On paper Steve Katz's career rivals anyone's except the 1960s' and '70's biggest stars: the Monterey Pop Festival with the legendary Blues Project, Woodstock with Blood, Sweat & Tears, and even producing rock's most celebrated speed addict, Lou Reed. There were world tours, and his résumé screams "Hall of Fame" -- it won't be long before BS&T are on that ballot. He has three Grammies (ten nominations), three Downbeat Reader's Poll Awards, three gold records, one platinum record, and one quadruple platinum platter (the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album), not to mention three gold singles with BS&T. All together, he's sold close to 29 million records. He had affairs with famous female folk singers, made love to Jim Morrison's girlfriend Pam when Jim was drunk and abusive, partied with Elizabeth Taylor and Groucho Marx, dined with Rudolf Nureyev, conversed with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tennessee Williams, hung out with Andy Warhol, jammed with everyone from Mose Allison to Jimi Hendrix, and was told to get a haircut by both Mickey Spillane and Danny Thomas. But his memoir is more Portnoy's Complaint than the lurid party-with-your-pants-down memoir that has become the norm for rock 'n' roll books. It's an honest and personal account of a life at the edge of the spotlight--a privileged vantage point that earned him a bit more objectivity and earnest outrage than a lot of his colleagues, who were too far into the scene to lay any honest witness to it. Set during the Greenwich Village folk/rock scene, the Sixties' most celebrated venues and concerts, and behind closed doors on international tours and grueling studio sessions, this is the unlikely story of a rock star as nerd, nerd as rock star, a nice Jewish boy who got to sit at the cool kid's table and score the hot chicks.

The long-awaited and vastly entertaining autobiography of Scott Ian, guitarist and co-founder of the legendary thrash metal band Anthrax

Looks at such major aspects of the author's life as family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair, and argues that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to him.

'Never has the world needed strong and wise American leadership more than it does now. Abramsky's eminently readable description of Obama's personal gifts makes it clear that he is remarkably suited to be the president the moment requires.' -Former New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo From the moment he burst onto the national political scene, Barack Obama has fascinated people more than any politician in decades. Many biographers have already retold his story, but no previous book truly explains how his mind works, what passions drive him, or what makes him such an effective leader. This concise profile explores the ideas, inspirations, and experiences that have shaped the president. It quotes a wide network of sources, including many who broke long-standing vows of silence to offer their candid and surprising observations. Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky interviewed close to one hundred of Obama's current and former friends, colleagues, classmates, teachers, staff, mentors, basketball buddies, fellow Chicago activists, media consultants, editors, and even his next-door neighbors from Hyde Park. These people each know a part of Obama's life and career, which the author blends the pieces into a uniquely detailed analysis. Abramsky explains the origins of Obama's extraordinary poise, focus, and self-confidence; his powerful storytelling and speaking skills; and his empathetic listening style. He shows why Obama's experiences as a community organizer are widely misunderstood and more influential than many people realize. And he explores how Obama found a unique way to bridge America's racial divides. No previous book has delved so deeply into the events and people that helped make Barack Obama the man he is today.

A revealing look at the power of speaking out, Writing in an Age of Silence describes Paretski’s coming of age in a time of great possibility, during the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the women’s movement. Bestselling crime-writer Sarah Paretsky has won critical acclaim for her V.I. Warshawski novels, centered around one of the first and most popular female investigators in contemporary fiction. In this fascinating and personal account, Paretsky describes a life shaped by the desire to act. From the feminist movement—which triggered her aspirations to write and shaped the character of her female detective—to the Patriot Act and the liberties we have lost, Paretsky describes the struggle of one individual to find a voice. A moving call to action, Writing in an Age of Silence chronicles the social changes that have shaped contemporary America, and mirrors a desire for freedom, both personal and political, that many Americans will relate to today.

"The autobiography of a noted scientist who made significant contributions to the field of optics and lasers, and participated in the government's top-secret psychic spy program. Includes the author's encounters with well-known authors, actors, scientists, and other recognizable figures"--Provided by publisher.

