"For nearly five decades, Geddy Lee's playing and work as cowriter, vocalist, and keyboardist has been an essential part of the success story of Canadian progressive rock trio Rush. This uniquely poignant memoir is his account of life inside and outside the band. Long before Rush accumulated more consecutive gold and platinum records than any rock band after the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, before the seven Grammy nominations or the countless electrifying live performances across the globe, Geddy Lee was Gershon Eliezer Weinrib, named after his grandfather murdered in the Holocaust. As he recounts the transformation, Lee looks back on his family, in particular his loving parents and their horrific experiences during World War II. He talks candidly about his childhood and the pursuit of music that led him to drop out of high school. He tracks the history of Rush, which, after early struggles, exploded into one of the most beloved bands of all time. He shares intimate stories of his lifelong friendships with bandmates Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart -- deeply mourning Peart's passing -- and reveals his obsessions in music and beyond." --

A memoir in bite-size chunks from the author of the viral Modern Love column “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” “[Rosenthal] shines her generous light of humanity on the seemingly humdrum moments of life and shows how delightfully precious they actually are.” — The Chicago Sun-Times How do you conjure a life? Give the truest account of what you saw, felt, learned, loved, strived for? For Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the surprising answer came in the form of an encyclopedia. In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life she has ingeniously adapted this centuries-old format for conveying knowledge into a poignant, wise, often funny, fully realized memoir. Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere—preferably at the beginning—and see how one young woman’s alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways. An ordinary life, perhaps, but an extraordinary book.

Marilyn Monroe’s final formal photo session and last interview have never been released in their entirety—until now. Completed in July 1962, just a month before her passing, the interview conducted by Richard Meryman was Marilyn at her most open and honest, and the photos by Allan Grant were the only ones ever taken in her home. Now, for the first time, you can read Marilyn in her own words and see her as the world has never seen her before. "A beautifully understated look at an American icon, as she probably wished she could have been seen.” --Library Journal In July 1962, Marilyn Monroe was at a crossroads. At thirty-six years old and embroiled in legal battles with the studio of her current picture, Something’s Gotta Give, she was struggling with fame, age, and a studio system in which she no longer fit. When she sat down to give Richard Meryman an interview, she had a lot to say. Originally intended to be an interview about fame, over the course of four hours Marilyn talked about her entire life. Only a small portion of the interview was published in LIFE Magazine. When she died, just two days after the article was published, Meryman put the full transcript and the original tapes in his files, never to see the light of day. Documenting this landmark interview was iconic photojournalist Allan Grant. His images of Marilyn would be her last formal photo shoot—in her home, in casual clothes, being the glorious, free spirit she was. Grant captured every emotion of the interview in these exquisite images, only eight of which were published alongside the LIFE interview excerpt. Most of the remainder of the images were stored in Allan’s safe, waiting to be rediscovered. Marilyn: The Lost Photographs • The Last Interview is Marilyn Monroe in her own words—words that haven’t been published, until now. In this recently restored and complete transcript, Marilyn candidly talks about her childhood and life, fame, the studio system, her approach to work, celebrity, being a sex symbol, and more. At times joyous, silly, serious, philosophical and pensive, it is a Marilyn that the world has never experienced. Accompanying the interview are more than 400 of Grant’s extraordinary images, most never published until now. This beautifully produced book offers readers a glimpse into Marilyn’s mindset during her final month as she began to assert control of her career and address her relationship with celebrity. Deepening the understanding of Marilyn’s talents, humanity, and true legacy, and the appreciation of her true beauty, this is a fitting tribute to one of the most iconic figures in history.

