Reality Biographies

Millions of people go to enormous lengths to achieve fame. Fame is woven into our lives in ways that may have been unimaginable in years past. Mining decades of experience, writer, director, producer, and actress Justine Bateman writes a visceral, intimate look at the experience of Fame. Combining the internal reality-shift of the famous, theories on the public’s behavior at each stage of a famous person’s career, and the experiences of other famous performers, Bateman takes the listener inside and outside the emotions of Fame.

In April 1997, pretty, 22-year-old Jacine Gielinski stopped her car at a red light in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She had no idea that the two young men looking at her from the car next to hers would in that moment decide she would be their target for unspeakable horrors.

Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Dawn of the New Everything is a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility. Through a fascinating look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, an interdisciplinary scientist and father of the term virtual reality, exposes VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and gives listeners a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world.

In the tradition of Neil Postman's masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Audience of One shows how American media have shaped American society and politics, by interweaving two crucial stories. The first story follows the evolution of television from the three-network era of the 20th century, which joined millions of Americans in a shared monoculture, into today's zillion-channel, internet-atomized universe, which sliced and diced them into fractious, alienated subcultures. The second story is a cultural critique of Donald Trump.

Taking unexpected risks, daring to do what no one has done before, that's the reality of Amy Dumas, the remarkable woman behind WWE's Lita. Amy found trainers who saw her determination and her heart. Among them were the two local North Carolina stars who had just signed with WWE, Matt and Jeff Hardy. Amy formed an instant bond with the dynamic Hardy Boyz, whose spectacular style and high-flying bravado inspired her own bold in-ring style.

Complete with stories, tips, tricks, and advice from your favorite Bachelor alumni, and filled with all the juicy details Courtney fans and foes alike want to know, I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends is a must-listen for every member of Bachelor nation.

At the Mind's Limits is the story of one man's incredible struggle to understand the reality of horror. In five autobiographical essays, Amery describes his survival - mental, moral, and physical - through the enormity of the Holocaust. Above all, this masterful record of introspection tells of a young Viennese intellectual's fervent vision of human nature and the betrayal of that vision.

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.

When Lina’s idyllic childhood descends into mental chaos in her teenage years, Lina resorts to recording her thoughts in diaries, online chats, and emails to make sense of her anguish. Through Lina’s heart-wrenching words, the listener steps into her broken inner world to experience firsthand the obsessions, irrationality, angst, and ruthlessness of teenage borderline personality disorder.

In March 2015, millions worldwide were captivated by news reports of the dramatic rescue of an 18-month-old girl, Lily Groesbeck, who'd somehow survived 14 hours in an overturned car partially submerged in an icy-cold Utah river after her mother apparently lost control of the vehicle. A voice the four responding officers assumed was the child's mother still trapped inside spurred them on: "Help me, help me." Yet once the two victims were recovered, it was clear that the voice could not have come from Lily's mother: She'd been killed on impact.

A tell-all memoir by the star of MTV's The Hills and E4's Made in Chelsea. Stephanie Pratt is the consummate reality star. Since 2007 her life has been lived almost as much on the small screen as off it and constantly analysed in gossip columns. In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother house.

Before Colton Underwood captured the hearts of millions on The Bachelor, he was a goofy, socially awkward, overweight adolescent who succeeded on the football field while struggling with personal insecurities off it. An All-American gridiron hero, he was also a complex, sometimes confused, soft-hearted romantic wondering how these contradictions fit together. Old-fashioned and out of step with the swipe-right dating culture of today, he was saving the most intimate part of life for the love of his life. If only he could find her.

In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Resolution gives you great stories with practical ideas for today's times – for your mind, your body, and your wallet! Everyone makes resolutions – for New Year’s, for big birthdays, for new school years. In fact, most of us are so good at resolutions that we make the same ones year after year. They can be life-changing or really quite simple. Listen to real stories from real people about their year-round resolutions.

Part-memoir, part girl's guide, Now Accepting Roses is full of never-before-told stories from behind the scenes of one of America's most popular television shows - but this book isn't just for fans of The Bachelor. This book is for anyone navigating the crazy and exciting world of finding real love.

Making films about club kids, royalty, hustlers, and televangelists, and working with icons such as such as Britney Spears, Tammy Faye Bakker, and RuPaul, the book is packed with glorious insider gossip and amazing celebrity stories. These are the riotous tales behind the shows that would make screen-agers of us all.

Imagine losing your grip on reality and plunging into a nightmarish yet fantastical realm of schizophrenia. This memoir is one Harvard grad's account of several psychotic episodes he's endured over the years. A constant pause-resister, the adrenaline doses keep coming from start to finish. These vivid accounts of psychoses put the listeners in a front-row seat of some of the spectacular recesses of human imagination - only the listener has the option to check out at any time.

Mackenzie McKee has grown up in front of the world as part of MTV's hit reality shows 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom 3, and Teen Mom OG. Fans have experienced the ups and downs of motherhood and marriage right alongside Mackenzi - from difficult childbirths due to her type 1 diabetes diagnosis, to the untimely death of her beloved mother, Angie Douthit. But through it all, Mackenzie never falters in her deep love of family and God. In her new memoir, Mackenzie proves there is more to her than what the glaring spotlight of fame has shown.

Authored by creative and well-known ballet dancer and educator Anna Duvall, Dancing into My Bolshoi Dream is Anna's amazing true story of survival through the harsh conditions of Moscow at a time when the newly-formed Russian mafia has more control over Russia than the government. She encounters adventures, trials, and heartaches along the way - including culture shock, language barriers, a first love, and a gang of Gypsy kids.

Although Libby Peyton hailed from a small Ohio town, she branched out from attending a very small liberal arts school, which included a junior year sojourn in Japan, to a doctoral program at a major midwestern university. Her studies in sociology were interrupted, at least as she likes to think, by the onset of schizophrenia and a subsequent hospitalization. Despite the ongoing, unrelenting somatic symptoms, delusions, and suicidal ideation she experienced, she held down a low-level administrative job in a university for twenty years, all the while keeping her mental health status a secret.