A magician himself, the author offers a history of magicians and other performers, including animals trained to do arithmetic and limbless people able to play musical instruments.

Rick Elice, author of Jersey Boys, Addams Family, and Peter and the Starcatcher for Broadway, has penned a heartbreaking memoir of his 34 years with the inimitable Roger Rees. Some may recognize Roger as Nicholas Nickleby and others will know him as Kirstie Alley's boyfriend on Cheers. When he died of brain cancer in 2015, Broadway dimmed all the lights in his honor -- a true stage legend. Pulled straight from Rick's enormous and broken heart, Finding Roger will touch everyone who reads it. It's a story of profound loss -- but also a love story for the ages.

Revival is the dramatic inside story of the defining period of the Obama White House. It is an epic tale that follows the president and his inner circle from the crisis of defeat to historic success. Over the span of an extraordinary two months in the life of a young presidency, Obama and his senior aides engaged in a desperate struggle for survival that stands as the measure of who they are and how they govern. Bestselling Obama biographer Richard Wolffe draws on unrivaled access to the West Wing to write a natural sequel to his critically acclaimed book about the president and his campaign. He traces an arc from near death to resurrection that is a repeated pattern for Obama, first as a candidate and now as president. Starting at the first anniversary of the inauguration, Wolffe paints a portrait of a White House at work under exceptional strain across a sweeping set of challenges: from health care reform to a struggling economy, from two wars to terrorism. Revival is a road map to understanding the dynamics, characters, and disputes that shape the Obama White House. It reveals for the first time the fault lines at the heart of the West Wing between two groups competing for control of the president's agenda. On one side are the Revivalists, who want to return to the high-minded spirit of the presidential campaign. On the other side are the Survivalists, who believe that government demands a low-minded set of compromises and combat. At the center of this compelling story is a man who remains opaque to supporters, staff, and critics alike. What motivates him to risk his presidency on health care? What frustrations does he feel at this incredible time of testing? Written by the author who knows Obama best, Revival is a frank and intimate account of a president struggling to adapt, enduring failure, and outfoxing his foes. It is a must-read volume, full of exclusive insights into the untold and unfinished story of a new force in world politics.

"Here is the story of how two people most influenced Feynman's early years-his father, who taught him to think, and his first wife Arlene who taught him to love, even as she lay dying in an Albuquerque hospital while Feynman worked nearby, on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. And here are lighter moments, some told through letters, as Feynman reports from Geneva, Trinidad, Greece, and Japan on the effects this curious character has had on the locals. The second half of the book...is Feynman's behind-the-scenes account of the investigation that followed the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in January 1986"--Jacket.

A candid portrait of the famed photographer, co-written by his longtime business partner and confidante, traces Avedon's life from his humble New York childhood to his death during a shoot in 2004.

Dean Reed was an American and the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union. He was so famous his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. Reggie Nadelson first saw him in 1986 on a TV chat show. Few people in the West had ever heard of him. Six weeks later Reed was found dead in a lake in East Berlin.

From the international bestselling author of Black, White, and Jewish comes a "wonderfully insightful" ( Associated Press ) book that's destined to become a motherhood classic. Now in trade. Like many women her age, thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. As an adult she longed for a baby but feared losing her independence. In this very smart memoir, Walker explores some of the larger sociological trends of her generation while delivering her own story about the emotional and intellectual transformation that led her to motherhood.

Primo Levi's account of life as a concentration camp prisoner falls into two parts. IF THIS IS A MAN describes his deportation to Poland and the twenty months he spend working in Auschwitz. THE TRUCE covers his long journey to Italy at the end of the war through Russia and Central Europe. Levi never raises his voice, complains or attributes blame. By telling his story quietly, objectively and in plain language he renders both the horror and the hope of the situation with absolute clarity. Probing the themes which preoccupy all his writing - work love, power, the nature of things, what it is to be human - he leaves the reader drained, elated, apprehensive.

An in-depth look at the personal and artistic life of renowned artist Peter Max...in his own words. In this intimate visual memoir, artist Peter Max details his life journey as an artist, providing a stirring account of himself as a young boy and as a successful artist eager to return to the days of wonderment and inspiration found only in dreams and childhood. Max charts his ascension in the art world and pauses to reflect on the nature of creativity, the universe at large, his many loves, and his ability to see beauty in the everyday. Vibrantly illustrated with Max's signature work, including some never-before-seen pieces.

