Memoir & Biography
A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever
Josh Karp
Now a Netflix Original Movie starring Will Forte, Domhnall Gleeson, and Emmy Rossum!
The ultimate biography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney, this book offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters. With wonderful stories of the comedy scene . . . . READ MORE
“The definitive behind-the-scenes account of the man and publication that all but defined the comedy zeitgeist of the last 35 years.”
“Jammed with personalities and capsule histories.”
The Life I’ve Picked: A Banjo Player’s Nitty Gritty Journey
John McEuen
#1 New Release on Amazon’s “Country Music” bestseller list!
John McEuen is one of the founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Now 50-years strong, the band is best known for its evergreen bestselling album Will the Circle Be Unbroken and for its gorgeous version of the song “Mr. Bojangles.” McEuen is one of the seminal figures who conceived and originated the fusion of folk, rock and country, a unique sound still hugely popular today. . . . READ MORE
“Nitty Gritty is one of the greatest bands and gifts music will ever hold. John McEuen doesn’t know how not to be honest . . . as a player or an author. You’re going to love this read!!”
Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Cass Elliot
Eddi Fiegel
This insightful biography examines the life and music of Cass Elliot—better known as "Mama Cass"—the instantly recognizable face of the Mamas and the Papas. Untangling the truth about Cass's life, this book follows her development from her misfit teenage years to her part in the folk boom of the early 1960s. . . . READ MORE
“Thoroughly researched, colorfully written.”
“A revelatory and entertaining biography. A fast-paced and engrossing read.”
High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta
Gerard Helferich
Winner of the 2009 Authors Award from the Mississippi Library Association!
This dirt-under-the-fingernails portrait of a small-time farmer follows Zack Killebrew over a single year as he struggles to defend his cotton against such timeless adversaries as weeds, insects, and drought, as well as such twenty-first-century threats as globalization. . . . READ MORE
“Evocative.”
“Valuable insights into the historical and cultural significance of cotton in the United States.”
Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero
David Sandison and Graham Vickers
This fascinating and in-depth biography of Neal Cassady takes a look at the man who achieved immortality as Dean Moriarty, the central character in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. A charismatic, funny, articulate, and formidably intelligent man, Cassady was also a compulsive womanizer who lived life on the edge. . . . READ MORE
“A full-scale biography of the maddest of the ‘mad ones.’ ”
“A myth-shattering account of one of the most important figures of the beat generation.”
8: All True: Unbelievable
Amy Fusselman
The Mania of Early Motherhood, the intimacy of marriage, and the quest for healing are raw materials from which critically acclaimed writer Amy Fusselman has wrought her latest work—a daring exploration of the perversities of time. The same idiosyncratic and inimitable form Fusselman created . . . READ MORE
“Fusselman’s freewheeling memoir is alternately serious and trivial, entertaining and exasperating.”
“[Fusselman] makes the world strange again, a place where dying and making life are equally mysterious and miraculous activities.”
The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere
Debra Marquart
Debra Marquart grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota—on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely . . . READ MORE
“The author’s elegant, understated sentences are as fertile as freshly tilled rows of loam.”
“[A] rich memoir, set in North Dakota, about growing up on and escaping from a family farm for a future that held once unheard-of opportunities as a rock musician, poet, and English teacher.”
The All-American Industrial Motel: A Memoir
Doug Crandell
This volatile memoir from Doug Crandell weaves a darkly comic and thoroughly heartbreaking coming-of-age tale set in 1990 as the author is about to graduate from college. With very few job prospects and in need of tuition money, he joins his father working at a ceiling tile factory in tiny Lagro, Indiana. As his father moves headlong . . . READ MORE
“This sad, sharp memoir is graced with humor, hope, a strong sense of place and a winning narrator, making it a fine example of the form.”
Perishable: A Memoir
Dirk Jamison
Fascinatingly disturbing, this memoir chronicles seven years in the life of a distinctly unordinary American family. In 1973, Dirk Jamison's father started having a midlife crisis that never ended, and after purposefully losing his construction job, he moved his family to a ski resort and started feeding them from dumpsters in an effort to reject money and all its trappings. . . . READ MORE
“A wicked, wonderfully crafted memoir. . . Recollections in a fresh voice—with sharp teeth.”
“An intensely relatable picture of the roads we travel into adulthood.”
The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius
Joyce Chaplin
Famous, fascinating Benjamin Franklin—he would be neither without his accomplishments in science. In this authoritative intellectual biography of America's most brilliant and cosmopolitan Founding Father, Joyce Chaplin considers Franklin's scientific work as a career in its own right as well as the basis of his political thought. The famous kite and other experiments with electricity were only part of Franklin's . . . READ MORE
Where’s My F***ing Cake, Bob? How I Survived My True Love’s Trips to Rehab
Curlin Reed Sullivan
Memoir, Humor, Addiction/Recovery (forthcoming)