Adults

A New York Times bestseller, this revelatory and redemptive memoir from Beverly Johnson, the first black supermodel to grace the cover of Vogue—and who, over five hundred magazine covers later, remains one of the most successful glamour girls of all time—goes behind the lens and glossy magazine covers.

Growing up a studious, bookish child during the socially conscious, racially charged 60s, Beverly Johnson never imagined that she would irrevocably change modern fashion by becoming the first black cover model of American Vogue in 1974. What followed has been a successful, multifaceted, and inspiring career in modeling. In The Face That Changed It All, Beverly Johnson brings her own passionate and deeply honest voice to the page to chronicle the highs, lows, and everything in between of her career.

In this “revealing, even harrowing” (USA TODAY) memoir, with glamorous tales about the hard partying of the 1970s and Hollywood during the ’80, Johnson details her many encounters and fascinating friendships with Jackie Kennedy, Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Keith Richards, and Warren Beatty. “Refreshingly brave and tough-minded in her self-assessment” (Variety), Johnson reveals the demons she wrestled with over the course of her storied career. She brings us into the heart of her struggles with racism, drug addiction, divorce, and a prolonged child custody battle over her daughter that tested her fortitude and sanity. She shares for the first time intimate details surrounding her love affair with the late tennis icon Arthur Ashe, pays homage to her mentor, the late Naomi Sims, while lifting the veil off the complicated, catty, and often times tense relationships between models during her fashion heyday.

Featuring gorgeous, never-before-seen photos from Johnson’s childhood and modeling days, The Face That Changed It All gives a no-holds-barred look at the lives of the rich, fabulous, and famous. It is also a story of failure and success in the upper echelons of the fashion world, and how Beverly Johnson emerged from her struggles smarter, happier, and stronger than ever.

In honor of the one hundredth anniversary of George H. W. Bush’s birth, this visually stunning chronicle features never-before-published photos and memories celebrating the forty-first president’s vision of leadership as service to country—curated by Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham.

Lavishly illustrated, The Call to Serve is an intimate, illuminating portrait of the forty-first president, a man who was so much more than just his politics. In words and images—many found in a lifetime of scrapbooks kept by Barbara Pierce Bush—Jon Meacham brings George H. W. Bush vividly to life. From the values of integrity, empathy, and grace that Bush learned in childhood to his leadership at the highest levels in tumultuous times, the forty-first president embodied an ideal of service that warrants attention in our own divided time.

Bush pursued a life of service to America through his heroic combat experience in the Pacific during World War II, his political rise in Texas, his serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN, his time as envoy to China and as director of the CIA, his tenure as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, and his election as the forty-first president of the United States. Set against the background of America during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book commemorates the legacy of a man who was far from perfect—he could be cutthroat on the campaign trail—but whose ambition was not an end unto itself. Bush’s drive to succeed was, rather, a means to put the values of balance, patriotism, and respect for others into action in the political arena. Toward the end of Bush’s life, the forty-fourth president, Barack Obama, said that Bush put the country first “both before he was president, while he was president, and ever since.”

Featuring more than 450 photographs, Meacham’s introduction and commentary throughout, and narration drawn from his biography of George H. W. Bush, Destiny and Power, this is an essential tribute to a uniquely American life.

One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies. 

Her singular story of patriotism, barrier breaking, and fearless sacrifice is told for the first time in full for readers of The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, The Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown and all Asian American, women’s and WWII history books.

In 1932, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend’s flight lesson. It changed her life. In less than a year, a girl with a wicked sense of humor, a newfound love of flying, and a tough can-do attitude earned her pilot’s license and headed for China to help against invading Japanese forces. In time, Hazel would become the first Asian American to fly with the Women Airforce Service Pilots. As thrilling as it may have been, it wasn’t easy.

In America, Hazel felt the oppression and discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In China’s field of male-dominated aviation she was dismissed for being a woman, and for being an American. But in service to her country, Hazel refused to be limited by gender, race, and impossible dreams. Frustrated but undeterred she forged ahead, married Clifford Louie, a devoted and unconventional husband who cheered his wife on, and gave her all for the cause achieving more in her short remarkable life than even she imagined possible.

American Flygirl is the untold account of a spirited fighter and an indomitable hidden figure in American history. She broke every common belief about women. She challenged every social restriction to endure and to succeed. And against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hazel Ying Lee reached for the skies and made her mark as a universal and unsung hero whose time has come.

The #1 New York Times bestseller from “America’s historian-in-chief” (New York magazine).

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.

Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.

The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Town & Country, New York Post, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews

On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.

