Autobiography


Morrissey - 2013
    Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.An animal protectionist, in 2006 Morrissey was voted the second greatest living British icon by viewers of the BBC, losing out to Sir David Attenborough. In 2007 Morrissey was voted the greatest northern male, past or present, in a nationwide newspaper poll. In 2012, Morrissey was awarded the Keys to the City of Tel-Aviv.It has been said 'Most pop stars have to be dead before they reach the iconic status that Morrissey has reached in his lifetime.'Autobiography covers Morrissey's life from his birth until the present day.

Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII


Chester Nez - 2011
    Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty- nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them.In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Marine. His story puts a living face on the legendary men who developed what is still the only unbroken code in modern warfare.

Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith


Joe Perry - 2014
    He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock-gods on stage. The nearly five-decade saga of Aerosmith is epic, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll.With record-making hits and colossal album sales, Aerosmith has earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But theirs is ultimately a story of endurance, and it starts almost half a century ago with young Perry, the rebel whose loving parents wanted him to assimilate, but who quits school because he doesn’t want to cut his hair. He meets Tyler in a restaurant in New Hampshire, sways him from pop music to rock-and-roll, and it doesn’t take long for the “Toxic Twins” to skyrocket into a world of fame and utter excess. From the mega-successful song and music video with Run DMC, “Walk This Way,” to the realization that he can’t pay his room service bill, Perry takes a personal look into the human stories behind Aerosmith, the people who enabled them, the ones who controlled them, and the ones who changed them. In his own words, Rocks is the whole story: “the loner’s story, the band’s story, the recovery story, the cult story, the love story, the success story, the failure story, the rebirth story, the re-destruction story, the post-destructive rebirth story.”Foreward by Johnny Depp.

Just Kids


Patti Smith - 2010
    An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club


Peter Hook - 2008
    He provided the propulsive bass guitar melodies of Love Will Tear Us Apart, as well as Blue Monday and many other songs. As co-owner of Manchester's Hacienda club, Hook propelled the rise of acid house in the late 1980s, then suffered through its violent fall in the 1990s as gangs, drugs, greed, and a hostile police force destroyed everything he and his friends had created. This is his memory of that era and it is far sadder, funnier, scarier, and stranger than anyone has imagined. As young and naive musicians, the members of New Order were thrilled when their record label Factory opened a club. Yet as their career escalated, they toured the world, and they had top 10 hits, their royalties were being ploughed into the Hacienda and they were only being paid £20 per week. As Peter Hook tells the story of that exciting and hilarious time, all the main characters appear—Tony Wilson, Barney, Shaun Ryder—and he tells it like it truly was—a rollercoaster of success, money, confusion, and true faith.

John


Cynthia Lennon - 2005
    There is so much that I have never said, so many incidents I have never spoken of and so many feelings I have never expressed: great love on one hand; pain, torment, and humiliation on the other. Only I know what really happened between us, why we stayed together, why we parted, and the price I have paid for being John’s wife. —From the Introduction

Coming Back Stronger: Unleashing the Hidden Power of Adversity


Drew Brees - 2010
    Coming Back Stronger is the ultimate comeback story, not only of one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, but also of a city and a team that many had all but given up on. Brees’s inspiring message of hope and encouragement proves that with enough faith, determination, and heart, you can overcome any obstacle life throws your way and not only come back, but come back stronger.

The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince


Mayte Garcia - 2017
    In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell this story or can provide a deeper, more nuanced portrait of Prince - both the famously private man and the pioneering, beloved artist - than Mayte, his partner during some of the most pivotal personal and professional years of his career. The Most Beautiful is a book that will be returned to for decades, as Prince's music lives on with generations to come.

How to be Champion


Sarah Millican - 2017
    If you haven't done those things but wish you had, This Is Your Book. If you just want to laugh on a train/sofa/toilet or under your desk at work, This Is Your Book.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck


Brett Morgen - 2015
    For the first time, his story is told in Brett Morgen’s Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, a fully authorized feature documentary released in 2015. Brett Morgen is writer, director, and producer of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Visual artist Frances Bean Cobain, Cobain’s daughter, is executive producer. This riveting book accompanies Morgen’s documentary and delve further into the material created for the film, presenting an illuminating and honest portrait of the Nirvana frontman that captures the contradictions that made up his character. The book is composed of the extended versions of the exclusive interviews featured in the film. The book also showcases the film’s incredible visuals with a mixture of animation stills, rare photography, and other treasures from Kurt Cobain’s personal archive. Director Brett Morgen also offers his personal thoughts on the creation of the film and the need to shatter the mythos that surrounds Cobain.

Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep


Michael Schulman - 2016
    Burning with talent and ambition, she was like dozens of aspiring actors of the time—a twenty-something beauty who rode her bike everywhere, kept a diary, napped before performances, and stayed out late “talking about acting with actors in actors’ bars.” Yet Meryl stood apart from her peers. In her first season in New York, she won attention-getting parts in back-to-back Broadway plays, a Tony Award nomination, and two roles in Shakespeare in the Park productions. Even then, people said, “Her. Again.”Her Again is an intimate look at the artistic coming-of-age of the greatest actress of her generation, from the homecoming float at her suburban New Jersey high school, through her early days on the stage at Vassar College and the Yale School of Drama during its golden years, to her star-making roles in The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and Kramer vs. Kramer. New Yorker contributor Michael Schulman brings into focus Meryl’s heady rise to stardom on the New York stage; her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with fellow actor John Cazale; her marriage to sculptor Don Gummer; and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love, and sacrifice.Featuring eight pages of black-and-white photos, this captivating story of the making of one of the most revered artistic careers of our time reveals a gifted young woman coming into her extraordinary talents at a time of immense transformation, offering a rare glimpse into the life of the actress long before she became an icon.

