Biografier

'There's never been a more honest or raw memoir ... and it may just save lives' Daily Mail'Funny, fascinating, compelling ... also a wonderful read for fans of Friends' The TimesThe beloved star of Friends takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this candid, funny, and revelatory memoir that delivers a powerful message of hope and persistence.'Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.'So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who travelled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.In an extraordinary story that only he could tell - and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it - Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he's found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening - as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.'An unflinching and often harrowing must-read for 90s pop culture fans' Guardian'Written with Chandler's trademark sarcasm and self-deprecation' Telegraph'A hopeful read ... I started to think of [it] not as a celebrity memoir about addiction, but as an addiction memoir written by a man who understands his own history through the prism of showbiz' Independent

Megan Fox showcases her wicked humor throughout a heartbreaking and dark collection of poetry. Over the course of more than 80 poems, Fox chronicles all the ways in which we fit ourselves into the shape of the ones we love, even if it means losing ourselves in the process."These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I've spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins. My freedom lives in these pages, and I hope that my words can inspire others to take back their happiness and their identity by using their voice to illuminate what's been buried, but not forgotten, in the darkness," says Fox.Pretty Boys Are Poisonous marks the powerful debut from one of the most well-known women of our time. Turn the page, bite the apple, and sink your teeth into the most deliciously compelling and addictive book you'll read all year.

"Geddy Lee is one of rock and roll's most respected bassists. For nearly five decades, his playing and work as co-writer, vocalist, and keyboardist has been an essential part of the success story of Canadian progressive rock trio Rush. Here for the first time is his account of life inside and outside the band. ... [He] was [born] Gershon Eliezer Weinrib, after his grandfather murdered in the Holocaust. As he recounts [his life's] transformation, Lee looks back on his family, in particular his loving parents and their horrific experiences as teenagers during World War II"--

Bono-artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2-has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. "When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way." -Bono As one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it's Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life-and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him. Surrender's subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book's forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.

The first English-language biography of Formula 1's hottest new talent, Dutchman Max Verstappen.

From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum.

The incredibly moving and powerful memoir by an Auschwitz survivor who made headlines round the world in 2020

I spent 12 years in prison for crimes I did not commit. The only reason I am here now and able to share my story with you is because I never stopped fighting to prove my innocence. Eventually, I won and my convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2000. I was free...but changed forever.This is my story.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them-women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.

To read this magnificent biography of Leonardo da Vinci is to take a tour through the life and works of one of the most extraordinary human beings of all time in the company of the most engaging, informed, and insightful guide imaginable. Walter Isaacson is at once a true scholar and a spellbinding writer. And what a wealth of lessonsthereare to be learned in these pages. David McCullough Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history's most creative genius. His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history's most memorable smile. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo's lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions. Leonardo's delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question itto be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.

The life of one of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton.

In 1926, de Saint-Exupery began flying for the airline Latecoere - later known as Aeropostale - opening up the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. This autobiographical narrative combines encounters with nomadic Arabs and other adventures. It includes the story of his crash in the Libyan Desert in 1936, and his miraculous survival.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of My Story by Steven Gerrard, read Michael Ryan. Steven Gerrard is the former captain of Liverpool football team and of the England national football team, and is the only player ever to have scored in a FA cup final, a league cup final, a UEFA cup final and a champions league final. His entire career, since 1998, has been spent at Anfield with Liverpool. In this book he charts his full playing career, shedding light on the defining games, his life off the pitch as well as the players and managers hes encountered. Explosive, controversial and searingly honest, this will be the last word from an era-defining player.

**Winner of the2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**';Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard.'Sports IllustratedIncluded in President Obama's 2016 Summer Reading ListBarbarian Daysis William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter.Barbarian Daystakes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our nosesoff the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves.Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful follyhe drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Mauiis served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan's travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.Barbarian Daysis an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.Praise forBarbarian Days:';Without a doubt, the finest surf book I've ever read . . . But on a more fundamental level,Barbarian Daysoffers a clear-eyed vision of American boyhood. Like Jon Krakauer'sInto the Wild, it is a sympathetic examination of what happens when literary ideas of freedom and purity take hold of a young mind and fling his body out into the far reaches of the world.'The New York Times Magazine';Incandescent . . . I'd sooner press this book upon on a nonsurfer, in part because nothing I've read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under. . . . [But] it's also about a writer's life and, even more generally, a quester's life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I've read in a long time.'Los Angeles Times

Kevin Mitnick's long-awaited memoir of computer hacking and FBI skirting, revealed now after seven years of government-mandated silence.

Working as a prison guard in St Petersburgs notorious Kresty Prison, the author diligently recorded over 3,000 criminal tattoos, documenting their meanings within this closed society. This title explores the extremes of this collection.