Biographies & Memoirs Books - Page 8

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene

Amazon Price: $11.63 List Price: $18.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin (Non-Classics) Amazon Marketplace: 164 new & used starting at $7.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 510 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

My Former Bible 3 out of 5 stars.
8 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Only two types of people have been and will be attracted to reading this book: those who hope it's about one thing and those who know it's about the other. The former belong to the timid, powerless, low-self esteem majority looking for the ultimate guide to gaining respect and admiration from their peers. The latter belong to the unscrupulous, dare I say sociopathic ever-growing minority whose end goal is to win at everything against everyone by any means. Once the book has been read and fully digested, one of two conclusions will be reached. The first is a sudden awareness of what a perfectly outstanding tool they hold in their hands and the limitless rewards it can afford them. The second is an absolute disgust and horror at what a dangerous volume this is and the malicious behavior it outright encourages. Interestingly, the timid are not always the ones repulsed and the ruthless are not always the ones aroused. The wave can break either way.

Shortly after this book was published, I happened upon it in a bookstore and knew I had to have it. A blaze of energy electrified my body and pounded through the deepest recesses of my mind. I was on fire, I couldn't put it down and yet I knew I could never share it with anyone, the way a child might hide away their favorite toy. In truth I became obsessed. I had to learn and then master every element of every law and take supreme authority over every aspect of my life. Indeed, this book, The 48 Laws of Power, became my bible, the most passionate conquest I had ever sought to undertake.

Within its pages I met with the reflection of every gruesome bully and every merry manipulator I had ever known. Their power was uncanny and yet so mysterious, mostly because I could never fathom how such apparently absent minds could lay so cool yet strike with such venom. It was awe-inspiring, and I had to come to terms with their secrets. The secrets that earned them respect from their enemies and fear from their admirers. The secrets that won them the most buxom women, who always appeared so entranced by even their rudest and most audacious displays. "How could they get away with everything so smoothly?!" I had wondered. "How could they be so desirable?!" I had thought. "HOW?!"

Well...here is how. It is simple.

Some people are given to a heredity and/or an upbringing that nourishes what is commonly considered 'bad' behavior. Certain genes as well as certain parenting styles perpetuate an attitude of unruliness which leads in its purest variety to utter contempt for anyone else's thoughts, feelings, or needs. Their minds develop without a balanced set of experiences, leading them to deduce that the information they received must indeed be correct. This is also applicable to those who suffer violence in their youth, even if that violence is not carried out physically. The fact remains that whatever world with which one is presented is accepted as unmitigated truth. 'Bad' behavior is usually viewed by such a person as normal. Thus selfishness, cruelty, and manipulation are seen as strengths, while compassion, kindness and humility are seen as weaknesses.

Surely there are a bevy of other factors that cannot go without mention. High intelligence, a pleasing appearance, a particular talent, et cetra can all act as lauchpads for immorality if similar virtues in others go unrecognized as being equal. This sense of equality is what it all comes down to, in fact. The very idea of power assumes that another cannot or should not be in a position to where the perspectives of both can be viewed as equally valid. On the one end is the person who is possessed by their own image, on the other is the person who believes that they have no intrinsic worth at all. The two feed off of each other in a sadistic/masochistic symbiotic relationship. The point then comes to bear that a person who believes himself powerful only remains so long as the other believes the same thing. Put two people who both see power as the ultimate attainment and you have the setting for nearly every meeting in the business world. From here, only two things can happen. One party will cave, allowing the other to dominate, or neither party will cave, effectively precipitating resentment and rage in both. The former leads to a continuation of the cycle while the latter leads to war.

This book is extremely well-researched and exquisitely written, which is why I still give it three stars. But I warn you now to be aware of your true intentions. Buy this book if you don't care about anyone but yourself, and it pleases you to see another man crumble. Do not buy this book if you have even the slightest interest in saving yourself from years of unnecessary struggle. Remember that the wave does break both ways, and you do not know who you may become if you toss your ethics in the wastebasket. Needless to say, I was the timid one who was sick of being overlooked, but in the end, it was this book that I tossed into the wastebasket. Your call.

