Selvbiografier

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessive colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising, but that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocratic and his wealthy Jewish wife, she would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated secret agents. Having fled Poland on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services long before the establishment of the SOE, and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa and was later parachuted into Occupied France, where an agent's life expectancy was only six weeks. Her courage, quick wit and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and saved the lives of several fellow officers, including one of her many lovers, just hours before their execution by the Gestapo. More importantly, perhaps, the intelligence she gathered was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort and her success was reflected in the fact that she was awarded the George Medal, the OBE and the Croix de Guerre.

In this New York Times bestseller, Hollywood power couple DeVon Franklin and Meagan Good candidly share their courtship and marriage, and the key to their successwaiting.President/CEO of Franklin Entertainment and former Sony Pictures executive DeVon Franklin and award-winning actress Meagan Good have learned firsthand that some people must wait patiently for the one to come into their lives. They spent years crossing paths but it wasnt until they were thrown together while working on the film Jumping the Broom that their storybook romance began. Faced with starting a new relationship and wanting to avoid potentially devastating pitfalls, DeVon and Meagan chose to do something almost unheard of in todays societyabstain from sex until they were married. DeVon and Meagan share the life-changing message that waitingrather than rushing a relationshipcan help you find the person youre meant to be with. The Wait is filled with candid his-and-hers accounts of the most important moments of their relationship and practical advice on how waiting for everythingfrom dating to sexcan transform relationships, allowing you to find a deep connection based on patience, trust, and faith.

Rapturous in its ability to depict the creative process, Words Without Music allows readers to experience that sublime moment of creative fusion when life merges with art. Biography lovers will be inspired by the story of a precocious Baltimore boy, the son of a music-shop owner, who entered college at age fifteen, before traveling to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger; Glass devotees will be fascinated by the stories behind Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, among so many other works. Whether recalling his experiences working at Bethlehem Steel, traveling in India, driving a cab in 1970s New York, or his professional collaborations with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, and Martin Scorsese, Words Without Music affirms the power of music to change the world.

Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music the band helped usher in-paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines what partnership means-and what happens when it dissolves.

Acclaimed historian Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth century France apart. Here is a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint. Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this refreshing new take on the medieval world. Helen Castor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a country in turmoil, a world where no-one - not Joan herself, nor the people around her, princes, bishops, soldiers or peasants - knew what would happen next.

'The most famous chess match of all time reconstructed in a style as compelling as that of a thriller.'Irish TimesFor decades, the USSR had dominated world chess. Evidence, according to Moscow, of the superiority of the Soviet system. But in 1972 along came the American, Bobby Fischer: insolent, arrogant, abusive, vain, greedy, vulgar, bigoted, paranoid and obsessive - and apparently unstoppable.Against him was Boris Spassky: complex, sensitive, the most un-Soviet of champions. As the authors reveal, when Spassky began to lose, the KGB decided to step in . . .'The authors build to a crescendo with fascinating details, taking the reader inside the two camps in Reykjavik . . . General readers will savor a marvelous portrait of East against West, with perceived societal superiority as the real prize.' Kirkus Reviews'Pure drama . . . The most cool, ruthless and rational player the world has ever seen.' Independent'Fischer seemed to thrive on complaints, tantrums and ultimatums, treating the exercise as a game, not of chess but of Chicken . . . It is precisely these factors that make for such a gripping read.' Sunday Times

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane's life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable - he writes about the saxophonist's unique sound.

A memoir of land, family and perseverance from one of the most influential writers in America.In this moving and surprising book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history - and America's. Where I Was From, in Didion's words, "e;represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, misapprehensions and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely."e;The book is a haunting narrative of how her own family moved west with the frontier from the birth of her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother in Virginia in 1766 to the death of her mother on the edge of the Pacific in 2001; of how the wagon-train stories of hardship and abandonment and endurance created a culture in which survival would seem the sole virtue. Didion examines how the folly and recklessness in the very grain of the California settlement led to the California we know today - a state mortgaged first to the railroad, then to the aerospace industry, and overwhelmingly to the federal government.Joan Didion's unerring sense of America and its spirit, her acute interpretation of its institutions and literature, and her incisive questioning of the stories it tells itself make this fiercely intelligent book a provocative and important tour de force from one of America's greatest writers.

