Biografier

Following on from his critical smash and SUNDAY TIMES BEST-SELLING debut, Raven Smith's Trivial Pursuits, Raven is back with a pin sharp, hilarious and incisive exploration of what it means to be a man in the modern day.

The Philosophy of Modern Song is Bob Dylan’s first book of new writing since 2004’s Chronicles: Volume One — and since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.   Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over 60 essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.   In 2020, with the release of his outstanding album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan became the first artist to have an album hit the Billboard Top 40 in each decade since the 1960s. The Philosophy of Modern Song contains much of what he has learned about his craft in all those years and, like everything that Dylan does, it is a momentous artistic achievement.

Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter's revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir's experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of feeling alive and embodied.Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina's morphine addiction, Freud's unfreudian behaviors, marriage brokers and war brokers to 'Not Jokes', Abu Ghraib, Fanon's negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, to how poetry can wake us up. At the centre of the book, though, is the author's relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions - frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking - are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from our True Self and hinting at ways we might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut,Animal Joyis an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.

Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realising I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realised whilst growing up that I was different. It was only in my teens that I found the words to express who I was and what I needed to do. Since then, I've been on testosterone for more than a decade - I know, I can't believe it either - I've also had top and bottom surgery and legally changed my sex, so I know a few things about the transitioning process and being trans!I want to welcome you to The T in LGBT where you can explore and learn about so many topics surrounding gender identity: realising you're trans, starting hormones, considering surgery, and everything in between. Whether you're questioning your own identity and are looking for advice on certain stages of transition, or whether you're wanting to learn about the trans experience to support someone or understand allyship, I hope this book can be your one-stop guide to everything trans related.And don't just take my word for it either - this book is packed full of advice, tips, and the personal stories of a range of trans voices, because no one journey is the same.

***SOON TO BE A MAJOR HOLLYWOOD FILM DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN***WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 'Reads like a thriller, gripping and terrifying' Sunday TimesPhysicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer - director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - was the most famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. But when David Mockett, a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd's of London, inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. Soon after his inspection, he was murdered. Dead in the Water is a shocking expose of the criminal inner-workings of international shipping, an old-world industry at the backbone of our global economy. Through first-hand accounts of those who lived the hijacking-from members of the ship'screw and witnesses to the attacks, to the ex-London detectives turned private investigators seeking to solve Mockett's murder-award-winning reporters Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel piece together the astounding truth behind one of the most brazen financial frauds in history.

An award-winning critical biography of Finland's towering leader, charting his statecraft, his political journey and his strategic bravado, carving out independence between Stalin and Hitler.

"Renowned spiritual teacher and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn teaches the art and healing power of connecting with the dead, as she guides readers through the magical process of conversing with the unseen world. What if you could live in a world where the guidance of those who were gone was available, right at your very fingertips? It's possible, if we are open to it. Anyone can reclaim the forgotten guidance of the dead, and anyone can return to the realm of magic and miracles. In Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, author, spiritual teacher, and co-founder of The Way of the Rose Perdita Finn reveals that life is beginningless, love is endless, and those who have passed don't truly go anywhere when they die. Weaving together memoir, history, and a non-denominational spirituality based in ecology, Finn invites readers to live the experience that the stories of our lives are much older, bigger, and more merciful than we have been led to believe. Take Back the Magic takes the reader on a journey of healing, possibility, and love, as the story of how Finn healed her relationship with her bitter, patriarchal father long after his death unfolds over the course of thirteen moving chapters. Along the way, readers will learn how they, too, can reconnect with the generous guidance of the soul's long story through deep time, recovering their lost relationships with their ancestors and the Earth itself. Throughout, Finn shares guidance, tips, and practical advice that will aid readers in forging their own relationships with those who have passed, as she invites every reader to reconnect with their own inner knowing and to call forth magic from the most ancient parts of humanity. An inspiring invitation to healing in this life, and to experience that we are never alone, Take Back the Magic shows that the whole world is simply souls reaching out to and finding each other-and no one is ever truly lost to us, if we allow ourselves to begin our own conversations with the unseen world"--

Through his never-before-seen diaries - a twenty-five-year passion project - Alan Rickman invites readers backstage and into his life. He takes us behind the scenes on films and plays ranging from Sense & Sensibility, the Harry Potter series, Private Lives and many more. Detailing the extraordinary and the ordinary, he writes in a way that is anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid.

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one satellites, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

The definitive biography that unlocks the remarkable story of Vivian Maier, the nanny who lived secretly as a world-class photographer, featuring nearly 400 of her images, many never seen before, placed for the first time in the context of her life.

Brain: No one's going to buy your bookMe: But it's good! My editor says so!Brain: Well she would, wouldn't she... Btw, didn't you leave your hair straighteners on?Me: I can't get into this now, I've got a book description to writeHello! Hayley Morris here. You might have seen me on your feed dressed up as a vagina. People seem to find me quite funny. I'm on a mission to prove once and for all that You. Are. Not. A. Weirdo... Or, maybe, We. Are. All. Weirdos. Yes, you're not the only one whose body does that gross thing you've never even told your mum about. And yes, we're all walking around saying embarrassing things constantly and waking up in a cold sweat at 3am thinking about them. So we might as well have a laugh about it, right?In this book, I've overthought absolutely everything so that you don't have to. I'm going to be talking about everything from dating to discharge, mental health to menstrual cups. I might not be able to banish your anxiety or make you feel 100% comfortable in your skin but I hope I can at least give you a break from the constant brain chatter and we can have a giggle about it together.

No other book can give you the feel of Africa like this one can.

**MiCannes Award Music Book of the Year**The first full-length biography of Mal Evans, the Beatles' beloved roadie, assistant, confidant and friend

Fierce, unapologetic and joyous . . . This book is a marvel.'-Jordon Steele-John, Disability Rights Advocate and Australian SenatorGrowing up, Chloé Hayden felt like she'd crash-landed on an alien planet where nothing made sense. Eye contact? Small talk? And why are you people so touch-oriented? She moved between 10 schools in 8 years, struggling to become a person she believed society would accept, and was eventually diagnosed with autism and ADHD. When a life-changing group of allies showed her that different did not mean less, she learned to celebrate her true voice and find her happily ever after.This is a moving, at times funny story of how it feels to be neurodivergent as well as a practical guide, with advice for living with meltdowns and shutdowns, tips for finding supportive communities and much more.Whether you're neurodivergent or supporting those who are, Different, Not Less will inspire you to create a more inclusive world where everyone feels like they belong.