For over 40 years a myth has surrounded the Beatles -- one that smoothed the rough edges and filled in the fault lines, until now.
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for.
Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; and at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness. It is all here, the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.
One of the most extraordinary true survival stories ever told -- Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home.
It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands. Climbing down a wedged boulder, a rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose, pinning his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall.
And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston.
With scant water and little food, what does one do in the face of almost certain death? A brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing narrative.
On July 20, 1969, the world stood still to watch 38-year-old American astronaut Neil Armstrong become the first person ever to step on the surface of another heavenly body. Perhaps no words in human history became better known than those few he uttered at that historic moment.
Upon his return to earth, Armstrong was honored and celebrated yet largely misunderstood. Access to private documents and sources yields this in-depth, authorized biography of an elusive American celebrity -- a portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history's most famous space traveler.
Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer. The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories.
In this personal memoir, Clark tells the story of her amazing life, from a child of the depression, to the intrigues of family life and her unyeilding struggle to get published. She began writing stories at the kitchen table; finally selling the first one for one hundred dollars, after six years and forty rejections. When asked if she might give up writing for a life of leisure, Marv replied, "Never. To be happy for a year, win the lottery. To be happy for life, do what you love."
In this epic, Pulitzer prize-winning biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution. Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many. His rocky relationship with friend and eventual archrival Thomas Jefferson, his courageous voyages and mountain treks are exploits few would have dared.
John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. This is history on a grand scale -- an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.
Lou Gehrig was the Iron Horse, baseball's strongest and most determined superstar, struck down in his prime by a disease that now bears his name. Regarded as the greatest first baseman in baseball history and the heart of the Yankee dynasty, he complemented baseball greats like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. Luckiest Man reveals that Gehrig was afflicted with ALS as early as the spring of 1938. Yet, he didn't miss a game that year, keeping intact his astonishing consecutive-games streak, which stood for more than half a century.
Luckiest Man brings to life a figure whose shyness obscured his greatness. Gehrig emerges as more human and more heroic than ever.
In Mark Twain, Ron Powers consummates years of research with a tour de force on the life of our culture's founding father. Drawing on thousands of letters and notebook entries, many only recently discovered, he offers Sam Clemens as he lived, breathed, and wrote. From his frontier boyhood in Missouri, life on the Mississippi and the western theater of the Civil War, to an uproarious newspaper career in the Nevada of the Wild West. His fame as a humorist and lecturer spread around the country and his comments on everything he saw, many published here for the first time, are priceless.
Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt, seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma, and his struggle to manhood. It spans seventeen years -- from 1869 when "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when he returns from the West a "real life cowboy" to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man.
This is a tale about family love and loyalty...about courtship, childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about gutter politics and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884...about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback.
Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, No Ordinary Time relates the unique story of how Franklin D. Roosevelt led the nation to victory against seemingly insurmountable odds and, with Eleanor's essential help, forever changed the fabric of American society.
Using diaries, interviews, and White House records, Goodwin paints an intimate portrait of the daily conduct of the presidency during wartime, and the Roosevelts' extraordinary constellation of friends, advisers, and family.
Watch the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 is unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.
So many of our dreams at first
seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the
will, they become inevitable. Christopher Reeve shows that we are all capable
of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. He describes his own struggles
since his spinal cord injury that left him virtually paralized. Yet, says
Reeve, many able-bodied people choose paralysis - choosing
to live with self-doubt and the fear of taking risks. Life is not to be
taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.
A powerful message of hope.
Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, David McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman has captured the heart of the nation. Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American. From Truman's small-town, turn-of-the-century boyhood, his transforming experience in the face of war in 1918, to his political beginnings and rapid rise to prominence, and the weighty decision to use the atomic bomb. McCullough shows, in colorful detail, a man of uncommon vitality and strength of character---a compelling, classic portrait of a life that shaped history.
