Here are 100 books that Man on the Run fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a senior writer at Rolling Stone, where I cover a wide range of music-related topics. But as a child of the Seventies, I was shaped by the defining and enthralling pop culture of that era, from singer-songwriters, Southern rock, and disco records to Norman Lear sitcoms. In some of my work, I’ve chronicled the highs and lows of that era, perhaps as a way to answer a question that haunted me during my youth: Why did my older sisters and their friends keep telling me that the Sixties were the most incredible decade ever and the Seventies were awful? What did I miss? And how and where did it all go wrong?
Over 40 years after he left office, when he was replaced by Ronald Reagan, Carter remains an underrated and undervalued president. Alter doesn’t skimp on Carter’s shortcomings, from his sometimes rigid thinking to a nastiness that could be unleashed; the Iran-hostage debacle is also detailed in full. But using interviews with Carter and many of his associates and family members, he also makes the case, without being heavy-handed, that Carter was ahead of the curve on the ecology, voting rights, and other issues that remain frustratingly unfulfilled.
From one of America's most-respected journalists and modern historians comes the first full-length biography of Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian.
Jonathan Alter tells the epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon. Alter paints an intimate and surprising portrait of the only president since Thomas Jefferson who can fairly be called a Renaissance Man, a complex figure-ridiculed and later revered-with a piercing intelligence, prickly intensity, and biting wit beneath the patented smile. Here is a moral exemplar for our times, a flawed…
My writing takes readers behind the scenes of major moments in pop culture history and examines the lasting impact that our favorite TV shows, music, and movies have on our society and psyches. I investigate why pop culture matters. I have written eight books, including the New York Times bestseller Seinfeldia, When Women Invented Television, Sex and the City and Us, and my latest, So Fetch. I’ve chosen books here that share my mission not only by going behind the scenes of major films but also by chronicling their effects on people’s real lives as well as culture and society at large.
Biskind takes us right inside the boardrooms, movie shoots, and parties, oh, so many parties, that produced one of the biggest change movements in American cinematic history, the auteur wave of the 1970s.
From the shocking success of Easy Rider through the tsunami of modern classics such as The Godfather, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, as well as crowd-pleasers like Jaws, Biskind tells the story of how the likes of Scorcese and Coppola, DeNiro and Pacino, and other giants of modern film came to be.
Biskind was among the first to prove that Hollywood history could be as engaging and as serious a subject as presidential politics or world wars while remaining outrageously entertaining.
When the low-budget biker movie Easy Rider shocked Hollywood with its success in 1969, a new Hollywood era was born. This was an age when talented young filmmakers such as Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg, along with a new breed of actors, including De Niro, Pacino, and Nicholson, became the powerful figures who would make such modern classics as The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, and Jaws. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls follows the wild ride that was Hollywood in the '70s -- an unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (both onscreen and off) and a climate where innovation and…
I’m a senior writer at Rolling Stone, where I cover a wide range of music-related topics. But as a child of the Seventies, I was shaped by the defining and enthralling pop culture of that era, from singer-songwriters, Southern rock, and disco records to Norman Lear sitcoms. In some of my work, I’ve chronicled the highs and lows of that era, perhaps as a way to answer a question that haunted me during my youth: Why did my older sisters and their friends keep telling me that the Sixties were the most incredible decade ever and the Seventies were awful? What did I miss? And how and where did it all go wrong?
Even though they weren’t musicians, the original cast members of Saturday Night Live were among the biggest rock stars of the Seventies. Their journey from underground comics and performers to crossover superstardom, via TV, albums, and movies, is the story of the rise of the counterculture in the Seventies. And, sadly, Belushi’s flameout was the dark side of that tale.
I read this book not long after I had graduated from NYU with a degree in journalism, and Woodward’s peerless reporting—including a chilling, nearly hour-by-hour chronicle of Belushi’s last few weeks before his death in 1982—made me realize the power of narrative, research, and detail. If I were stymied while writing a story of my own in the early days of my career, I’d grab my increasingly beaten-up Wired paperback and be inspired anew.
This reissue of Bob Woodword’s classic book about John Belushi—one of the most interesting performers and personalities in show business history—“is told with the same narrative style that Woodward employed so effectively in All the President’s Men and The Final Days” (Chicago Tribune).
