#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The outspoken actress, talk show host, and reality television star offers up a no-holds-barred memoir, including an eye-opening insider account of her tumultuous and heart-wrenching thirty-year-plus association with the Church of Scientology.
Schlow Library Selection: Based on obsessive research of first-hand accounts, Kate Clifford Larson tells the story of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter in the context of her famous family and the history swirling around them.
Albeit not moving as quickly as her eight siblings, Rosemary participated in the upper echelons of society as much as she could until her early 20s. It appears as though a combination of escalating psychological issues and "Rosie's" realization that she was not allowed and/or able to live life as her age cohort led to uncontrollable "rages" and seizures.
Their desperation over how to keep her from embarrassing the family led her parents to move Rosie from facility to school to house until finally Joe, Sr. fatefully arranged for the widely disparaged frontal lobotomy that robbed his eldest daughter of almost all of the physical and mental skills she had.
Rosie became a rarely-mentioned ghost in her family, making this book even more impressive in the author's gathering and collating of letters, journals, and other historical sources into a well-written, disturbing, and ultimately intriguing story of one of the most well-known families in American history.
David Spade is best known for his harsh “Hollywood” Minute Sketches on SNL, his starring roles in movies like Joe Dirt and Tommy Boy, and his seven-year stint as Dennis Finch on the series Just Shoot Me. Now, with a wit as dry as the weather in his home state of Arizona, the “comic brat extraordinaire” tells his story in Almost Interesting.
The ultimate critical biography of the King of Pop: a panoramic, vivid, and incisive portrait of Michael Jackson that explores and celebrates his influence in music, dance, and popular culture, drawing on 400 interviews.
Born Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance-band vocalist. Costello went into the family business and before he was twenty-four took the popular music world by storm.
The love, life, and work of two brilliant scientists, Marie and Pierre Curie, are woven together in this highly artistic biography. The book has passages that read like a scientific journal, some that feel like an artist’s notebook, and others that feel like a love story told in a novel. Although the work does focus on both scientists, Marie is at the forefront through much of it. Her identity of scientist, lover, and mother is examined in a soft and artistic way. -- Alison O., DC Public Library
Cleese takes readers on a Grand Tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Monty Python partner Graham Chapman), to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown.
Today, “Hallelujah” is one of the most-performed rock songs in history. It has become a staple of movies and television shows as diverse as Shrek and The West Wing, of tribute videos and telethons. It has been covered by hundreds of artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Justin Timberlake, and k.d. lang, and it is played every year at countless events—both sacred and secular—around the world.
When Felicia Day was a girl, all she wanted was to connect with other kids (desperately). Growing up in the Deep South, where she was “home-schooled for hippie reasons,” she looked online to find her tribe. The internet was in its infancy and she became an early adopter at every stage of its growth—finding joy and unlikely friendships in the emerging digital world. Her relative isolation meant that she could pursue passions like gaming, calculus, and 1930’s detective novels without shame. Because she had no idea how “uncool” she really was.
There's a notorious criminal following me! On Twitter, that is, and it's former criminal, if you please. William Lobban, a gangster so vicious no prison in Scotland would take him, finished paying his debt to society in an English penitentiary in 1988.
Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, international humanitarian, fisherman, reflects on his full and happy life with pride, humor, and a few second thoughts.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (The New York Observer)
Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress...
Told through a series of larger-than-life snapshots, a hilarious memoir in essays about love, sex, marriage, motherhood, bikinis, and loving your body, no matter what size you are from the acclaimed blogger and body image advocate.
