Download or read book The Grand Gypsy A Memoir written by Ottavio Gesmundo and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ed Sullivan have in common? Ottavio Canestrelli crossed paths with each. He performed with the Krone Circus in Italy and Germany from 1922 to 1924 on the eve of Hitler's rise to power; he witnessed a rally for Mahatma Gandhi in India in 1931; and he appeared twice on the Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s. In The Grand Gypsy, Canestrelli, with his grandson, Ottavio Gesmundo, tells the story of a man who witnessed historical events as he toured with his family through five continents and countless nations, including experiences fighting in World War I and the excavation of the Sphinx in Egypt. It shares memories of life in the circus, filled with daring feats and tragic mishaps. With over one hundred and seventy historical photographs included, this memoir chronicles a circus dynasty from the late nineteenth-century in Europe to the new millennium in the United States.
Download or read book American Gypsy written by Oksana Marafioti and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the author's early experiences as a fifteen-year-old Gypsy emigrating with her family from the Soviet Union to the United States.
Download or read book The Encore written by Charity Tillemann-Dick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “heartrending, passionate, and surprisingly humorous account of the conjunction between art and death” (Andrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author), acclaimed opera singer Charity Tillemann-Dick recounts her remarkable journey from struggling to draw a single breath to singing at the most prestigious venues in the world after receiving not one but two double lung transplants. Charity Tillemann-Dick was a vivacious young American soprano studying at the celebrated Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest when she received devastating news: her lungs were failing, her heart was three and a half sizes too big, and she would die within five years. Medical experts advised Charity to abandon her musical dreams, but if her time was running out, she wanted to spend it doing what she loved. In just three years, she endured two double lung transplants and had to slowly learn to breathe, walk, talk, eat, and sing again. With new lungs and fierce determination, she eventually fell in love, rebuilt her career, and reclaimed her life. More than a decade after her diagnosis, she has a chart-topping album, performs around the globe, and is a leading voice for organ donation. Weaving Charity’s extraordinary tale of triumph with those of opera’s greatest heroines, The Encore illuminates the indomitable human spirit and is “an uplifting story of overcoming significant odds to fulfill a dream” (Kirkus Reviews).
Download or read book The Glory Road written by Anita Faye Garner and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories and songs from a childhood spent in a vanished world of revivals and road shows Anita Faye Garner grew up in the South—just about every corner of it. She and her musical family lived in Texarkana, Bossier City, Hot Springs, Jackson, Vicksburg, Hattiesburg, Pascagoula, Bogalusa, Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans, and points between, picking up sticks every time her father, a Pentecostal preacher known as “Brother Ray,” took over a new congregation. In between jump-starting churches, Brother Ray took his wife and kids out on the gospel revival circuit as the Jones Family Singers. Ray could sing and play, and “Sister Fern” (Mama) was a celebrated singer and songwriter, possessed of both talent and beauty. Rounding out the band were the young Garner (known as Nita Faye then) and her big brother Leslie Ray. At all-day singings and tent revivals across the South, the Joneses made a joyful noise for the faithful and loaded into the car for the next stage of their tour. But growing up gospel wasn’t always joyous. The kids practically raised and fended for themselves, bonding over a shared dislike of their rootless life and strict religious upbringing. Sister Fern dreamed of crossing over from gospel to popular music and recording a hit record. An unlikely combination of preacher’s wife and glamorous performer, she had the talent and presence to make a splash, and her remarkable voice brought Saturday night rock and roll to Sunday morning music. Always singing, performing, and recording at the margins of commercial success, Sister Fern shared a backing band with Elvis Presley and wrote songs recorded by Johnny Cash and many other artists. In her touching memoir The Glory Road, Anita Faye Garner re-creates her remarkable upbringing. The story begins with Ray’s attempts to settle down and the family’s inevitable return to the gospel circuit and concludes with Sister Fern’s brushes with stardom and the family’s journey west to California where they finally landed—with some unexpected detours along the way. The Glory Road carries readers back to the 1950s South and the intersections of faith and family at the very roots of American popular music. For more information about the book and Anita Garner, visit www.thegloryroad.com or www.anitagarner.com
Download or read book My G String Mother written by Erik Lee Preminger and published by Frog Books. This book was released on 2004-01-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Erik was 12 when Gypsy decided she was through with striptease—'I’m forty-two years old. Too old to be taking my clothes off in front of strangers.' Her endless schemes for staying famous and maintaining their extravagant lifestyle—a best-selling writing career, a musical based on her life, a disastrous attempt to turn her home movies into a blockbuster—make for comedic yet poignant reading. My G-String Mother is a stylish, incisive portrait of two lives: an awkward adolescent who was as much confidante, co-conspirator, and companion as son, and the legendary woman who told police at a raid at the famous Minsky’s burlesque house, 'I wasn’t naked. I was completely covered by a blue spotlight.'