The author recalls his tenure at Paramount Pictures during a tumultuous time when the studio produced such films as "The Godfather," "Chinatown," and "True Grit" but was also plagued by drugs, the mafia, and runaway budgets

Paula Fredriksen draws on the narratives of all four evangelists as well as both John and the Synoptics, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish authorities of Jesus' time - Philo, Paul, and Josephus - who wrote in Greek, and early rabbinic writings. She shows us a historical Jesus living in the tumultuous world of late-Second Temple Judaism; an observant Jew of his time, a prophetic teacher who traveled through the villages of Galilee and frequently in and around Jerusalem.. 'At the center of her book she brings us to the questions raised by the least disputed fact about Jesus' life; his death.. 'Why was crucifixion chosen as the means of execution? If Jesus was executed as a political insurrectionist, why were none of his followers executed or even arrested?. 'The author's quest in search of the answers takes us through the religious world - Jewish and pagan - of Mediterranean antiquity, through the tangle of Judean and Galilean politics, and through the surprisingly intimate social interactions of Jewish and gentile communities in the ancient city. And it is through the Gospel of John - a text out of favor in most academic reconstructions - that she finds the answer to the interpretive dilemma posed by Jesus' execution and his disciples' survival.

"After years of battling uncontrollable addiction, I have achieved the supposedly impossible: complete freedom from craving." Dr. Olivier Ameisen was a brilliant cardiologist on the staff at one of America’s top teaching hospitals and running his own successful practice when he developed a profound addiction to alcohol. He broke bones with no memory of falling; he nearly lost his kidneys; he almost died from massive seizures during acute withdrawal. He gave up his flourishing practice and, fearing for his life, immersed himself in Alcoholics Anonymous, rehab, therapy, and a variety of medications. Nothing worked. So he did the only thing he could: he took his treatment into his own hands. Searching for a cure for his deadly disease, he happened upon baclofen, a muscle relaxant that had been used safely for years as a treatment for various types of muscle spasticity, but had more recently shown promising results in studies with laboratory animals addicted to a wide variety of substances. Dr. Ameisen prescribed himself the drug and experimented with increasingly higher dosages until he finally reached a level high enough to leave him free of any craving for alcohol. That was more than five years ago. Alcoholism claims three hundred lives per day in the United States alone; one in four U.S. deaths is attributable to alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs. Baclofen, as prescribed under a doctor’s care, could possibly free many addicts from tragic and debilitating illness. But as long as the medical and research establishments continue to ignore a cure for one of the most deadly diseases in the world, we won’t be able to understand baclofen’s full addiction-treatment potential. The End of My Addiction is both a memoir of Dr. Ameisen’s own struggle and a groundbreaking call to action—an urgent plea for research that can rescue millions from the scourge of addiction and spare their loved ones the collateral damage of the disease.

Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer -- all are ex-friends of Norman Podhoretz, the renowned editor and critic and leading member of the group of New York intellectuals who came to be known as "the Family." As only a family member could, Podhoretz tells the story of these friendships, once central to his life, and shows how the political and cultural struggles of the past fifty years made them impossible to sustain. With wit, piercing insight, and startling honesty, we are introduced as never before to a type of person for whom ideas were often matters of life and death, and whose passing from the scene has left so large a gap in American culture. Podhoretz was the trailblazer of the now-famous journey of a number of his fellow intellectuals from radicalism to conservatism -- a journey through which they came to exercise both cultural and political influence far beyond their number. With this fascinating account of his once happy and finally troubled relations with these cultural icons, Podhoretz helps us understand why that journey was undertaken and just how consequential it became. In the process we get a brilliantly illuminating picture of the writers and intellectuals who have done so much to shape our world. Combining a personal memoir with literary, social, and political history, this unique gallery of stern and affectionate portraits is as entertaining as a novel and at the same time more instructive about postwar American culture than a formal scholarly study. Interwoven with these tales of some of the most quixotic and scintillating of contemporary American thinkers are themes that are introduced, developed, and redeveloped in a variety of contexts, with each appearance enriching the others, like a fugue in music. It is all here: the perversity of brilliance; the misuse of the mind; the benightedness of people usually considered especially enlightened; their human foibles and olympian detachment; the rigors to be endured and the prizes to be won and the prices to be paid for the reflective life. Most people live their lives in a very different way, and at one point, in a defiantly provocative defense of the indifference shown to the things by which intellectuals are obsessed, Norman Podhoretz says that Socrates' assertion that the unexamined life was not worth living was one of the biggest lies ever propagated by a philosopher. And yet, one comes away from Ex-Friends feeling wistful for a day when ideas really mattered and when there were people around who cared more deeply about them than about anything else. Reading of a time when the finest minds of a generation regularly gathered in New York living rooms to debate one another with an articulateness, a passion, and a level of erudition almost extinct, we come to realize how enviable it can be to live a life as poignantly and purposefully examined as Norman Podhoretz's is in Ex-Friends.

"Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Pacing out his every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was - along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce - a maker of our modern world."--Book jacket.

She was riveting to look at, a sprite of the zeitgeist, the living distillation of the over-amped vision of New York in the mid-sixties. Like many exotic creatures that Andy Warhol shed his light on, she initially bloomed--became the symbol for all that was hip and stylish--and just as quickly began to disintegrate. Told with unsparing candor and with candid images that capture her at the peak of her Factory stardom, Edie Factory Girl is the short but enduring cultural story of Edie Sedgwick--releasing in time for the film of the same name starring Slenna Miller, and including rare photos of Miller as Edie. David Dalton was just a teen when he became one of Warhol's first assistants, and was present for the arrival of Edie: witnessing her rise, her Factory superstardom, and subsequent unraveling. Like an anthropologist thrown together with a tribe of "wild" people, Nat Finkelstein entered the Factory just as Warhol was emerging as the supreme catalyst of the sixties. Among the freaky menagerie, Nat found Andy's misbegotten princess the most fascinating and enigmatic character of her time, and with a compassionate lens recorded her fragile, fleeting beauty. Edie Factory Girl is a privileged glimpse into Warhol's inner sanctum, via revealing interviews with intimates, friends, and scenesters, in which Edie orbits around the likes of Bob Dylan, Salvador Dali, Betsey Johnson, Lou Reed, Judy Garland, and many more, before departing as quickly as she came.

Though Nancy Dell'Olio is no stranger to the front pages, her real story has never been told. Now, for the first time she talks about herself, her life and the passions which have inspired her. It's a story which millions think they know already, from the acres of purely speculative newsprint which this fascinating woman has generated. Prepare to be surprised! The real story is far more gripping than the fictional one. Born and brought up in New York City, Nancy is a true woman of the world. She has the temperament and style of an Italian, yet she lives in London and has adopted an English lifestyle. She is also a proud European, a Catholic, a Jew and a true internationalist. She is also a successful lawyer with a keen interest in politics and world affairs - a woman for all seasons. Nancy has always emerged serene from scandal that would break most people. She values her sense of humour as her saving grace. Remember that scarlet cat suit entrance to Downing Street and all those classic red carpet moments? Nancy is just as at home in combat jacket and fatigues on the streets of Ramallah as lunching at Claridges. Fashion is fun and life is too serious to be taken seriously. Nancy's book tells the whole story of her life so far. From her childhood in New York and Puglia in Italy and the accident which nearly killed her, to the successful career in in commercial law and the passions which drive her on, despite all too public crises which would be the end of most of us. This is an inspirational and entertaining glimpse into the life of a fascinating and enigmatic woman.

Bibliography: p. 83.

In Two Lucky People , Rose and Milton Friedman provide a memorable and lively account of their lives, the people they knew, and the work they shared. Their involvement with world leaders and many of this century's most important public policy issues moves their memoir beyond the merely personal and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century ideas. "The Friedmans come across as the last Enlightenment thinkers in a post-modern world. . . . This is a book that restores your faith in reasoned discourse. . . . There really are people who believe in scholarly exchange as a way to discover truth."—David Brooks, New York Times Book Review "The Friedmans are a feisty couple, who clearly delight in their lives and each other. And shining through their reticence, and their conservatism, is a decency that even liberals will recognize."—Milton and Judith Viorst, Washington Post Book World "This engaging book recounts the life and contributions of one of America's most influential writers and economists in the second half of the twentieth century. And her husband's no slouch either. . . . An indispensable guide through the evolution of economic thought."—Stephen Moore, National Review "A thought-provoking book and one rich in history, the personal history of the Friedmans . . . and the cultural and political history of our country."—Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun-Times Books "[ Two Lucky People ] is almost like a letter from a couple of old friends—a couple of old friends who had a long, compelling intellectual journey, came to know some of the great world leaders of this century, and had 60 years of happy, supportive marriage."—N. Gregory Mankiw, Fortune "A rich autobiographical and historical panorama."—William P. Kucewicz, Wall Street Journal

In Redemption Song, Mike Marqusee takes the reader on an eye-opening excursion through the politics and culture of the 1960s, using the magisterial but often contradictory career of "the Greatest" as his guiding thread. His portrait of the boxer provides a springboard for an investigation of the themes of black representation, popular culture, the Black Atlantic, and the wool and warp of exuberant individualism and mass protest that came to typify the 1960s. Marqusee's story is populated by figures such as Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis and Kwame Nkrumah. It includes fresh examinations of Ali's friend, the singer Sam Cooke, who was a secret supporter of the Nation, and of Bob Dylan, whose retreat from protest to introspection provides an illuminating counterpoint to Ali's own journey.