Entertainment Professionals

One of the most influential, admired, and innovative women of our time: fashion designer, philanthropist, wife, mother, and grandmother, Diane von Furstenberg shares stories about becoming the woman she wanted to be. Diane von Furstenberg started out with a suitcase full of jersey dresses and an idea of who she wanted to be - in her words, "the kind of woman who is independent and who doesn’t rely on a man to pay her bills."

Before the heyday of the Food Network, there was Chef Tell - TV persona of Friedemann Paul Erhardt, America's first TV showman chef. Big on personality and flavor, Chef Tell was once called by Philadelphia magazine the "affably roguish Bad Boy of the Philadelphia restaurant world." Chef Tell explores how a young German American chef became America's biggest TV celebrity chef of his time. Most of Chef Tell's forty million baby boomer viewers - a number comparable to Julia Child's - never knew his fascinating, hardscrabble life story. Until now.

The definitive biography of the king of the rock 'n' roll business, Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records.

This is the extraordinary, behind-the-scenes tale of how Woodstock went from a pipe dream to the most iconic rock concert of all time. Elliot Tiber, then known as Eliyahu Teichberg, was a budding painter in the 1960s. He also happened to be head of his local chamber of commerce - and owner of the yearly permit to hold summer music concerts. The rest, as they say, is history.

Do you want to make better music? How about achieving a professional sound? Or even being able to work in professional studios? Most musicians dream of making professional sounding music. But in order to create great music, they need to understand the steps and tools involved. With proper skill development, creativity, and knowledge, anyone can reach that professional level. This audiobook will show you how, whether you want to build a studio, work in one, start a label, or just make better music.

John Denver said, “I have a producer who looks like an accountant, and an accountant who looks like a producer”. Soberly dressed, unflashy, and a trained classical musician, in the golden age of the music business, Milt Okun stood out by not standing out. His legacy does that for him. He discovered and launched John Denver, and mentored him throughout his career. He created arrangements for Peter, Paul and Mary that the trio performed for half a century. He brought Placido Domingo a crossover career that made him an international star beyond the world of opera.

What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary inven­tion based on the rapid switching of communications sig­nals among a spread of different frequencies. Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today. Only a writer of Richard Rhodes’s caliber could do justice to this remarkable story. Unhappily married to a Nazi arms dealer, Lamarr fled to America at the start of World War II; she brought with her not only her theatrical talent....

Here's the inside story of Trump's legendary tirades, his convenient forgetfulness, and the infamous Donald Trump ego. O'Donnell tells how the Plaza staff catered to Trump's personal whims, and to those of his mistress - and how the man who built the largest gambling hall in the world knew little about running a casino. From the hypocrisy, bad deals, and the monumental debt to the untold tales of Marla and Ivana, Trumped! rips the mask off the mighty Trump facade - revealing a castle about to collapse.

Howard Hughes was one of the most amazing, intriguing, and controversial figures of the 20th century. He was the billionaire head of a giant corporation, a genius inventor, an ace pilot, a matinee-idol-handsome playboy, a major movie-maker who bedded a long list of Hollywood glamour queens, a sexual sultan with a harem of teenage consorts, a political influencer with intimate ties to Watergate, a Las Vegas kingpin, and, ultimately, a bizarre recluse.

The Entrepreneurial Muse explores principles of entrepreneurship in a classical music setting, inspiring students, emerging professionals, and educators alike to gain the broader perspective and strategic understanding required to negotiate the complex and ever-changing landscape of a professional music career. Listeners will acquire strategic and observational tools designed to expand their view of possible career paths in classical music, stimulate creative thinking about how their unique skills can find value in the 21st-century marketplace, and realize their professional goals.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

In Being Oscar,one of America’s most celebrated criminal defense attorneys recounts the stories and cases of his epic life. The Mafia’s go-to defender, he has tried an estimated 300 criminal cases, and won most of them. His roster of clients reads like a history of organized crime: Meyer Lansky, Nicky Scarfo, and "Lefty" Rosenthal, as well as Mike Tyson and boxing promoter Don King, along with a midget, a dentist, and a federal judge. After 35 years as a defender, he ran for mayor of Las Vegas, and America’s greatest Mob lawyer became the mayor of its sexiest city.

In this fresh, amusing, and inspirational autobiography, Mark Holden shines the light on the power of reinvention and provides an intriguing account of a variegated life as an award-winning rock musician, international recording artist, film and television sound producer, CEO for cutting-edge technology companies, fashion designer, and serial entrepreneur.

Almost everything you know about Mickey Mouse is wrong: He wasn’t Disney’s first star; Steamboat Willie wasn’t his first movie; Mickey wasn’t a nice guy - and Walt Disney didn’t invent him. In 1928, two very different best friends invented Mickey Mouse. And the success tore them apart. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks’ friendship is a story of betrayal, love, war, money, power, tragedy, intrigue, humor, despair, and hope. You’ll love them both - when you don’t want to drop anvils on their heads.

In Good Day!: The Paul Harvey Story, author Paul J. Batura follows the remarkable life of one of the founding fathers of the news media. Paul Harvey started his career during the Great Depression and narrated America's story day by day, through wars and peace, the threat of communism and the crumbling of old colonial powers, consumer booms and eventual busts.

My real story starts with a disaster, an unmitigated, pull-the-rug-from-under-you, clean-out-the-bank-account disaster. But had it not happened, The Police would never have risen to become the biggest rock band in the world; Jools Holland would not have ended up on TV; The Bangles, The Go-Go’s, R.E.M., and many other music stars might never have made it either. It’s strange how a fluke, a disaster, an unlikely event can lead to incredible results. But that is in essence what happened to me....

Most musicians dream of making professional-sounding music. But in order to create great music, they need to understand the steps and tools involved. With proper skill development, creativity, and knowledge, anyone can reach that professional level. This audiobook will show you how, whether you want to build a studio, work in one, start a label, or to make better music. Inside, you will find up-to-date, practical, and well-explained techniques in a professional guide for 2024 and beyond.

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham was only at home in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love - and that would change him forever.

Everyone knows the hits: "Mony Mony," "I Think We're Alone Now," "Crimson and Clover," "Crystal Blue Persuasion." They are nuggets of rock and pop history. However, few know the unlikely story of how these hits came to be. Tommy James had been performing in rock bands in the Michigan area since the age of 12. Prompted to record a few songs by a local disc jockey in 1964, Tommy chose an obscurity titled "Hanky Panky," which became a minor local hit that came and went.

The definitive biography of movie executive and philanthropist Sherry Lansing traces her groundbreaking journey to become the first female head of a major motion picture studio, shares behind-the-scenes tales from movie sets and Hollywood boardrooms, and explains what inspired her to walk away from it all to start the Sherry Lansing Foundation.