The most haunting memoir of the twentieth century—written in exile, published after death, essential for our time. Stefan Zweig was born into the golden age of European civilization, a world that believed in progress, treasured culture above nationalism, and thought peace permanent. From his privileged position in Vienna—cultural capital of the Hapsburg Empire—he witnessed the last great flowering of cosmopolitan humanism. He knew Rilke and Freud, Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. He moved effortlessly between Paris, London, Berlin, and Rome. By the 1920s, he was one of the most translated authors in the world. Then, across three decades, he watched that entire civilization destroy itself. The World of Yesterday is Zweig's attempt to capture what was lost—the intellectual brilliance of pre-war Vienna, the madness of 1914's patriotic fever, the hyperinflation that destroyed Austria's middle class, the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, the nightmare of exile. Writing without access to his notes or library, relying purely on memory, Zweig creates something more valuable than conventional autobiography: a sustained meditation on civilization's fragility, written by a witness who understood exactly what was being destroyed and why it mattered. This is not simply historical testimony. It is warning and prophecy. Zweig describes how quickly democratic norms collapsed, how virulent antisemitism erupted in countries where Jews felt integrated, how cultural achievement proved defenseless against totalitarian barbarism. He chronicles the failure of intellectuals to resist, the transformation of neighbors into enemies, the speed with which cosmopolitan ideals gave way to tribal hatred. The memoir was completed in Brazil in February 1942, mailed to the publisher on February 21st. The next day, Zweig and his wife ended their lives. He could not survive the destruction of everything he valued. But he left us this book—eloquent, heartbroken, clear-eyed about both his generation's achievements and its catastrophic failures. For readers in our own uncertain era, The World of Yesterday speaks with uncomfortable urgency. The questions Zweig asks have become our questions. The dangers he witnessed have not disappeared. His testimony reminds us that civilization is never guaranteed—it must be defended, or it will be lost. A masterwork of witness and warning. The essential memoir of European catastrophe. Required reading for our age.

"Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy--especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis--and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre. From his early days as an office assistant, to meeting Jonathan Larson and experiencing the triumph and tragedy of Rent, to working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton, Jeffrey completely pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of makingnew musicals, finding new audiences, and winning a Tony Award--all the while finding himself"--

In an era when too many heroes have been toppled from too many pedestals, Sandy Koufax stands apart and alone, a legend who declined his own celebrity. As a pitcher, he was sublime, the ace of baseball lore. As a human being, he aspired to be the one thing his talent and his fame wouldn't allow: a regular guy. A Brooklyn kid, he was the product of the sedate and modest fifties who came to define and dominate baseball in the sixties. In Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, former award-winning Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy delivers an uncommon baseball book, vividly re-creating the Koufax era, when presidents were believed and pitchers aspired to go the distance. He was only a teenager when Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley proclaimed him "the Great Jewish Hope" of the franchise. But it wasn't until long after the team had abandoned Brooklyn that the man became the myth. Old-fashioned in his willingness to play when he was injured and in his acute sense of responsibility to his team, Koutax answered to an authority higher than manager Walter Alston. When he refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, he inadvertently made himself a religious icon and an irrevocably public figure. A year later, he was gone -- done with baseball at age thirty. No other sports hero had retired so young, so well, or so completely. Despite Sandy Koufax's best efforts to protect his privacy, his legend has grown larger ever since. Part biography, part cultural history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy gets as close to that legend as he will allow. Through meticulous reporting and interviews with five hundred of his friends, teammates, and opponents, Leavy penetrates the mythology to discover a man more than worthy of myth.

This is the autobiography of Hedy Lamarr, who is famous for two things: First: Her movie career, as she was regarded as the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. She was also the first woman ever to appear nude in a movie. Second: She is famous as an inventor, a scientist and a researcher, especially during the Second World War, as she developed and patented a method to defend against torpedoes and missiles. She also developed an anti-aircraft system where the anti-aircraft fire would not hit the aircraft but would explode nearby. Nowadays, in the aftermath of the shooting down of Malaysian Airline 17 over Eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers, a new look is being taken at the process developed by Hedy Lamarr. The missile that shot down the Malaysian Airplane used a system similar to the one developed by Hedy Lamarr, and the defense against torpedoes she developed might have applications to prevent future commercial aircraft from being knocked down.

Blending memories and family myths, Mary McCarthy takes us back to the twenties, when she was orphaned in a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There were her grandmothers: one was a blood-curdling Catholic who combined piousness and pugnacity; the other was Jewish and wore a veil to hide the disastrous effects of a face-lift. There was wicked Uncle Myers who beat her for the good of her soul and Aunt Margaret who laced her orange juice with castor oil and taped her lips at night to prevent unhealthy 'mouth-breathing'. 'Many a time in the course of doing these memoirs,' Mary McCarthy says, 'I have wished that I were writing fiction.' But these were the people, along with the ladies of the Sacred Heart convent school, who helped to inspire her devastating sense of the sublime and ridiculous and her witty, novelist's imagination.