Editorial Review:

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power in to forty-eight well explicated laws. As attention--grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some laws teach the need for prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), the virtue of stealth ("Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions"), and many demand the total absence of mercy ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally"), but like it or not, all have applications in real life. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded--or been victimized by--power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.

The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star

Nikki Sixx

Amazon Price: $13.60 List Price: $20.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: VH1 Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $12.31

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> Rock
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Entertainers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 270 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In one of the most unique memoirs of addiction ever published, Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx shares mesmerizing diary entries from the year he spiraled out of control in a haze of heroin and cocaine, presented alongside riveting commentary from people who were there at the time, and from Nikki himself.

When Mötley Crüe was at the height of its fame, there wasn't any drug Nikki Sixx wouldn't do. He spent days -- sometimes alone, sometimes with other addicts, friends, and lovers -- in a coke and heroin-fueled daze. The highs were high, and Nikki's journal entries reveal some euphoria and joy. But the lows were lower, often ending with Nikki in his closet, surrounded by drug paraphernalia and wrapped in paranoid delusions.

Here, Nikki shares those diary entries -- some poetic, some scatterbrained, some bizarre -- and reflects on that time. Joining him are Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Slash, Rick Nielsen, Bob Rock, and a host of ex-managers, ex-lovers, and more.

Brutally honest, utterly riveting, and shockingly moving, The Heroin Diaries follows Nikki during the year he plunged to rock bottom -- and his courageous decision to pick himself up and start living again.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris

List Price: $16.50 By: Abacus Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $3.14

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> Reference -> Writing

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 736 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not as funny as I'd hoped. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sedaris describes vignettes from his life in this wry-humored self-deprecating autobiography.

He and I do not share the same sense of humor, so though I did find some of his stories throughout the middle of the text quite funny (particularly the way he described learning French and moving to France), I found the beginning and end of the book tedious reading. Perhaps I didn't read it in the right frame of mind. If I had approached it as a collection of short stories instead of a continuing narrative, I might have enjoyed it better, and I am willing to take the blame for that oversight, though I didn't see any reference to this book as a collection of short stories in any reviews.

In the beginning, Sedaris describes himself as a vapid and shallow child, and a pretentious and annoying art student. As a reader, I simply didn't care about him.

If you can stick with this novel until chapter nine, when Sedaris moves to NYC, his humor kicks into gear and the book becomes very amusing through chapter twenty-three.

After that, subsequent chapters about uncomfortable self-revelations and insomniac fantasies are at times both repulsive and tedious, and divorced from any of the previous text. But then Sedaris finishes with one of the funniest chapters of the whole lot which leaves the reader laughing, but does nothing to draw the whole book together in conclusion.

Many people have loved this book, but I did not find it very appealing or satisfying.

C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail

Editorial Review:

Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

sTORI Telling

Tori Spelling

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon Spotlight Amazon Marketplace: 122 new & used starting at $10.39

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Entertainers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Rich & Famous

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 321 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tori Spelling Reads Her Fabulous #1 New York Times Bestseller

She was television's most famous virgin -- and, as Aaron Spelling's daughter, arguably its most famous case of nepotism. Portraying Donna Martin of Beverly Hills 90210, Tori Spelling became one of the most recognizable young actresses of her generation, with a not-so-private personal life every bit as fascinating as her character's exploits. Yet years later the name Tori Spelling too often closed -- and sometimes slammed -- the same doors it had opened.

sTORI telling is Tori's chance to finally tell her side of the tabloid-worthy life she's led, and she talks about it all: her decadent childhood birthday parties, her nose job, her fairy-tale wedding to the wrong man, her so-called feud with her mother. Tori has already revealed her flair for brilliant, self-effacing satire on her VH1 show So NoTORIous and Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Inn Love, but her memoir goes deeper, into the real life behind the rumors: her complicated relationship with her parents; her struggles as an actress after 90210; her accident-prone love life; and, ultimately, her quest to define herself on her own terms.

