Biografier

100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a PoemImplicit in poetry is the idea that we are enriched by heartbreaks, by the recognition and understanding of suffering?not just our own suffering but also the pain of others. We are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a record. And poets are people who are determined to leave a trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into art that speaks to others.In 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, poet and advocate Edward Hirsch selects 100 poems, from the nineteenth century to the present, and illuminates them, unpacking context and references to help the reader fully experience the range of emotion and wisdom within these poems. For anyone trying to process grief, loneliness, or fear, this collection of poetry will be your guide in trying times.

Selma Blair has played many archetypal roles: gullible ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Fire-starter in Hellboy. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Face of Chanel. Cover model. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best for being one thing: a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Selma Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, shocking memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood and, finally, the simultaneous devastation and surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair's Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement.

Fifty years after their marriage, Jack and Michael's story is one of the milestone events in the fight for equal rights, and this memoir the unmissable account a remarkable couple.On September 3, 1971, at the dawn of the modern gay movement, Michael McConnell and Jack Baker exchanged vows in the first legal same-sex wedding in the United States. But the battle to get there - legal and emotional - was only the start of their incredible lives together.Jack enrolled in law school, keeping his promise to Michael that he would figure out a way to marry. He did, but the repercussions would echo not only through their lives, but through those of everyo gay person in the US who ever wanted what this one pioneering couple did: a happy family life. This is the story of how they met, how they married, and what came after. And one wedding heard 'round the world.'A beautiful, well-written love story that is heartrending and ultimately heartwarming'Robert Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen Boy'A fascinating story of love and struggle that reads like a novel'Washington Book Review

The long-awaited memoir from international football ambassador, former co-owner of Arsenal FC and legend of the game: David Dein.There's no doubt that Dein has been one of the most significant and influential figures in British football for over three decades - operating at club and international level. He was a prime mover in the creation of the Premier League, hugely influential within the England set-up and, of course, was the mastermind - along with Arsène Wenger - in creating the glory days of Arsenal Football Club, leading the team for almost a quarter of a century. Connected to the most senior figures across the global game as a friend, rival, advisor, and collaborator, Dein has been central to major turning points in the game.Calling the Shots is part memoir, part inspirational meditation on leadership, teamwork and how to invest in people. It tracks the full story of David's remarkable life and career to date, recounting never-before-told stories from the inside, intriguing characters met along the way, and discussing the past, present and future of football. An entertaining and motivational read for football and non-football fans alike, Calling the Shots is a dynamic masterclass in how to succeed in business and life.

"Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation. Beginning in 1930, when Gaddis was at boarding school, and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and are all the more valuable because Gaddis was not an autobiographical writer. Here we see him forging his first novel, The Recognitions, while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award-winning J R amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter's Gothic; then teaches himself enough about the law to indite A Frolic of His Own, which earned him another National Book Award. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel, Agapåe Agape, as he lies dying"--

In The Cinematic Connery A. J. Black delves into Sean Connery's life for more than mere biography, exploring not just the enormously varied pictures he made but also the sweep of a career that crossed movie eras as well as decades.

"She gave up everything - and changed the world. A riveting novel based on the true story of the woman who stopped a pandemic, from the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe. In 1940s and '50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one's life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world's best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor--often the only woman in the room--she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine--and to decide what is forgivable, and how much should be sacrificed, in pursuit of the cure"--

"Love is a boundless ocean, in which the heavens are but a flake of foam." For more than eight hundred years, the poetry of Jalalu'l-Din Rumi has touched and inspired people of all faiths and cultures. Considered the greatest mystical poet of Iran, Rumi is also known as "the Sufi poet of love." His stirring and mesmerizing words have gained a new appreciation in the western world, influencing celebrities and musicians from Deepak Chopra to Coldplay and Madonna. Rumi produced an enormous body of work--as many as 2,500 mystical odes; 25,000 rhyming couplets; and 1,600 quatrains--each reflecting his fervent belief in the transformative powers of longing, love, and spirituality. This beautifully designed hardcover volume presents more than one hundred of Rumi's finest verses, including "The Marriage of True Minds," "The Children of Light," "The Man Who Looked Back on His Way to Hell," "The Ascending Soul," "The Pear-Tree of Illusion," "The Riddles of God," and many more.

"Stephen Hawking's closest collaborator offers the intellectual superstar's final thoughts on the cosmos-a dramatic revision of the theory that made him the heir to Einstein's legacy. Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. Pondering this mystery led Hawking to study the big bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse-countless different universes, most far too bizarre to harbor life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked shoulder to shoulder for twenty years on a new quantum theory of the cosmos. As their journey took them deeper into the big bang, they were startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws themselves transform and simplify until particles, forces, and even time itself fades away. Once upon a time, perhaps, there was no time. This led them to a revolutionary idea: the laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes shape. On the Origin of Time takes the reader on a quest to understand questions bigger than our universe, peering into the extreme quantum physics of black holes and the big bang and drawing on the latest developments in string theory. As Hawking's final days drew near, the two collaborators developed a final theory proposing their radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of our universe. Hertog offers a striking new vision that ties together more deeply than ever the nature of the universe's birth with our existence. This new theory profoundly transforms the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove Hawking's biggest legacy"--

"Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian--but not an historian of the Jews--is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics"--