From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars


Virginia Hanlon Grohl - 2017
    But when she saw him perform in front of thousands of screaming fans for the first time, she knew that rock stardom was meant to be for her son. And as Virginia watched her son's star rise, she often wondered about the other mothers who raised sons and daughters who became rock stars. Were they as surprised as she was about their children's fame? Did they worry about their children's livelihood and wellbeing in an industry fraught with drugs and other dangers? Did they encourage their children's passions despite the odds against success, or attempt to dissuade them from their grandiose dreams? Do they remind their kids to pack a warm coat when they go on tour?Virginia decided to seek out other rock star mothers to ask these questions, and so began a two-year odyssey in which she interviewed such women as Verna Griffin, Dr. Dre's mother; Marianne Stipe, Michael Stipe of REM's mother; Janis Winehouse, Amy Winehouse's mother; Patsy Noah, Adam Levine's mother; Donna Haim, mother of the Haim sisters; Hester Diamond, Mike D of The Beastie Boys' mother.With exclusive family photographs and a foreword by Dave Grohl, From Cradle to Stage will appeal to mothers and rock fans everywhere.

You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery


Mamrie Hart - 2015
    With over a million subscribers to her cult-hit video series “You Deserve a Drink,” Hart has been entertaining viewers with a combination of tasty libations and raunchy puns since 2011. Hart also co-wrote/co-starred in Dirty Thirty and Camp Takota with Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart.Finally, Hart has compiled her best drinking stories—and worst hangovers—into one hilarious volume. From the spring break where she and her girlfriends avoided tan lines by staying at an all-male gay nudist resort, to the bachelorette party where she accidentally hired a sixty-year-old meth head to teach the group pole dancing (not to mention the time she lit herself on fire during a Flaming Lips concert), Hart accompanies each story with an original cocktail recipe, ensuring that You Deserve a Drink is as educational as it is entertaining.

Fairytale Interrupted: What JFK Jr. Taught Me About Life, Love, and Loss


RoseMarie Terenzio - 2011
    Kennedy, Jr. and his personal assistant, a blue-collar girl from the Bronx.The Kennedys have captured the American imagination for fifty years, and the public’s enduring fascination with Camelot continues to this day. Now, former personal assistant and dear friend of JFK, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, RoseMarie Terenzio has waited for more than a decade to share her unique, intimate, and extraordinary perspective of life behind the Kennedy curtain.Upon first meeting, RoseMarie was not immediately impressed with JFK, Jr. In an awkward yet comedic encounter, she walked into her office to find that John had begun dismissively boxing up her personal belongings and moving them to a smaller office, including her prized, autographed Howard Stern photo. As she gave him a piece of her mind, people stood around gaping that she would dare speak to JFK, Jr. that way. But John loved her moxie and eventually asked her to become his personal assistant and publicist—and years later she would become one of his closest confidantes, as well as Carolyn’s.   For five years RoseMarie witnessed John’s dating, politics, his marriage to Carolyn, and his untimely death. In her memoir, she blends her own story of a young woman who rose from an embattled childhood to follow her dream with amazing revelations about the man who has been the subject of unparalleled attention, sensationalism, adoration, and speculation. Offering readers a rare access to the epicenter of American royalty, this funny, moving, and truthful work is a breath of fresh air in the legacy of writing about the Kennedys. .

I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax


Scott Ian - 2014
    Through various lineup shifts, label snafus, rock 'n' roll mayhem, and unforeseen circumstances galore, Scott Ian has approached life and music with a smile, viewing the band with deadly seriousness while recognizing the ridiculousness of the entertainment industry. Always performing with abundant energy that revealed his passion for his craft, Ian has never let the gravity of being a rock star go to his shaven, goateed head.Ian tells his life story with a clear-eyed honesty that spares no one, least of all himself, starting with his upbringing as a nerdy Jewish boy in Queens and evolving through his first musical epiphany when he saw KISS live on television and realized what he wanted to do with his life. He chronicles his adolescence growing up in a dysfunctional home where the records blasting on his stereo failed to drown out the sound of his parents shouting at one another. He sets down the details of his fateful escape into the turbulent world of heavy metal. And of course he lays bare the complete history of Anthrax—from the band's formation to their present-day reinvigoration—as they wrote and recorded thrash classics like Spreading the Disease, Among the Living, and the top-twenty-charting State of Euphoria.Along the way, Ian recounts harrowing, hysterical tales from his long tour of duty in the world of hard rock. He witnesses the rise of Metallica, for which he had a front row seat. He parties with the late Dimebag Darrell while touring with Pantera and gets wild with Black Label Society frontman and longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde. He escapes detection while interviewing Ozzy for "The Rock Show" while dressed as Gene Simmons and avoids arrest after getting detained on suspicion of drugs while riding the tube in England with the late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton.In addition, I'm the Man addresses the trials and tribulations of Ian's life and loves. He admits his foibles and reveals the mistakes made along the way to becoming a fully-functioning adult. He celebrates finally finding peace and a true sense of family with his wife, singer/songwriter Pearl Aday, and examines how his world changed after the birth of their first son.I'm the Man is a blistering hard rock memoir, one that is astonishing in its candor and deftly told by the man who's kept the institution of Anthrax alive for more than thirty years.