There's No Bones in Ice Cream, by Sylvain Sylvain, is the inside story of glam heroes the New York Dolls - outrageous, defiant, sleaze kings, transgender posers, drug casualties and victims, not just of their own excess but of an unsympathetic music industry that simply didn't know how to process them. Sylvain, one of only two surviving members of the original New York Dolls, offers a fly-on-the-wall, sincere and often hilarious account of the rise and fall of the Dolls, the group that flew so close to the sun that they exploded in a fireball that lit the touch paper under punk rock. Though their brief, sensation-filled yet doomed career produced just two albums, the Dolls exerted an influence on rock that changed it forever. A cross between the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols, the Dolls became the link in the chain between them, offering a crash course in mischief, cross-dressing and anarchy, but like unheralded prophets of Biblical times they were cast aside until the world finally caught up. "Other people turned the New York Dolls into legends. We just went along for the ride."

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."

"Wow, Ron Levy's book is AMAZING! Wonderful reading, entertaining, fun, educational and, well, AMAZING!" - Norman Darwen - Blues Matters! - UK "I want everyone to know, Ron Levy is one of the very best musicians I've ever played and worked with. Now, he's even written a great book! I'm so proud of my 'son'." B.B. King 4/13/13 "Ron Levy endures as an ingenious Blues keyboardist -- touring most notably with B.B. King for 7 years -- and he was there when B.B. played Muhammad Ali's private parties, as well as stadium shows in Africa and throughout the world. He was the ultimate road warrior, also tickling the ivories for Albert King, Roomful of Blues and his own Ron Levy's Wild Kingdom, while meeting everyone from Elvis Presley to Nina Simone. He distills it all in his lively, remarkably honest book (NOW IN PAPERBACK), 'Tales of a Road Dog.' Nearly everything is unique in these gritty and humorous stories of survival with some of music's great pioneers and the musicians who powered them on stage. If you thought you knew about music history, trust me that you'll know even more when you delve into Levy's rich and colorful text. This guy can write as well as he can play." - STEVE MORSE - Boston Globe, Billboard and Rolling Stone. A download link to Levy's critically acclaimed album "FUNKY FIESTA!" is included. - Also available as a Web-book & eBook!

“The Hollywood memoir that tells all . . . Sex. Drugs. Greed. Why, it sounds just like a movie.”— The New York Times Every memoir claims to bare it all, but Julia Phillips’s actually does. This is an addictive, gloves-off exposé from the producer of the classic films The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind —and the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture—who made her name in Hollywood during the halcyon seventies and the yuppie-infested eighties and lived to tell the tale. Wickedly funny and surprisingly moving, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again takes you on a trip through the dream-manufacturing capital of the world and into the vortex of drug addiction and rehab on the arm of one who saw it all, did it all, and took her leave. Praise for You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again “One of the most honest books ever written about one of the most dishonest towns ever created.” — The Boston Globe “Gossip too hot for even the National Enquirer . . . Julia Phillips is not so much Hollywood’s Boswell as its Dante.” — Los Angeles Magazine “A blistering look at La La Land.” —USA Today “One of the nastiest, tastiest tell-alls in showbiz history.” —People

Fragile, raw, daring, brilliant...Sandra Bernhard rocks. The actress, philospher, comedian, and cult goddess is definitely back -- and feeling fabulous -- with a labor of love that'll knock her followers off their feet and draw new ones to her like a magnet. Stage, film, music, television -- in every performance, Bernhard has shocked and amused, titillated and broken every rule. With her first two books, Confessions of a Pretty Lady and Love, Love, and Love Bernhard's electrifying talent took to the page and burned it up with flashes of true brillance -- the kind of writing that separates the powerful from the good. And now, in this new book, Sandra returns with a deeply personal collection of spicy tales, fiercely witty riffs, and sweet doses of wisdom. Here is Sandy as we know and love her -- and as we've never quite seen her before: heartrenderingly honest, with the mouth of a diva, the soul of a fighter, and the insight of a girl who has lived life big. Like a whisper in your ear, Sandy opens up her world: from her friendship with her loyal housepainter to her imagined history as as one of Jack Kennedy's lovers; from the sensual streets of Mogador to the comfort of her pristine L.A. bungalow; from her own poetry of romantic yearning and reflective prayer to dead-on truths brought to light in the heartbreaking and hilarious glow of fashion, celebrity, rock and spirituality. There is nothing Sandra Bernhard offers that doesn't deliver a pungent snap of truth and the surprise of unexpected emotion in this, her most revealing and entertaining book yet.

A finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award "A compelling, absolutely unputdownable story . . . And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told." -- Booklist In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report . Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. Wasson shows why improv deserves to be considered the great American art form of the last half century. " One of the most important stories in American popular culture . . . Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv's] entire history . . . For that reason alone, it's a valuable book . " -- New York Times Book Review "A compelling history . . . It holds the element of surprise--true to the spirit of its subject." -- Entertainment Weekly

Ever wonder why so many B actors wind up as A-grade politicians? Or how the casting couch worked? Acclaimed author Kathleen Sharp traces the influence of show business through the lives of its first power couple. Edie and Lew Wasserman built the world's largest talent agency, MCA, created the multibillion-dollar Universal Studios, and helped shape Washington, DC. Starting from MCA's birth in gangland Chicago, Lew represented stars such as Jimmy Stewart and Marilyn Monroe; pioneered TV with Leave It to Beaver and Miami Vice ; spawned the blockbuster movie model with Psycho and Jaws ; and developed a mega-theme park. His savvy wife, Edie, was the daughter of a mob attorney, the queen of A-list parties, and Lew's secret agent who boosted their status. Yet, the couple was attacked by rivals, federal prosecutors, and their own protégés. Even so, over the course of seven decades they managed to vanquish their enemies and parlay their influence far beyond Sunset Strip into governors' mansions, Senate chambers, and the White House. At the end, Edie and Lew became diplomats, kingmakers, and philanthropists, who elevated the fortunes of middle-class workers and California itself. Based on some four hundred interviews, this book features Janet Leigh, Clark Gable, Grace Kelly, John Belushi, Jean Stein, and Steven Spielberg along with the Kennedys, the Johnsons, the Reagans, and the Clintons. It's a fascinating read about how two kids from Cleveland created the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world and wound up ruling twentieth-century America.

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent's dog. Here is Marianne on the dark side of the sixties and the bright side of the nineties, which saw her collaborating with the likes of Blur and Jarvis Cocker; compelling recollections of an unconventional childhood in her father's orgiastic literary commune to a hilariously decadent few days at Lady Caroline Blackwood's deathbed. Here she is her blossoming movie career, on her records as subliminal autobiography. This is as intimate a portrait as we've ever had of Marianne, as she meditates on sex and drugs, confronts her alter-ego, the Fabulous Beast, and faces her own mortality in her battle with breast cancer. Since her last book Marianne has, in her own words, 'made quite a few records, gone on many tours, tried to play it straight, and... Well, the rest is the subject of this book.'

Max Fleischer (1883--1972) was for years considered Walt Disney's only real rival in the world of cartoon animation. The man behind the creation of such legendary characters as Betty Boop and the animation of Popeye the Sailor and Superman, Fleischer asserted himself as a major player in the development of Hollywood entertainment. Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution is a vivid portrait of the life and world of a man who shaped the look of cartoon animation. Also interested in technical innovation, Fleischer invented the rotoscope -- a device that helped track live action and allowed his cartoons to revolutionize the way animated characters appeared and moved on-screen. In the 1920s, Fleischer created a series of "Out of the Inkwell" films, which led to a deal with Paramount. Their character KoKo the Clown introduced new animation effects by growing out of Fleischer's pen on-screen. As the sound revolution hit film, the studio produced shorts featuring the characters interacting with songs and with the now-famous bouncing ball that dances across lyrics projected on the screen. Max Fleischer's story is also one of a creative genius struggling to fit in with the changing culture of golden age cinema. Out of the Inkwell captures the twists and turns, the triumphs and disappointments, and most of all the breathless energy of a life vibrantly lived in the world of animation magic.