In this exhilarating memoir, three-time World Champion and Olympic gold-medalist Nathan Chen tells the story of his remarkable journey to success, reflecting on his life as a Chinese American figure skater and the joys and challenges he has experienced?including the tremendous sacrifices he and his family made, and the physical and emotional pain he endured. When three-year-old Nathan Chen tried on his first pair of figure skates, magic happened. But the odds of this young boy?one of five children born to Chinese immigrants?competing and making it into the top echelons of figure skating were daunting. Chen's family didn't have the resources or access to pay for expensive coaches, rink time, and equipment. But Nathan's mother, Hetty Wang, refused to fail her child. Recognizing his tremendous talent and passion, she stepped up as his coach, making enormous sacrifices to give Nathan the opportunity to compete in this exclusive world.That dedication eventually paid off at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, where Chen?reverently known as the ?Quad King??won gold, becoming the first Asian-American man to stand at the highest podium in figure skating. In this moving and inspiring memoir Chen opens up for the first time, chronicling everything it took to pursue his dreams. Bolstered by his unwavering passion and his family's unconditional support, Chen reveals the most difficult times he endured, and how he overcame each obstacle?from his disappointment at the 2018 Olympic Games, to competing during a global pandemic, to the extreme physical and mental toll the sport demands.Pulling back the curtain on the figure skating world and the Olympics, Chen reveals what it was really like at the Beijing Games and competing on the US team in the same city his parents had left?and his grandmother still lived. Poignant and unfiltered, told in his own words, One Jump at a Time is the story of one extraordinary young man?and a testament to the love of a family and the power of persistence, grit, and passion.This memoir includes 16 pages of color photographs.

By Philippe Margotin with a foreword by David Sinclair. Pop Rock Icons takes us into the extraordinary world of London, England at the time of the greatest countercultural upheaval that the country has known.

A renowned scholar investigates the human crisis' that Albert Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant study of Camus's life and influence for those readers who, in Camuss words, ';cannot live without dialogue and friendship.'As Franceand all of the worldwas emerging from the depths of World War II, Camus summed up what he saw as the human crisis': We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world. In the years after he wrote these words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity, and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946for his first and only visit to the United Stateshe found an ebullient nation celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was dead, but ';we know perfectly well,' he argued, ';that the venom is not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts.' All around him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that we see all around, and within ourselves, today. Camus's voice speaks like few others to the heart of an affliction that infects our country and our world, a world divided against itself. His generation called him ';the conscience of Europe.' That same voice speaks to us and our world today with a moral integrity and eloquence so sorely lacking in the public arena. Few authors, sixty years after their deaths, have more avid readers, across more continents, than Albert Camus. Camus has never been a trend, a fad, or just a good read. He was always and still is a companion, a guide, a challenge, and a light in darkened times. This keenly insightful story of an intellectual is an ideal volume for those readers who are first discovering Camus, as well as a penetrating exploration of the author for all those who imagine they have already plumbed Camus' depthsa supremely timely book on an author whose time has come once again.

As one of club culture's most notorious - and best loved - figures, Tony is a complete force of nature. Here he tells the most extraordinary stories of depravity and hedonism, of week-long benders and extreme self-destruction - and of recovery, redemption, friendship and the joy of a good tune.'If you want to change your life but can't.. I strongly advise you read this book' TRACEY EMIN'This is a story that should never have been told' KATE MOSS 'I love this man so much. He was, and always will be, my knight in shining Westwood.' DAVINA MCCALL'Anyone can get a party started, but no one keeps it going like Fat Tony, the energy never dips andwhat a life he's lived.. He's a tosser but we still love him.' ELTON JOHN & DAVID FURNISHDJ 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. From his childhood on an estate in Battersea where he honed his petty criminality, was abused by an older man and made friends with Boy George, to his teenage years spent parading the Kings Road in his latest (stolen) clobber, working as a receptionist for a prostitute, hanging out with Leigh Bowery and Sue Tilley and creating his drag persona, to his life as DJ to the stars and his spiral into serious drug addiction. Now, he is 16 years sober and, alongside working to help others overcome addiction, DJing for everyone from Elton John to Louis Vuitton and the Beckhams - and running one of lockdown's most popular Instagram accounts with its wickedly funny memes. It is all here in horrifying, glorious, heart-breaking detail.'Whenever we host a party, Tony is our first port of call. He'll have everyone dancing, guarantee great memories, and the stories he tells... Just don't f*****g ask for any requests!' DAVID & VICTORIA BECKHAM'There is nobody in London, let alone the world who has lived a more extraordinary life... his journey from villain to real life hero is one of the most beautiful examples of humanity I have ever witnessed. I wouldn't be without this c*nt.' KELLY OSBOURNE'Hearing Tony's story is brutal and shocking. He is nothing short of a miracle and his willingness to be of service to others seeking sobriety is testament to how far he has come from the days of pulling his own teeth out.' MARC JACOBS

Dispensing with the patriarchal bullshit, Kirsty Loehr exposes centuries of outrageous straightwashing

"For millennia the location of the Nile River's headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, ... European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe-- and extend their colonial empires. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated soldier ... Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined to make his mark ... There was a third man on both expeditions ... whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan's army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, ... neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived"--Publisher marketing.