A delightful collection from legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky—who currently appears on The Goldbergs , HBO’s Silicon Valley , and the serial podcast The Tobolowsky Files — “a series of true stories that wrestle with a big idea: how belief shapes our lives. Funny, smart, and moving, this is a wonderful account of our relationship with the unknowable” (Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin ). In My Adventures with God , Stephen Tobolowsky explores the idea that most people’s lives seem to fit into the template of the Old Testament. We all have powerful creation myths: tales of our childhood and family, our first battles won and lost. It is our Genesis. Then, like in the Book of Exodus , we go into slavery. Rather than building pyramids, we lose ourselves in fear and ambition—in first loves, first jobs, too many dreams mixed with too much beer. We eventually become free, only to wander in the wilderness. At some point we stop and proclaim to the universe who we are. This is our Leviticus moment. We reconcile what we thought we would be with what we have become. We often attempt a mid-course correction. Then, as in the Book of Numbers, we are shaped by mortality as we bear the loss of family and friends. Finally, we retell our stories to our children hoping to make sense of the journey, like Moses did in Deuteronomy. Tobolowsky’s stories tell of a boy growing up in the wilds of Texas, finding and losing love, losing and finding himself—all told through the prism of the Torah and Talmud, mixed with insights from science, and refined through a child’s sense of wonder. My Adventures with God is a “fast-paced, precise, wide-ranging, and impressive book draws on the I Ching, Talmud, Einstein, Grimms’ Fairy Tales , and reruns of SportsCenter to create counterpoints when discussing his life of faith. This is a well-told, must-read…for anyone interested in a comedic adventure with the divine” ( Publishers Weekly ).

The 1961 UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill stirred worldwide interest, because of the book The Interrupted Journey, the subsequent media coverage, and a 1975 TV movie. The case is mentioned in almost all UFO abduction books. It also became a target for debunkers, who still attack it today. But the complete story of what really happened that...

"The hilarious, beloved cohost of TLC's What Not to Wear examines the universal obstacles all women--including herself--put in their way With her unique talent for seeing past disastrous wardrobes to the core emotional issues that caused these sartorial crises, style savant Stacy London has transformed not only the looks but also the lives of hundreds of guests who have appeared on What Not to Wear. Now for the first time in print, London turns that expert X-ray insight on herself. Like the women she's transformed, London has plenty of emotional baggage. At eleven, she suffered from severe psoriasis that left her with permanent physical and mental scars. During college, she became anorexic on a misguided quest for perfection. By the time she joined the staff at Vogue, London's weight had doubled from binge eating. Although self-esteem and self-consciousness nearly sabotaged a promising career, London learned the hard way that we wear our insecurities every day. It wasn't until she found the self-confidence to develop a strong personal style that she finally became comfortable in her skin. In The Truth About Style, London shares her own often painful history and her philosophy of the healing power of personal style--illustrating it with a series of detailed "start-overs" with eight real women, demonstrating how personal style helps them overcome the emotional obstacles we all face. For anyone who has ever despaired of finding the right clothes, or even taking an objective assessment in a full-length mirror, The Truth About Style will be an inspiring, liberating, and often very funny guide to finding the expression of your truest self. "--

Driving down the Long Island Expressway in November of 1992, Sol Wachtler was New York's Chief Judge and heir apparent to the New York Governorship. Suddenly, three van loads of FBI agents swerved in front of him--bringing his car and his legal career to a halt. Wachtler's subsequent arrest, conviction and incarceration for harassing his longtime lover precipitated a media feeding frenzy, revealing to the world his struggles with romantic obsession, manic-depression and drug abuse. In this, his prison diary, Wachtler reveals the stark reality behind his vertiginous fall from the heights of the legal establishment to the underbelly of the criminal justice system. Sentenced to a medium security prison in Butner, North Carolina, Wachtler is stabbed by an unseen assailant, berated by prison guards, and repeatedly placed in solitary confinement with no explanation. Moreover, as a prisoner he confronts first hand the inequities of a system that his judicial rulings helped to construct and befriends the type of people he once sentenced to prison. With unflinching honesty, Wachtler draws upon his unique experience of living life on both sides of the bench to paint a chilling portrait of prison life interwoven with a no-holds-barred analysis of the shortcomings of the American legal justice system.

