Biographies

From his emergence in the 1950s - when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared in the West Coast and became, seemingly overnight, the prince of 'cool' jazz - until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth.

'The first of all soldier books in the world...' Conan Doyle

The publication of Feel: Robbie Williams by Chris Heath in September 2004 caused shockwaves of controversy and delight. Written by Chris Heath, who spent nearly two years working with Robbie on this book, every word is imbued with Robbie's humour, charisma, talent, memories and complexity.

During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy.

At the age of sixteen, Andy Cave followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps and became a miner - one of the last recruits into a dying world. Every day he would descend 3,000 feet into Grimethorpe pit. But at weekends Andy escaped from the pithead to a very different world - testing his nerve on the cliffs and mountains around Britain.

Comic riffs and diatribes on the America of G.W. Bush from the author of Slaughterhouse 5

Through Adam Von Trott, for whom she worked in the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, she became involved in the Resistance and the diaries vividly describe her part in the drama of July 1944 and its appalling aftermath.

That Gad Beck, a gay Jew in the Berlin of Nazi Germany, lived through the Holocaust at all is amazing. His determination to keep loving, living and believing in every human possibility - even in the face of the unthinkably monstrous - makes this quite a different story of the Holocaust.

A magnificent, harrowing testimony to the voiceless victims of North Korea.

The definitive, fully authorised story of the record-breaking rivalry between London Olympics organiser Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, published to coincide with the 2012 games.

A compelling new portrait of Tudor Queen Anne Boleyn

But Miles regularly changed styles, leaving his inimitable impact on many forms of jazz, whether he created them or simply developed the work of others, from modal jazz to be-bop, his seminal quintet and his big-band work, to the jazz funk experiments of later years.

In 1858, aged thirty-five, weak with malaria, isolated in the remote Spice Islands, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin: he had, he said excitedly, worked out a theory of natural selection. A year later, with Wallace still at the opposite side of the world, On the Origin of Species was published.

She also shows how she contacts the spirit world, predicts future events, performs 'spirit rescues' for those unable to continue their journey and, most of all, she illuminates a plane of infinite goodness, light and wonder beyond everyday life - a place accessible to us all.

Robert Wedderburn was one of the first promoters of black power by revolutionary force, if necessary. His publications had an enormous impact in his time. His autobiography is a vital indictment of an execrable system.

Eighty letters, written over twenty-six years, record that friendship, and are published here in English for the first time.

An insider's guide to the secret workings of the billion-dollar adult film industry.

Julian Cope's highly acclaimed autobiography and its long-awaited sequel in one extraordinary volume.

Punk has been romanticised and embalmed by the media. A youth revolt that became a worldwide fashion statement, punk's idols were the Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten was its sneering antichrist. Rotten is a history of punk: angry, witty, poignant and crackling with energy. Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, the 1970s, the Pistols' story are all here, in one of the best books ever written about youth culture, by one of its most notorious figures.

Examines the notorious Nazi's life.

This book provides fascinating insights into Suharto, a man who rose from humble beginnings to exert extraordinary power over a complex and volatile nation. He presented himself as an infallible father of Indonesia, yet he remained a mysterious and puzzling figure.

For nearly five years, he was known as the 'Darling Of Las Vegas'; And he made millions of dollars playing blackjack, using three simple techniques that gave him the edge, techniques that are revealed in this book for the first time. This is his story, the ultimate true story of Las Vegas, the book Vegas doesn't want you to read...

Donovan's autobiography charts his life from a post-war, Glaswegian childhood to the height of an international career as one of the leading figures of the 1960's music scene. It offers insights into his music and poetry, and the way in which destiny was to play a hand by re-uniting him with the lost love of his life through a chance meeting.

In these letters written to April Gifford (Dubenka) between 1989 and 1991 but never sent, Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) chronicles the momentous events of those years as seen, more often than not, from the windows of his favorite pubs. In his palavering, stream-of-conscious style that has marked him as one of the major writers and innovators of postwar European literature, Hrabal gives a humorous and at times moving account of life in Prague under Nazi occupation, Communism, and the brief euphoria following the revolution of 1989 when anything seemed possible, even pink tanks. Interspersed are fragmented memories of trips taken to Britain - as he attempted to track down every location mentioned in Eliot's "The Waste Land" - and the United States, where he ends up in one of Dylan Thomas's haunts comparing the waitresses to ones he knew in Prague. The result is a masterful blend of personal history and fee association rendered in a prose as powerful as it is poetic..

Born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1850, Jack Daniel became a legendary moonshiner at age 15 before launching a legitimate distillery ten years later. By the time he died in 1911, he was an American legend-and his Old No. 7 Tennessee sipping whiskey was an international sensation, the winner of gold medals at the St.

A memoir in bite-size chunks from the author of the viral Modern Love column "You May Want to Marry My Husband." "[Rosenthal] shines her generous light of humanity on the seemingly humdrum moments of life and shows how delightfully precious they actually are." -The Chicago Sun-Times How do you conjure a life? Give the truest account of what you saw, felt, learned, loved, strived for? For Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the surprising answer came in the form of an encyclopedia. In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life she has ingeniously adapted this centuries-old format for conveying knowledge into a poignant, wise, often funny, fully realized memoir. Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere-preferably at the beginning-and see how one young woman's alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways. An ordinary life, perhaps, but an extraordinary book.

Ray Mears shows how the success of a vital World War II mission depended on survival skills.

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have." Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

Gerald Durrell, director and owner of Jersey Zoo, was internationally famous for his amusing books about collecting wild animals. It describes an expedition to the remote territory of the Cameroons in West Africa, before independence. 'A delightful book .

don't compare me with your latest squeeze, don't try and guess my measurements - my body is my own business!"'From My Sisters' Lips offers a glimpse into the lives of just some of the extraordinary women who, like herself, have chosen to live behind the veil.