'A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.' Michael Frayn The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather.Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history. 'A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph

Tim Burton is one of the great modern-day visionaries of cinema, a director who has fabricated his own deliciously nightmarish universe in movies as extraordinary as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks! and The Nightmare before Christmas - not to mention his twisted takes on the tales of Batman, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Following the release of his re-imagining of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with long-time comrade Johnny Depp (who also provides a new foreword here), this updated and fully illustrated new edition of the definitive Burton interview book casts light on Burton's Burbank childhood, his early work at Disney, the recurrent themes and stunning designs of his movies, and the creative obsessions that fuel them.

'There is no doubt that [Quartered Safe Out Here] is one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War' John KeeganLife and death in Nine Section, a small group of hard-bitten and (to modern eyes) possibly eccentric Cumbrian borderers with whom the author, then nineteen, served in the last great land campaign of World War II, when the 17th Black Cat Division captured a vital strongpoint deep in Japanese territory, held it against counter-attack and spearheaded the final assault in which the Japanese armies were, to quote General Slim, "e;torn apart"e;.

A third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers 'Angela's Ashes' and ''Tis'. In 'Teacher Man', Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City.Frank McCourt arrived in New York as a young, impoverished and idealistic Irish boy - but who crucially had an American passport, having been born in Brooklyn. He didn't know what he wanted except to stop being hungry and to better himself. On the subway he watched students carrying books. He saw how they read and underlined and wrote things in the margin and he liked the look of this very much. He joined the New York Public Library and every night when he came back from his hotel work he would sit up reading the great novels.Building his confidence and his determination, he talked his way into NYU and gained a literature degree and so began a teaching career that was to last thirty years, working in New York's public high schools. Frank estimates that he probably taught 12,000 children during this time and it is on this relationship between teacher and student that he reflects in 'Teacher Man', the third in his series of memoirs.The New York high school is a restless, noisy and unpredictable place and Frank believes that it was his attempts to control and cajole these thousands of children into learning and achieving something for themselves that turned him into a writer. At least once a day someone would put up their hand and shout 'Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, tell us about Ireland, tell us about how poor you were...' Through sharing his own life with these kids he learnt the power of narrative storytelling, and out of the invaluable experience of holding 12,000 people's attention came 'Angela's Ashes'.Frank McCourt was a legend in such schools as Stuyvesant high school - long before he became the figure he is now, he would receive letters from former students telling him how much his teaching influenced and inspired them - and now in 'Teacher Man' he shares his reminiscences of those thirty years as well as revealing how they led to his own success with 'Angela's Ashes' and ''Tis'.

Miles Davis is one of the most revered artists of the last 100 years, regardless of the art form. Credited with ushering in a new age of jazz more than once, Davis’s unique perception of the world is best known through his memorable music and is arguably more popular now than ever. In later years, he earned additional acclaim as an abstract painter, with many of his originals selling for thousands of dollars and continuing to escalate in value.  But his sense of personal expression didn’t stop with music and painting. Miles Davis’s restless, rebellious personality found an additional creative outlet through his interest in fashion.  From the big shouldered, pleated suits of the forties, to the Ivy League look of the fifties, the sleek Italian suits of the sixties and the more avant-garde looks of the last twenty years of his life, Miles Davis blazed a fashion trail whose impact is still being felt today.MILESSTYLE is the first book to examine Miles Davis, the artist, using himself as a creative canvas.  MILESSTYLE features observations from notable fashionistas like Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Ferry and Lloyd Boston, as well as friends and bandmates like Quincy Jones, Ron Carter, Clark Terry and more regarding his sartorial evolution as well as what his style said about the music and the man.  

The star of some of the most beloved films of Hollywood's golden age--including Bullitt, The Great Escape, and The Magnificent Seven--Steve McQueen's unflappably roguish persona earned him the nickname "The King of Cool" . Steve McQueen in His Own Words lets us hear directly from this iconoclastic actor through a wide array of sources.

The shocking, gripping, and at times darkly hilarious bestselling memoir of Nikki Sixx’s yearlong war with a vicious heroin addiction, featuring exclusive new content.When Mötley Crüe was at the height of its fame, there wasn’t any drug Nikki Sixx wouldn’t do. He spent days—sometimes alone, sometimes with other addicts, friends, and lovers—in a coke- and heroin-fueled daze. The highs were high, and Nikki's journal entries reveal some euphoria and joy. But the lows were lower, often ending with Nikki in his closet, surrounded by drug paraphernalia and wrapped in paranoid delusions. Here, Nikki shares the diary entries—some poetic, some scatterbrained, some bizarre—of those dark times. Joining him are Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Slash, Rick Nielsen, Bob Rock, and a host of ex-managers, ex-lovers, and more. Brutally honest, utterly riveting, and surprisingly moving, The Heroin Diaries follows Nikki during the year he plunged to rock bottom—and his courageous decision to pick himself up and start living again.