Download or read book Distant Skies written by Melissa A Priblo Chapman and published by Trafalgar Square Books. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part American road trip, part coming-of-age adventure, and part uncommon love story—a remarkable memoir that explores the evolution of the human-animal relationship, along with the raw beauty of a life lived outdoors. Melissa Chapman was 23 years old and part of a happy, loving family. She had a decent job, a boyfriend she cared about, and friends she enjoyed. Yet she said goodbye to all of it. Carrying a puppy named Gypsy, she climbed aboard a horse and rode away from everything, heading west. With no cell phone, no GPS, no support team or truck following with supplies, Chapman quickly learned that the reality of a cross-country horseback journey was quite different from the fantasy. Her solo adventure would immediately test her mental, physical, and emotional resources as she and her four-legged companions were forced to adapt to the dangers and loneliness of a trek that would span over 2,600 miles, beginning in New York State and reaching its end on the other side of the country, in California. Enchanted by the freedom a nomadic life seemed to promise, the young woman would soon find herself only more deeply connected…to the animals that accompanied her, to the varying and challenging landscapes through which she traveled, and to the people she met on the farms and back roads that crisscross the United States. Chapman's vigilance in detailing the quietest moments of heroism and beauty, as well as the startling and tragic, yields a read that convinces one of both the magnificence of the countryside and the generosity of the people who call it home. A book for the equestrian, the animal lover, and the outdoor enthusiast—or anyone who dreams about one day bringing a longed-for adventure to life.
Download or read book Leather Soul written by Bob Murphy and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A young, naive kid, with a brand-new football. Over time, the leather aged from the bumps along the trail. The Footscray winters and some glorious liniment-scented afternoons. All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and characters. The game. It all left a mark on me, on my soul.’ Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer. Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a quiet corner of a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room. Murphy takes the reader inside his 17-year career, including his three years as captain of the Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him: from playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high-school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL ruptures. How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club win the grand final for the first time in 62 years and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great? The celebrated Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.
Download or read book February House written by Sherill Tippins and published by HMH. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “irresistible” account of a little-known literary salon and creative commune in 1940s Brooklyn (The Washington Post Book World). A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year February House is the true story of an extraordinary experiment in communal living, one involving young but already iconic writers—and America’s best-known burlesque performer—in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn. It was a fevered yearlong party, fueled by the appetites of youth and a shared sense of urgency to take action as artists in the months before the country entered World War II. In spite of the sheer intensity of life at 7 Middagh, the house was for its residents a creative crucible. Carson McCullers’s two masterpieces, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, were born, bibulously, in Brooklyn. Gypsy Rose Lee, workmanlike by day, party girl by night, wrote her book The G-String Murders in her Middagh Street bedroom. W. H. Auden—who, along with Benjamin Britten, was being excoriated back in England for absenting himself from the war—presided over the house like a peevish auntie, collecting rent money and dispensing romantic advice. And yet all the while, he was composing some of the most important work of his career. Enlivened by primary sources and an unforgettable story, this tale of daily life at the most fertile and improbable live-in salon of the twentieth century comes from the acclaimed author of Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel. “Brimming with information . . . The personalities she depicts [are] indelibly drawn.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . Not to mention funny and raunchy.” —The Seattle Times
Download or read book Gypsy Boy written by Mikey Walsh and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH** 'It was a revelation. Moving, terrifying, funny and brilliant. I shall never forget it - an amazing achievement' STEPHEN FRY 'Brash and frightening and funny' NEW YORK TIMES * * * * * * The Sunday Times bestselling Gypsy Boy was the first commercial memoir written by someone on the inside of the notoriously secretive culture of the Romany Gypsies. MIKEY WAS BORN into a Romany Gypsy family. They live in a closeted community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and if you choose to leave you can never come back. This is something Mikey knows only too well. Growing up, he rarely went to school, and seldom mixed with non-Gypsies. The caravan and camp were his world. But although Mikey inherited a vibrant and loyal culture, his family's legacy was bittersweet with a hidden history of grief and abuse. Eventually Mikey was forced to make an agonising decision - to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere he could truly belong. Mikey's amazing story is continued in the sequel Gypsy Boy on the Run.
