David Rensin

Louis Zamperini

The "inspirational" and "extraordinary" memoir of one of the most courageous of the greatest generation, Louis Zamperini: Olympian, WWII Japanese POW and survivor. A juvenile delinquent, a world class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller than most, when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B–24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty–seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith–and the ever–present sharks. On the forty–seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land–and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war. Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird–a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive. Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short–lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking. A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," DEVIL AT MY HEELS is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.

Devil at My Heels

Brandy Engler

A New York City sex therapist describes her work with male clients who sought greater self-awareness and improved sex lives, in a guide that draws on true cases to offer insight into how real men feel about sex, desire and love. Original. 50,000 first printing.

True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy

The Men on My Couch

The bestselling autobiography of the legendary Louis Zamperini, hero of the blockbuster Unbroken. A modern classic by an American legend, Devil at My Heels is the riveting and deeply personal memoir by U.S. Olympian, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor Louis Zamperini. His inspiring story of courage, resilience, and faith has captivated readers and audiences of Unbroken, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. In Devil at My Heels, his official autobiography (co-written with longtime collaborator David Rensin), Zamperini shares his own first-hand account of extraordinary journey—hailed as “one of the most incredible American lives of the past century” (People). A youthful troublemaker, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller life than most. But on May 27, 1943, it all changed in an instant when his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Louis and two other survivors drifting on a raft for forty-seven days and two thousand miles, waiting in vain to be rescued. And the worst was yet to come when they finally reached land, only to be captured by the Japanese. Louis spent the next two years as a prisoner of war—tortured and humiliated, routinely beaten, starved and forced into slave labor—while the Army Air Corps declared him dead and sent official condolences to his family. On his return home, memories of the war haunted him nearly destroyed his marriage until a spiritual rebirth transformed him and led him to dedicate the rest of his long and happy life to helping at-risk youth. Told in Zamperini’s own voice, Devil at My Heels is an unforgettable memoir from one of the greatest of the “Greatest Generation,” a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of faith.

A Heroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II

A tell-all journey inside a talent agency mailroom traces sixty-five years of Hollywood history to recount the real stories behind how careers have been made--or destroyed--offering entertaining anecdotes and behind-the-scenes gossip about Barry Diller, David Geffen, Mike Ovitz, and other Hollywood insiders. Reprint.

Hollywood History from the Bottom Up

The Mailroom

Bernie Brillstein

David Sipress

A noted Hollywood manager and producer draws on his own fifty-year career to provide fifty important lessons, insights, words of wisdom, and rules that can be applied to the business world, including such memorable tips as "Don't pet the snakes," "Have an opinion, even if it's wrong," "It's all lies, and that's the truth," and "Know the difference between hot and good." 50,000 first printing

50 Rules from 50 Years of Trying to Make a Living

The Little Stuff Matters Most

In this utterly engrossing biography, the author of the bestselling "The Mailroom" goes beyond the myth of legendary surfer Miki Dora to reveal the truth behind one man's colorful and dramatic life and the sport he helped define. b&w photos throughout.

The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora

All for a Few Perfect Waves

Bill Zehme

A tribute to the name Bob looks at famous and not-so-famous namesakes in history, and takes a tongue-in-cheek look at hairstyles, aftershaves, clothing, and personality traits associated with the name

A Celebration of the Ultimate Okay Guy

The Bob Book

It’s like a plot from a Hollywood potboiler: start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. But for many, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment—including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Michael Ovitz— started their dazzling careers in the lowly mailroom. Based on more than two hundred interviews, David Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution—in the voices of the people who lived it. Through nearly seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you’ll go where the trainees go, learn what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. A vibrant tapestry of dreams, desire, and exploitation, The Mailroom is not only an engrossing read but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood.

