crown publishing archetype (6 results)

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. New condition white boards with gold spine lettering contained in a new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Photo Credits; Acknowledgments; and Index. Illustrated with three sections of black-and-white photographic plates. The lower page edge has a small pencil eraser size remainder dot. (see photographs). First U.S. Edition, Third Printing. "John Cleese's huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp, irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected with Monty Python, on Fawlty Towers, and beyond now seem written into comedy's DNA. In this rollicking memoir, So, Anyway.Cleese takes readers on a grand tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman) to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown. Cleese was just days away from graduating Cambridge and setting off on a law career when he was visited by two BBC executives who offered him a job writing comedy for radio. That fateful moment - and a near-simultaneous offer to take his university humor revue to London's famed West End - propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like David Frost and Peter Sellers, and eventually joining the five other Pythons to pioneer a new kind of comedy that prized invention, silliness, and absurdity. Along the way, he found his first true love with the actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from a reluctant performer to world-class actor and back again. Twisting and turning through surprising stories and hilarious digressions - with some brief pauses along the way that comprise a fascinating primer on what's funny and why - this story of a young man's journey to the pinnacle of comedy is a masterly performance by a master performer." - from the inner front jacket flap.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. New condition black boards with gold spine lettering contained in a new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Notes; Acknowledgments and About the Author. "It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie's of London, a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite Bordeaux - one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson - went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose. Why wouldn't Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled Nazi hoard? Or did his reticence conceal an even darker secret? It would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing players - among them Michael Broadbent, the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women and staked his reputation on the record-setting sale; Serena Sutcliffe, Braodbent's elegant archrival, whose palate is covered by a hefty insurance policy; and Bill Koch, the extravagant Florida tycoon bent on exposing the truth about Rodenstock. Pursuing the story from Monticello to London to Zurich to Munich and beyond, Benjamin Wallace also offers a mesmerizing history of wine, complete with vivid accounts of subterranean European laboratories where old vintages are dated and of Jefferson's colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture. Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, The Billionaire's Vinegar is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. It is also the debut of an exceptionally powerful new voice in narrative non-fiction." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. As new condition dark silver gray boards with gold spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Acknowledgments; Tiger Woods' Worldwide Performance Record Whilte Hank Haney Was His Coach; Glossary of Golf Terms; and Index of Names. "My phone call with Tiger lasts no more than three minutes. After hanging up, I stand on the sidewalk, stunned. Besides sheer amazement, my mind is filled with all sorts of thoughts. As a golf instructor, I feel as though I've won the lottery . To be able to teach the best player -- that's always been my dream. I'm going to give Tiger as much as I've got for as long as I can. And somehow I already know he's going to be the last touring pro I teach." -- from The Big Miss and the rear outer jacket. "The Big Miss is Hank Haney's candid and surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. He was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him more than 200 days a year, and stayed at his home up to 30 days a year, observing him in nearly every circumstance: at tournaments, on the practice range, over meals, with his wife, Elin, and relaxing with friends. The relationship between the two men began in March 2004 when Hank received a call from Tiger during which the golf champion asked him to be his coach. It was a call that would change both men's lives. Tiger -- only 28 at the time -- was by then already an icon, judged by the sporting press not only one of the best golfers ever, but possibly the best athlete ever. Already he was among the world's highest paid celebrities. There was an air of mystery surrounding him, an aura of invincibility. But TIger was always looking to improve, and he wanted Hank's help. What Hank soon came to appreciate was that Tiger was one of the most complicated individuals he'd ever met, let alone coached. Although Hank had worked with hundreds of elite golfers and was not easily impressed, there were days watching Tiger on the range when Hank couldn't believe what he was witnessing. On those days, it was impossible to imagine another human playing golf so perfectly. And yet Tiger was human -- and Hank's expert eye was adept at spotting where TIger's perfection ended and an opportunity for improvement existed. Always haunting Tiger was his fear of "the big miss" -- the wildly inaccurate golf shot that can ruin an otherwise solid round -- and it was because that type of blunder was sometimes part of Tiger's game that Hank carefully redesigned his swing mechanics. Hank's mosts formidable coaching challenge, though, would be solving the riddle of Tiger's personality. Wary of the emotional distractions that might diminish hs game and put him further from his goals, Tiger had developed a variety of tactics to keep people from getting too close, and not even Hank -- or Tiger's family and friends, for that matter -- was spared "the treatment." Toward the end of Tiger and Hank's time together, the champion's laser-like focus began to blur and he became less willing to put in punishing hours practicing -- a disappointment to Hank, who saw in Tiger's behavior signs that his pupul had developed a conflicted relationship with the game. Hints