The riveting, mega-bestselling, beloved and highly acclaimed memoir of a man, a vocation, and an era named one of the ten best nonfiction titles of the year by Time and Entertainment Weekly.
In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked...

Everybody starts somewhere, and once upon a time Luigi Lemoncello was a thirteen-year-old boy in a large family who dreamed of being a showman; he gets his first chance working for a famous barker at a summer carnival where a mysterious puzzle leads him and his friends on a treasure hunt.

Reynolds, a film legend and Hollywood icon, shares the highs and lows of her life as an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age. She includes stories from her lifelong friendship with Elizabeth Taylor, and intimate details of her marriages and family life.

In this book, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away, and unearths the well of emotions she experienced long afterward as a result. For the first time, she reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence, a presence absent during much of the author's early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old...

The Academy, Tony, and Emmy Award-winning actor and trailblazer tells her stunning story, looking back at her life and six-decade career. Tyson has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. She has been the church girl who once rarely spoke a word; the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. A daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend, she is also an observer of human nature and the...

"Critically acclaimed, award-winning British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard details his childhood, his first performances on the streets of London, his ascent to worldwide success on stage and screen, and his comedy shows which have won over audiences around the world"--

Orson is a young boy whose mother works at the US Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a GI stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio.

When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis' tunes from the post exchange store, the attendant publicity catches the star's attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship.

As Elvis's career

...

"From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City's creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home--a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art,...

Writer, activist, and actor Charles Grodin delivers a fascinating collection of more than eighty intimate and revealing stories from friends and colleagues in the worlds of entertainment, sports, journalism, politics, and business-inspiring, entertaining, and heartfelt accounts of mistakes they've made and the lessons they learned.
Carol Burnett writes about an ill-fated meeting with Cary Grant. Rosie O'Donnell remembers her inability to...

"Paris, 1944. Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is an unwilling darling of the Nazis and uses her position of privilege to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows the Gestapo will torture information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing Lillian by any means necessary--including assassination....