The autumn 2002 publication of Ruby Wax's memoirs was greeted with shock - and delighted acclaim. In the tradition of the best memoirs, such as The Moon's a Balloon and Billy , Ruby Wax revealed, surprised and captured the public more than was ever predicted. How Do You Want Me? was critically acclaimed as brutally honest, vivid and gripping. Ruby Wax's unflinching revelation of a childhood poisoned, and a youth spoiled, culminates in a moving account of her breakdown and recovery. But How Do You Want Me? is also funny, rude and irreverent. It's unusually honest about fame and celebrity and happy to burst ego-balloons and golden myths. A brilliantly fast, furious and surprising read from the inimitable Ruby Wax.

"In the tradition of The Year of Magical Thinking comes a legendary editor's unflinching love song about his radiant wife, Margaret, and her battle with cancer. It was a warm April in Pleasant Valley when Margaret Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, 'Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me.' Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital. An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret's tumors quickly returned-leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern- day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together. Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love"--

"Joel Grey, the Academy Award-winning master of ceremonies in Cabaret, finally tells his remarkable life story. Born Joel David Katz to a wild and woolly Jewish-American family in 1930's Cleveland, Joel began his life in the theater at the age of nine, starring in local productions of touring Broadway hits. He was hooked, and the search for the spotlight took him from the Cleveland Playhouse to seedy, gangster-filled nightclubs in Chicago, and finally to the lights of Broadway and the dizzying glamour of Hollywood. Master of Ceremonies is a memoir of a life lived in and out of the limelight, but it is also the story of the man behind the makeup. Coming of age in a time when being yourself tended to be not only difficult but also dangerous, Joel was required to act both on and off stage. Deftly capturing the pain and secrets of an era we have only just started to leave behind, Joel's story is one of love, loss, hard-won honesty, redemption, and success"--

On the twentieth anniversary of Bernard Malamud's death, Janna Malamud Smith explores her renowned father's life and literary legacy. Malamud was among the most brilliant novelists of his era, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Fixer, as well as The Natural and The Assistant -- named one of the best "100 All-Time Novels" by Time. He counted among his friends Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Theodore Roethke, and Shirley Jackson. Yet Malamud was also very private. Only his family has had full access to his personal papers, including revealing letters and journals that offer unique insight into the man and his work. In her candid, evocative, and loving memoir, his daughter brings Malamud to vivid life as no one else can. Bernard Malamud, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, grew up in Brooklyn in a home overshadowed by poverty and mental illness. Unable to earn a living in New York, he took a teaching position in Oregon and moved his young family there. For Janna, it was an idyllic time and place. Her father was warm, funny, and passionate about his writing, which was gaining national attention. In 1961, an appointment to Bennington College brought the Malamuds back east and right into the middle of the heady, often hilarious free-for-all that was campus life in that radically changing time. But Bennington's anything-goes atmosphere and Malamud's growing fame came at a price to his family: his deep belief that one should live morally crashed into his premise that one should live fully. Janna Malamud Smith speaks as only a daughter can of a fraught relationship with an adored father. In glowing praise of My Father Is a Book, Susan Cheever -- who also wrote memorably of her own father, John Cheever -- says, "This loving portrait of a writer's family from the inside describes good times and difficulties with affection and candor and provides a fascinating backstory for Malamud's great fiction."

At the age of 27, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan joined the world s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for daily page" of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about 600 years and the basis for all codes of Jewish law. A runner, a reader and a romantic, Kurshan adapted to its pace, attuned her ear to its poetry, and discovered her passions in its pages. She brought the Talmud with her wherever she went, studying in airplanes, supermarket lines, and over a plate of pasta at home, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar. By the time she completed the Talmud after seven and a half years, Kurshan was remarried with three young children. With each pregnancy, her Talmud sat perched atop her growing belly. This memoir is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments both for those already familiar with the text and for those who have never encountered it. For people of the book both Jewish and non-Jewish If All the Seas Were Ink is a celebration of learning through literature how to fall in love once again.