For Rembrandt as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance; the strutting and mincing; the wardrobe and the face paint; the full repertoire of gesture and grimace; the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes; the belly laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle, and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon; to shake a fist or uncover a breast; how to sin and how to atone; how to commit murder and how to commit suicide. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between. More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by; the Leiden miller's son who briefly found fame in Amsterdam, whose genius was fitfully recognized by his contemporaries, who fell into bankruptcy and died in poverty. So there is probably no other painter whose life has engendered more legends, nor to whom more unlikely pictures have been attributed (a process now undergoing rigorous reversal). "Rembrandt's Eyes," about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Though a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt'spaintings threaded into his narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh. But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved -- its sounds, smells and tastes as well as its politics; the influences on him of the wars of the Protestant United Provinces against Spain, of the extreme Calvinism of his native Leiden, of the demands of patrons and the ambitions of contemporaries; the importance of his beloved Saskia and, after her death (Rembrandt was later forced to sell her grave, so complete was his ruin), of his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels; and, above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens: "the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality. "Rembrandt's Eyes" shows us "why" Rembrandt is such a thrilling painter, so revolutionary in his art, so penetrating of the hearts of those who have looked for three hundred years at his pictures. Above all, Schama's understanding of Rembrandt's mind and the dynamic of his life allows him to re-create Rembrandt's life on the page. Through a combination of scholarship and literary skill, Schama allows us to actually see that life through Rembrandt's own eyes. In overcoming the paucity of conventional historical evidence, it is the most intelligently true biography of Rembrandt that has ever beenwritten, and the most dazzling achievement to date of the art historian whose work has been hailed as "marvelously rich and eloquent" ... "rare, imaginative" ... "provocative" ... "astoundingly learned with verve, humor, and an unflagging sense of delight" ... that of "a master storyteller ... and a master of history."* Quotes from the "New York Times Book Review, Time," the "New York Times, The Independent on Sunday," and "Nature," respectively. "From the Hardcover edition."

How did he walk through walls, escape drowning, and shatter iron chains that were tightly wrapped around him? The rare photos in this book might help you figure it out. So might the exclusive update about the rumor that Houdini was poisoned. But just remember, a true magician never reveals his tricks. . . .

Always Apprentices collects five years of intimate, wide-ranging conversations with many of today's most prominent writers, taken from the pages of the Believer . The participants don't limit themselves to issues of writing and craft, but instead offer unfettered exchanges on a wide range of topics--from what it means to be a consumer to whether or not to kill a deer, from how we get to know each other to walking while inebriated. The interviews feature the serious-yet-casual Believer approach to the often staid interview format. For example, Sheila Heti asks Mary Gaitskill, "If you go into a room or go to a party, is there a basic disposition you have toward humans going through the world?" Elsewhere, Colum McCann begins his conversation with Aleksandar Hemon by asking, "What are we doing here? Why aren't we in a pub?" Other interviews include Don DeLillo talking with Bret Easton Ellis; Joan Didion talking with Vendela Vida; and Barry Hannah talking with Wells Tower.

The #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller from the host of NPR's Weekend Edition -- "absolutely spectacular-wise and intimate, often funny, always touching" (Scott Turow) -- now in paperback. In a beautifully written narrative that runs from childhood to adulthood through times of war and peace, Scott Simon movingly tracing his life as a fan -- of sports, theater, politics, and the people and things he holds dear. Sports Illustrated columnist Ron Fimrite says of Home and Away, "Rarely do you find in books of this genre a clearer look into mysteries and confusions of childhood . . . moving and often amusing portraits . . . insights into the complex and often corrupt world of Chicago politics, the city being this book's true protagonist. There are compelling scenes from Simon's years as a war correspondent, roving reporter, and political operative . . . There is also an emotional account of Michael Jordan's last championship season with the Bulls that is a book within a book . . . "The writing is uniformly superb. This is, in fact, a memoir of such breadth and reach it compares favorably with another book that is allegedly about the nature of sports allegiance, Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. And that, believe me, is saying something."

This is the story of a 30 year, one-man war. The author confesses his bias - in favor of labor, in friendship with Lewis, but he manages to present Lewis convincingly, with his complicated personality, his inconsistencies, his dynamic power, his ruthless use of any means to his end. He traces the steps by which he reached the peak from the pits of Illinois mines. He tells how he created C.I.O. in protest over the limitations of A.F. of L.; of how he secured his own U.M.W. even at the cost of dictatorship. He goes behind the scenes for his breaks with Green, with Murray, with Roosevelt. But the end-all is gains for his miners - in pay, in safety, in security. Brilliant analysis, an unflaggingly interesting chapter in American labor, it provides an interesting insight into a fascinating part of American history. It's a reminder of what unions did achieve and it is a contrast to the comparative powerless of unions these days.

