Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's courageous, candid memoir of his return to Earth after the historic moon landing and his personal struggle with fame and depression."We landed with all the grace of a freight elevator," Buzz Aldrin relates in the opening passages of Return to Earth, remembering Command Module Columbia's abrupt descent into the gravity of the blue planet. With that splash, Aldrin takes readers on a journey through the human side of ...

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 ...

A British officer recounts his harrowing years as a POW in Thailand, including his time as the camp commandant, in this WWII memoir.Colonel Cary Owtram served with the 137th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, and the 11th Indian Infantry Division in Malaysia. After being captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he was transported to the infamous Burma railway. He went on to spend the next three and a half years in grueling captivity in Thailand, first in Ban Pong Camp a...

With the same straightforward honesty that made her one of country’s top-selling female recording artists, Reba McEntire tells her phenomenal story.From her childhood in Oklahoma working cattle with her ranching family to her days on the rodeo competition circuit, from her early days as a performer in honky-tonks to her many awards and a sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall, Reba relates her experiences with heartfelt emotion and down-to-earth humor. With the same ...

The Newbery Medal–winning author of A Wrinkle in Time paints an intimate portrait of her forty-year marriage to actor Hugh Franklin in this personal memoir.A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.As National Book Award-winnin author Madeleine L'Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and confl...

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...

A gift-worthy playbook of common and unexpected words and idioms that have their roots in sports and games.There are many metaphors we can quickly identify from the realm of sports: covering all the bases (baseball), game plan (football), and par for the course (golf). But the English language is also peppered with the not-so-obvious influence of sports and games, such as go-to guy (basketball) and dead ringer (horse rac...

The landmark New York Times bestselling biography of Richard M. Nixon, a political savant whose gaping character flaws would drive him from the presidency and forever taint his legacy.“A biography of eloquence and breadth . . . No single volume about Nixon’s long and interesting life could be so comprehensive.”—Chicago TribuneOne of Time’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the YearIn this revelat...

The "extraordinary" true story of the St. Louis, a German ship that, in 1939, carried Jews away from Hamburg—and into an unimaginable ordeal ( The New York Times).On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany before World War II erupted. Aboard were 937 Jews—some had already been in concentration camps—who believed they had bought visas to enter Cuba. The voyage of the damned h...

The Irish National Liberation Army was one of the most ruthless terrorist organisations during the troubles in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1974 as a splinter group of the Official IRA, the INLA's campaign of murder throughout the 1970s and 1980s included such notorious acts as the bombing of the Droppin' Well in Derry in 1982 and, perhaps most infamously, the kidnapping and mutilation of Dublin dentist by former member, the "Border Fox".Many of their leading members found death at ...

In this WWII memoir, a British POW recounts his captivity, his thrilling escape, and his time as a fugitive on the run through occupied France.British army doctor Philip Newman was left behind after the evacuation from Dunkirk. As a prisoner of war, he was first held in France, then in Germany, where he treated the wounded and sick and planned to escape. After several failed attempts, he finally got out over the wire and journeyed for weeks as a fugitive from northe...

E. R. Braithwaite, the acclaimed author of To Sir, With Love, poignantly recounts his time as a social worker dedicated to London's abandoned minority childrenDespite his Cambridge education and a sterling record with the British Royal Air Force during World War II, E. R. Braithwaite, a black man, was unable to find employment as an engineer in post-war London. Instead he accepted a position as a teacher in a tough East End school and wrote of his experienc...