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Trashy celebrity bios are usually diminished by the fact that we've already heard the stories about Lonnie and Burt, or Madonna and Sean, or whoever the current target is. Author Stephen Fried manages to get all the sleaze value plus a lot of surprises by choosing supermodel Gia Carangi as his topic. Although her face is widely recognized, Gia finished her modeling career in a blaze of heroin and disease just before the time when models became celebrities with name recognition. Her life is the perfect fodder for the exploitation market, but Fried goes beyond that with fluid prose and a reporter's nose for tracking down sources. His stories about her teenage years, with their mix of late nights in Philadelphia's gay clubs, manic worship, and glam-style imitation of David Bowie, as well as tales of Gia's ability to seduce her friends, male and female, are the product of a lot of work and make for very interesting reading. Gia's unabashed homosexuality and early death from AIDS make her.

Book Description From the way we build to the way we live, Frank Lloyd Wright?s influence on American architecture is visible all around us. Now, Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize- winning architecture writer for The Wall Street Journal ?and chief architecture critic for The New York Times for nearly twenty years?offers an outstanding look at the architect and the man. She explores the sources of his tumultuous and troubled life and his long career as master builder as well as his search for lasting, true love. Along the way, Huxtable introduces readers to Wright?s masterpieces: Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder; the Imperial Hotel, one of the few structures left standing after Japan?s catastrophic 1923 earthquake; and tranquil Fallingwater, to which millions have traveled to experience its quiet grace. Through the journey, Huxtable takes us not only into the mind of the man who drew the blueprints, but also into...

With over ten million albums sold and multiple Grammy nominations, the hard rock band Godsmack has become one of the most successful groups of the last decade. The band's driving beats and searing lyrics have garnered widespread acclaim, while their well-known work ethic has earned the industry's respect. Fans who attend Godsmack concerts are sure to be rewarded with a fiercely energetic show. The force behind the band comes largely from founder and front man Sully Erna. Onstage, growling into the microphone with characteristic intensity, he appears perfectly at home, and it's no wonder. Erna has been immersed in the world of rock ever since he got his first drum set at the age of five. Given his achievements, that early start might suggest that his career was a straight shot to the top. The truth is, Erna took so many detours during the years between his first drums and Godsmack's first contract that, more than once, he nearly forgot his destination. In The Paths We Choose, he...

Reprint edition

An introduction to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. A short essay provides an overview of his professional life and selected blogs provide commentary on his performance.

German Panzer ace Michael Wittmann was by far the most famous tank commander on any side in World War II, destroying 138 enemy tanks and 132 anti-tank guns with his Tiger. This classic of armored warfare is both combat biography and unit history, as Patrick Agte focuses on the life and career of Wittmann but also includes his fellow Tiger commanders in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. Volume Two follows Michael Wittmann and his unit into Normandy to defend against the Allied invasion. A week after D-Day, Wittmann achieved his greatest success. On June 13, 1944, near Villers Bocage, the panzer ace and his crew attacked a British armored unit, single-handedly destroying more than a dozen tanks and preventing an enemy breakthrough. The exploit made Wittmann a national hero in Germany and a legend in the annals of war. He was killed two months later while attempting to repulse an Allied assault, but the book continues beyond his death until the Leibstandarte’s...

Book Description Billy Waugh is a Special Forces and CIA legend, and in Hunting the Jackal he allows unprecedented access to the shadowy but vital world he has inhabited for more than fifty years. From deep inside the suffocating jungles of Southeast Asia to the fetid streets of Khartoum to the freezing high desert of Afghanistan, Waugh chronicles U.S. Special Operations through the extraordinary experiences of his singular life. He has worked in more than sixty countries, hiding in the darkest shadows and most desolate corners to fight those who plot America's demise. Waugh made his mark in places few want to consider and fewer still would choose to inhabit. In remarkable detail he recounts his participation in some of the most importantevents in American Special Operations history, including his own pivotal role in the previously untold story of the CIA's involvement in the capture of the infamous Carlos the Jackal. Waugh's work in helping the CIA bring down...

Book DescriptionThe death of CIA operative Theodore G. "Ted" Shackley in December 2002 triggered an avalanche of obituaries from all over the world, some of them condemnatory. Pundits used such expressions as "heroin trafficking," "training terrorists," "attempts to assassinate Castro," and "Mob connections." More specifically, they charged him with having played a major role in the Chilean military coup of 1973. But who was the real Ted Shackley? In SPYMASTER, he has told the story of his entire remarkable career for the first time. With the assistance of fellow former CIA officer Richard A. Finney, he discusses the consequential posts he held in Berlin, Miami, Laos, Vietnam, and Washington, where he was intimately involved in some of the key intelligence operations of the Cold War. During his long career, Shackley ran part of the inter-agency program to overthrow Castro, was chief of station in Vientiane during the CIA's "secret war" against North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao, and...

Book DescriptionA significant postwar memoir written by one of Germany's best field commanders and a brilliant panzer tank general. German general Erhard Raus was one of the most talented commanders to fight on the Eastern Front in Russia, where he was eventually appointed to army group command in early 1945. By the time the war ended, Raus had established a reputation as one of the German army's foremost tacticians of armored warfare, which made him a prized capture by U.S. Army intelligence. In American captivity, Raus wrote a detailed memoir of his service in Russia. His battlefield experience and keen tactical eye makes his memoir especially valuable. The Raus memoir-now translated, compiled, and edited by prominent World War II historian Steven H. Newton-covers the Russian campaign from the first day of the war to his being relieved of his command at Hitler's order in the spring of 1945. It includes a detailed examination of Raus's 6th Panzer Division's drive to Leningrad,...

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What if Bridget Jones were alive and well and living in Manhattan? Meet Bridget Harrison, a soon-to-be-thirty Brit, newly-on-the-scene reporter for America’s most famous tabloid, the New York Post. While her friends back in London are tossing their bridal bouquets, Bridget is chasing down the next big story-and her dream of becoming a topnotch journalist. But just when she’s perfected the art of interviewing complete strangers about ghoulish crimes, finding a mate in the Big Apple proves downright, well, impossible. As Bridget learns (the hard way) the vexing rules of dating in the ultimate singles city, a silver lining appears in her dating cloud: She lands her very own Post column about her quest for love. Each Sunday half a million New Yorkers read about her match-ups with urban Romeos, including a man who tells her she’d be "one hot chick if she made a bit more of an effort" (even though she’s wearing her Page Six pal’s designer cast-offs) and another who shoves her into a cab...

The Final Chapter in the FBI’s Greatest Mafia Sting—with Shocking Declassified Details from the Donnie Brasco Operation and a Timeline of the Fall of the Mafia. When FBI Special Agent Joe Pistone began what was supposed to be a six-month operation infiltrating New York’s Bonanno crime family in 1975, he had no idea what was about to happen. Posing as jewel thief "Donnie Brasco," Pistone would spend the next six years undercover in the Family, witnessing—and sometimes participating in—the Mafia’s gruesome activities while gathering enough evidence to send over 200 gangsters to jail. Pistone told his story in the 1988 book Donnie Brasco—a New York Times bestseller and later a feature film starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino. But because of pending trials at the time of publication, many details of the alleged crimes were omitted. Now, in Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business, Pistone for the first time reveals with great detail the horrific deeds of wiseguys Tony Mirra, Lefty Ruggiero,...