Barbara Amiel's long-awaited memoir is shockingly honest, richly detailed and pulls few punches. An instinctive feminist and now a foe of feminism's political correctness, her own memoirs cover a formidable array of experiences - political, sexual, marital and material. Born in London during the Blitz, the only consistent strain in her early life was a fierce belief in her identity as a Jew even as the Jewish community disowned her and an unquestioned view that women were free to do anything in any arena they chose without any need to win society's approval. Which she very often did not. Her rise to the senior rungs of journalism began in Canada after the emigration of her family and continued in the United Kingdom on her return. With four marriages and an assorted number of beaus, some famous, some infamous (some rather young, some rather elderly), she moved through different worlds encountering problems made more intractable on occasion by her own faulty choices. It is a measure of her writing skill that she held down plum jobs for many decades in Canadian and British journalism as well as appearances in U.S. publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Vogue. As a writer of unabashedly libertarian views, she was derided as much for her wardrobe as for her ideas. Pilloried for years in books and television and called every conceivable name by the media, she is philosophical. 'I love fashion, sex and opera, ' she once told an interviewer, 'but life would have been easier if my passions had been for train-spotting and stamp collecting. 'Her life has an operatic quality with a wildly diverse cast including Elton John, Henry Kissinger, Anna Wintour, Oscar de la Renta, Princess Diana, Tom Stoppard, Brooke Astor, Ghislaine Maxwell, Ronald Harwood, David Frost and an array of the aristocrats of Manhattan and the stately homes of England. All handled, she writes 'with my fatal combination of naivete and self-absorption'. The epic battle with the U.S. justice system leading to the trial and imprisonment of her husband Conrad Black (eventually substantially vindicated) became a litmus paper for sorting out friends from those who were quick to judge and brutal in their dismissal.

Thomas Buergenthal is a judge at the International Court in The Hague who was rescued from the death camps of Auschwitz at the age of eleven by Soviet and Polish troops. These memoirs present the story of his extraordinary journey - from the horrors of Nazism to an investigation of modern day genocide.

"Quiara Alegria Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced in her grandmother's tight South Philly kitchen, "frizzy hair cut short, bangs teased into stiff clouds, sweat glistening in the summer fog, pamper-butt babies weaving between legs." Quiara was awed by her aunts and uncles and cousins, but haunted by the secrets of the family and the unspoken stories of the barrio -- even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering of powerful orishas with tragic wounds and she vowed to tell their stories--but first she'd have to get off the stairs and join the dance; she'd have to find her langauge. This is an inspired exploration of home, family, memory, and belonging, narrated by the obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty"--

In 2011, when she was in her late fifties, beloved author and journalist Joyce Maynard met the first true partner she had ever known. Then, just after their one-year wedding anniversary, her new husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During the nineteen months that followed, as they battled his illness together, she discovered for the first time what it really meant to be a couple - to be a true partner and to have one. This is their story. Charting the course through their whirlwind romance, a marriage cut short by tragedy, and Joyce's return to singleness on new terms, 'The Best of Us' is a heart-wrenching, ultimately life-affirming reflection on coming to understand true love

"Elissa and Rita have forever struggled to find their place in each other's worlds. Rita, an overreaching, makeup-addicted, narcissistic Manhattan singer couldn't be more different from Elissa, her gay, taciturn New England writer daughter. Stuck in an outrageous maelstrom of codependency, mother and daughter cannot seem to extricate themselves from the center of each other's lives. Motherland is their universal story: a kaleidoscopic journey built on the ferocity of mother-daughter love, moral obligation, and the possibility and promise of healing. Having survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of her mother, Elissa is finally settled in Connecticut with her wife of almost twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, orbiting around her mother, but keeping far enough away from her to preserve the independent, quiet life she has built for herself. All of this is suddenly at risk when Rita, whose days are spent traversing the streets of Manhattan from Bergdorf's to Bloomingdale's and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall that leaves her fully dependent on her only child. Forced to confront her mother's desperate need for beauty, her view of the world through a medley of men, her lost days in the spotlight, addiction, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of maintaining her youth, Elissa must navigate the waters of their shared history, obligation, the problems of caregiving and age, and the frenetic, co-dependent love that has defined their obsessive relationship. Motherland asks the universal mother-daughter question: How much love is too much love?"--

"Elissa and Rita have forever struggled to find their place in each other's worlds. Rita, an overreaching, makeup-addicted, narcissistic Manhattan singer couldn't be more different from Elissa, her gay, taciturn New England writer daughter. Stuck in an outrageous maelstrom of codependency, mother and daughter cannot seem to extricate themselves from the center of each other's lives. Motherland is their universal story: a kaleidoscopic journey built on the ferocity of mother-daughter love, moral obligation, and the possibility and promise of healing. Having survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of her mother, Elissa is finally settled in Connecticut with her wife of almost twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, orbiting around her mother, but keeping far enough away from her to preserve the independent, quiet life she has built for herself. All of this is suddenly at risk when Rita, whose days are spent traversing the streets of Manhattan from Bergdorf's to Bloomingdale's and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall that leaves her fully dependent on her only child. Forced to confront her mother's desperate need for beauty, her view of the world through a medley of men, her lost days in the spotlight, addiction, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of maintaining her youth, Elissa must navigate the waters of their shared history, obligation, the problems of caregiving and age, and the frenetic, co-dependent love that has defined their obsessive relationship. Motherland asks the universal mother-daughter question: How much love is too much love?"--

A tribute to writer Susan Sontag and her final battle with cancer, written by her son, relates the human experience of being close to someone who is gravely ill and evaluates the current state of cancer research and treatment.