Download or read book Ordinary Girl written by Donna Summer and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ordinary Girl is legendary singer-songwriter Donna Summer's delightfully candid memoir about her journey from signing in a Boston church to her unexpected reign as the Queen of Disco, and the tragedy and spiritual rebirth that followed.
Download or read book How to Murder Your Life written by Cat Marnell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a “vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic” (The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs. At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell “treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no. Combining “all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity” (Harper’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.
Download or read book Forever Young written by Hayley Mills and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iconic actress Hayley Mills shares personal memories from her storied childhood, growing up in a famous acting family and becoming a Disney child star, trying to grow up in a world that wanted her to stay forever young. The daughter of acclaimed British actor Sir John Mills was still a preteen when she began her acting career and was quickly thrust into the spotlight. Under the wing of Walt Disney himself, Hayley Mills was transformed into one of the biggest child starlets of the 1960s through her iconic roles in Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, and many more. She became one of only twelve actors in history to be bestowed with the Academy Juvenile Award, presented at the Oscars by its first recipient, Shirley Temple, and went on to win a number of awards including a Golden Globe, multiple BAFTAs, and a Disney Legacy Award. Now, in her charming and forthright memoir, she provides a unique window into when Hollywood was still 'Tinseltown' and the great Walt Disney was at his zenith, ruling over what was (at least in his own head) still a family business. This behind-the-scenes look at the drama of having a sky-rocketing career as a young teen in an esteemed acting family will offer both her childhood impressions of the wild and glamorous world she was swept into, and the wisdom and broader knowledge that time has given her. Hayley will delve intimately into her relationship with Walt Disney, as well as the emotional challenges of being bound to a wholesome, youthful public image as she grew into her later teen years, and how that impacted her and her choices--including marrying a producer over 30 years her senior when she was 20! With her regrets, her joys, her difficulties, and her triumphs, this is a compelling read for any fan of classic Disney films and an inside look at a piece of real Hollywood history.
