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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Film, television, music, theatre
This is the definitive biography of rap supergroup, Wu-Tang Clan (WTC). Widely regarded as one of the most influential groups in modern music--hip hop or otherwise--WTC has released seven albums [including four gold and platinum studio albums, as well as the genre-defining Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)] and has launched the careers of famous rappers like RZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and more. Beyond the musicians in the group itself, WTC has also collaborated with many of the biggest names in the game-from Busta Rhymes and Redman to Nas and Kanye West), and one is hard pressed to find a group who's had a bigger impact on the evolution of the hip hop genre. S.H. Fernando, Jr. is a journalist who has interviewed WTC several times over the past several decades for publications like Rolling Stone, Vibe, and The Source. Over the years, he has "built up a formidable archive--including over 100 pages of unpublished transcribed interviews, videos of the group in action in the studio, and several notepads of accumulated memories and observations." The result is a startling portrait of innovation, collaboration, and adversity, giving us unparalleled access to the highs and lows of the WTC's illustrious career so far. And this book doesn't shy away from controversy--along with stories of the group's musical success, we're also privy to stories from their childhoods in the crime-and-cocaine infested hallways of Brooklyn and Staten Island housing projects, stints in Rikers for gun possession and attempted murderer, and million-dollar contracts that led to recklessness and drug overdoses (including Ol' Dirty Bastard's untimely death). Even more than just a history of a single group, this book tells the story of a musical and cultural shift that encapsulates and then expands beyond NYC in the 20th and 21st centuries. Though there have been biographies written about the band, both from members (like RZA) and collaborators (like Cyrus Bozorgmehr), most of the material that's been published so far has either focused on a single member of the group's story, or a narrow timespan of their work. This book will not only feature interviews with all living WTC members and a comprehensive look at their discography, it also includes never-before-revealed insight into their childhoods and the neighborhoods that shaped them growing up. It's unique in its breadth, scope, and access--a must-have for fans of WTC and music bios more generally.
In a searingly candid memoir which he authored himself, Grammy
Award-winning pop icon Rick Springfield pulls back the curtain on
his image as a bright, shiny, happy performer to share the
startling story of his rise and fall and rise in music, film, and
television and his lifelong battle with depression.
No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story -- until now. "Many say I was the best geisha of my generation," writes Mineko Iwasaki. "And yet, it was a life that I found too constricting to continue. And one that I ultimately had to leave." Trained to become a geisha from the age of five, Iwasaki would live among the other "women of art" in Kyoto's Gion Kobu district and practice the ancient customs of Japanese entertainment. She was loved by kings, princes, military heroes, and wealthy statesmen alike. But even though she became one of the most prized geishas in Japan's history, Iwasaki wanted more: her own life. And by the time she retired at age twenty-nine, Iwasaki was finally on her way toward a new beginning. Geisha, a Life is her story -- at times heartbreaking, always awe-inspiring, and totally true.
A raw, moving and uplifting memoir about courage, resilience and the transformative power of love, from one of Australia's most captivating personalities 'Powerful, heartbreaking and beautiful ... a story of incredible triumph fuelled by love and compassion' Osher Gunsberg 'Brooke Blurton is an icon for people of all generations and backgrounds. I love seeing her star shine.' Clementine Ford My story is about the one thing that I never went without. Love. Big love, that filled me up and made me feel like there was a future for me. The kind of love that's unconditional, and that lasts across time and space ... From the moment Brooke Blurton appeared on Australian television, she dazzled audiences with her authenticity, self-knowledge, generosity and honesty. As a proud young Noongar-Yamatji woman, Brooke's connection to her culture and country is deep, and as an openly queer woman, she knows that love is simply love. Most of all Brooke knows the importance of family, and the uplifting power of unconditional connection. But behind the public persona Brooke presents to the world is a story of epic proportions and awe-inspiring resilience - she had to grow up fast from a very young age, surviving an extremely challenging childhood and youth, and overcoming the shocking legacy of intergenerational trauma, abuse and homelessness. She's also had to defy labels and perceptions about who she is, and her worth, all her life. But through it all, Brooke didn't just survive, she found her voice and thrived, and in this raw, heartbreaking, often funny and ultimately life-affirming memoir, Brooke lays her journey bare about how she refused to allow the past to define her and reclaimed her own identity - and realised the power of love, for herself, for her family, and her community.
