A portrait of the music-culture icon shares insight into her use of experimental lyrics while revealing the inspirations behind her most famous songs, from her youth on the Canadian prairie to her early marriage and the child she gave up for adoption.

A fast-moving, musically astute portrait of arguably the greatest composer of American popular music. Irving Berlin (1888-1989) has been called-by George Gershwin, among others-the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. "Berlin has no place in American music," legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; "he is American music." In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including...

"One of the most revered composers of the twentieth century, Claude Debussy (1862–1918) achieved the unheard of: he reinvented the language of music without alienating the majority of music lovers. Debussy drove French music into entirely new regions of beauty and excitement at a time when old traditions threatened to stifle it. Yet despite his profound influence on French culture, Debussy’s own life was complicated and often troubled by struggles...

In his life and in his music, Cole Porter was the top-the pinnacle of wit and sophistication. From the 1910s through the 50s, from Yale pep rallies through the Broadway triumphs of Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate, he delighted audiences with a glittering torrent of song: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Night and Day," "Love for Sale," and "Just One of Those Things." The bright surface of these gems made them instant pop hits. Their more subtle qualities...

"In the glittering hotbed of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Vienna, one woman's life would define and defy an era ... Gustav Klimt gave Alma her first kiss. Gustav Mahler fell in love with her at first sight and proposed only a few weeks later. Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius abandoned all reason to pursue her. Poet and novelist Franz Werfel described her as "one of the very few magical women that exist." But who was this woman who brought these most...

John Cage was a man of extraordinary and seemingly limitless talents: musician, inventor, composer, poet. He became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Now award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. We follow Cage from his Los Angeles childhood—his father was a successful inventor—through...

Published for the first time in hardcover, here is New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen’s classic novel of unforgettable romance and unrelenting suspense–a ravishing thriller of a woman with a secret irresistibly drawn into the glittering world of a famous man whose past may be murder….
Taking the stage that evening, Daisy Justine had no idea that she was auditioning for her life. Watching from the darkness beyond...

Drawing on the latest research as well as using source material, a leading authority on the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven reveals the man behind the legend, painting a complete portrait of one of the greatest composers who ever lived.