The memoirs of a Panzer commander who served on all major fronts of the Second World War. A professional soldier, Hans von Luck joined the Panzerwaffe in its earliest days, serving under Erwin Rommel.

The badass adventurers in this collection are all fearless, intelligent, compassionate and curious about the world - and they all happen to be female. From arctic expeditions and endurance races to wingsuit flying and mountain climbing, they have set the bar high for what women are capable of. These are their inspiring stories.

"Excellent" The Times"Kevin''s immense knowledge shines on every page." Gary Lineker"A football book by a fan for the fans. A treasure trove..." Alan Davies"An entertaining romp through the back alleys and glamour parks of English football." FourFourTwoPartly autobiographical, partly polemical, but mostly funny, Who Are Ya? is a snapshot of modern football, exploring the history of all 92 English Football League clubs.During his time as a broadcaster, Kevin Day has spoken to thousands of football players, managers and most importantly fans from across the generations. He spent thousands of hours crossing the country on trains, planes, automobiles, coaches ΓÇô and once a donkey called Lightning ΓÇô watching football at all levels. This book is the result of that: a tale of being chased down a railway line at Cardiff, a story of meeting George Best, an account of a lady getting her first Hull City tattoo at the age of 80!Crisply funny and with a host of celebrity football fan contributors ΓÇô including Stephen Fry, Jo Brand, Alfie Boe, Eddie Izzard, Gabby Logan, and Romesh Ranganathan ΓÇô Who Are Ya? celebrates the joys and miseries of being a football supporter.

The Pet Shop Boys are one of the most successful and unusual bands of the last five decades. They are the pop duo that proves pop music can be modern, ecstatic and playful as well as serious and intelligent, winning them legions of devoted fans throughout the world. In 1989, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe invited journalist Chris Heath and photographer Lawrence Watson to shadow them around Hong Kong, Japan and the UK as they embarked on their first-ever tour. This book is the result: an immersive portrait giving access into the duo‿s inner sanctum, showing them in brilliantly observed detail as they work, relax, gossip, argue and occasionally try to make sense of what they do. ‿As clear a picture as could be wished for of the seething mass of elegant contradictions that is the Pet Shop Boys‿ on-the-road experience.‿ Independent on Sunday‿This superbly reported book transcends tired rock journalism cliché. It‿s about what it means to be a pop star, what it means to be a Pet Shop Boy‿ how to love pop, hold it to a higher standard and subvert its expectations.‿ Laura Snapes

No other pop group in recent history has faced fame with such intelligence, humour and shrewdness as the Pet Shop Boys. it is an unusually intimate portrait of two maverick British musicians always reluctant to compromise. 'There was a time when the Pet Shop Boys seemed to exist entirely on radio, television and in magazines.

The complete text of the bestselling narrative history of the Vietnam War-based on the celebrated PBS television series by Ken Burns and Lynn NovickMore than forty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, but its memory continues to loom large in the national psyche. In this intimate history, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns have crafted a fresh and insightful account of the long and brutal conflict that reunited Vietnam while dividing the United States as nothing else had since the Civil War. From the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tet Offensive to Hamburger Hill and the fall of Saigon, Ward and Burns trace the conflict that dogged three American presidents and their advisers. But most of the voices that echo from these pages belong to less exalted men and women-those who fought in the war as well as those who fought against it, both victims and victors-willing for the first time to share their memories of Vietnam as it really was. A magisterial tour de force, The Vietnam War is an engrossing history of America's least-understood conflict.

McKenzie Wark invents a new genre for another gender: not a memoir but an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.Another genre for another gender.What if you were trans and didn't know it? What if there were some hole in your life and you didn't even know it was there? What if you went through life not knowing why you only felt at home in your body at peak moments of drugs and sex? What if you expended your days avoiding an absence, a hole in being? Reverse Cowgirl is not exactly a memoir. The author doesn't, in the end, have any answers as to who she really is or was, although maybe she figures out what she could become.Traveling from Sydney in the 1980s to New York today, Reverse Cowgirl is a comedy of errors, chronicling the author's failed attempts at being gay and at being straight across the shifting political and media landscapes of the late twentieth century. Finding that the established narratives of being transgender don't seem to apply to her, Wark borrows from the genres of autofiction, fictocriticism, and new narrative to create a writing practice that can discover the form of a life outside existing accounts of trans experience: an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.

