A fast-moving, musically astute portrait of arguably the greatest composer of American popular music. Irving Berlin (1888-1989) has been called-by George Gershwin, among others-the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. "Berlin has no place in American music," legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; "he is American music." In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including...

In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of his fifty-year friendship with Dean Martin. 
They were the unlikeliest of pairs—a handsome crooner and a skinny monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J.. Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen...

In the fall of 1999, two men meet at a high school reunion in New Jersey, one a yuppie, the other a manual worker lacking in ambition. Both feel sorry for each other. The novel follows their fortunes as the worker becomes manager and the yuppie ends in the street, victim of a stock market crash. By the author of Pearl's Progress.

The child of Communist war-hero parents under Tito's regime in postwar Yugoslavia, Marina Abramović was raised with a relentless work ethic. Even as she was beginning to build an international artistic career, she lived at home under her mother's abusive control, strictly obeying a 10 p.m. curfew. But nothing could quell her insatiable curiosity, her desire to connect with people, or her distinctly Balkan sense of humor -- all of which informs her...