MAKING MICHAEL delves deep inside the career of one of the most successful, enigmatic and controversial entertainers of all time: Michael Jackson. Side-stepping sensationalism, journalist Mike Smallcombe enters unchartered territory as he takes you behind the scenes to reveal the real Jackson, a man few people ever got to know. Interviewing over sixty of Jackson's associates including managers, lawyers, music executives, producers, musicians and engineers - many of whom are speaking about ...

What happens when you discover at thirty that your brain runs on different software? Chemical engineer Michelle Vines reveals the invisible world of female autism—from childhood isolation through workplace disasters to the life-changing moment of diagnosis. With wit and searing honesty, she exposes the exhausting performance of appearing "normal" and the profound relief of finally understanding why she never quite fit. A must-read for anyone who's ever felt like they're operating from a di...

"Reveals the grisly conditions in which the mentally ill were kept . . . [and] harrowing details of the inhumane and gruesome treatment of these patients."— Daily MailIn the first half of the nineteenth century, treatment of the mentally ill in Britain and Ireland underwent radical change. No longer manacled, chained and treated like wild animals, patient care was defined in law and medical understanding, and treatment of insanity developed.Focusin...

"[A]n eloquent, brave, big-hearted book…about the timeless anxieties and emotions of parenthood, and the modern twists thereon.”—James Fallows, The AtlanticLove That Boy is a uniquely personal story about the causes and costs of outsized parental expectations. What we want for our children—popularity, normalcy, achievement, genius—and what they truly need—grit, empathy, character—are explored by National Journal’s ...

New York Times Bestseller: The "gripping" true story of a beautiful Texas socialite, her ambitious husband, and a string of mysterious deaths ( Los Angeles Times).Joan Robinson Hill was a world-class equestrian, a glamorous member of Houston high society, and the wife of Dr. John Hill, a handsome and successful plastic surgeon. Her father, Ash Robinson, was a charismatic oil tycoon obsessed with making his daughter's every dream come true.R...

A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" ( Publishers Weekly).Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the...

The true story of one of Hitler's most feared and brutal killers: his life and crimes, postwar atrocities, and forty-year evasion of justice.During World War II, SS Hauptsturmführer Nikolaus "Klaus" Barbie earned a reputation for sadistic cruelty unmatched by all but a handful of his contemporaries in Adolf Hitler's Gestapo. In 1942, he was dispatched to Nazi-occupied France after leaving his bloodstained mark on the Netherlands. In Lyons, Barbie was entrusted with...

“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it.”—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnistScandal! Intrigue! Cossacks! Here the world’s most engaging royal historian chronicles the world’s most fascinating imperial dynasty: the Romanovs, whose three-hundred-year reig...

A sweeping biography of one of the greatest and most provocative athletes of all time—"a life that needs to be understood whether you care a whit about boxing or not" ( The Boston Globe).Athlete, activist, rebel, poet, legend—Muhammad Ali stood larger than life in the imagination of hundreds of millions of people around the world. A gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics, he won the heavyweight championship at age twenty-two by conquering Sonny Liston in dramat...

An Edgar Award–winning author's true crime account of a grisly string of killings in Kentucky—and the shocking spectacle of greed that followed.Kentucky never deserved its Indian appellation "A Dark and Bloody Ground" more than when a small-town physician, seventy-seven-year-old Roscoe Acker, called in an emergency on a sweltering evening in August 1985. Acker's own life hung in the balance, but it was already too late for his college-age daughter, Tammy, savagely s...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • With a new afterword by the author in honor of Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthdayThis is the book that Frank Sinatra tried—but failed—to keep from publication, and it’s easy to understand why. This unauthorized biography goes behind the iconic myth of Sinatra to expose the well-hidden side of one of the most celebrated—and elusive—public figures of our time. Celebrated journalist Kitty Kelley spent three years researching governm...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAmerica was flying high in the Roaring Twenties. Then, almost overnight, the Great Depression brought it crashing down. When the dust settled, people were primed for a star who could distract them from reality. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a gift for delivering exactly what America needed. With her superb narrative skills and eye for detail, Karen Abbott brings to life an era of ambition,...