At one gilded moment in history, his fame was so great that he was known the world over by his nickname alone: Rubi. Pop songs were written about him. Women whom he had never met offered to leave their husbands for him. He had an eye for feminine beauty, particularly when it came with great wealth: Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Eva Peron, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. But he was a man's man as well, polo player and race-car driver, chumming around with the likes of Joe Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Oleg Cassini, Aly Khan, and King Farouk. He was also a jewel thief, and an intimate of one of the world's most bloodthirsty dictators. And when he died at the age of fifty-six--wrapping his sports car around a tree in the Bois de Boulogne--a glamorous era of white dinner jackets at El Morocco and celebrity for its own sake died along with him. He was one of a kind, the last of his breed. And in The Last Playboy, author Shawn Levy brings the giddy, hedonistic, and utterly remarkable story of Porfirio Rubirosa to glorious Technicolor life.
'Fearsome wit' Elle 'Charming' Buzzfeed 'Ridiculously entertaining' Associated Press 'Endearingly honest' Guardian A collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Pitch Perfect, Twilight, Up in the Air, Into the Woods and Trolls. Even before she made a name for herself on the silver screen, Anna Kendrick was unusually small, weird, defiant, and '10 per cent weird'. When she was thirteen, a classmate dropped by her house unexpectedly and discovered written evidence of Anna's social ineptitude. From then on she decided to 'keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here's the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.' In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites her readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candour and winningly wry observations. With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she's experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can - from her unusual path to the performing arts (her older brother's affinity for Vanilla Ice may have inadvertently launched her career) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial 'dating experiments' (including only liking boys who didn't like her back) to the perils of reading The Shining while filming Twilight in the isolated Canadian wilderness to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual 'man-child'. Enter Anna's world and follow her rise from 'scrappy little nobody' to someone who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page - with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).
In 1997 het 'n besonder gewaagde boek die lig gesien: 'n Kas is vir klere het openlik die aanvaarde idee dat gaywees en Christenwees nie een kan wees nie, uitgedaag. Daardie teks het vertel van Pieter Cilliers se reis na selfaanvaarding tot hy die waagmoed had om, met 'n boek, uit die kas te klim. Vir veertien lang jare het Pieter Cilliers hom daarna uit die openbare oog onttrek. Tog, maand na maand, het die briewe daar by hom opgedaag. Talle het gese: Ek is ook so! Hoe meer briewe opgedaag het, hoe nodiger het dit geword om op te staan vir diegene wat nog vasgevang sit in die oordeel van die godsdiens. Pieter het met die skrywers begin korrespondeer en, het, soms teen sy sin, begin deelneem aan kerklike debatte jeens gaywees, maar meer nog: ook wat dit beteken om gemarginaliseerd te wees.
Dit is die sewentigerjare. Nelle Dreyer is negentien jaar oud en bly in die Kaap. Nadat sy as Maties se sjampanjenooientjie gekroon is, droom sy net van een ding: om topmodel in Europa te wees. Sy sou gou uitvind dat dit nie maklik is nie. Sy neem die leser terug na haar kinderjare, haar jongmeisiejare, die verlies van haar maagdelikheid en die kort, uitbundige studentelewe wat sy gehad het voor daar deure oopgegaan het oorsee. Uiteindelik is dit 'n bitter eerlike werk. Nelle was jonk in die dae van die sogenaamde seksrevolusie, en sy het daardie vryheid ten volle omarm. Maar, seksuele vryheid het gevolge – en die manuskrip is ook ontsettend eerlik oor die hartseer tye wat Nelle beleef het. Voorbladnooi is haar storie, met die mooi, met die hartseer.
