Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Biographies & Memoirs

Here is the rags-to-riches story of the man who sliced, diced, and julienned his way into our hearts and wallets—Ron Popeil—packed with hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guidance on how anyone with a product idea can make big money.

The Chippewa shaman No-Eyes shares her wisdom and perspective on life. No-Eyes sits in her humble Colorado cabin, offering startling but compelling visions of the future, including some upheavals on the horizon. Listening intently to her teacher and new friend, Summer Rain learns about the unique relationship between the Earth Mother and the many creatures in her domain.

In a 45-year career as a personal manager, Hollywood agent, producer, and studio head, Bernie Brillstein learned how to survive and prosper in Hollywood. And in Where Did I Go Right?, Brillstein's street-smart, funny, and thoroughly human account of his life in show business, he shares those secrets. With his trademark wit and candor, Bernie recounts with pride how he built his impressive stable of clients, discusses his feud with Mike Ovitz, and reveals how he felt after passing on the leadership of his company to his partner, Brad Grey.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were violently murdered, leading to the arrest and trial of former NFL player, O.J. Simpson. The “Trial of the Century” soon turned into a spectacle on both sides of the aisle—and in the jury box itself! In this personal account by a juror who was dismissed before the trial ended, Michael Knox provides a unique look—as both insider and outsider—of this volatile case that divided a country.

A legendary folk singer and activist, Woody Guthrie and his songs changed the world. Born in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, Guthrie traveled America by boxcar, thumb, and foot. Along the journey, he composed and sang songs that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. This remarkable autobiography brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die. Funny, cynical, and earthy, Bound for Glory is the stirring account of Guthrie's life and a superb portrait of America's Depression years.

This century's most ardent advocate of the First Amendment, controversial and outspoken, hated and adored, the infamous Larry Flynt's life needs no exaggeration to make it one of the most interesting stories of our time. The real events of Flynt's life are captured here for the very first time, from his roots in Appalachia to his troubles in Beverly Hills.

In the days when Hollywood films were cranked out the way Detroit turned out automobiles, one man clung to the belief that a motion picture was like a painting created and signed by a single artist.

Based on interviews with Lansky's family, his close friends and criminal associates, law enforcement experts, and using previously unpublished documents written by Lansky himself, this is both the biography of a mob boss and a social history of American crime.

Acclaimed biographer Anne Edwards reveals for the first time the dynamic history of the world's oldest reigning dynasty. This book ncludes little known facts and details on the deaths of Princess Grace and Princess Caroline's husband.

With his body-covering tattoos and ever-changing fluorescent hair, Dennis Rodman—one of the NBA's greatest rebounders—dishes on everything from fame, money, and race relations to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Rodman's sideline antics and celebrated benchings captivated sports fans as much as his record-breaking on-court performances and earned him a reputation as a rebel with a penchant for shocking behavior. In Bad as I Wanna Be, Rodman tells his unique, uncompromising life story, demonstrating why he is one of a kind and unforgettable.

More than 85 years after his untimely death at just age 37, Irving Thalberg remains a legendary Hollywood figure. Called the “Boy Wonder of Hollywood,” Thalberg quickly climbed the ranks at MGM studios to become one of the most powerful and high-profile producers of the time, elevating filmmaking to an art form. In this definitive biography, Bob Thomas brings Thalberg's legend to life, recounting how the producer's remarkable talent for developing stars and scripts led to the creation of beloved movies such as Ben-Hur, Romeo and Juliet, and Camille.

Harry Cohn was the cofounder and president of Columbia Pictures, which he ran from the 1930s through the 1950s. Cohn—who abhorred personal publicity—left no writings, made no speeches, and rarely submitted to interviews. Despite this, acclaimed biographer Bob Thomas brilliantly illuminates the life of the powerful but elusive studio head in King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn. Thomas details the studio head's rise from a New York City song-plugger to a Poverty Row impresario, highlighting his reign as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Leigh Perkins bought Orvis in 1965 and over the next thirty years would revolutionize the catalog industry as he successfully blended his love for the outdoors with his business acumen. A Sportsman's Life is the story of a man, his company, and his love of the outdoors, his commitment to conservation, and his infectious enthusiasm for the good life.

Chutzpah, says Alan M. Dershowitz, is "boldness, assertiveness, a willingness to demand what is due, to defy tradition, to challenge authority, to raise eyebrows." Assessing his experiences, he brings to bear all the chutzpah for which he is famous in examining such issues as anti-Semitism, assimilation, the Holocaust, Zionism. The changes in Eastern Europe, and the turmoil in the Middle East, as well as what the future will bring—and needs to bring.

When Pauline Chen began medical school, she dreamed of saving lives. What she didn't count on was how much death would be a part of her work. Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her training, as she struggles to reconcile a shared humanity with her patients and to separate ideals about healing from a fierce desire to cure. Chen's transfixing and beautiful rumination on how doctors negotiate the ineluctable fact of death becomes, in the end, a brilliant questioning of how we should live.

In December 2008, amidst a world gripped by financial crisis, Bernard Madoff, a respected fund manager, and former chairman of NASDAQ, was arrested by the FBI for reportedly bilking thousands of trusting investors out of $50 billion. In the first comprehensive account of this financial mastermind's epic Ponzi scheme, Catastrophe exposes the real story behind Madoff's upstanding façade-his family's involvement, and his unlikely rise and incredible crash.

In this adventure, which would have played well in one of his own films, Schmuel Goldfisz left the Warsaw ghetto in 1895. He walked 300 miles to the Oder River, where he paid someone to row him across, smuggling him out of the Russian empire into Germany, past border patrols to another long walk to Hamburg. The gleam in his eye was America, "a far-away country, a vision of paradise." Schmuel Goldfisz became Samuel Goldwyn, one of the producers who created the Hollywood film industry.

Frank Rich's eloquent and moving boyhood memoir reveals how theater itself became a ghost light and a beacon of security for a child finding his way in a tumultuous world. The revered New York Times critic writes lovingly of how his favorite shows, songs, and actors became a lifeline, leading him out of a tumultuous household and propelling him towards the itinerant family of theater, whose romantic denizens welcomed him into the colorful fringes of Broadway during its last glamorous era.

Would you believe that one man championed the cause of Native Americans with Leonard Peltier, helped migrant farm workers with Cesar Chavez, traveled to Nepal, hiked the Himalayas, explored Africa and founded The Paris Review? It's true, and it's the life of Peter Matthiessen. Listen to entrancing travel tales and real life anecdotes from this author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard.

Lisa Kron invites her audience on a roller coaster ride through the Kron family album in 2.5 Minute Ride. Rising and falling between high hilarity and deep disquiet, Kron demonstrates with disarming simplicity that humor and horror can share the same human moment. Kron's' performance switches back and forth between her journey to Auschwitz with her septuagenarian father, a Holocaust survivor; her Michigan family's annual pilgrimage to a Sandusky, Ohio amusement park, and more.