Discusses the career of the gifted pianist, composer, entertainer, raconteur, and author, as well as his tumultuous, self-destructive private life

A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant

Sam Kashner

NANCY SCHOENBERGER

Biographies & Memoirs

Villard

Runaway Train SIGNED: Or, the Story of My Life So Far

Eric Roberts

St.Martin's Press

A vivid portrait of power, fame and sex in 1950s Hollywood, from the rise of tabloid journalism to the making of legendary film icons.

The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties

Humor & Entertainment

Jennifer MacNair

Movies

Konecky&Konecky

A tough Welshman, he was softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman: she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the king and queen of Hollywood. Yet their two marriages to each other represented much more than outlandish romance. Together, Elizabeth and Richard were a fascinating embodiment of the mores and transgressions of their time and even luminaries like Jacqueline Kennedy looked to them as a barometer of the culture. The enduring glamour, grandeur, drama and bravado embodied in the couple gave rise to the type of rabid gossip and wide-eyed adoration that are the staples of today's media. Using brand-new research and interviews - including unique access to Taylor herself, the Burton family, and Taylor's extensive personal correspondence - this ultimate celebrity biography is the gripping real-life story of a fairy-tale couple whose lives were even grander and more outrageous than the epic films they made.

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, the Marriage of the Century. Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger

A poignant, evocative, and wonderfully gossipy account of the two sisters who represented style and class above all else--Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill--from the authors of Furious Love.
When sixty-four-year-old Jackie Kennedy Onassis died in her Fifth Avenue apartment, her younger sister Lee wept inconsolably. Then Jackie's thirty-eight-page will was read. Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members, friends, and employees--but nothing to her. ""I have made no provision in this my Will for my sister, Lee B. Radziwill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime,"" read Jackie's final testament. Drawing on the authors' candid interviews with Lee Radziwill, The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters explores their complicated relationship, placing them at the center of twentieth-century fashion, design, and style.
In life, Jackie and Lee were alike in so many ways. Both women had a keen eye for beauty--in fashion, design, painting, music, dance, sculpture, poetry--and both were talented artists. Both loved pre-revolutionary Russian culture, and the blinding sunlight, calm seas, and ancient olive groves of Greece. Both loved the siren call of the Atlantic, sharing sweet, early memories of swimming with the rakish father they adored, Jack Vernou Bouvier, at his East Hampton retreat. But Jackie was her father's favorite, and Lee, her mother's. One would grow to become the most iconic woman of her time, while the other lived in her shadow. As they grew up, the two sisters developed an extremely close relationship threaded with rivalry, jealousy, and competition. Yet it was probably the most important relationship of their lives.
For the first time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and acclaimed biographer Nancy Schoenberger tell the complete story of these larger-than-life sisters. Drawing on new information and extensive interviews with Lee, now eighty-four, this dual biography sheds light on the public and private lives of two extraordinary women who lived through immense tragedy in enormous glamour.

The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee

Community & Culture

HarperCollins B and Blackstone Audio

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Books by Sam Kashner