"Jennifer Shahade, a two-time US Women's Chess Champion, spent her teens and twenties travelling the world playing chess. Tournaments have taken her from Istanbul to Moscow, and introduced her to players from Zambia to China. In this ultra male-dominated sport, Jennifer found shocking sexism, but she also found friendships, feminism and hope. Through her own story as well as interviews with international players, Jennifer invites us into the extremely competitive world of chess. She shows us the rivalry and the camaraderie; the ecstatic highs and the excruciating losses; the glamour and the hard work. She describes the coach who told her that her period will affect her standard of play, and gives us thrilling blow by blow accounts of the matches that made history. Intertwined with Jennifer's own story are those of the top female players from around the world. We meet the famous Polgar sisters, the three Hungarian girls who were all child prodigies; we meet the glamorous jet setters who travel the world partying, and the players who escaped war-torn countries to become champions against the odds. Chess Queens is a fascinating glimpse into the exhilarating world of chess and an essential book for all the aspiring chess queens of today"--Publisher's description.

IF YOU THOUGHT TINSELTOWN WAS TOUGH . . . Tori Spelling might have grown up with everything a girl could wish for, but these days she’s just another suburban working mom . . . whose toddler regularly recognizes her in the pages of US Weekly . Welcome to Mommywood , where the stars are two feet tall and your neighbors know who you are before you move in. Like most parents, Tori wants her children to have the one thing she didn’t have as a kid—a normal family. On their hit Oxygen reality show, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood , the starlet and her husband Dean McDermott regularly wrestle dirty diapers, host the neighborhood block party, and tackle temper tantrums on the red carpet. But when the cameras aren’t rolling, Tori’s still having awkward run-ins with a former 90210 costar at a laser tag birthday party, scooping rogue poo out of the kiddie pool on a resort vacation, and racing to win back her pre-baby body before the media starts calling her fat. For all her suburban fantasies, Tori Spelling is no June Cleaver. With the same down-to-earth wit that made her entertaining memoir sTORI telling a #1 New York Times bestseller, Tori tells the hilarious and humbling stories of life as a mom in the limelight, from learning to be the kind of parent her own mother never was to revealing what it’s like to raise a family while everyone is watching. Mommywood is an irresistible snapshot of celebrity parenthood that you won’t get from the paparazzi.

In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history.... from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies.--From publisher's description.

" In this sweeping memoir, Novak offers a full account of his involvement in the Valerie Plame CIA leak affair, while also telling the story of his remarkable life and career, a singular journey through a half century of stories, scandals, and personal encounters with Washington's most powerful and colorful people. Novak has been a Washington insider since the days when the place was a sleepy southern town and journalism was built on shoe leather and the ability to cultivate and keep sources (not to mention the ability to hold one's liquor). He has covered every president since Truman, known (personally and professionally) virtually all the big movers and shakers in DC, and broken a number of the biggest stories. Here, he puts it all into perspective. He also reveals the extraordinary transformations that have fundamentally remade Washington, politics, and journalism--and his own role in those transformations.--From publisher description.

In 1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as a heated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of a pretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces -- John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" -- and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and pictures by an extraordinary man.

A memoir from the beloved, colorful criminal defense attorney and three-term mayor of Las Vegas.

If you're going to read one book about Hollywood, this is the one. As co-founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Michael Ovitz earned a reputation for ruthless negotiation, brilliant strategy and fierce loyalty to his clients. He reinvented the role of the agent and helped shape the careers of hundreds of A-list stars and directors, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Sean Connery, Steven Seagal, Bill Murray, Robin Williams and David Letterman. But this personal history is much more than celebrity friendships and bare-knuckled deal-making. It's an underdog's story- How did a kid with no connections work his way into the William Morris mailroom, and become the most powerful person in Hollywood? How did a superagent also become a power in producing, advertising, mergers & acquisitions and modern art? And what were the personal consequences of all those deals? After decades of near-silence in the face of intense controversy, Michael Ovitz is finally telling his whole story in this blistering, unforgettable memoir.