"The definitive biography of America's best-known and least understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped. After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the...

"A witty, tender memoir of a son's journey home to care for his irascible mother -- a tale of secrets, silences, and enduring love. When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself -- an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook -- in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her...

Draws on dozens of insider interviews in a portrait of the iconic Oscar nominee that discusses his traumatic childhood, sexual orientation and awareness-raising battle with AIDS. The icon worshiped by moviegoers and beloved by his colleagues appeared to have it all. Yet beneath the suave and commanding star persona, there was an insecure, deeply conflicted, and all too vulnerable human being. Growing up poor in Winnetka, Illinois, Hudson was abandoned...

"The newest essay collection from the New York Times-bestselling John Waters, reflecting on how to overcome newfound responsibility and rebel in the autumn of your years"-- Waters relates themes about which he is an expert, including: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; how to tell someone you love them...

"Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy Award-winning star of Broadway's Kinky Boots, ... Porter was a young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn't fit in. At five years old, Porter was sent to therapy to 'fix' his effeminacy. He was endlessly bullied at school, sexually abused by his stepfather, and...

"From the star of Broadway's The Book of Mormon and HBO's Girls, the heartfelt and hilarious coming-of-age memoir of a Midwestern boy surviving bad auditions, bad relationships, and some really bad highlights as he chases his dreams in New York City."--Publisher's description. When Rannells left Nebraska for New York City in 1997, he saw the city as a chance to start over. To transform the fiercely ambitious but sexually confused teenager he saw...

Once described by the Washington Post as "the most interesting mayor you've never heard of," Pete Buttigieg, the thirty-six-year-old Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has improbably emerged as one of the nation's most visionary politicians. First elected in 2011, Buttigieg left a successful business career to move back to his hometown, previously tagged by Newsweek as a "dying city," because the industrial Midwest beckoned as a challenge to...

Recounts the events that have shaped the author's adulthood, describing his experiences with his aging parents, his beloved AIDS-victim brother, and his distant boyfriend as well as the music of the B-52s and the appearance of Iranian objects mysteriously found in his luggage.

"Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And thank God he's here to tell us. He's bothered that he has to play football in high school gym when he'd rather be in the guidance counselor's office, faking sick and dishing about the latest dramas on his beloved soap operas. He's annoyed when, as a kid growing up in Queens, New York, there's a serial killer loose in his neighborhood, but Carole Burnett is on tv and he really doesn't want to miss...