John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose March 5, 1982, in a seedy hotel bungalow off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Belushi’s death was the beginning of a trail that led Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward on an investigation that examines the dark side of American show business—TV, rock and roll, and the movie industry. From…
I’m a senior writer at Rolling Stone, where I cover a wide range of music-related topics. But as a child of the Seventies, I was shaped by the defining and enthralling pop culture of that era, from singer-songwriters, Southern rock, and disco records to Norman Lear sitcoms. In some of my work, I’ve chronicled the highs and lows of that era, perhaps as a way to answer a question that haunted me during my youth: Why did my older sisters and their friends keep telling me that the Sixties were the most incredible decade ever and the Seventies were awful? What did I miss? And how and where did it all go wrong?
Anyone who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies remembers baseball trading cards, using sold with a flat stick of gum. Wilker doesn’t just remember them; he uses them as a narrative device. Each chapter of this touching and honest memoir about growing up in the Me Decade is based around one card in his collection (Tom Seaver, Wade Boggs, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, and many more) and the year and memories it evokes. What could have been a glib gimmick is transformed into a smart and insightful way to recall a life and a decade.
Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh's classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing…
We all know Little Richard’s great hits like "Long Tall, Sally", "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" and Little Richard’s life was as wild as his records. It’s excess all areas as Spencer Leigh tells the story of Little Richard in Send Me Some Lovin. It is a biography of someone who transformed popular music. Spencer Leigh was born in 1945 and hearing Little Richard for the first time in 1956 changed his life. He is a world expert on the Beatles and he has written a series of music-based biographies – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel – all of which are full of facts and opinions.
Published in 1968, this is the only authorised biography of the Beatles.
Davies was in the room when Lennon and McCartney were songwriting, providing insights worth the price of admission alone. He could have interviewed more of the outriders but on the other hand, this is a brilliant account of their claustrophobic world.
There's only one book that ever truly got inside the Beatles and this is it. The landmark, worldwide bestseller that has grown with the Beatles ever since.
During 1967 and 1968 Hunter Davies spent eighteen months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers as they defined a generation and rewrote popular music. As their only ever authorised biographer he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George and Ringo but to friends, family and colleagues. There when it mattered, he collected a wealth of intimate and revealing material that still makes this the classic Beatles book…
We all know Little Richard’s great hits like "Long Tall, Sally", "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" and Little Richard’s life was as wild as his records. It’s excess all areas as Spencer Leigh tells the story of Little Richard in Send Me Some Lovin. It is a biography of someone who transformed popular music. Spencer Leigh was born in 1945 and hearing Little Richard for the first time in 1956 changed his life. He is a world expert on the Beatles and he has written a series of music-based biographies – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel – all of which are full of facts and opinions.
The Beatles in forensic detail up to the first Parlophone single, "Love Me Do".
Mark has interviewed almost everyone who mattered and he knows what to ask them and how to shape a book. I suggest you seek out the two-volume version running to 1,600 pages.
The Beatles are treated with as much reverence as Picasso and Shakespeare, and deservedly so.
Now in paperback, Tune In is the New York Times bestseller by the world’s leading Beatles authority – the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy about the band that revolutionized music.
The Beatles have been in our lives for half a century and surely always will be. Still, somehow, their music excites, their influence resonates, their fame sustains. New generations find and love them, and while many other great artists come and go, the Beatles are beyond eclipse.
So . . . who really were these people, and just how did it all happen?
I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 40 years and now pass on that knowledge to mentees and university students. The key to success in business is being able to attract and then learn from mentors, who, in my opinion, always should provide their knowledge, wisdom, and connections free of charge. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to go down ‘The Dark Side’, especially if the pursuit of money and power becomes overwhelming. Many famous billionaires are not especially nice people. But there are many nice businesspeople out there and I aspire to be one of those, hence my pursuit of a daily advancement in esoteric, hermetic, and other knowledge.
Nobody really understands why The Beatles are still so popular over 50 years after they last played together. Rory Best is the brother of Pete Best (famously replaced in The Beatles by Ringo Starr) and the son of Neil Aspinall (the Beatles Road Manager who later ran Apple Corporation - The Beatles’ own company). This book tells the story of the true origins of The Beatles, centred around his mother, Mona Best, and The Casbah Coffee Club.
