Book picks similar to
Giacometti: A Biography by James Lord
art
biography
non-fiction
biographies
Cheryl: My Story
Cheryl Cole - 2012
Revealing the truth behind the headlines, this is the official autobiography, giving the fans the true story they’ve been waiting for - including exclusive, personal photos.The nation’s sweetheart, Cheryl has achieved unrivaled success with Girls Aloud, as a solo artist, a judge on the X-Factor, a fashion icon, and as the face of L’Oreal. However, the path to fame is rarely easy and for Cheryl it has been a colourful journey.From happy but humble beginnings growing up on a tough Newcastle estate, Cheryl saw firsthand the damage that drugs and alcohol can do. But this feisty Geordie never gave up on her dreams of being on stage.With success came a level of fame no one could prepare for. As Cheryl’s career went from strength to strength her personal heartache was played out in the national media. From her divorce to her battles with malaria, Cheryl's every move was captured by paparazzi. There was nowhere for Cheryl to hide. However, a true fighter, Cheryl emerged from every challenge stronger.In this heartfelt account, she opens up about all of the incredible ups and downs of her life. Told with searing honesty this is Cheryl as you’ve never seen her before.
Blood: A Memoir
Allison Moorer - 2019
A fourteen-year-old girl is awakened by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. On the front lawn, her father has shot and killed her mother before turning the gun on himself. Allison Moorer would grow up to be an award-winning musician, with her songs likened to "a Southern accent: eight miles an hour, deliberate, and very dangerous to underestimate" (Rolling Stone). But that moment, which forever altered her own life and that of her older sister, Shelby, has never been far from her thoughts. Now, in her journey to understand the unthinkable, to parse the unknowable, Allison uses her lyrical storytelling powers to lay bare the memories and impressions that make a family, and that tear a family apart.
Blood delves into the meaning of inheritance and destiny, shame and trauma -- and how it is possible to carve out a safe place in the world despite it all. With a foreword by Allison's sister, Grammy winner Shelby Lynne, Blood reads like an intimate journal: vivid, haunting, and ultimately life-affirming.
Genie: A Scientific Tragedy
Russ Rymer - 1993
And the questions Rymer poses about human experience and experiments on humans make the story both intellectually absorbing and emotionally disturbing. Genie is a wondrous feat of storytelling and investigative journalism, compulsively readable while forcing us to think hard about our own humanity." —Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck ClubThe compelling story of a young woman's emergence into the world after spending her first 13 years strapped to a chair in a closed room, and her rescue and exploitation by scientists hoping to gain new insight into language acquisition.
Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation
Philip Norman - 1981
Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania, from the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism to the band's acrimonious split. It also describes their struggle to escape the smothering Beatles’ legacy and the tragic deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. Witty, insightful, and moving, Shout! is essential reading not just for Beatles fans but for anyone with an interest in pop music.
Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman
Nuala O'Faolain - 1996
There are thousands who have yet to discover this extraordinary memoir of an Irish woman who has stepped away from the traditional roles to define herself and find contentment. They will make this paperback a long-selling classic.
Prairie Tale: A Memoir
Melissa Gilbert - 2009
Children across the country dreamed of the Ingalls’ idyllic life—and so did Melissa. With candor and humor, the cherished actress traces her complicated journey from buck-toothed Laura "Halfpint" Ingalls to Hollywood starlet, wife, and mother. She partied with the Brat Pack, dated heartthrobs like Rob Lowe and bad boys like Billy Idol, and began a self-destructive pattern of addiction and codependence. She eventually realized that her career on television had earned her popularity, admiration, and love from everyone but herself. Through hard work, tenacity, sobriety, and the blessings of a solid marriage, Melissa has accepted her many different identities and learned to laugh, cry, and forgive in new ways. Women everywhere may have idolized her charming life on Little House on the Prairie, but Melissa’s own unexpectedly honest, imperfect, and down-to-earth story is an inspiration.