From her over-the-top first wedding to finding new love to her much-publicized -- and misunderstood -- "disinheritance," sTORI telling is a juicy, eye-opening, enthralling look at what it really means to be Tori Spelling.

The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It

Tilar J. Mazzeo

Amazon Price: $17.13 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Collins Business Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $15.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Business

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The story of the visionary young widow who built a champagne empire, showed the world how to live with style, and emerged a legend

Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomizes glamour, style, and luxury. But who was this young widow—the Veuve Clicquot—whose champagne sparkled at the courts of France, Britain, and Russia, and how did she rise to celebrity and fortune?

In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life—for the first time—the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin. A young witness to the dramatic events of the French Revolution and a new widow during the chaotic years of the Napoleonic Wars, Barbe-Nicole defied convention by assuming—after her husband's death—the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world's first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time.

Although the Widow Clicquot is still a legend in her native France, her story has never been told in all its richness—until now. Painstakingly researched and elegantly written, The Widow Clicquot provides a glimpse into the life of a woman who arranged clandestine and perilous champagne deliveries to Russia one day and entertained Napoléon and Joséphine Bonaparte on another. She was a daring and determined entrepreneur, a bold risk taker, and an audacious and intelligent woman who took control of her own destiny when fate left her on the brink of financial ruin. Her legacy lives on today, not simply through the famous product that still bears her name, but now through Mazzeo's finely crafted book. As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Widow Clicquot is utterly intoxicating.

The Way I Am

Eminem

Amazon Price: $23.52 List Price: $40.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dutton Adult Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $23.52

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General AAS
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For the first time, one of music’s most popular—and headline-making—rap artists shares his private reflections, drawings, handwritten lyrics, and never-before-seen photographs.

Fiercely intelligent, relentlessly provocative, and prodigiously gifted, Eminem is known as much for his enigmatic persona as for being the fastest-selling rap artist and the first rapper to ever win an Oscar. Now, in The Way I Am, he shares his private thoughts on everything from his inner struggles, to the trials of being famous, to his love for his daughter, Hailie, creating a book that is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself.

Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of Eminem’s home and life along with original drawings, The Way I Am is filled with reflections on his greatest hits, previously unpublished lyric sheets, and other rare memorabilia. Providing his millions of fans with a personal tour of Eminem’s creative process, it is poised to be hailed in much the same way as Tupac’s The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, and Journals by Kurt Cobain.

Hurry Down Sunshine

Michael Greenberg

Amazon Price: $13.20 List Price: $22.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Other Press Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $12.47

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

HURRY DOWN SUNSHINE TELLS THE STORY OF THE extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg’s daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally’s visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city’s most sweltering months. “I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,” Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine. Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her–her brother and grandmother, her mother and stepmother, and, not least of all, the author himself. Among Greenberg’s unforgettable gallery of characters are an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary dreams. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshine holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.

“The psychotic break of his fifteen-year-old daughter is the grit around which Michael Greenberg forms the pearl that is Hurry Down Sunshine. It is a brilliant, taut, entirely original study of a suffering child and a family and marriage under siege. I know of no other book about madness whose claim to scientific knowledge is so modest and whose artistic achievement is so great.” – Janet Malcolm, author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes and The Journalist and the Murderer

“One of the most gripping and disturbingly honest books I have ever read.  The courage Michael Greenberg shows in narrating the story of his adolescent daughter’s descent into psychosis is matched by his acute understanding of how alone each of us, sane or manic, is in our processing of reality and our attempts to get others to appreciate what seems important to us. This is a remarkable memoir.” – Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan

Suite Francaise (French language edition)

Irene Nemirovsky

Amazon Price: $19.89 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: French & European Pubns Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $16.30

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 375 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Suite Française is both a brilliant novel of wartime and an extraordinary historical document. An unmatched evocation of the exodus from Paris after the German invasion of 1940, and of life under the Nazi occupation, it was written by the esteemed French novelist Irène Némirovsky as events unfolded around her. This haunting masterpiece has been hailed by European critics as a War and Peace for the Second World War.

