‘Illuminated by finely turned phrases and vivid insights’ - Richard Williams, Guardian Sports Books of the Year. Thierry Henry – gifted, charismatic and a genuinely world-class footballer – has passed into Arsenal legend as the hero of a team that finally ended Manchester United’s dominance. But as he approached the autumn of his career, Thierry’s crown began to slip – from the infamous ‘Hand of Gaul’ incident to a dismal World Cup 2010 campaign. Suddenly, a player who Arsene Wenger once dubbed ‘the greatest striker ever’, a man who had spent his career at the very top of the game, began to learn how lonely such a position could be. Drawing from numerous interviews and impeccable sources, as well as his own observations over the course of Henry’s entire career, award-winning author Philippe Auclair has produced the most complete portrait of the Arsenal hero ever to be written. Clear-eyed, lyrical and passionately argued, Thierry Henry: Lonely at the Top is as raw, shocking and thought-provoking as it is celebratory of Henry’s outstanding flair and talent.

Men appear to enjoy many advantages in society-on average they make more money, have more power, and enjoy a greater degree of social freedom than women. But many men pay a high price for the pursuit of success and power. Taking family and friends for granted, men will often let relationships take a back seat to their professional ambitions, only to ultimately find themselves with few real friends they can rely on in hard times. As a result, they turn to affairs, alcohol, and other self-destructive behaviors. Sadly, millions of men suffer untreated depression. In this groundbreaking and provocative book, award-winning clinical psychologist Thomas Joiner makes an impassioned call for society to recognize the harmful effects that solitude can have on men. Drawing on original research done for the National Institute of Mental Health, he focuses on the particular situations that leave men rudderless. He offers advice on support systems that are most useful to men, and he offers prescriptive advice on how men can improve their lives.

Biographical sketches of modern Africans from varied walks of life illustrate the individual and societal conflicts of a continent in the process of transition between two cultures

One of the most original, influential, and commercially successful American songwriters, Jerome Felder, aka Doc Pomus (1925-1991), gave the world a dazzling legacy of musical hits during rock 'n' roll's first decade. A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of "Lonely Avenue" to the symphonic soul of "Save the Last Dance for Me" to the pure pop of "Viva Las Vegas." His songs-"This Magic Moment," "A Teenager in Love," "Hushabye," "Little Sister," "Turn Me Loose," and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding 100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an "entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man." Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, "If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus." Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York's underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc's story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock 'n' roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York's punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenueis the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus's family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.

Despite 21st-century fears of an 'epidemic' of loneliness, its history has been sorely neglected. A Biography of Loneliness offers a radically new interpretation of loneliness as an emotional language and experience. Using letters and diaries, philosophical tracts, political discussions, and medical literature from the eighteenth century to the present, historian of the emotions Fay Bound Alberti argues that loneliness is not an ahistorical, universal phenomenon. It is, in fact, a modern emotion: before 1800, its language did not exist. And where loneliness is identified, it is not always bad, but a complex emotional state that differs according to class, gender, ethnicity and experience. Looking at informative case studies such as Sylvia Plath, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf, A Biography of Loneliness charts the emergence of loneliness as a modern and embodied emotional state.

"Booker proposes the republication of Alice Allison Dunnigan's original, unedited autobiography A Black Woman's Experience: From School House to White House (unavailable except as a collector's item). Alice Dunnigan (1906-1983) was the first African American woman to break the color and gender barriers of national journalism. During her time as a journalist, she reported for the Louisville Defender and Chicago Defender, and was a member of the Negro Associated Press. Dunnigan has been inducted into the Kentucky Hall of Fame for Journalism (1982) and for Human Rights (2010), and in 2013 was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. The original autobiography was self-published and quite long, thus failing to gain the wide readership it might have; Booker aims to make Dunnigan's story available once more and highly readable for a general audience. She has edited from its original 673 pages into a flowing, compelling narrative of approximately 234 pages (71,000 words)"--

A glamorous, haunted life unfolds in the mesmerizing biography of the woman behind a classic children's book In 1957, a children's book called The Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book-and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together a glamorous life. Blond, beautiful Wright had begun her career as an actress and model and then turned to fashion photography before stumbling upon her role as bestselling author. But there was a dark side to the story: a brother lost in childhood, ill-fated marriage plans, a complicated, controlling mother. Edith Stevenson Wright, herself a successful portrait painter, played such a dominant role in her daughter's life that Dare was never able to find her way into the adult world. Only through her work could she speak for herself: in her books she created the happy family she'd always yearned for, while her self-portraits betrayed an unresolved tension between sexuality and innocence, a desire to belong and painful isolation. Illustrated with stunning photographs, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll tells the unforgettable story of a woman who, imprisoned by her childhood, sought to set herself free through art.

Men appear to enjoy many advantages in society-on average they make more money, have more power, and enjoy a greater degree of social freedom than women. But many men pay a high price for the pursuit of success and power. Taking family and friends for granted, men will often let relationships take a back seat to their professional ambitions, only to ultimately find themselves with few real friends they can rely on in hard times. As a result, they turn to affairs, alcohol, and other self-destructive behaviors. Sadly, millions of men suffer untreated depression. In this groundbreaking and provocative book, award-winning clinical psychologist Thomas Joiner makes an impassioned call for society to recognize the harmful effects that solitude can have on men. Drawing on original research done for the National Institute of Mental Health, he focuses on the particular situations that leave men rudderless. He offers advice on support systems that are most useful to men, and he offers prescriptive advice on how men can improve their lives.