An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hey girlfriend I got a proposition, goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want. Kathleen Hanna's rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the '90s and beyond. Her band Bikini Kill embodies this iconic time, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like 'Rebel Girl' and 'Double Dare Ya' are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from? In Rebel Girl, Hanna's raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes clear, being in a 'girl band, ' especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination. But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her--including with her bandmates, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Johanna Fateman; her friendships with Kurt Cobain and Ian MacKaye; and her introduction to Joan Jett--were all a testament to how the punk world could nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity. In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful--and how it continues to fuel her revolutionary art and music.

"Darius has always been one of my favorite people to sing with and to call a friend in this industry and yet even knowing him well for as long as I have, there are so many incredible stories in Life's Too Short that I enjoyed learning for the first time."--Sheryl Crow

*A NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller*

A raw, heartfelt memoir from Darius Rucker, the Grammy Award- winning country music sensation and multiplatinum-selling lead singer of Hootie & The Blowfish

In 1986 Darius Rucker cofounded Hootie & The Blowfish at the University of South Carolina. What began as a party band playing frat houses and dive bars quickly became a global pop rock phenomenon through their multiplatinum-selling debut album, cracked rear view, which featured era-defining hit songs like "Only Wanna Be with You," "Let Her Cry," and "Hold My Hand." Later, Darius would chart a pioneering path as a solo country music artist, with classic anthems like "Wagon Wheel" and "Alright."

Nearly forty years after the band's formation, Darius tells his remarkable story through the lens of the songs that shaped him--from Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and KISS to Lou Reed, Billy Joel, Nanci Griffith, and so many more.

Set against the soundtrack of his life, Darius recounts his childhood as the son of a single mother in Charleston, South Carolina. He traces the unlikely ascent of his band and shares wild tales of life on the road--but he also faces his missteps, defeats, and demons. As moving as it is entertaining, Life's Too Short is a timeless book about a man and his music.

A sweeping and evocative memoir from the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy Award-winning, platinum selling singer-songwriter Michael McDonald, written with his friend, Emmy Award-nominated actor, comedian, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Paul Reiser.

Doobie Brothers. Steely Dan. Chart topping soloist. Across a half-century of American music, Michael McDonald's unmistakably smooth baritone voice defined an era of rock and R&B with hit records like "What A Fool Believes," "Takin' It to the Streets," "I Keep Forgettin'," "Peg," "It Keeps You Running," "You Belong to Me," and "Yah Mo B There."

In his candid, freewheeling memoir, written with his friend, the Emmy Award-nominated actor and comedian Paul Reiser, Michael tells the story of his life and music. A high school dropout from Ferguson, Missouri, Michael chased his dreams in 1970's California, a heady moment of rock opportunity and excess. As a rising session musician and backing vocalist, a series of encounters would send him on a wild ride around the world and to the heights of rock stardom--from joining Steely Dan and becoming a defining member of The Doobie Brothers to forging a path as a breakout solo R&B artist.

Interwoven with the unforgettable tales of the music, Michael tells a deeply affecting story of losing and finding himself as a man. He reckons with the unshakeable insecurities that drove him, the drug and alcohol addictions that plagued him, and the highs and lows of popularity. Along the way he relays the lessons he's learned, and that if he's learned anything at all it's that there's often little correlation between what you get and what you deserve.

Filled with unbelievable stories and a matchless cast of music greats including James Taylor, Ray Charles, Carly Simon, and Quincy Jones, What a Fool Believes is a moving and entertaining memoir that is sure to be a classic.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

As seen on The Today Show, The View, and Jesse Watters

The man who brought the kavorka to the Seinfeld show through one of the most remarkable and beloved television characters ever invented, Kramer, shares the extraordinary life of a comedy genius—the way he came into himself as an artist, the ups and downs as a human being, the road he has traveled in search of understanding.

“The hair, so essential, symbolizes the irrational that was and is and always will be the underlying feature not only of Kramer but of comedy itself. This seemingly senseless spirit has been coursing through me since childhood. I’ve been under its almighty influence since the day I came into this world. I felt it all within myself, especially the physical comedy, the body movements, so freakish and undignified, where I bumped into things, knocked stuff down, messed up situations, and often ended up on my ass.

“This book is a hymn to the irrational, the senseless spirit that breaks the whole into pieces, a reflection on the seemingly absurd difficulties that intrude upon us all. It’s Harpo Marx turning us about, shaking up my plans, throwing me for a loop. Upset and turmoil is with us all the time. It’s at the basis of comedy. It’s the pratfall we all take. It’s the unavoidable mistake we didn’t expect. It’s everywhere I go. It’s in the way that I am, both light and dark, good and not-so-good. It’s my life.” 

—Michael Richards, from Entrances and Exits

From multi-award winner Whoopi Goldberg comes a new and unique memoir of her family and their influence on her early life.

If it weren't for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010--and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later--she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone.

Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn't know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced--and it wasn't until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were.

Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and Pieces: a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and a beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, "Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I'd share mine with you."