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity
Mark Vonnegut - 1975
That he emerged to write this funny and true book and then moved on to find the meaningful life that for a while had seemed beyond reach is what ultimately happens in The Eden Express. But the real story here is that throughout his harrowing experience his sense of humor let him see the humanity of what he was going through, and his gift of language let him describe it in such a moving way that others could begin to imagine both its utter ordinariness as well as the madness we all share.
Kerry Katona Too Much, Too Young
Kerry Katona - 2006
By the age of 13 she could beat grown men at pool and knew how to look after her mother during a breakdown. By the age of 15 she had lived in womens life.
Room to Dream
David Lynch - 2018
Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.
My Life in France
Julia Child - 2006
Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.
Alexander McQueen: The Life and the Legacy
Judith Watt - 2012
An intimate and revealing look at the personal and professional life of the fashion world's most visionary designer.
A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
Steve Pemberton - 2012
No one in the system can help him. No one can tell him if he has a family. No one can tell him why, with obvious African-American features, he has the last name of Klakowicz.Along the way, a single faint light comes only from a neighbor’s small acts of kindness and caring—and a box of books. From one of those books he learns that he has to fight in any way he can—for victory is in the battle. His victory is to excel in school.Against all odds, the author succeeded. He attended college, graduated, became a successful corporate executive, and married a wonderful woman with whom he established a loving family of his own. Through it, he dug voraciously through records and files and found his history, his birth family—and the ultimate disappointment as some family members embrace him, but others reject him.Readers won’t be the same after reading this powerful story. They will share in the hurts and despair but also in the triumph against daunting obstacles. They will share this story with their family, with their friends, with their neighbors.
A Paper Life
Tatum O'Neal - 2004
The role won her an Oscar, making O'Neal the youngest Academy Award winner in history. By 1982, though, this angel-face was a full-blown cocaine addict, a teenage victim of depression, parental neglect, and abuse. A Paper Life recounts the actress's fragile passage through decades of adversity and personal turmoil to sobriety and spiritual peace. With astonishing candor, O'Neal discusses her destructive relationships with her father, Ryan O'Neal, her mother, Joanna Moore, and her ex-husband, tennis pro John McEnroe.
Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
Alice Steinbach - 2000
“For years I’d made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.” But somehow she had become dependent in quite another way. “I had fallen into the habit of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” But who was she away from the people and things that defined her? In this exquisite book, Steinbach searches for the answer to this question in some of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate; Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village; and Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. Beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach’s journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery.
Kiki's Memoirs
Kiki de Montparnasse - 1929
A love child, she was born in Burgundy in 1901 and christened Alice Prin. Raised by her grandmother in dire poverty, she made meals of vegetables thieved from neighbors' gardens and snails lured from hiding by summer showers. At twelve, she was shipped off to Paris to live with the mother she had never known. Her fierce survival instincts immediately translated into a precocious thirst for experience. Soon she discovered the power of artificial geraniums to rouge her cheeks and mouth, and at fourteen she had her first contact with art when she began posing nude for a sculptor. Thereafter, she embraced life as the irrepressible Kiki, lover of Man Ray, beloved friend of Soutine and Jean Cocteau - the toast of Montparnasse. One of the century's first truly independent women, she cut a wide swath of color and passion wherever she went. Man Ray, Foujita, Kisling, and others immortalized her in their work. Crowds roared for her raunchy songs at the artists' boite, Le Jockey. She appeared in nine films, including Leger's famous Ballet Mecanique. And she painted hundreds of portraits and dream-like landscapes, many of which are included in these memoirs, working in a fresh naive style that made her one-person show a sellout. Featuring full page reproductions of original paintings by Kiki herself, plus famous and lesser known photographs of Kiki by Man Ray and portraits of her by other important artists, Kiki's Memoirs brushes vivid new color on to the canvas of 1920s Montparnasse and sketchesin bold strokes the indomitable spirit of an unforgettable personality who was always a woman but never a lady.