Other books that might interest you

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  Robert Plant - A Life

  Paul Rees

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  This biography of the solo artist and legendary lead singer of Led Zeppelin “informs and entertains . . . leav[ing] few stones in Plant’s life unturned.” —Mojo magazine 
   
  Robert Plant by Paul Rees is the definitive biography of Led Zeppelin's legendary frontman. As lead singer for one of the biggest and most influential rock bands of all time—whose song “Stairway to Heaven” has been played more times on American radio than any other track—Robert Plant defined what it means to be a rock god. 
   
  Over the course of his twenty-year career, British music journalist and editor Paul Rees has interviewed such greats as Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Bono, and AC/DC. Rees now offers a full portrait of Robert Plant for the first time, exploring the forces that shaped him, the ravaging highs and lows of the Zeppelin years—including his relationship with Jimmy Page and John Bonham—and his life as a solo artist today. 
   
  Illustrated with more than two dozen photographs, Robert Plant: A LIfe is the never-before-told story of a gifted, complicated music icon who changed the face of rock 'n' roll. 
   
  “Anyone seeking insight into Robert Plant as a man and musician will find it here.” —Q Magazine 
   
  “Particularly enlightening on Plant’s formative pre-Zep years in the Midlands, A Life puts the singer’s eclectic career into clear context.” —Dave Lewis, Tight But Loose magazine

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  On This Day: May 2

  Kurt Heintz

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  On This Day: May 2. Daily podcast of historical and noteworthy activity on this calendar day. Lou Gehrig's 2,130-game streak comes to an end; King James version of Bible is published; Tony Blair ; Ella Fitzgerald; Red Baron; Osama bin Laden; Edvard Munch

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  Ava Gardner - A Life in Movies

  Kendra Bean, Anthony Uzarowski

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  Renowned for her screen performances, down-to-earth personality, and love affair with Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner left an indelible mark on Hollywood history. Her adventurous life story is told through authoritative text and hundreds of photos in Ava: A Life in Movies.Ava is an illustrated tribute to a legendary life. Authors Kendra Bean and Anthony Uzarowski take a closer look at the Academy Award-nominated actress's life and famous screen roles. They also shed new light on the creation and maintenance of her glamorous image, her marriages, and friendships with famous figures such as Ernest Hemingway, John Huston, and Tennessee Williams. From the backwoods of Grabtown, North Carolina to the bullfighting rings of Spain, from the MGM backlot to the Rome of La Dolce Vita, this lavishly illustrated biography takes readers on the exciting journey of a life lived to the fullest and through four decades of film history with an iconic star.

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  The Real Consequences of Justice...

  Frederic Reamer

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  Frederic Reamer finds his belief in justice tested every time he faces criminals and victims at parole board hearings in "The Real Consequences of Justice," his contribution to NPR's This I Believe series.  
  This I Believe is a National Public Radio program that features Americans, from the famous to the unknown, completing the thought that begins with the series title. The pieces that make up the program compel listeners to re-think not only what and how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others. 
  Featuring a star-studded list of contributors that includes John McCain, Isabel Allende, and Colin Powell, as well as pieces from the original 1950's series including Helen Keller and Jackie Robinson, the This I Believe collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer, a woman who sells yellow pages advertising in Fort Worth, and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring, funny and always provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of Americans whose beliefs, and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them, reveal the American spirit at its best.

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  The Hungarian Who Walked to...

  Edward Fox

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  This is a delightful short biography of an eccentric Hungarian scholar who became one of the fathers of Western studies of the Tibetan language and culture. Educated at an austere Calvinist school until aged 31 where he demonstrated exceptional skills as a linguist, Csoma de Korös (1784-1842) finally set out alone on a pilgrimage to the East. His personal mission was to discover the roots of the Hungarian people, whom he and others of the time theorized to be descended from Attila the Hun. 
   
  Due to a Chinese decree restricting foreign entry to Tibet he was sadly never to reach Yarkand in the Western plains of China, where he hoped to find linguistic proof of the Central Asian origins of the Hungarian race. However on his way, via many adventures, misfortunes and disguises, he expanded his repertoire to as many as 14 languages and became one of the first Europeans to enter Ladakh, Tibetan in language and culture, but politically part of India. Supported by the British vet and superintendent of the East India Company's Stud, William Moorcroft, Csoma was encouraged to use his extraordinary facility for languages to learn Tibetan, (largely unknown in the West), and produce the first English-Tibetan dictionary. He studied with Lama Sangye Phuntsog in a remote monastery in Zanskar. For 16 months the two men studied the Tibetan language and its vast religious canon in austere freezing conditions in a tiny nine-foot square cell. The fruits of this arduous but pioneering effort, the first reliable grammar and dictionary of Tibetan, was finally published in two volumes in 1834 - using a Tibetan font that had to be specially made. Csoma spent the last years of his life working for the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, mastering Marathi, Bengali and Sanskrit, before dying of malaria on a final courageous attempt to travel across Tibet to Western China. Csoma's life-story and achievements gradually became known in Hungary, and he is now a revered national figure. A fascinating little book.

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  Some Sort of Epic Grandeur - The...

  Matthew J. Bruccoli

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  “Epic indeed, this is the definitive biography of Fitzgerald, plain and simple. There’s no reason to own another.” —Library Journal  The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” These works and more elevated F. Scott Fitzgerald to his place as one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. After struggling to become a screenwriter in Hollywood, Fitzgerald was working on The Last Tycoon when he died of a heart attack in 1940. He was only forty-four years old.   Fitzgerald left behind his own mythology. He was a prince charming, a drunken author, a spoiled genius, the personification of the Jazz Age, and a sacrificial victim of the Depression. Here, Matthew J. Bruccoli strips away the façade of this flawed literary hero. He focuses on Fitzgerald as a writer by tracing the development of his major works and his professional career. Beginning with his Midwest upbringing and first published works as a teenager, this biography follows Fitzgerald’s life through the successful debut of This Side of Paradise, his turbulent marriage to Zelda Sayre, his time in Europe among The Lost Generation, the disappointing release of The Great Gatsby, and his ignominious fall. As former US poet laureate James Dickey said, “the spirit of the man is in the facts, and these, as gathered and marshalled by Bruccoli over thirty years, are all we will ever need. But more important, they are what we need.”

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