The Casbah Coffee Club, which opened in Liverpool on August 29, 1959, was the brainchild of Mona Best, the mother of Pete Best. It is well known that Pete Best was the drummer for The Beatles in their early days in Liverpool and Hamburg. But less well known is that The Beatles’ origins were in fact at Pete’s mother’s club-it was at the Casbah and with Mona Best’s blessing that the greatest popular music phenomenon of the twentieth century began.
And now, the basement club where The Quarrymen, The Silver Beatles, and finally The Beatles played over 90 times before…
The first record I ever bought was Magical Mystery Tour when I was no more than twelve or so. It’s what made me want to be a musician myself. I’ve got every Beatle record and I am the kind of guy to study carefully who played what, who wrote what, and how they put it all together. Just before Covid shut down everything, I even went to Abbey Road studios where we recorded some of the songs for my novel (we wrote and recorded all the songs of the fictitious band Downtown Exit). Working in Abbey Road was a dream come true – to record in the same rooms that the Beatles used. Imagine that. It was wonderful.
Revolution in the Head should come with a warning. This one is only for the most serious of Beatle fanatics. It’s an encyclopedic tome listing every song they ever recorded, who played on it, and even what days it was recorded (Strawberry Fields was recorded over five different sessions through November 1966). There are also many longer sections dealing with the particular cultural moments surrounding the writing of the songs and a whole lot of controversial opinion-making about just which ones are good songs and which are not.
This “Bible of the Beatles” captures the iconic band’s magical and mysterious journey from adorable teenagers to revered cultural emissaries. In this fully updated version, each of their 241 tracks is assessed chronologically from their first amateur recordings in 1957 to their final “reunion” recording in 1995. It also incorporates new information from the Anthology series and recent interviews with Paul McCartney. This comprehensive guide offers fascinating details about the Beatles’ lives, music, and era, never losing sight of what made the band so important, unique, and enjoyable.
The first record I ever bought was Magical Mystery Tour when I was no more than twelve or so. It’s what made me want to be a musician myself. I’ve got every Beatle record and I am the kind of guy to study carefully who played what, who wrote what, and how they put it all together. Just before Covid shut down everything, I even went to Abbey Road studios where we recorded some of the songs for my novel (we wrote and recorded all the songs of the fictitious band Downtown Exit). Working in Abbey Road was a dream come true – to record in the same rooms that the Beatles used. Imagine that. It was wonderful.
Rolling Stone magazine chose Love Me Do: the Beatles Progress as the best of all the Beatles’ books which is a little unfair because it barely moves beyond 1963. On the other hand, it’s a riveting, eye witness account (author Michael Braun was a journalist embedded with the Beatles on some of their first tours) and it covers the first blast of Beatlemania, the screaming fans, and of course their legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in February of 1964.
Rolling Stone magazine named this the #1 Beatles Book. It is the classic behind-the-scenes story of The Beatles first British tour. The year is 1963. 'Love Me Do' is The Beatles first hit single, closely followed by 'Please Please Me,' which reached No. 1. John, Paul, George, and Ringo celebrate their newfound success with a hectic six-week tour, briefly interrupted by a historic live appearance at the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.
It is the beginning of Beatlemania, and American writer Michael Braun is there as the drama unfolds. Eavesdropping on The Beatles' private conversations. Recording every last…
As a life coach and author of two dozen self-help books, I’ve spent the past twenty years helping people to be more creative. I love reading about the early lives of artists because it is an engaging way to learn about the creative process. Even rock stars have doubts, insecurities, regrets, and setbacks. Yet, fueled by their passions, they persist. They overcome their obstacles and pursue unique paths to success. These books are inspirational and informative for anyone with a creative dream.
Before he was part of Nirvana or Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl was a kid frenetically banging drum sticks on pillows, playing along with his favorite records. He eventually saved up for a drum kit and his one and only drum lesson, in which he learned that he had been holding the sticks backward. From humble beginnings, Dave stayed remarkably humble and appreciative of the twists and turns of his musical career. Reading the book feels like you are sitting down with him backstage, sharing a beer as he shares highlights of his life with candor and humor.
Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities ('It's a piece of cake! Just do four hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!'), I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I've recorded and can't wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or…
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