WHAT MEN WANT. WHAT MEN FEEL. WHAT WOMEN NEED TO KNOW. When Dr. Brandy Engler opened her sex therapy practice for women in Manhattan, she got a big surprise. Most of the calls were from men. They wanted to talk about womanizing, porn addiction, impotence, prostitutes—and most of all, love. Her patients were everyday guys from all walks of life. Among them were David, the Wall Street hotshot and compulsive womanizer; Charles, an introvert who kept pushing away the fiancée he thought was too beautiful for him; Paul, the self-made man who visited massage parlors despite his sexy wife; and the men’s group whose stark revelations about male anger and their search for the right woman will open your eyes. In The Men on My Couch, Dr. Engler allows readers inside those private sessions to witness her exciting and evocative encounters with what men desire and fear. Dr. Engler tells her own story, too. At first her patients’ revelations are painful and disconcerting, especially against the backdrop of her own difficult love affair. Yet Dr. Engler lets readers experience how she evolves both professionally and personally, from chagrin to compassion, and reconciles her idealized notions of love and sex with the unexpected and raw truths she hears in the office. The Men on My Couch is unlike books you’ve read before. There are no tired facile conclusions or pejorative generalizations. Here are fresh insights into modern sexual maladies, gleaned from real people having real struggles and experiencing real epiphanies—in the real world. This book will change how both women and men think about love, sex, and desire.

True Stories of Sex, Love and Psychotherapy

Yanni

Yanni is practically a force of nature. With global sales of over 20 million albums, 35 gold and platinum awards, and a fan base of untold millions in nearly every corner of the world, this self-taught musician and composer has achieved a cult-like following. The Washington Post has called Yanni's career 'a miracle, a lesson in pluck that could be taught in business school, preached from pulpits and woven into bedtime stories.' In this long-awaited memoir, Yanni offers an inside look at his fascinating journey, from his boyhood in Greece, where he taught himself to play piano at the age of six, to his current status as a musical star. His path to success was sometimes rocky. With unprecedented candor, Yanni describes his long struggle to separate himself from the 'New Age' label, his ongoing battles with a music industry bewildered by his work, and the depression that threatened to derail his career. With great affection, he also discusses his long relationship with Linda Evans and shares the lessons about love and truth that he's learned from his father along the way.

Yanni in Words

Champion. Survivor. Hero. Legend. Completed just two days before Louis Zamperini's death at age 97, Don't Give Up, Don't Give In shares a lifetime of wisdom, insight, and humor from one of America's most inspiring lives. Zamperini's story has touched millions through Laura Hillenbrand's biography Unbroken, soon to be a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. Now, in his own words, Louis Zamperini reveals, with warmth and great charm, the essential values and lessons that sustained him throughout his remarkable journey. He was a youthful troublemaker from California who turned his life around to become a 1936 Olympian and a world-class miler at the University of Southern California. Putting aside his superstar track career, Louis Zamperini volunteered for the army before Pearl Harbor and was thrust into the violent combat of World War II as a B-24 bombardier. While on a rescue mission, his plane went down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where he survived, against all odds, drifting two thousand miles in a small raft for forty-seven days. His struggle was only beginning: Zamperini was captured by the Japanese and, for more than two years, he courageously endured torture and psychological abuse in a series of prisoner-of-war camps. He returned home to face more dark hours, but in 1949 Zamperini's life was transformed by a spiritual rebirth that would guide him through the next sixty-five years of his long and happy life. Cowritten with longtime collaborator David Rensin, Louis Zamperini's Don't Give Up, Don't Give In is an extraordinary last testament that captures the wisdom of a life lived to the fullest. A son of Italian immigrants, Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) was a U.S. Olympic runner, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor. After the war, he returned to the United States to found the Victory Boys Camp for at-risk youth and became an inspirational speaker. Zamperini's story was told in his 2003 autobiography Devil at My Heels, as well as in Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 biography Unbroken. David Rensin worked closely with Louis Zamperini for many years and cowrote Devil at My Heels, as well as fifteen other books, including five New York Times bestsellers.

