New Biographies Memoirs

Telling the remarkable tale of a man who is still remembered on the streets of New Orleans and in the hearts of professional-wrestling fans, this book aims to restore the overlooked Junkyard Dog to his proper place in the history books. In 1979, Sylvester Ritter, also known as the Junkyard Dog, managed to break one of the final color barriers in the sport by becoming the first Black wrestler named undisputed top star of his promotion, and this biography reveals all the famous feuds and business back stories that made him a wrestling legend.

Heath Ledger rapidly rose to fame to become one of the most acclaimed actors of our time. Although his career was brief, spanning little over 10 years, he shot up like a rising star. People still remember his innovative portrayal of the Joker and so many other roles with awe.

In March 2011, a major police investigation was opened in the search for missing Swindon local, Sian O'Callaghan. When taxi driver Christopher Halliwell was arrested, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher didn't expect what happened next. After the body of another missing girl, Becky Godden-Edwards, was uncovered, the police had two murders on their hands and one suspect, but how many more unsolved murders could Christopher Halliwell be responsible for?

As dramatic as any great literary classic, and told in Jim Weiss’s warm, accessible style, these stories reveal the personal, professional, and societal challenges these geniuses overcame, and shine a light on the nature of genius itself. And as a clear, family-friendly introduction to mathematics and science, listeners will find an inspiring, welcoming world opening up.

Charles Bowden writes, “this book is not about how the world ends but how a new world is being born.” Murder City explores this new world, focusing on the idea that Mexico is collapsing into a permanent culture of violence. Bowden focuses on Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, last year alone 1,607 people were murdered, a number that is set to accelerate in 2009.

Bob Schlegel grew up on a struggling family farm, and like his entrepreneurial father, he took charge of his destiny by starting his own businesses - often more than one at a time. He and his wife Myrna partnered together in their early endeavors and raised a family of entrepreneurs. Their diverse startups included a chain of 15 superior nursing and retirement centers, as well as the nation's leading manufacturer of paving stones and landscaping materials.

In Alvin York, Douglas V. Mastriano sorts fact from myth in the first full-length biography of York in decades. He meticulously examines York's youth in the hills of east Tennessee, his service in the Great War, and his return to a quiet civilian life dedicated to charity. By reviewing artifacts recovered from the battlefield using military terrain analysis, forensic study, and research in both German and American archives, Mastriano reconstructs the events of October 8th and corroborates the recorded accounts.

Taking the lessons Machiavelli recorded in his political masterpiece The Prince, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, shows how they can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, Powell provides a gripping account of life inside Number 10 and draws lessons from those experiences for anyone today who has access to the levers of power.

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of New Order. 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.

Burned-out after years of doing development work around the world, William Powers spent a season in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cabin off the grid in North Carolina, as recounted in his award-winning memoir Twelve by Twelve. Could he live a similarly minimalist life in the heart of New York City? To find out, Powers and his wife jettisoned 80 percent of their stuff, left their 2,000-square-foot Queens townhouse, and moved into a 350-square-foot "micro-apartment" in Greenwich Village.

In 1895, a 22-year-old Italian seamstress named Maria Barbella was accused of murdering her lover, Domenico Cataldo, after he seduced her and broke his promise to marry her. Following a sensational trial filled with inept lawyers, dishonest reporters and editors, and a crooked judge repaying political favors, the illiterate immigrant became the first woman sentenced to the newly invented electric chair at Sing Sing, where she was also the first female prisoner. Enter Cora Slocomb, who launched the first campaign against the death penalty to save Maria.

At 12.16 a.m. on Wednesday, June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded in the service pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. A 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was found holding the smoking gun and convicted of murder. That is the official history - but Tim Tate and Brad Johnson have uncovered a different story.

In 2010, a brave whistleblower alerted the police to Dr. Stan Li's corrupt pain management clinic in Queens, New York. Li spent years supplying more than 70 patients a day with oxycodone and Xanax, trading prescriptions for cash. Emergency room doctors, psychiatrists, and desperate family members warned him that his patients were at risk of death, but he would not stop.

Sudhir Venkatesh, acclaimed sociologist at Columbia University and author of Gang Leader for a Day, returns to the streets to connect the dots of New York's divergent economic worlds and crack the code of the city's underground economy. Based on Venkatesh's interviews with prostitutes and socialites, immigrants and academics, high end drug bosses and street-level dealers, Floating City exposes the underground as the city's true engine of social transformation and economic prosperity - revealing a wholly unprecedented vision of New York.

As enlightening as The Facebook Effect, Elon Musk, and Chaos Monkeys - the compelling, behind-the-scenes story of the creation of one of the most essential applications ever devised, and the rag-tag team that built it and changed how we navigate the world. Never Lost Again chronicles the evolution of mapping technology - the "overnight success 20 years in the making." Bill Kilday takes us behind the scenes of the tech’s development, and introduces to the team that gave us not only Google Maps but Google Earth, and most recently, Pokémon Go.

An inventor, adventurer, entrepreneur, collector, and entertainer, and son of legendary scientist-astronaut Owen Garriott, Richard Garriott de Cayeux has been behind some of the most exciting undertakings of our time. A legendary pioneer of the online gaming industry - and a member of every gaming Hall of Fame - Garriott invented the multi-player online game, and coined the term "Avatar" to describe an individual's online character. In this fascinating memoir, Garriott invites listeners on the great adventure that is his life.

1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape-recorded her memories. With those tapes and original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles Norma's rise and fall with the social history of New Orleans.

E. M. Forster’s homosexuality was the central fact of his life. Between Wilde’s imprisonment and the Stonewall riots, Forster led a long, strange, and imaginative life as a gay man. He preserved a vast archive of his private life - a history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in a happier time. Seeing Forster’s life through the lens of his sexuality, Wendy Moffat’s biography offers us a dramatic new view - revealing his astuteness as a social critic, his political bravery, and his prophetic vision of gay intimacy.

In 2001, Paul Bacon was a typical young New Yorker: hip, liberal, overeducated, a little aimless. But then 9/11 happened. Hearing a call to duty and lacking any better employment options, he joined the NYPD, with the earnest hope of making his hometown a safer place. Silly him.

This riveting biography of a Massachusetts slave boy who fought in the Revolutionary War illuminates race relations in the Northern colonies, early battles of the revolution, and the experiences of Black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.