that TIger hungered to reinvent himself were present in his bizarre infatuation with elite military training, and -- in a development Hank didn't see coming -- in the scandal that would make headlines in late 2009. It all added up to a big miss that Hank, try as he might, couldn't save Tiger from. There's never been a book about TIger Woods that is as intimate and revealing -- or one so wise about what it takes to coach a superstar athlete." -- from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. As new condition brown boards/dark brown spine/gold spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color illustrated dust jacket. Includes Praise for A Curious Man; List of Other Books by Neal Thompson; Author Dedication; Dear Reader; Preliminary Page Quotes; Preface; Author's Note on Sources; Notes; Acknowledgments; Index and About the Author. Illustrated with a section of black-and-white photographic plates. "Turning the phrase 'believe it or not' into a global brand and multimedia empire built on equal doses of sex, information, and oddity, Robert Ripley played a fascinating role in the rise of modern American entertainment . Shrewdly, he conjured a first-person fairy tale for the modern age, helping millions to forget the specter of world war and depression. Now, for the first time anywhere, Neal Thompson brings us Ripley in all his gaudy glory, crafting a hard-boiled Horatio Alger story for a media-obsessed age." -- Tom Reiss, author. "A Curious Man is the rollicking, terrific story of one of America's greatest men . Ripley brought back to an awed nation the richness of an endlessly exotic world, and Neal Thompson tells the story with a perfectly pitched sense of what makes such a man, and a nation, tick." - Peter Heller, author. "The breathtaking life of a quintessential American: a Frankenstein monster stitched together with equal parts genius, bravado, insecurity, and propaganda. A master of oddities, RIpley himself was the purest form of his own collection, and Neal Thompson is his wondrous exhibitor." - Brad Meltzer, author. "Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that the history of a time can be resolved in the biography of a few stout and earnest people. Robert Ripley was certainly one of those, and in this fascinating account, Neal Thompson rescues for us a colorful slice of history." - Colum McCann, author. "Anyone who wants to understand America needs to read this book . Neal Thompson gives us a vivid portrait of this complex, restless man in all his maniacally conflicted glory." -- Ben Fountain, National Book Award finalist author. "Intelligent and gripping . Neal Thompson expertly captures the surprisingly complex character of Robert Ripley, and a life nearly too fantastic to be believed." - Karen Abbott, author. "A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globe-trotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable. As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, RIpley's life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Bucktoothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world. After he sold his first cartoon to LIFE magazine at age eighteen, more cartooning triumphs followed, but it was his "Believe It or Not!" conceit and the wildly popular radio shows it birthed that would make him one of the most successful entertainment figures of his time and spur him to search the globe's farthest corners for bizarre facts, exotic human curiosities, and shocking phenomena. Ripley delighted in making preposterious declarations that somehow always turned out to be true -- such as that Charles Lindbergh was only the sixty-seventh man to fly across the Atlantic or that "The Star-Spangled Banner" was not the national anthem. Assisted by an alluring harem of female admirers and by ex-banker Norbert Pearlroth, a devoted researcher who spoke eleven languages, Ripley simultaneously embodied the spirit of Peter Pan, the fearlessness of Marco Polo, and the marketing savvy of P.T. Barnum. In a very real sense, Ripley sought to remake the world's aesthetic. Ripley changed everything. The supreme irony of his life. is that he may have been the most amazing oddity of all." - excerpt from the dust jacket flaps.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. Elias, Maria (book design); Nguyen, Tam (illustrations); Nagin, Michael (jacket design); Larsen, Craig (author photograph) (illustrator). 1st Edition. As new condition orange boards with silver spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Introduction; Conclusion; and Acknowledgments. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. "Every hero has a journey. Every journey has a beginning. Every hardcover has a flap. Before Loveline and The Man Show, before the Guinness World Record-breaking podcast and the New York Times bestseller In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks, Adam Carolla's story began in a house that was such a dump the neighborhood kids called it "The Barn." His adobe was pathetic, and his early life was peppered with lowlights such as the Carolla tradition of Trash-Picking Thursday, having his beloved unicycle stolen, or getting carbon monoxide poisoning from the customized microbus of his hippie mom's friend "Zorback." The seeds of the angriest man in America were planted right there on the Barn's dirt lawn. Carolla takes us from teenage years, marked by little income and no self-esteem, to early adulthood sharing a futon with his stoner best buddy, to his days working construction and residing in a house that earned the name "Chez Nude." Finally with determination, talent, and a little help from a guy named Jimmy, Adam climbed to Hollywood stardom and a luxurious home in the Hollywood Hills. Not Taco Bell Material is a tale of depressed parents, public nudity, fecal matter, fist fights, Tijuana road trips, stripper girlfriends, magic mushrooms, flatulence, vandalism, perverted landlords, obnoxious celebrities, ass geysers, and complaining -- lots of complaining. But at its heart is the inspiring story of Adam Lakers Carolla." - from the inner front jacket flap.

Condition: Like New. ** Deluxe, Signed and Numbered Edition **; Fine/As New; Hardcover; This book is brand new and still sealed in the publisher's original shrinkwrap; Perfect, new condition; This book will be shipped in a sturdy cardboard box with foam padding; Medium Format (8.5" - 9.75" tall); 1.9 lbs; Red slipcase with title in black lettering along the spine of slipcase; 2016, Crown Publishing Archetype; 384 pages; "Walk Through Walls Signed and Numbered Collector's Edition," by Marina Abramovic.