In a series of riveting interviews, America's senior statesman discusses the challenges of directing foreign policy during times of great global tension. As National Security Advisor to Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger transformed America's approach to diplomacy with China, the USSR, Vietnam, and the Middle East, laying the foundations for geopolitics as we know them today. Nearly fifty years later, escalating tensions between the US, China, and Russia are threatening a swift return to the same diplomatic game of tug-of-war that Kissinger played so masterfully. Kissinger on Kissinger is a series of faithfully transcribed interviews conducted by the elder statesman's longtime associate, Winston Lord, which captures Kissinger's thoughts on the specific challenges that he faced during his tenure as NSA, his general advice on leadership and international relations, and stunning portraits of the larger-than-life world leaders of the era. The result is a frank and well-informed overview of US foreign policy in the first half of the 70s—essential reading for anyone hoping to understand tomorrow's global challenges.

Told in her own words, this is the incredible true story of one young woman's survival of Auschwitz and Belsen because she happened to play the cello. Although my head was shaved and I had a number on my arm, I had not lost my identity totally. I may no longer have had a name, but I was identifiable ... I was 'the cellist'. When eighteen-year-old Anita arrived at Auschwitz, she found herself plucked from the Nazi death machine by a twist of fate: she played the cello, and the camp orchestra needed a cellist. Now the last living survivor of the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, this is her story told in her own words. Like so many German Jewish schoolgirls, Anita had been busy with her studies and ambitions when her everyday life began to turn by degrees into one of unimaginable horror. School was cancelled, her parents were summoned for deportation, and when she and her sister, Renate, attempted to escape to France, they were arrested and imprisoned. Through her sharp-etched memories, alongside family letters, photos, and other historical documents, Inherit the Truth leads us into one of humanity's darkest chapters, where we are forced to confront the fragility of the line between civilisation and barbarity. Marking the eightieth anniversary of her arrival in the UK after her release from Belsen concentration camp, Anita Lasker-Fallfisch's account of her and her sister's survival of both Auschwitz and Belsen is a testament to their remarkable courage, resilience, ingenuity and luck. This edition includes a new foreword from Philippe Sands.

The author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome while on the cusp of adulthood. In Roman Year , André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman’s family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment in Rome’s Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman’s mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman, still unmoored, burrowed into his bedroom to read one book after the other. The world of novels eventually allowed him to open up to the city and, through them, discover the beating heart of the Eternal City. Aciman’s time in Rome did not last long before he and his family moved across the ocean, but by the time they did, he was leaving behind a city he loved. In this memoir, the author, a genius of “the poetry of the place” (John Domini, The Boston Globe ), conjures the sights, smells, tastes, and people of Rome as only he can. Aciman captures, as if in amber, a living portrait of himself on the brink of adulthood and the city he worshipped at that pivotal moment. Roman Year is a treasure, unearthed by one of our greatest prose stylists.

Welcome back to the irrepressible and unstoppable world of Miriam Margolyes. Packed with her wit, wisdom and unfiltered stories, 'The Little Book of Miriam' is a memory palace of Miriam's extraordinary life's standout moments, opinions and conclusions.

Really The Blues is the story of a white kid who fell in love with black culture, learning to blow clarinet in the reform schools, brothels and honky-tonks of his youth. Drawn by the revelation of the blues, he followed the music along the jazz avenues of Chicago, New Orleans, and New York, and into the heart of America's soul. Told in the jive lingo of the underground's inner circle, this classic is an unforgettable chronicle of street life, smoky clubs, roadhouse dances, and reefer culture. First published in 1946, Really the Blues was a rousing wake-up call to alienated young whites to explore black culture and the world of jazz, the first music America could call its own. Their spiritual godfather was Mezzrow, jazz cat, bootlegger, and peddler of the finest gauge in Harlem. Above all, Mezz championed the abandon available to those willing to lose their blues. 2009 Edition

