by Lisa Robinson (Get the Book)
Journalist Robinson, currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has four decades' worth of personal stories about the many rock 'n' roll stars she hung with and wrote about. She knew Mick Jagger before he got his teeth fixed, for example, and she colorfully details her times with rock soon-to-be-superstars David Bowie, Lou Reed, and such before moving on to her many years of interviews and meetings with music luminaries like Michael Jackson, Bono, Eminem, and Lady Gaga. Robinson has an astute memory, reel-to-reel party tapes, and even breakfast-order notes that captured the minutest aspects of her musical journey. The excerpts from her long interviews with, say, John Lennon, are fascinating and worth the price of the book; no worries that Robinson digresses and rambles here and there. Plenty of music fans will be more than ready for this circuitous, genial, and opinionated walk on the wild side. --Booklist
by Frances Mayes (Get the Book)
Mayes, adored for her famed Tuscany books (Under the Tuscan Sun, 1996; Every Day in Tuscany, 2010), mined the murky depths of her family's history for her first novel, Swan (2002). She now returns to the scene of the crimes in both literal and figurative senses. Her southern memoir is a tale straight out of Faulkner, rife with episodes of dissipation and disillusion, parents who loved and fought with equally wild abandon, and ancestors with names like Big Mama and Daddy Jack. While on a book tour in Oxford, Mississippi, Mayes realized her southern roots ran deeper than she believed or would have liked. But she and her husband were sufficiently compelled to relocate from Northern California to North Carolina, settling in a university town with a far enough remove to allow her an objective distance from which to analyze the signature episodes of her childhood. With her trademark skill for capturing the essence of place and time, Mayes candidly reveals a youth riddled with psychological abuse and parental neglect that, nevertheless, ignited a fiery passion for adventure and self-discovery. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A best-selling sensation worldwide, Mayes will galvanize readers with this vigorously promoted coming-of-age tale set on her home terrain. --Booklist
by Robert Wagner (Get the Book)
Wagner and Eyman, who coauthored Wagner's 2008 autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, this time tell the story of a place and a time: Hollywood from the 1930s through the '60s. Divided into topical chapters, including Houses and Hotels, Style, and Nightlife, the book follows Hollywood from its early days until Cecil B. DeMille arrived in 1913, Hollywood was just another place outside Los Angeles through its heady decades as the trendsetter in style and popular culture, and ending with the collapse of the studio system, when profits were in steep decline and many of the Golden Age stars were dying or aging out of the spotlight. You can tell that Wagner, whose acting career started when the Golden Age was its most golden, truly misses that time and place; his fondness for it and his distaste for the modern way of moviemaking come through on almost every page. For Wagner, the emblems of Hollywood at its grandest the mansions, the stars, the parties, the watering holes evoke a better world, and his account of how it was then just may leave nostalgic readers similarly affected. --Booklist
by Doug Harvey (Get the Book)
Doug Harvey made his Major League umpiring debut in 1962 and retired after 4,673 games in 1992. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. As one would expect of an umpire, his memoir is confident and sure. Whatever call he made, safe or out, ball or strike, he never backed down and never changed his mind. Along with best-selling coauthor Golenbock (The Bronx Zoo, 1979, and Balls, 1984, among others), Harvey guides readers through his career: his relatively short apprenticeship in the minors, his time as a basketball referee, his early years with a contentious crew chief in the Majors, and his long run as veteran and much-respected ump. And, as readers would hope, there are dozens of anecdotes involving some of baseball's greatest names, including Sandy Koufax, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays. Though he never changed his mind, Harvey prided himself on being a good listener, even to irate managers, and the best tales are those about the behind-the-scenes machinations of such legendary field generals as Leo Durocher, Sparky Anderson, Tommy Lasorda, and Walter Alston. Baseball fans will relish this my-way-or-the-highway memoir. --Booklist