"The traits that make Sam Zell one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs also make him one of the most surprising, enigmatic, and entertaining mavericks in American business. Self-made billionaire Sam Zell consistently sees what others don't. From finding a market for overpriced Playboy magazines among his junior high classmates, to buying real estate on the cheap after a market crash, to investing in often unglamorous industries with long-term value, Zell acts boldly on supply and demand trends to grab the first-mover advantage. And he can find opportunity virtually anywhere--from an arcane piece of legislation to a desert meeting in Abu Dhabi. "If everyone is going left, look right," Zell often says. To him, conventional wisdom is nothing but a reference point. Year after year, deal after deal, he shuts out the noise of the crowd, gathers as much information as possible, then trusts his own instincts. He credits much of his independent thinking to his parents, who were Jewish refugees from World War II. Talk to any two people and you might get wild swings in their descriptions of Zell. A media firestorm ensued when the Tribune Company went into bankruptcy a year after he agreed to steward the enterprise. At the same time, his razor-sharp instincts are legendary on Wall Street, and he has sponsored over a dozen IPOs. He's known as the Grave Dancer for his strategy of targeting troubled assets, yet he's created thousands of jobs. Within his own organization, he has an inordinate number of employees at every level who are fiercely loyal and have worked for him for decades. Zell's got a big personality; he is often contrarian, blunt, and irreverent, and always curious and hardworking. This is the guy who started wearing jeans to work in the 1960s, when offices were a sea of gray suits. He's the guy who told The Wall Street Journal in 1985, "If it ain't fun, we don't do it." He rides motorcycles with his friends, the Zell's Angels, around the world and he keeps ducks on the deck outside his office. As he writes: "I simply don't buy into many of the made-up rules of social convention. The bottom line is: If you're really good at what you do, you have the freedom to be who you really are." Am I Being Too Subtle?--a reference to Zell's favorite way to underscore a point--takes readers on a ride across his business terrain, sharing with honesty and humor stories of the times he got it right, when he didn't, and most important, what he learned in the process. This is an indispensable guide for the next generation of disrupters, entrepreneurs, and investors"--

From the Hardcover "We stormed every classroom, inscribed our slogans on the blackboard . . . Never had mayhem brought more peace. All our lives we had been taught the virtues of behaving, and now we were discovering the importance of misbehaving. Too much fear had tainted our days. Too many afternoons had passed in silence, listening to a fanatic's diatribes. We were rebelling because we were not evil, we had not sinned, and we knew nothing of the apocalypse. . . . This was 1979, the year that showed us we could make our own destinies. We were rebelling because rebelling was all we could do to quell the rage in our teenage veins. Together as girls we found the courage we had been told was not in us." In Journey from the Land of No Roya Hakakian recalls her childhood and adolescence in prerevolutionary Iran with candor and verve. The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about one deeply intelligent and perceptive girl's attempt to i¬?nd an authentic voice of her own at a time of cultural closing and repression. Remarkably, she manages to re-create a time and place dominated by religious fanaticism, violence, and fear with an open heart and often with great humor. Hakakian was twelve years old in 1979 when the revolution swept through Tehran. The daughter of an esteemed poet, she grew up in a household that hummed with intellectual life. Family gatherings were punctuated by witty, satirical exchanges and spontaneous recitations of poetry. But the Hakakians were also part of the very small Jewish population in Iran who witnessed the iron fist of the Islamic fundamentalists increasingly tightening its grip. It is with the innocent confusion of youth that Royadescribes her discovery of a swastika--"a plus sign gone awry, a dark reptile with four hungry claws"--painted on the wall near her home. As a schoolgirl she watched as friends accused of reading blasphemous books were escorted from class by Islamic Society guards, never to return. Only much later did Roya learn that she was spared a similar fate because her teacher admired her writing. Hakakian relates in the most poignant, and at times painful, ways what life was like for women after the country fell into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who had declared an insidious war against them, but we see it all through the eyes of a strong, youthful optimist who somehow came up in the world believing that she was different, knowing she was special. At her loneliest, Roya discovers the consolations of writing while sitting on the rooftop of her house late at night. There, "pen in hand, I led my own chorus of words, with a melody of my own making." And she discovers the craft that would ultimately enable her to find her own voice and become her own person. A wonderfully evocative story, Journey from the Land of No reveals an Iran most readers have not encountered and marks the debut of a stunning new talent.