Most unusually among major painters, Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was also an accomplished writer. His letters provide both a unique self-portrait and a vivid picture of the contemporary cultural scene. Van Gogh emerges as a complex but captivating personality, struggling with utter integrity to fulfil his artistic destiny. This major new edition, which is based on an entirely new translation, reinstating a large number of passages omitted from earlier editions, is expressly designed to reveal his inner journey as much as the outward facts of his life. It includes complete letters wherever possible, linked with brief passages of connecting narrative and showing all the pen-and-ink sketches that originally went with them. Despite the familiar image of Van Gogh as an antisocial madman who died a martyr to his art, his troubled life was rich in friendships and generous passions. In his letters we discover the humanitarian and religious causes he embraced, his fascination with the French Revolution, his striving for God and for ethical ideals, his desperate courtship of his cousin, Kee Vos, and his largely unsuccessful search for love. All of this, suggests De Leeuw, demolishes some of the myths surrounding Van Gogh and his career but brings hint before us as a flesh-and-blood human being, an individual of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Perhaps even more moving, these letters illuminate his constant conflicts as a painter, torn between realism, symbolism and abstraction; between landscape and portraiture; between his desire to depict peasant life and the exciting diversions of the city; between his uncanny versatility as a sketcher and his ideal of the full-scale finished tableau. SinceVan Gogh received little feedback from the public, he wrote at length to friends, fellow artists and his family, above all to his brother Theo, the Parisian art dealer, who was his confidant and mainstay. Along with his intense powers of visual imagination, Vincent brought to the
The global icon, award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, actress, mother, daughter, sister, storyteller and artist finally tells the unfiltered story of her life in The Meaning of Mariah Carey. It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments - the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams - that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it's been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a ten-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else's lens, largely satisfying someone else's assignment to define me. This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side. Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit. Love, Mariah
One of the most charismatic showmen ever to grace a WWE ring recounts his life, his phenomenal career, and how he finally found the one thing that gave his life meaning--his faith. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse' - THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'A riveting portrait' - GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR *** 'Christie lovers should read this biography for the same reason they read her novels.' - The Times 'A model of how to combine biographical information, analysis and literary criticism into a propulsive narrative' - Daily Telegraph 'Worsley's book excels in bringing a broader historical perspective to Christie's life and work, and her enthusiasm is infectious.' - Observer Ms Worsley herself writes engagingly... She combines an almost militant support for her subject with a considered analysis of her books and plays.' - Economist 'Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.' Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why - despite all the evidence to the contrary - did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn't do. Lucy Worsley's biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley's biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was - truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
From the moment RoseMarie Terenzio unleashed her Italian temper on
the entitled nuisance commandeering her office in a downtown New
York PR firm, an unlikely friendship bloomed between the
blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.
The true story that inspired the Sofia Coppola film Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson: robbed. More than $3 million in stolen clothing, jewelry, shoes, and handbags reported missing. Who is behind one of the most brazen string of crimes in recent Hollywood history? Meet the Bling Ring: a band of club-hopping teenagers from the Valley with everything to lose. Over the course of a year, the members of the now infamous Bling Ring allegedly burglarized some of the biggest names in young Hollywood. Driven by celebrity worship, vanity, and the desire to look and dress like the rich and famous, these seven teenagers made headlines for using Google maps, Facebook, and TMZ to track the comings and goings of their targets. Many of the houses were unlocked. Alarms disabled. A "perfect" crime-- celebrities already had so much, why shouldn't the Bling Ring take their share? As the unprecedented case unfolded in the news, the world asked: How did our obsession with celebrities get so out of hand? Why would a group of teens who already had so much, take such a risk? Acclaimed Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales found the answer: they did it because each stolen T-shirt or watch brought them closer to living the Hollywood dream . . . and because it was terrifyingly easy. For the Bling Ring the motivation was something deeper than money--they were compelled by a compulsion to be famous. Gaining unprecedented access to the group of teens, Sales traces the crimes minute by minute and details the key players' stories in a shocking look at the seedy, and troubling, world of the real young Hollywood.
In an acting career of more than seventy years, Hollywood legend
Maureen O'Hara came to be known as "the queen of Technicolor" for
her fiery red hair and piercing green eyes. She had a reputation as
a fiercely independent thinker and champion of causes, particularly
those of her beloved homeland, Ireland. In "'Tis Herself, " O'Hara
recounts her extraordinary life and proves to be just as strong,
sharp, and captivating as any character she played on-screen.