Schoeman, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, and best-selling author of Salvation Is From The Jews, once again shows the clear links between Judaism and Catholicism in these inspiring stories of sixteen Jews who became fulfilled Jews, as Schoeman says, through their spritual journeys to the Catholic Church. Using the rich image in Psalm 81 for the book's title, the author shows how God gave the Jews at Meribah refreshing water from the rock struck by Moses, but He promised ever so much more when they turn their whole hearts to Him - he will give them honey, sweetness itself, from the rock . The sweetness of Christ.

In charting the course of his career, Ron Moody casts an ever-analytical eye over his many shows, giving piercing insights into the hard work and attention to detail involved in creating characters, the role of anarchy and clowning in his performances, and the nature of comedy itself.

An important collection of writings and memoirs on the Russian Futurist movement from one of America's pre-eminent linguists and literary theorists. Born in Moscow in 1896, Roman Jakobson brought an extraordinary rare poet's sensibility to his exploration of language. This volume, which fills a major gap in the literature of the Russian avant-garde, is a lively collection of letters, memoirs, poetry, prose, and essays. It includes recollections of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikow and others.

An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and a mystery novelist, Roger L. Simon is the only American writer to pull off the amazing trick of being profiled positively in both Mother Jones and National Review in one lifetime. The stunning story of his political odyssey is told in this memoir, where Simon recounts his migration from financier of the Black Panther Breakfast Program to pioneer blogosphere mogul beloved by the right as a 9/11 Democrat. But Simon is beholden to neither right nor left in this tale of Hollywood chic run amuck, as he talks out of school about his adventures with, among many others, Richard Pryor, Warren Beatty, Timothy Leary, Richard Dreyfuss, Woody Allen, and Julian Semyonov, the Soviet Union's version of Robert Ludlum and also a KGB colonel who tempted Simon to join the KGB himself. Among the topics covered along the way: Is there a new blacklist in Hollywood, this one targeting conservatives? Simon's red-carpet tours of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union with Hollywood screenwriters and famous mystery novelists. Why Al Gore's documentary on global warming didn't deserve the Oscar on artistic grounds alone; and why the Academy's voting system is so corrupt. And, as they say, there is much, much more besides.

This text provides an account of the turbulent romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham. In July 1937 Scott Fitzgerald was broken in spirit, desperate for money and headed for Hollywood for work as a screenwriter - his one last shot at staying sober and re-establishing himself as a writer. There he met the young Sheilah Graham, a fledgling columnist who had transformed herself from a Jewish orphan from London's East End to a British aristocrat, determined to eradicate all traces of her squalid youth. Scott was fascinated by the gutsy Graham, she instinctively understood him and his demons and, together, they sought refuge from the glittering ferment of late-1930s Hollywood among friends such as Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the brilliant author of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, was a man haunted by failure to live up to his own early successes. In 1937, desperate for money, nearly broken in spirit, he headed west for work as a Hollywood screenwriter and one last shot at staying sober.

Book by Wistrich, Robert S.

How a little-known industrial neighborhood in New York unintentionally became a nexus of creative activity for a brief burst of time. During the 1960s and 1970s in New York City, young artists exploited an industrial wasteland to create spacious studios where they lived and worked, redefining the Manhattan area just south of Houston Street. Its use fueled not by city planning schemes but by word-of-mouth recommendations, the area soon grew to become a world-class center for artistic creation indeed, the largest urban artists' colony ever in America--let alone the world. Richard Kostelanetz's Artists' SoHo not only examines why the artists came and how they accomplished what they did but also delves into the lives and works of some of the most creative personalities who lived there during that period, including Nam June Paik, Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Hannah Wilke, George Macuinas, and Alan Suicide. Gallerists followed the artists in fashioning themselves, their homes, their buildings, and even their streets into transiently prominent exhibition and performance spaces. SoHo pioneer Richard Kostelanetz's extensively researched intimate history is framed within a personal memoir that unearths myriad perspectives: social and cultural history, the changing rules for residency and ownership, the ethos of the community, the physical layouts of the lofts, the types of art produced, venues that opened and closed, the daily rhythm, and the gradual invasion of "new people." Artists' SoHo also explores how and why this fertile bohemia couldn't last forever. As wealthier people paid higher prices, galleries left, younger artists settled elsewhere, and the neighborhood became a "SoHo Mall" of trendy stores and restaurants. Compelling and often humorous, Artists' SoHo provides an analysis of a remarkable neighborhood that transformed the art and culture of New York City over the past five decades.

A renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, antireligious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933-1939.

"It is [a] belief in diversity and pluralism and the uniqueness of each person that underlies all my writings . . . " -from the Preface. Regarded as the most influential and widely read thinker on modern organizations and their management, Peter Drucker has also established himself as an unorthodox and independent analyst of politics, the economy, and society. A man of impressive scope and expertise, he has paved significant inroads in a number of key areas, sharing his knowledge and keen insight on everything from the plight of the employee and the effects of technology to the vicissitudes of the markets and the future of the new world order. Adventures of a Bystander is Drucker's rich collection of autobiographical stories and vignettes, in which this legendary figure paints a portrait of his remarkable life, and of the larger historical realities of his time. In a style that is both unique and engaging, Drucker conveys his life story -from his early teen years in Vienna through the interwar years in Europe, the New Deal era, World War II, and the postwar period in America-through intimate profiles of a host of fascinating people he's known through the years. Their personal histories are, as Drucker tells us, the beads for which his own life serves as the string. A colorful group, these diverse, often unpredictable, always multidimensional individuals were chosen "because each of them, in his or her own highly personal way, reflects and refracts the thirty crucial years from the end of World War I to the first post-World War II decade-the thirty years that largely formed the world in which we now live." An amazing pageant of characters, both famous and otherwise, springs from these pages, illuminating and defining one of the most tumultuous periods in world history. Along with bankers and courtesans, artists, aristocrats, prophets, and empire-builders, we meet members of Drucker's own family and close circle of friends, among them such prominent figures as Sigmund Freud, Henry Luce, Alfred Sloan, John Lewis, and Buckminster Fuller. Playing to perfection their roles as those who "reflect and refract" the customs, beliefs, and attitudes of the times, these singular personalities lend Adventures of a Bystander a striking "you-are-there" feel. A brief encounter with Freud becomes the catalyst for an absorbing, multidimensional description of the economics, politics, and social psychology of pre-World War II Europe. Drucker introduces us to Fritz Kraemer, a brilliant, monocle-wearing eccentric who became an influential mentor to the young Henry Kissinger. His personal memoir of Henry Luce documents the development of modern journalism, while in "The Indian Summer of Innocence," he rescues and preserves the very heart of the American experience during the last New Deal years before World War II. Shedding light on a turbulent and important era, Adventures of a Bystander also reflects Peter Drucker himself as a man of imaginative sympathy and enormous interest in people, ideas, and history. These enthralling stories complement and complete the groundbreaking analytical writing for which he is so revered. Luminous autobiographical stories by one of the greatest thinkers of our time "The cast of characters among whom Drucker moves is superbly rich, and the informed glimpse he provides of a vanished social and political universe is an education in itself. Adventures of a Bystander is better than a novel, more lively than an essay, and as thoughtful as both at their best." -The Harvard Business Review. "Adventures of a Bystander is a virtuoso performance in which Drucker displays a dazzling diversity of personal interests and knowledge, an awesome power of recall, and a crisp, highly readable writing style." -BusinessWeek. "Adventures of a Bystander appears in a stroke to have restored the art of the memoir and of the essay. It will doubtless be a while before its like comes round again." -The Washington Post.

""Peter David, award-winning writer of comic books, novels, television, films and video games, has boatloads of stories to tell about his 30-year career. Whether it was attending George Takei's wedding, being described as Will Smith's bodyguard, or wandering around on the set of Babylon 5, David has been telling anecdotes of his life for years. Here they are all in one place, along with the story of a career that has taken him from writing Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk for twelve years to adventures in the Star Trek universe to the New York Times bestseller list."-Provided by publisher"--