Uncompromisingly frank, "both brutal and beautifully written" (The Boston Globe), The Cap is an unconventional Holocaust memoir that defies all moral judgment and ventures into a soul blackened by the unforgiving cruelty of its surroundings. Roman Frister's memoir of his life before, during, and after his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps sparked enormous controversy and became an international best-seller. With bone-chilling candor, Frister illustrates how the impulse to live unhinges our comfortable notions of morality, blurring the boundary between victim and oppressor and leaving absolutely no room for martyrdom. By the time Roman Frister was sixteen, he had watched his mother murdered by an SS officer and he had waited for his father to expire, eager to retrieve a hidden half loaf of bread from beneath the dying man's cot. When confronted with certain death, he placed another inmate in harm's way to save himself. Frister's resilience and instinct for self-preservation -- developed in the camps -- become the source of his life's successes and failures. Chilling and unsentimental, The Cap is a rare and unadorned self-portrait of a man willing to show all of his scars. Reflected in stark relief are the indelible wounds of all twentieth-century European Jews. An exceptional and groundbreaking testimony, Roman Frister's "gut-wrenching memoir is a must-read." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."--Lord Acton, 1887 Lord Acton (1834-1902), numbered among the most esteemed Victorian historical thinkers, was much respected for his vast learning, his ideas on politics and religion, and his lifelong preoccupation with human freedom. Yet Acton was in many ways an outsider. He stood apart from his contemporaries, doubting the notion of unlimited progress and the blessings of nationalism and democracy. He differed from fellow members of the English upper class, holding to his Catholic faith. And he angered other Catholic believers by fiercely opposing the doctrine of papal infallibility. In this remarkable biography, Roland Hill is the first to make full use of the vast collection of books, documents, and private papers in the Acton archives to tell the story of the enigmatic Lord Acton. The book describes Acton's extended family of European aristocrats, his cosmopolitan upbringing, and his disrupted education. Drawing a lively picture of politics and religion at the time, Hill discusses Acton's brief career as a Liberal member of Parliament, his work as editor and owner of learned Catholic journals, his battles for freedom for and in the Catholic Church, his friendship with William E. Gladstone, and his seven years as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. Though unable to complete The Cambridge Modern History series he envisaged, Acton transformed historical study and left a legacy of ideas that continues to influence historians today.

At the age of 44—at the height of his success—Richard Lewis found himself on a gurney in an emergency room, suffering from a lethal mix of alcohol and drugs. The same dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and had generated so much wonderful material for comedy had turned on him. In this blistering memoir, Lewis tells how he got to that point, how he got on the road to recovery, and how he copes with being Richard Lewis, sober, on a daily basis, in this very funny, profoundly honest, inspiring but unsentimental book. He shares candid and revealing anecdotes about love, sex, fame, family, drinking therapy, eating disorders, and the serious business of comedy.

Holzman has seen all the great ones in action, and here he discusses the unique contributions of such superstars as Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Bob Cousy, Julius Erving, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and others. These are the names that changed the way the game is played today. The heart of the book is Holzman's appraisal of the great matchups, those individual rivalries that have often decided championship series. The model here is Russell, who brought back the concept of defense, against Chamberlain, the greatest offensive force the game has known and virtual owner of the record book. Other matchups such as Bradley vs. Havlicek are chosen to illustrate Holzman's concept of team play. In each case he breaks down the matchup into its physical and psychological aspects, with plenty of anecdotal spinoffs that reflect the intensity of the rivalry. Reading this book is like sitting beside Red Holzman on the bench. His uncensored observations give a whole new perspective on how the game is played by the pros and what to watch for.

An intimate memoir by the controversial, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Oliver Stone Before moving to Los Angeles and the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while working odd jobs in Manhattan. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the highs and lows: meetings with Al Pacino over Stone's early scripts; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction; the failure of his first feature; his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; and much more. Chasing the Light is a true insider's guide to Hollywood's razor-edged years of upheaval in the 1970s and '80s with untold stories of decade-defining films from the man behind the camera.

The final previously unpublished work from two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Book Award, Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer is one of America's most consequential public intellectuals of the postwar period. He cofounded the Village Voice , and he was the author of twelve novels, among them The Naked and the Dead and Harlot’s Ghost , as well as numerous works of nonfiction. He is truly one of the giants of American literature. Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal is the only work by Norman Mailer that has not been published previously. Written between 1954-55, from December to March, it contains many ideas he would develop in his later work. The journal includes daily musings, as well as thoughts profound. It is a must-read for Norman Mailer scholars, as well as literature professors. Lipton’s, A Marijuana Journal also includes never before published letters between Robert Lindner (author of Rebel Without a Cause , Prescription for a Reberllion , and The 50 Minute Hour) and Norman Mailer. They introduce the reader to Mailer’s state of mind during the time he was writing the journal and to the unique relationship he had with Dr. Lindner.