She made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando tongue-tied. She iced out Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her...

Of all the charming misfits on television, there's no doubt Raj from The Big Bang Theory -- the sincere yet incurably geeky Indian-American astrophysicist -- ranks among the misfittingest. Now, we meet the actor who is every bit as loveable as the character he plays on TV. In this revealing collection of essays written in his irreverent, hilarious, and self-deprecating voice, Kunal Nayyar traces his journey from a little boy in New Delhi who mistakes...

"A perfect match of writer and subject: one of our most brilliant biographers takes on one of our greatest living playwrights--with his cooperation and access to a trove of hitherto unseen material. Tom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics, and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary...

Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of her age. Just as Paz illuminates Sor Juana's life by placing it in its historical setting, so he situates her work in relation to the traditions that nurtured it. With critical...

A family memoir about the author's race to document her father's story as a World War II paratrooper before his mind succumbed to dementia relates how he overcame formidable obstacles and maverick impulses to join an elite special ops unit that was a first collaboration between the American and British Secret Services. "Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. In her adult life,...

Written in a spirit of exploration rather than declaration, Montaigne in Barn Boots is a down-to-earth (how do you pronounce that last name?) look into the ideas of a philosopher "ensconced in a castle tower overlooking his vineyard," channeled by a midwestern American writing "in a room above the garage overlooking a disused pig pen." Whether grabbing an electrified fence, fighting fires, failing to fix a truck, or feeding chickens, Perry draws on...

"A definitive biography accompanied by spectacular images of the artist's greatest work."--Cover.

"... Laurie Notaro isn't exactly a domestic goddess -- unless that means she fully embraces her genetic hoarding predisposition, sneaks peeks at her husband's daily journal, or has made a list of the people she wants on her Apocalypse Survival team (her husband's not on it). Notaro chronicles her chronic misfortune in the domestic arts, including cooking, cleaning, and putting on Spanx while sweaty (which should technically qualify as an Olympic sport)....