With her white beehive and Mondrian make-up, Jordan's look helped shape a revolution on the King's Road and has become an iconic part of pop culture. With commentary from key players, including Vivienne Westwood, Paul Cook and her partner behind the SEX counter Michael Collins, Defying Gravity is the revealing story of a life at the eye of punk's storm. Deluxe signed box-set edition - Limited to 500 copies - A copy of the book hand signed by Jordan - A specially designed poster featuring Graham Humphreys' jacket design - A T-shirt designed by Graham Humphreys - A certificate of authenticity
A biography that crackles with as much energy as the great bluesman's songs." The epic, rollicking, up-and-down life of Muddy Waters-who went from Mississippi farmhand to musical legend, invented electric blues, and created the template for the rock-and-roll band and its wild lifestyle-is chronicled with rare vividness in Robert Gordon's widely praised biography.
Carlos Acosta, the Cuban dancer considered to be one of the world's greatest performers, fearlessly depicts his journey from adolescent troublemaker to international superstar in his captivating memoir, "No Way Home." Carlos was just another kid from the slums of Havana; the youngest son of a truck driver and a housewife, he ditched school with his friends and dreamed of becoming Cuba's best soccer player. Exasperated by his son's delinquent behavior, Carlos's father enrolled him in ballet school, subjecting him to grueling days that started at five thirty in the morning and ended long after sunset. The path from student to star was not an easy one. Even as he won dance competitions and wowed critics around the world, Carlos was homesick for Cuba, crippled by loneliness and self-doubt. As he traveled the world, Carlos struggled to overcome popular stereotypes and misconceptions; to maintain a relationship with his family; and, most of all, to find a place he could call home. This impassioned memoir is about more than Carlos's rise to stardom. It is about a young man forced to leave his homeland and loved ones for a life of self-discipline, displacement, and physical hardship. It is also about how the heart and soul of a country can touch the heart and soul of one of its citizens. With candor and humor, Carlos vividly depicts daily life in communist Cuba, his feelings about ballet -- an art form he both lovesand hates -- and his complex relationship with his father. Carlos Acosta makes dance look effortless, but the grace, strength, and charisma we see onstage have come at a cost. Here, in his own words, is the story of the price he paid.
Brian Blessed has a lifelong love of animals and over the years has rescued cats and dogs, horses and ponies, and even a very ungrateful fighting cock. All were characters in their own right, such as Jessie, a dog left languishing for a year at the local RSPCA, who ruled the entire household with a rod of iron, when she wasn't out harassing the local vicar. Then there was Bodger, an abused terrier cross breed, who was nursed back to health by Brian and his wife, and Peppone, a stray cat and notorious thief, who was responsible for a crime epidemic in the Bagshot area. Most of all there was Misty, a soul mate and the first Jack Russell Brian met who didn't take an instant dislike to him. Over the years Brian has encountered more exotic animals too, from Kali the black panther who had free run of his kitchen and the gentle boa constrictor Bo Bo who went for walks with him in Richmond Park to the female gorillas who found him incredibly attractive. Written with all of Brian's ebullience, The Panther in My Kitchen is a laugh-out-loud, life-affirming book about the joy animals bring and why we should care for them.
One of the world's greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built--from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore--and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in societyOver more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures--from the 1967 modular housing scheme in Montreal known as "Habitat" and the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel, to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas and the Marina Bay Sands development and extraordinary Jewel Changi airport interior garden and waterfall in Singapore. For Safdie, the way a space functions is fundamental; he is deeply committed to architecture as a social force for good, believing that any challenge, including extreme population density and environmental distress, can be addressed with solutions that enhance community and uplift the human spirit. Safdie always refers to the "silent client" an architect must ultimately serve: the people who live in, work in, or experience a building.If Walls Could Speak takes readers behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works--"from the spark of imagination through the design process, the model-making, the politics, the engineering, the materials." Relating memorable stories about what has inspired him--from childhoods in Israel and Montreal to the projects and personalities worldwide that have captured his imagination--Safdie reveals the complex interplay that underpins every project and his vision for the role architecture can and should play in society at large. Illustrated throughout with drawings, sketches, photographs, and documents from his firm's voluminous archives that illuminate his stories, If Walls Could Speak ends with a chapter outlining seven projects Safdie would pursue around the world if resources and will were no issue and the choices were his to make.A book like no other, If Walls Could Speak will forever change the way you look at and appreciate any built structure. |
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