the Kardashians, we watch Kris do it all. She runs a household, manages her children’s successful careers, produces four television shows featuring her larger-than-life family, and still finds time to tweet to her fans. How does she manage to maintain her composure, enviable elegance, and unflappable sense of humor? After raising six children of her own, in addition to being a stepmother to four and a grandmother, multitasking is Kris’s way of life. But she would have never made it without her unwavering belief in God. In this thoughtful, candid, and no-nonsense memoir, Kris Jenner is an open book about the good times and the rough patches. She shares the reality of living her hectic life in the celebrity spotlight, touching on topics that will resonate with women everywhere—love, loss, marriage, divorce, motherhood, and faith. Kris talks about her marriages to Olympic champion Bruce Jenner and Robert Kardashian, the late father of her four oldest children—and how it was Bruce who finally helped end the Kardashians’ messy divorce so they could all move forward as a family. She writes with candor and vivid insider detail about her close friendships with Nicole Brown Simpson and O.J. Simpson, as well as Nicole’s murder, its aftermath, and the infamous trial. She also puts her oftencontroversial parenting style under the microscope as she relates the details of her decision to make her charming family into an international brand with a blockbuster reality television franchise. If you think your life is chaotic, try keeping up with Kris Jenner.