Entertainment Culture

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

In this new audiobook, radio broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of David Bowie. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

Leaving school and starting his career at Decca Records in 1958 at the age of sixteen, Tony King would soon find himself becoming close friends with Elton John, rekindling John Lennon and Yoko Ono's relationship, mediating a quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and spending time with Freddie Mercury in his final days - a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as a stalwart in London and New York's gay scenes.

Laurel Canyon was the neighborhood perched above the clubs and record companies of Sunset Strip where Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Graham Nash, Cass Elliot, Carole King, Don Henley, and Peter Tork, just to name a few, lived and collaborated to make an indelible mark on our music and our culture.

Sixteen-year-old Juliet Moreau has built a life for herself in London - working as a maid, attending church on Sundays, and trying not to think about the scandal that ruined her life. After all, no one ever proved the rumors about her father's gruesome experiments. But when she learns he is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations are true. Accompanied by her father's handsome young assistant, Montgomery, and an enigmatic castaway, Edward - both of whom she is deeply drawn to - Juliet travels to the island, only to discover the depths of her father's madness.

Ted Lasso and Philosophy explores the hidden depths beneath the vibrant veneer of AppleTV's breakout, award-winning sitcom. Blending philosophical sophistication with winsome appreciation of this feel-good comedy, the collection features original essays canvassing the breadth of the series and carefully considering the ideas it presents.

DJ Fat Tony has been described as 'the closest thing that club culture has to a national treasure' and the 'unlikely cult hero of quarantine'. Few people have crammed so many lives into one: when your first line of cocaine is aged 16 with Freddie Mercury, where do you go from there? I Don't Take Requests is Fat Tony's breathtakingly candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes.

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of Depeche Mode. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

When his satirical musings in a college newspaper got him discharged from the Air Force, it became clear to Walt Williams that his destiny in life was to be a writer - he just never thought he'd end up writing video games, let alone working on some of the most successful franchises in the industry - Bioshock, Civilization, Borderlands, and Mafia, among others. Williams pulls back the curtain on an astonishingly profitable industry that has put its stamp on pop culture and yet is little known to those outside its walls.

Martin Torgoff details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the launch of heroin in Harlem.

William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the 19th century, and professionals in the 20th, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.

Empire of the Air tells the story of three American visionaries - Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff - whose imagination and dreams turned a hobbyist's toy into radio, launching the modern communications age. Tom Lewis weaves the story of these men and their achievements into a richly detailed and moving narrative that spans the first half of the 20th century, a time when the American romance with science and technology was at its peak.

The Queen of Urban Airwaves and VH1 host, Wendy Williams, dishes up juicy revelations and insider stories without batting a false eyelash.

MercyMe’s crossover hit, “I Can Only Imagine,” has touched millions of people around the world. But few know about the pain, redemption, and healing that inspired it. Now Bart Millard, award-winning recording artist and lead singer of MercyMe, shares how his dad’s transformation from abusive father to man of God sparked a divine moment in music history.

For an actor who’s been in so many mega-hits and equally mega misses, it can be tough to track Keanu Reeves's accomplishments. But true fans know that Keanu is so much more than his Bill and Ted persona, both onscreen and off. During his long career - over 30 years, although you wouldn’t know it from his immortal looks - he has constantly subverted Hollywood stereotypes and expectations. He's the type to start his own publishing company, reread Hamlet, eat lunch alone in the park while looking very sad, and give away his salary to the film crew.

The Ultimate History of the '80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the '80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.

The Horror of It All is a memoir from the front lines of the industry that dissects (and occasionally defends) the hugely popular phenomenon of scary movies. Author Adam Rockoff traces the highs and lows of the horror genre through the lens of his own obsessive fandom, born in the aisles of his local video store and nurtured with a steady diet of cable trash.

Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: 21 layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of "Playtex" - a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

Shooting Midnight Cowboy is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema but also the story of a country (and an industry) beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.