Lessons from an Extraordinary Life

Don't Give Up, Don't Give In

Garry Shandling

The popular comedian and star of "The Larry Sanders Show" presents the tell-all memoirs of his fictional alter ego Larry Sanders, a slightly neurotic Hollywood talk show host

The Autobiography of Larry Sanders

Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host

Legendary Hollywood supermanager and producer Bernie Brillstein reveals his collection of wisdom gleaned from his fifty years of insight, instinct, and experience in both business and life. An uncommon collection of common sense, The Little Stuff Matters Most delivers the hard and fast lessons of Brillstein’s unparalleled business experience in fifty pithy, wise, and completely entertaining essays. Brillstein, whose name is synonymous with some of the highest-profile Hollywood careers, shares these invaluable lessons in the clever, unfailingly honest, and inimitable tone for which he is known and loved. Memorable tips include: Know the difference between "hot" and "good" Only doctors and hookers need pagers Don’t pet the snakes Have an opinion, even it it’s wrong It’s all lies, and that’s the truth When your time has come, success will find you The stomachache—and other gastrointestinal warnings Each of the book’s fifty "Bernie-isms" is followed by refreshing commentary, peppered with colorful tales from Bernie’s career and clever drawings by acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress. This book is the next best thing to having your own personal manager on call 24/7—without having to fork over 15 percent of your paycheck.

and 49 More Rules from 50 Years of Trying to Make a Living in Hollywood

It's All Lies and That's the Truth

Sam Haskell

What would my mother say? How would she want me to handle this situation? How can I make this tough decision and stay true to myself? What would my mother say? Sam Haskell still asks himself these questions every day. When Haskell was young, his devoted mother, Mary, instilled in her son the values of character, faith, and honor by setting an example and asking him to promise to live his life according to her lessons. He did, and those promises have served Haskell consistently from his Mississippi boyhood to his long career at the venerable William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. In this inspiring memoir full of touching stories and amusing anecdotes, Haskell reveals how he kept his pledge to his mother to live a decent life–even in the shark-infested waters of Hollywood, where he handled the hottest stars and packaged the highest-rated shows–by refusing to become the cliché of an amoral agent. Here is Haskell as a child in Amory, Mississippi (pop. 7,000), discovering the power of hope as he waits for an unlikely visit from the “Cheer Man” (a representative of the detergent company who gave ten dollars to anyone using the brand), learning humility after pursuing an eighth-grade “Good Citizenship” award he cockily assumed he’d win, confronting the complications of human character when a near-fatal car crash exposed his judgmental father’s true nature. Years later, in Hollywood, Haskell would rely on his mother’s teachings–honesty, self-reliance, and belief in God–as he swiftly rose from the William Morris mailroom to eventually become the company’s Worldwide Head of Television. His capacity for friendship and his insistence on living his version of the Golden Rule (being “thoughtfully political”) allowed him to handle various client crises and the tense negotiations that nearly scuttled the last years of Everybody Loves Raymond and the entire existence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Haskell has achieved success through self-respect, and from his story we learn how we, too, can maintain our dignity when faced with life’s challenges. This stirring memoir is a testament to mothers everywhere who instill in their sons the lasting values they need to become good men and devoted fathers.

Promises I Made My Mother

There will never be another surfer like Miki 'Da Cat' Dora. For twenty years the dashing and enigmatic dark prince of California surfing dominated the Malibu waves and his peers' imaginations, blazing a trail that would inspire generations to come. But when the sport exploded into the mainstream and surfing changed for ever, Dora's paradise was lost. Outraged at gridlocked swells and a scene that had grown ever more commodified, Dora eventually fled Malibu, seeking empty waves - and anonymity - beyond America. He'd also run afoul of the law, and he led the authorities on a seven-year chase around the globe. Yet, Dora would never give up searching for the spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. Wherever he made his home - New Zealand, South Africa, France - he personified the rebel heart of surfing and became a legend in his own time. This brilliant biography, based on interviews with more than three hundred people who knew Dora, finally uncovers the truth about surfing's most seductive and complicated icon.

David Rensin

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