More than once, friends of Carl Reiner said, "You ought to write those things down." And at the age of eighty, Carl finally did. In this funny and engaging memoir, Reiner recounts his show business life in short comic takes. After answering an ad for free acting classes, he forsook a budding vocation as a machinist for an acting career. Reiner recalls the highlights of the succeeding decades: his first sweaty audition - impersonating a dog impersonating...

Ireland's patron saint has long been shrouded in legend: he drove the snakes out of Ireland; he triumphed over Druids and their super-natural powers; he used a shamrock to explain the Christian mystery of the Trinity. But his true story is more fascinating than the myths. Late in the 4th century Irish pirates captured a young, British citizen named Patricius from his parents' Roman villa. The boy was sold into slavery and sent to tend sheep in Ireland....

"J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice. At eight years old,...

From the iconic image of a little boy saluting his father's casket to his tragic death at age thirty- eight, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was never far from the public eye. Now the friend who John was flying to see the night he died reveals the private man behind the public myth. Billy and John shared summers in Hyannisport and formed a bond in the Kennedy compound that lasted well into adulthood. With Forever Young, Noonan offers a unique glimpse into the...

John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits had earned him the label "social deviant." No guidance came from his mother, who conversed with light fixtures, or his father, who spent evenings drunk. No wonder he gravitated to machines, which could be counted on. His savant-like ability to visualize electronic circuits landed him a gig with KISS, for whom he created their legendary fire-breathing...

Since her screen debut in Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable, endearing roles. But she has never told the story of her life before fame--until now. Here, she takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and...

"Nearly a decade after the debut of her best-selling, life-changing classic 'A Year by the Sea', Joan is so busy helping other women search for their true selves and taking care of several generations of her family that she doesn't even realize how out of control her life has become. Ironically, she finds she needs to listen to her own advice more than anyone else does. 'The Second Journey' chronicles Joan's quest to restore her own equilibrium and...

In American Rebel, Marc Eliot examines the ever-exciting, often tumultuous arc of Clint Eastwood's life and career, from his days as a disaffected college dropout to his rise to fame as the archetypal loner to his acceptance into the pantheon as a multiple Academy Award winner.

The instant New York Times bestseller, now in paperback: a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of eleven girls and the ten women they became, from the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller The Last Lecture
As children, they formed a special bond, growing up in the small town of Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eighth different states, yet they managed to maintain an extraordinary friendship...