Biographies

Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one of the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as "e;America's best rock band"e; by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era's flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one's true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

Winner of the Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, this book is about a journey undertaken by the author that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain.

A stunning work of memoir and an unforgettable depiction of the brilliance and madness by one of Surrealism''s most compelling figuresIn 1937 Leonora Carrington—later to become one of the twentieth century’s great painters of the weird, the alarming, and the wild—was a nineteen-year-old art student in London, beautiful and unapologetically rebellious. At a dinner party, she met the artist Max Ernst. The two fell in love and soon departed to live and paint together in a farmhouse in Provence.  In 1940, the invading German army arrested Ernst and sent him to a concentration camp. Carrington suffered a psychotic break. She wept for hours. Her stomach became “the mirror of the earth”—of all worlds in a hostile universe—and she tried to purify the evil by compulsively vomiting. As the Germans neared the south of France, a friend persuaded Carrington to flee to Spain. Facing the approach “of robots, of thoughtless, fleshless beings,” she packed a suitcase that bore on a brass plate the word Revelation. This was only the beginning of a journey into madness that was to end with Carrington confined in a mental institution, overwhelmed not only by her own terrible imaginings but by her doctor’s sadistic course of treatment. In Down Below she describes her ordeal—in which the agonizing and the marvelous were equally combined—with a startling, almost impersonal precision and without a trace of self-pity. Like Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Down Below brings the hallucinatory logic of madness home.

A collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Up in the Air and Pitch Perfect, Anna Kendrick

A compelling and comprehensive history of the world's most successive secret service.

WHEN THE WORLD WAS BITTEN BY THE HARD-ROCKING, HARD-TOURING AND HARD-DRINKING WHITESNAKE, IT WAS MICKY MOODY'S GRITTY RIFFS AND SIGNATURE BLUESY SLIDE-GUITAR THAT HELPED PROPEL THEM TO INTERNATIONAL STARDOM, AS THEY SHOULDERED ASIDE CONTEMPORARY RIVALS, GOING ON TO SELL MILLIONS OF ALBUMS WORLDWIDE.

Chris discusses key hands and explains how he arrived at his decisions. Furthermore, numerous world class pros, including Daniel Negreanu, Liv Boeree and Fedor Holz, share their insights into Chris's play. Chris also discusses life growing up, how he got into poker and documents the highs and lows of his career so far.

As the man whose voice and style came to define pop music in the eighties and beyond, George Michael will forever be remembered as one of the all-time greats of British music.

The sensational autobiography of two of British rock's living legends - Parfitt and Rossi from Status Quo

A classic biography of the man who was partly responsible for the development of modern tank warfare.

Determination meets dance in this memoir by the history-making ballerina

The definitive volume on one of the most important and controversial figures of the 20th century, a man who almost singlehandedly changed his country and the world.

In advance of the 2016 Olympics, Akashic launches a new sports imprint, curated by Dave Zirin, with a dramatic memoir by an Olympic gold-medalist.

As a youth in Saigon's Chinatown of the 1960s and 70s, Paul Au was greatly affected by American 'hippie' culture and Rock & Roll. He was smuggled into Hong Kong in 1974 to escape the South Vietnamese military draft. At first living in rooftop squats, he started to trade used vinyl records on the streets of Kowloon, and finally established an underground reputation for his eclectic blend and unending supply of recorded music.

A powerful memoir from the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, chronicling holidays at Sissinghurst, reckless youth, and the tragic loss of her 19-year-old daughter Rosa

A fascinating journey on the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft and an exploration of never-dying themes, such as babies versus careers.

When Jean Sasson's book Princess: Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia was published, it became an immediate international bestseller.

Was Arizona Donnie Clark, AKA Kate "Ma" Barker the mastermind behind the Barker gang terrorizing the Midwest during the early years of the great Depression? Or was she a terrible mother who urged her sons to criminal behavior for her own financial gain? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?

The classic, bestselling account of the infamous Kray twins, now a major film, starring Tom Hardy.

Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-FictionA New York Times Notable Book of 2015 A painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators - her father, Josef Stalin.

A new perspective on the forgotten Beach Boy - the voice of 'God Only Knows', 'Good Vibrations', and more.

One-Straw Revolutionary represents the first commentary on the work of the late Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka (1913 - 2008), widely considered to be natural farming's most influential practitioner. Mr. Fukuoka is perhaps most known for his bestselling book The One-Straw Revolution (1978), a manifesto on the importance of no-till agriculture, which was at the time of publication a radical challenge to the global systems that supply the world's food, and still inspires readers today. Larry Korn, who apprenticed with Mr. Fukuoka in Japan at the time, translated the manuscript and brought it to the United States, knowing it would change the conversation about food forever. The One-Straw Revolution, edited by Korn and Wendell Berry, was an immediate international success, and established Mr. Fukuoka as a leading voice in the fight against conventional industrial agriculture. In this new book, through his own personal narrative, Larry Korn distills his experience of more than thirty-five years of study with Mr. Fukuoka, living and working on his farm on Shikoku Island, and traveling with Mr. Fukuoka to the United States on two six-week visits. One-Straw Revolutionary is the first book to look deeply at natural farming and intimately discuss the philosophy and work of Mr. Fukuoka. In addition to giving his personal thoughts about natural farming, Korn broadens the discussion by pointing out natural farming's kinship with the ways of indigenous cultures and traditional Japanese farming. At the same time, he clearly distinguishes natural farming from other forms of agriculture, including scientific and organic agriculture and permaculture. Korn also clarifies commonly held misconceptions about natural farming in ways Western readers can readily understand. And he explains how natural farming can be used practically in areas other than agriculture, including personal growth and development. The book follows the author on his travels from one back-to-the-land commune to another in the countryside of 1970s Japan, a journey that eventually led him to Mr. Fukuoka's natural farm. Korn's description of his time there, as well as traveling with Mr. Fukuoka during his visits to the United States, offers a rare, inside look at Mr. Fukuoka's life. Readers will delight in this personal insight into one of the world's leading agricultural thinkers.

He was one of the hardest, most controversial footballers of his generation: the GBP20million man who became the first professional player to go to jail for an offence committed on the field of play.

A moving meditation on home, home-coming and belonging from Francophone Africa's most important writer.

* Remarkable biography of the complex and tragic 'First Lady' of the Third Reich, Magda Goebbels

Stylish and dark, the BBC series the 'Peaky Blinders' is set in the backstreets of Birmingham after the First World War and tells of the rise to power of Thomas Shelby and his criminal gang. Yet the real stories behind these fictional characters are just as dramatic, bloody and compelling as the TV series. This book tells their story.

Carstairs, the State Hospital in Lanarkshire, Scotland, is a hospital like no other. Effectively a prison for some of the most violent and insane criminals in our society, it houses men who have committed the most horrific and frightening crimes imaginable.

Igor Stravinsky was a celebrity composer in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed age. He was a true modern, a man of his time. Stravinsky's extraordinary music reflected and shaped his own times, and resonates with audiences even today. Stravinsky tells of a colourful life lived against the backdrop of the twentieth century's wars and revolutions.

Based on new interviews with key figures this is the most authoritative and explosive account of the life of Charles Manson.