Download or read book Confessions of a Radical Chicano Doo Wop Singer written by Ruben Guevara and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prologue -- La Veinte: a Santa Monica barrio -- Rubén Ladrón de Guevara Sr., 1914-2006 -- 1742 22nd Street, Barrio La Veinte, Santa Monica -- Palm Springs / Cathedral City / Las Vegas -- Binnie -- La Gatita -- Las Vegas : breakup of the family -- Sue Dean -- Beverly -- Shindig! with Tina Turner and Bo Diddley, 1965 -- The Sunset Strip riots -- The southern belle -- LACC / The New Revelations Gospel Choir -- Miss Santa Barbara -- Frank Zappa / Ruben And The Jets / Rock 'n' Roll Angels / 1972-1974 -- Miss Pamela & the G.T.O.'s (Girls Together Outrageously) -- Miss Claremont -- Miss Chino -- The mutiny -- The movie star and Miss Blue Eyes -- We open for Zappa at Winterland, San Francisco, April, 1973 -- Con Safos the album -- Mexico / Hollywood / The Whisky / Eastside Revue / Zyanya Records -- La gypsy -- The Star Spangled Banner / America the Beautiful -- The Whisky / Con Safos the band, 1980 -- Miss Aztlán -- Gotcha -- Zyanya Records -- Cristina / Día de Los Muertos / Chicano Heaven -- Born in East L.A.--the movie -- HBO/Cinemax special -- Performance art : Mexico and France -- La quemada -- La rebel -- Jammin' with Johnny -- Arts 4 City Youth -- UCLA -- Journey to New Aztlán -- Miss San Francisco : the enchantress -- Miss Mongolia -- Metropolitan State Hospital -- Trinity Elementary School -- Teaching at UCLA -- Miss Tokyo -- Mexamérica the CD -- The Eastside Revue : a musical homage to Boyle Heights, 1922-2002 -- Boyle Heights, LA Times -- Collaborations with Josh Kun -- The Iraq war -- Collaborations with Nobuko Miyamoto / Great Leap / NCRR / MPAC -- Manzanar pilgrimage -- Yellow Pearl remix -- Minutemen protest in Baldwin Park -- Rock 'n' rights : rockin' for the mentally disabled -- Resistance & respect : Los Angeles muralism & graff art -- Miss Bogotá -- Word up! a performance and theater summit at the Ford, 2006 -- Meeting my Okanagan brothers from Westbank First Nation, B.C. Canada -- Epiphany at Joshua Tree -- Miss Altar in the sky -- Rubén Guevara & the Eastside Luvers -- The Tao of Funkahuatl -- The Tao of Funkahuatl the CD -- Mex/LA -- Opening for Los Lobos at the House of Dues -- Fifty years in show biz / The Madeleine Brand Show, NPR, 2011 -- Miss Beijing -- Miss Monterey Park -- End of ten year sex drought -- My 70th birthday party -- Platonic homegirls -- Joseph Trotter -- A Boyle Heights cultural treasure -- The new face of Boyle Heights -- ¡Angelin@s presente! -- Sara Guevara -- Confessions of a radical Chicano Doo Wop singer : the solo, multi-media theater piece -- The fall -- Reflections on L.A
Download or read book Only in Spain written by Nellie Bennett and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why don't' you...run away with the gypsies? Ten-hour shifts in a high-end department store and catering to snooty customers...Nellie Bennett's life wasn't supposed to turn out this way. But maybe all she needs to do is infuse a little passion into her routine—through flamenco dance lessons, for instance. What Nellie doesn't realize is that flamenco is not just a dance—it's a way of life that seems much more enticing than her depressing retail gig. So she packs her suede dance shoes and leaves everything she knows behind, flying halfway around the world to seek the authentic experience in Seville, where the dark-eyed gypsy boys and mouth-watering tapas are enough to make Nellie want to stay in Spain forever. And why shouldn't she? Only in Spain is a foot-stomping, full-on firecracker of a memoir—crackling with energy, food, dance, gypsies, and love—that will capture your heart with the first "Olé!" "A vivid, entertaining memoir...Bennett had me itching to pack my bag and join her."—Ann Vanderhoof, author of An Embarrassment of Mangoes and The Spice Necklace
Download or read book Your Voice in My Head written by Emma Forrest and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling and devastating memoir exploring breakdown and obsessive love, in a voice unlike any other
Download or read book Geek Love written by Katherine Dunn and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
Download or read book Sixtyfive Roses written by Heather Summerhayes Cariou and published by McArthur & Co. This book was released on 2011-06-20 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heather Summerhayes was six when her four-year-old sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and given only months to live. “Sixtyfive roses” was the way Pam pronounced the name of the disease that forever altered the lives of her siblings and parents, who in turn helped alter the community’s response to the disease by founding the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. With the help of the CF Foundation, research and new treatments, the fight to save Pam’s lasted for years, until her death at the age of twenty-six.This beautifully written memoir offers a compassionate yet unflinching eyewitness account of the hope, pain, and courage of a family in crisis as it falls apart and outs itself together again and again, to emerge stronger and more loving. The heart of the story explores the relationship between the two sisters—one devastatingly ill, the other healthy but burdened with guilt—as they journey through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.
