Girl To City: A Memoir


Amy Rigby - 2019
    For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.

London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City


Robert Elms - 2019
    Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you're lost.'Robert Elms has seen London change beyond all imagining: the house he grew up in is now the behemoth that is the Westway flyover, and areas once deemed murder miles have morphed into the stuff of estate agents' dreams, seemingly in a matter of months.Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs, a small community declare itself an independent nation and animals of varying exoticism roam free through its streets; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms' home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to epoch- and world-changing events.

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde


Alexis De Veaux - 2004
    Drawing from the private archives of the poet's estate and numerous interviews, Alexis De Veaux demystifies Lorde's iconic status, charting her conservative childhood in Harlem; her early marriage to a white, gay man with whom she had two children; her emergence as an outspoken black feminist lesbian; and her canonization as a seminal poet of American literature.

No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley


Rita Marley - 2004
    Abandoned by her mother at a very young age, she was raised by her aunt. Music ran in Rita's family, and even as a child her talent for singing was pronounced. By the age of 18, Rita was an unwed mother, and it was then that she met Bob Marley at a recording studio in Trench Town. Bob and Rita became close friends, fell in love, and soon, she and her girlfriends were singing backup for the Wailers. At the ages of 21 and 19, Bob and Rita were married.The rest is history: Bob Marley and the Wailers set Jamaica and the world on fire. But while Rita displayed blazing courage, joy, and an indisputable devotion to her husband, life with Bob was not easy. There were his liaisons with other women--some of which produced children and were conducted under Rita's roof. The press repeatedly reported that Bob was unmarried to preserve his "image." But Rita kept her self-respect, and when Bob succumbed to cancer in 1981, she was at his side. In the years that followed, she became a force in her own right--as the Bob Marley Foundation's spokesperson and a performer in her reggae group, the I-Three.Written with author Hettie Jones, No Woman No Cry is a no-holds-barred account of life with one of the most famous musicians of all time. In No Woman No Cry, readers will learn about the never-before-told details of Bob Marley's life, including:How Rita practiced subsistence farming when first married to Bob to have food for her family.How Rita rode her bicycle into town with copies of Bob's latest songs to sell.How Rita worked as a housekeeper in Delaware to help support her family when her children were young.Why Rita chose to befriend some of the women with whom Bob had affairs and to give them advice on rearing the children they had with Bob.The story of the attack on Bob which almost killed the two of them.Bob's last wishes, dreams, and hopes, as well as the details of his death, such as who came to the funeral (and who didn't).

Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota


Chuck Klosterman - 2001
    With a voice like Ace Frehley's guitar, Klosterman hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil. The fifth-grade Chuck wasn't quite ready to rock -- his hair was too short and his farm was too quiet -- but he still found a way to bang his nappy little head. Before the journey was over, he would slow-dance to Poison, sleep innocently beneath satanic pentagrams, lust for Lita Ford, and get ridiculously intellectual about Guns N' Roses. C'mon and feel his noize.

No Commercial Potential: The Saga Of Frank Zappa


David Walley - 1972
    This updated edition of David Walley's cutting-edge classic includes a new foreword, a substantial chapter carrying the Zappa saga through his death from cancer, an afterword, bibliography, discography, videography, and guide to Zappa on the Internet. From 1960's Freak Out! to the posthumous Civilization Phaze III, No Commercial Potential offers converts and connoisseurs the most practical and penetrating book ever written on the musical phenomenon known as Frank Zappa.

How to Ru(i)n a Record Label: The Story of Lookout Records


Larry Livermore - 2015
    He had no idea this little label, first run out of his solar powered cabin in the Northern California mountains, then a cramped room in the backstreets of Berkeley, would rise to international prominence, introducing the world to the likes of Green Day, Operation Ivy, and a host of other artists. How To Ru(i)n A Record Label documents the author’s experiences from Gilman Street to Bialystok, Poland, as he built Lookout from the ground up, only to find himself losing control of the label a mere ten years later, and abruptly walking away from the multi-million dollar company when it was at its peak of success. Throughout that time, however, he was central to the influential scene that gave birth to Gilman Street, Maximum Rocknroll, and a new generation of independent music that has had an everlasting effect on both the underground and mainstream. In the process, he just might even have found himself. Larry Livermore was the co-founder of Lookout Records, the editor and publisher of Lookout magazine, and a longtime columnist for Maximum Rocknroll and Punk Planet. His first memoir, Spy Rock Memories, was published in 2013 by Don Giovanni Records. He lives in Brooklyn.

Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer


Sarah Bamford Seidelmann - 2017
    Having witnessed human suffering early in her career and within her own family, she longed for a way to address more than just the physical needs of her patients and to live in a lighter, more conscious way.Swimming with Elephants tells the eccentric, sometimes poignant, and occasionally hilarious experience of a working mother undergoing a bewildering vocational shift from physician to shamanic healer. During that tumultuous period of answering her call, Sarah met an elephant who would become an important spirit companion on her journey, had bones thrown for her by a shaman in South Africa, and traveled to India for an ancient Hindu pilgrimage, where she received the blessing she had been longing for. Ultimately, she discovered an entirely different way of healing, one that she had always aspired to, and that enabled her to help those who are suffering.Editorial ReviewsReview"This is an exceedingly vulnerable, beautifully written book and the most genuine spiritual memoir I have ever read. It is also--in many hilarious moments--laugh out loud funny." --Maria Bamford, Comedian and star of Netflix Original Series Lady Dynamite"I LOVED THIS BOOK. Sarah takes us on an intimate tour of the hero's journey. She's a brilliant storyteller...making sense of the baffling journey from the ordinary world into the mystical and back again. I didn't want it to end." --MeiMei Fox, New York Times bestselling author"A fascinating, amusing, and wise account of how someone born with a shaman's predilections, raised in a rationalist culture, finds her way back to her true self.” --Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author of Expecting Adam"Sarah Bamford Seidelmann has amassed heaps of wisdom in her courageous leap from the safe realm of medical science into the unknown -- the world of spirit. In this incredibly honest and compassionate memoir, you feel as though you're soaking in her courage and wisdom on every page. Even better, you do so laughing." --Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha and The Fear Project"From the lakes of Minnesota to the Ganges River in India, Sarah Seidelmann's transformative journey from MD to shamanic healer is a refreshingly honest and very funny tale of spiritual growth." --Matt Adrian, author of The Guide to Troubled BirdsAbout the AuthorSarah Bamford Seidelmann is a fourth-generation physician turned shamanic healer and life coach, who deeply enjoys shenanigans. She’s a frequent guest blogger at Maria Shriver’s site for Architects of Change and has led sold-out retreats combining surfing and shamanism in Hawaii and a sacred pachydermal pilgrimage to Thailand. She loves to help others find their own “feel good” so they can live courageously and enthusiastically. Visit Sarah at followyourfeelgood.com.

Mossad Exodus: The Daring Undercover Rescue Of The Lost Jewish Tribe


Gad Shimron - 2007
    It was ordered by then Prime Minister Menachem Begin to rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jewish refugees in Sudan and "deliver them to me" in the Jewish state. No stranger to action in enemy countries, the agency established a covert forward base in a deserted holiday village in Sudan, and deployed a handful of operatives to launch and oversee the exodus of the refugees to the Promised Land, by sea and by air, in the early 1980s. Gad Shimron, the author of this book, was one of their number. First published in Hebrew in 1998, this updated English version of the book offers a thrilling firsthand account of how the operation was put in place, and how the Mossad team in Sudan brought it off, despite great personal risk, running a partying vacation spot for wealthy tourists by day as they stole through the Sudanese desert to rescue desperate refugees by night. The book sheds light on American involvement in the latter stages of the operation, when the White House facilitated an airlift of Ethiopian Jews and the CIA station in Khartoum sheltered the last Mossad operatives, on the run from Libyan secret service agents, and spirited them out of Sudan in special boxes labeled Diplomatic Mail. Enhanced by Gad Shimron's wide-ranging historical observations and his crisp, incisive prose, this is at once an entertaining read and a powerful tale of idealistic heroism.

The Beatles: The Biography


Bob Spitz - 2005
    This version of the Beatles legend smoothed the rough edges and filled in the fault lines, and for more than forty years this manicured version of the Beatles story has sustained as truth - until now.The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for -- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves -- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where -- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills -- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road Studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe...all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read -- Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.

Journals


Kurt Cobain - 2002
    His journals reveal an artist who loved music, who knew the history of rock, and who was determined to define his place in that history. Here is a mesmerizing, incomparable portrait of the most influential musician of his time.

The White Island


Stephen Armstrong - 2004
    Its history reads like a history of pleasure itself. It is also a story of invasions and migrations, of artists and conmen, of drop-outs and love-ins. The Carthaginians established a cult to their goddess of sex there, and named the island after Bez, their god of dance. Roman centurions in need of a bit of down time between campaigns would go to Ibiza to get their kicks. And over the centuries, cultures around the Med have used the island either as a playground or a dump for the kind of people who didn't quite fit in back home, but who you'd probably quite like to meet at a party...This is the history of Ibiza, the fantasy island, framed by one long, golden summer where anything can happen - and it usually does.

Mission Overseas: Daring Operations by the Indian Military


Sushant Singh - 2017
    

A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead


Dennis McNally - 2002
    The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes.Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco–an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation.Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

How Music Works


David Byrne - 2012
    In the insightful How Music Works, Byrne offers his unique perspective on music - including how music is shaped by time, how recording technologies transform the listening experience, the evolution of the industry, and much more.