Orson Welles, a biography

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Charlotte Chandler

"In Nobody's Perfect, Billy Wilder speaks for himself, in what is as close to an autobiography as there ever will be. Charlotte Chandler, author of earlier authorized biographies of Groucho Marx and Federico Fellini, met Wilder in the mid-1970s and began a friendship that continued until his death. Over the course of more than twenty years, she interviewed not only Wilder, but many of the actors and other creative people who worked with him. The result is this remarkable book, a very personal look at one of Hollywood's creative geniuses."--BOOK JACKET.

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Barbara Leaming

At last, the definitive biography of Katharine Hepburn - the story she herself has never told. Hollywood has produced many stars, but no one compares to Katharine Hepburn. She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original. In more than sixty years of public life, countless men have fallen in love with her, women have admired her, and yet only a handful have ever known the real Kate. What drove Katharine Hepburn? Why was she so loved? How could such a fiercely independent woman have given up her life to one man - Spencer Tracy - to the point of curling up on the floor outside his hotel room while he drank himself into unconsciousness behind a locked door? Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Growing up in a family shadowed by suicide and madness, young Kate was unaware of her family's tragic history until the day - she was thirteen - she discovered her brother hanging dead in an attic. His death - and the heritage that might have explained it - was never talked of again, leaving Kate with unresolved questions that have haunted her ever since. It is a love story - though not the one you would expect. It is also a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.

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Sally Field

One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen. From Gidget's sweet-faced "girl next door" to the dazzling complexity of Sybil to the Academy Award-worthy ferocity and depth of Norma Rae and Mary Todd Lincoln, Field has stunned audiences time and time again with her artistic range and emotional acuity. Yet there is one character who always remained hidden: the shy and anxious little girl within. With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring and important account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

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Sudhir Venkatesh

First introduced in Freakonomics, here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrance into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment. When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student hoping to impress his professors with his boldness, he never imagined that as a result of the assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there. Over the next seven years, Venkatesh got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his privileged position of unprecedented access, he observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack-selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure. In Hollywood-speak, Gang Leader for a Day is The Wire meets Harvard University. It's a brazen, page turning, and fundamentally honest view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in what is tantamount to an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between Sudhir and JT-two young and ambitious men a universe apart.