For ten weeks David Brudnoy, Boston's most popular and erudite conservativeradio-talk-show host, had been off the air. When he signed back on, hisfaithful following was prepared for the usual dose of wry humor, Clintonbashing, and brilliant banter. What they got instead was an electrifyinghourlong monologue, unprecedented in the freewheeling world of talk radio, during which Brudnoy confessed, I am a fifty-four-year-old homosexual...I wassuffering the first attack of HIV--the AIDS virus. What followed was an outpouring of support and devotion from an audience notknown for its tolerance of gay issues. With his story, Brudnoy has crossed thatgreat abyss where the personal and political meet. From his near-halcyon youthas an only child growing up in a small Minnesota town to his heady days as astudent at Yale, he recounts with equal doses of humor and candor a coming ofage that, in fits and starts, eventually recognized a sexual preference for menand a political tendency toward the right. Ruminating on matters that rangefrom his own mortality to TV, radio, friends, family, romance, and politics, Life Is Not a Rehearsal offers up the kind of trenchant and intelligentinsights that are Brudnoy's hallmark.A graduate of Yale with a major in Japanese, David Brudnoy went to graduateschool at Harvard (East Asian studies) before getting his Ph.D. in Americanintellectual history at Brandeis. In 1976 he won a full-time talk radio slot atBoston's WHDH, then moved to WRKO in 1981, finally going on to the region'spowerhouse, WBZ, in 1986. In addition to his hugely successful radio show onWBZ, he is a TV commentator, film critic, newspaper essayist on politics andtravel, and teacher ofjournalism at Boston University. Life Is Not a Rehearsal shows that conservatism is not conformity--or aprejudice or a mere establishmentarian life. Conservatism is about fighting forliberty and embracing responsibility, about war and love if you will. DavidBrudnoy is certainly a veteran of both. --P. J. O'Rourke, author of Give War a Chance David Brudnoy tells the personal story behind the public story of hisremarkable life and extraordinary career. He gives us a memoir that willbenefit many others across the country learning to live with AIDS. --Senator Edward M. KennedyThis is a book about love, loyalty, and the nurturing bonds of family andfriendship. And, it is also a book about the coming of age of a brave andhonorable man who has faced the looming spectre of death with the samecourageous honesty that so many of us have long admired in him. --Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., author of How We Die In this no-holds-barred memoir, Boston's outspoken, conservative, libertarian, gay, agnostically Jewish, living-with-AIDS, college professor and media iconproves once and for all the inadequacy of labels when it comes to defining alife. Life Is Not a Rehearsal is the story of David Brudnoy as only hecould tell it, with characteristic candor, humor, and the self-awareness of onewho has teetered on the edge, gone over the cliff, and lived to tell. And tellhe does --William F. Weld

""What Hitler Wants"" is a political analysis written by Leon Trotsky in 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. The book explores the motivations, goals, and strategies of the Nazi regime, particularly in regards to its expansionist ambitions and its hostility towards the Soviet Union. Trotsky argues that Hitler's regime is driven by a desire for territorial conquest and domination, fueled by a toxic blend of racism, nationalism, and anti-communism. He also critiques the policies of the Western powers, particularly their appeasement of Hitler and their failure to recognize the threat posed by fascism. The book is a powerful warning against the dangers of fascism and the need for international solidarity in the face of authoritarianism.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

There have been many books about the strange and exotic world of show business, but rarely has one encompassed so many roles in one person, Sonny Fox. Comedy writer on a daily half-hour TV series in New York, pioneer on the eighth Educational TV station to go on the air, host of the first weekly CBS-TV series to originate a live TV series, Emcee of "The $64,000 Challenge,” Producer of movies for TV and specials for PBS, VP Children’s programming NBC-TV, Chair of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a weekly, four-hour children’s program that set a standard for how to deal with young viewers, Fox ran the gamut, starting in radio in 1947 and lasting until today, that may be unique in TV history. What makes this a must-read is Sonny’s ability to spin narratives that take you inside of this panoply of events and personalities, so you feel their immediacy and experience the kaleidoscope almost as a participant. As he weaves his engaging tales, you will meet Senator Robert Kennedy, Actresses Julie Harris and Colleen Dewhurst, Lyricists Alan Jay Lerner, and Sheldon Harnick, Tom Snyder, and a whole cast of colorful personalities who are presented through the prism of Sonny Fox’s cavalcade that is a history of TV: in fact a history of the 20th century as it will never be taught in schools.