Though she conceived the book as a five-part work (based on the form of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony), Irène Némirovsky was able to write only the first two parts, Storm in June and Dolce, before she was arrested in July 1942. She died in Auschwitz the following month. The manuscript was saved by her young daughter Denise; it was only decades later that Denise learned that what she had imagined was her mother’s journal was in fact an invaluable work of art.

Storm in June takes place in the tumult of the evacuation from Paris in 1940, just before the arrival of the invading German army. It moves vividly between different levels of society–from the wealthy Péricand family, whose servants pack up their possessions for them, to a group of orphans from the 16th arrondissement escaping in a military truck. Némirovsky’s immense canvas includes deserting soldiers and terrified secretaries, cynical bank directors and hapless priests, egotistical writers and hardscrabble prostitutes–all thrown together in a chaotic attempt to escape the capital. Moving between them chapter by chapter, this thrilling novel describes a journey hampered and in some cases abandoned because of confusion, shelling, rumour, lack of supplies, bad luck and ordinary human weakness. Cars break down or are stolen; relatives are forgotten; friends are divided; but there are also moments of love and charity. Throughout, whether depicting saintly forbearance or the basest selfishness, Storm in June neither sweetens nor demonizes its characters; unsentimentally, with stunning perceptiveness, Némirovsky shows the complexities that mean no-one is simply a hero or villain.

The second volume, Dolce, is set in the German-occupied village of Bussy. Again, Némirovsky switches seamlessly between social strata, from tenant farmers to the local aristocracy. The focus, however, is on the delicate, secret love affair between a German soldier and the French woman in whose house he has been billeted; the passion, doubts and deceits of their burgeoning relationship echo the complex mixture of hostility and acceptance felt by the occupied community as a whole. Némirovsky is amazingly sensitive in her depiction of changing, often contradictory emotions, but her attention to the personal is matched by her sharp-eyed discussion of small-town life and the politics of occupation. In this myth-dissolving book, the French villagers see the Germans as oppressive warriors, but also as handsome young men, and occupation does nothing to remedy the condescension and envy that bedevil relations between rich and poor.

Quite apart from the astonishing story of its survival, Suite Française is a novel of genius and lasting artistic value. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, it is both a piercing record of its time and a humane, profoundly moving novel.

Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach

Meryl Gordon

Amazon Price: $17.64 List Price: $28.00 By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $17.64

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Rich & Famous
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A riveting look behind the gates of the house
of Astor as a famous family falls apart in public

The fate of Brooke Astor, the endearing philanthropist with the storied
name, has generated worldwide headlines since her grandson
Philip sued his father in 2006, alleging mistreatment of Brooke. And
shortly after her death in 2007, Anthony Marshall, Mrs. Astor's only
child, was indicted on charges of looting her estate. Rarely has there
been a story with such an appealing heroine, conjuring up a world so
nearly forgotten: a realm of lavish wealth and secrets of the sort that
have engaged Americans from the era of Edith Wharton to the more
recent days of Truman Capote and Vanity Fair.

New York journalist Meryl Gordon has interviewed not only the
elite of Brooke Astor's social circle but also the large staff who cosseted
and cared for Mrs. Astor during her declining years. The result is the
behind-the-headlines story of the Astor empire's unraveling, filled with
never-before-reported scenes. This powerful, poignant saga takes the
reader inside the gilded gates of an American dynasty to tell of three
generations' worth of longing and missed opportunities. Even in this
territory of privilege, no riches can put things right once they've been
torn asunder. Here is an American epic of the bonds of money, morality,
and social position.

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

John Stauffer

Amazon Price: $19.80 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Twelve Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $15.02

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> African-American & Black
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> United States -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning HarvardUniversity scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America.


Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders.


At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation.


Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.