Art Biography

Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination, and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi.

Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.

Goodbye, Guns N' Roses is a genre-rattling attempt to explain the appeal of America's most divisive rock band. While it includes uncharted history and the self-lacerating connoisseurship of a Guns N' Roses fetishist, it is not a recycled chronicle - this book is a deconstruction of myth, one that blends high and low art sketches to examine how Guns N' Roses impacted popular culture.

Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic funnymen who ruled '80s Hollywood - Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy - and the beloved films that made them stars, including Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters.

Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married, and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was.

He prepared therefore for the meditative journey that proves most excruciating in Limbo, a rounding through the past, a trip back! It is a venture full of perils. To meditate on TV might prove equal to writing a recollection of an enemy one has never met and cannot quite believe in. Indeed, how to conceive of an enemy who is without personal animosity? It was like writing a memoir of an oxymoron. Limbo set its tasks.

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.

Let the world's funniest sportsman tickle your funny bone with quirky homespun stories and whimsical perspectives on life. Patrick F. McManus gently pokes fun at the oddities of sacred institutions like friendship, marriage, and even hunting and fishing. Soon his crazy theories start making sense, and you know you've crossed the border into McManus country, where life is a little lighter - and much more amusing.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter - for whom this book was written - from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

At the request (well, it wasn't really a request) of his employers, Augusten lands in rehab, where his dreams of group therapy with Robert Downey Jr. are immediately dashed by grim reality of fluorescent lighting and paper hospital slippers. When Augusten is forced to examine himself, he finds himself in the worst trouble of all. Because when his thirty days are up, he has to return to his same drunken Manhattan life - and live it sober. Dry is the story of love, loss, and Starbucks as a Higher Power

When he retired as the chief security officer of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Barelli had spent the better part of 40 years responsible not only for one of the richest treasure troves on the planet, but the museum's staff, the millions of visitors, as well as American presidents, royalty, and heads of state from around the world. For the first time, John Barelli shares his experiences of the crimes that occurred on his watch, the investigations that captured thieves and recovered artwork....

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels.

From the outrageously filthy and oddly innocent comedienne and star of the powerful 2015 film I Smile Back Sarah Silverman comes a memoir—her first book—that is at once shockingly personal, surprisingly poignant, and still pee-in-your-pants funny. If you like Sarah's television show The Sarah Silverman Program, or memoirs such as Chelsea Handler's Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea and Artie Lange's Too Fat to Fish, you'll love The Bedwetter.

Top Ten Things You'll Learn When You Read This Book: 10) Jay was beaten up by an MMA fighter on live television. 9) Interviewing Will Ferrell can be a harrowing experience. 8) Jay once ruined a perfectly good pair of underwear on Christmas Eve. 7) Failing as a stand-up comedian can lead to a job in broadcasting. 6) Jay ran a marathon to get a ticket for the 2010 men's Olympic gold-medal hockey game....

The Lonely Life details the first 50-plus years of Davis' life - her Yankee childhood, her rise to stardom in Hollywood, the birth of her beloved children, and the uncompromising choices she made along the way to succeed. The book was updated with new material in the 1980s, bringing the story up to the end of Davis' life - all the heartbreak, all the drama, and all the love she experienced at every stage of her extraordinary life.

As one of America's preeminent comedic voices, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary 50-year career and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acer-bic humor with never-before-told stories from his own life.