Discover the Heartbreaking Confession Franz Kafka Never Meant for the World to See Franz Kafka, the literary genius behind The Metamorphosis and The Trial, opens the door to his most personal struggle in Letter to His Father. This raw and emotional text, written in 1919 but never sent, is both a plea for understanding and a scathing account of the turbulent relationship between a son and his overbearing father. Letter to His Father is now presented in a fresh, modern translation designed to make Kafka’s poignant and powerful words accessible to contemporary readers. This updated version brings clarity and immediacy to Kafka’s timeless exploration of the complex and fraught relationship between a son and his overbearing father. In this searing letter, Kafka grapples with feelings of fear, guilt, and inadequacy, offering readers a unique window into the forces that shaped his identity and his work. With his signature introspection and masterful prose, he examines the weight of familial expectations, the wounds inflicted by power imbalances, and the desperate longing for reconciliation. Published posthumously in 1952, Letter to His Father is more than a personal document—it is a universal exploration of the human condition, relatable to anyone who has felt misunderstood or struggled to find their place in the shadow of someone else. This is Kafka at his most vulnerable, unguarded, and unforgettable. Whether you are a longtime admirer or discovering his work for the first time, Letter to His Father is a powerful testament to the man behind the masterpieces. Step into Kafka’s world and uncover the story behind the stories. Order your copy today!

Admirers and detractors of Vladimir Nabokov have viewed him as an ingenious contriver of literary games, teasing and even outsmarting his readers through his self-reflexive artifice and the many codes and puzzles he devises in his fiction. Nabokov himself spoke a number of times about reality as a term that always has to be put in scare quotes. Consequently, many critics and readers have thought of him as a writer uninterested in the world outside literature. Robert Alter shows how Nabokov was passionately concerned with the real world and its complexities, from love and loss to exile, freedom, and the impact of contemporary politics on our lives. In these essays, Alter spans the breadth of Nabokov's writings, from his memoir, lectures, and short stories to major novels such as Lolita. He demonstrates how the self-reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction becomes a vehicle for expressing very real concerns. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant stylist who is at once serious and playful, who cared deeply about human relationships and the burden of loss, and who was acutely sensitive to the ways political ideologies can distort human values.

"An expedition into the troubled soul of one of the world's greatest songwriters."-- Haaretz "A fascinating and intense account of Leonard Cohen's time in Israel during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973. A must for any Leonard Cohen completist."--Suzanne Vega A Vanity Fair Best Book of 2022 * Mosaic Magazine Best Book of 2022 The untold story of Leonard Cohen's concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen--thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end--traveled to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a group of local musicians, Cohen sang for hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen, reigniting his creativity and inspiring him to compose some of his most memorable songs. Who by Fire provides a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen's previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, existential moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.

Dusty Springfield made her name in the 60s with a string of top ten hits. Her unique singing style and distinctive bouffant blonde look made her famous throughout the world. Despite a period in the wilderness during the 70s and 80s, she was back at the top in the 90s until her death from cancer in March l999. Born an Irish Catholic in l939, her background set her almost schizophrenically at odds with herself as she realised her sexuality and moved further into the rock world. Both Penny Valentine and Vicki Wickham knew Dusty well, as friend and manager for much of her career. As well as charting her gay relationships, this book also looks candidly at the period of her greatest self-destruction while living in Los Angeles in the 80s. Covering every area of her career with honesty and affection, Dusty is brought vividly to life.

Jacqueline Susann broke all the rules. Her life was flamboyant, outrageous, a mile-a-minute trip through the gossip columns and casting couches of the entertainment world. At 50, she knew herself a failure. She had missed the brass ring and now lived under a possible death sentence. It was then that she wrote the novel that would become one of the bestselling novels of all time--VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. LOVELY ME gives us the real woman behind the legends and the lies. She was amoral, loving, vulgar, brilliant, intensely loyal and capable of viciousness--a woman who lived at full throttle and without regret. She may shock you, but one thing is You will never forget her.

The Moment of Cubism is one of John Berger’s most important collections of art criticism. Whether considering Vermeer in his studio, Poussin’s poignant meditation on death, or the complexities of Rodin’s sculpture, Berger draws together the threads that bind individual artists to their social and political context. Here Berger argues that Cubism was a moment rather than a movement, one that came and went without the consent of its key figures – Picasso and Braque above all. He makes a case for Cubism’s revolutionary influence. As always, Berger helps us see the world in new ways