During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to introduce and establish the language of film music. Indeed, revered contemporary film composers like John Williams and Danny Elfman use the same techniques that Steiner himself perfected in his iconic work for such classics as Casablanca, King Kong,Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and over 200 other titles. And Steiner''s private life was a drama all its own. Born into a legendary Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood''s top-paid composers. But he was also constantly in debtΓÇöthe inevitable result ofgambling, financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son. Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by an innate optimism, a quick wit, and an instinctive gift for melody, all of which would come to the fore as he met and worked with luminaries like Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, the Warner Bros., David O. Selznick, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, and Frank Capra. In Music by Max Steiner, the first full biography of Steiner, author Steven C. Smith interweaves the dramatic incidents of Steiner''s personal life with anaccessible exploration of his composing methods and experiences, bringing to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art with some of the greatest film scores in cinema history.

n 1958, a talented young musician by the name of Harry Webb adopted a new stage name - and as the saying goes, the rest is history. Cliff Richard, first with The Drifters and then backed by The Shadows, dominated the British music scene in the late 1950s and early 60s with memorable hits such as Move It, Living Doll and Summer Holiday.He was the UK¿s answer to Elvis, and led a group of artists that included the likes of Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde as they took the nation by storm with their new and exciting rock ¿n¿ roll sensation.But, while the popularity of others would be replaced by Beatlemania, Cliff was only just getting started. As time¿s moved on he''s adapted his style to softer rock and middle-of-the-road pop, and an increased focus on his faith has even seen him venture into contemporary Christian music.In an unrivalled career that has now spanned six decades, Cliff has enjoyed unprecedented chart success, came agonisingly close to a Eurovision Song Contest win and has cemented himself as one of the best-selling British performers of all time.This special picture-packed edition explores his 60 years at the top, and celebrates the life and times of a true music legend.

***LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK AWARD 2020 'You need this. Trust me, buy it now.' - Weekly GG'a triumph... a must-read for newcomers and veterans alike' - ForbesAward-winning broadcaster Paul 'Redeye' Chaloner brings us the definitive book on esports, the fastest growing entertainment phenomenon in the world today.From slapping coins down on arcade cabinets to the lights of Madison Square Garden, competitive video gaming has come a long way. Today, esports is a billion-dollar industry, the best players becoming stars in their own right, battling for eight-figure prizes in front of a global audience of tens of millions. From Call of Duty to Counter-Strike, FIFA to Fortnite, a generation of players have turned multiplayer video games from a pastime into a profession. But there are questions. How did we get here? What exactly is competitive gaming - is it a sport? How much money do the top stars make? Do you really have to retire at 23? And just what the hell is Dota? This is esports (and How to Spell it) addresses all of this and more, as award-winning broadcaster Paul 'Redeye' Chaloner takes you inside the unstoppable rise of pro gaming to reveal the bitter rivalries, scandals and untold history of esports, from origins to sold-out arenas. With his trademark wit - and unrivalled access - Paul delivers the definitive book on the fastest-growing entertainment phenomenon in the world today.'Paul Chaloner is a living legend in the esports space.' - Jason Lake, founder and CEO of the esports team Complexity Gaming'Terrific stories and insights from the inside.' - T.L. Taylor, professor of Comparative Media Studies

Penned by two journalists in close contact with Ted Bundy's friends and relatives, as well as spending 150 hours interviewing him on Death Row, Ted Bundy: The Only Living Witness is the definitive account of America's most notorious criminal, as told by the people who knew him best.

At the age of fifty-four, Adrian Adger-church minister in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and recently married-discovered he had inoperable, incurable cancer. He was full of questions:Why me? Is God punishing me? Is my life effectively over? Should I pray for healing? Will I ever know joy again? By sharing his journey with us, Adrian explains the extraordinary difference that Jesus Christ has made to him as he faces a bleak diagnosis. Although Adrian is facing cancer, he is 'standing tall'-and not only because he is over 6 foot 7 inches tall.This book will encourage and help anyone who is facing cancer themselves and point them to the God who will see them through the darkest struggles because he loves and cares for them."With courageous and vivid honesty, Adrian answers many challenging questions that people, including Christians, often confront when they discover they have incurable cancer."Dr Cherith Semple, Cancer Care Specialist