An intimate biography of the great songwriter, this is also a deeply affectionate memoir by one of Johnny Mercer’s best friends. “Moon River,” “Laura,” “Skylark,” ”That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “Satin Doll,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Something’s Gotta Give”—the honor roll of Mercer’s songs is endless. Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. But Mercer was also a complicated and private man. A scion of an important Savannah family that had lost its fortune, he became a successful Hollywood songwriter (his primary partners included Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern), a hit recording artist, and, as co-founder of Capitol Records, a successful businessman, but he remained forever nostalgic for his idealized childhood (with his “huckleberry friend”). A gentleman, a nasty drunk, funny, tender, melancholic, tormented—Mercer was a man immensely talented yet plagued by self-doubt, much admired and loved but never really understood. In music historian and songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but directly with Mercer’s complicated relationships with his domineering mother; his tormenting wife, Ginger; and Judy Garland, who was the great love of his life. Lees’s highly personal examination of Mercer’s life is sensitive as only the work of a friend of many years could be to the conflicts in Mercer’s nature. And it is filled with insights into Mercer’s work that could come only from a fellow lyricist (whose own lyrics were much admired by Mercer). A poignant, candid, revelatory portrait of Johnny.

Throughout his career, Johnny Cash has been depicted—and has depicted himself—as a walking contradiction: social protestor and establishment patriot, drugged wildman and devout Christian crusader, rebel outlaw hillbilly thug and elder statesman. Leigh H. Edwards explores the allure of this paradoxical image and its cultural significance. She argues that Cash embodies irresolvable contradictions of American identity that reflect foundational issues in the American experience, such as the tensions between freedom and patriotism, individual rights and nationalism, the sacred and the profane. She illustrates how this model of ambivalence is a vital paradigm for American popular music, and for American identity in general. Making use of sources such as Cash's autobiographies, lyrics, music, liner notes, and interviews, Edwards pays equal attention to depictions of Cash by others, such as Vivian Cash's publication of his letters to her, documentaries and music journalism about him, Walk the Line, and fan club materials found in the archives at the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, to create a full portrait of Cash and his significance as a cultural icon.

Johnny Haynes: Portrait of a Football Genius is the biography of one of England's greatest ever footballers--a player described by Pele as "the greatest passer of a ball I have ever seen." He was capped 56 times, 22 as captain, including the 9-3 hammering of the Scots at Wembley in 1961. He succeeded Denis Compton as the "Brylcreem Boy." When he became the first £100-a-week player it cemented his celebrity superstar status as the David Beckham of his day. Haynes only ever played for one professional club and finished his playing career in South Africa. He retired into relative obscurity and lived the last 20 years of his life in Edinburgh before tragically dying in a car accident in 2005. In his obituary, James Lawton wrote, "Haynes was still the beginning and end of how football should be played. He had the wit to change the way the game was understood and played in this country." His fascinating life story is told through his family, ex-team-mates, famous journalists, and celebrities, as well as his fans.

The Johnny Depp Photo Album follows the unstoppable rise of its subject: through all the movies and the drunken bad-boy behaviour, the romantic affairs with actress Winona Ryder and supermodel Kate Moss, to his current peak in films like the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the box-office smash Alice in Wonderland. Featuring a wealth of film stills and candid shots away from the set, it also shows the other side of the screen icon: rejecting his former life of high-profile hellraising, Depp has chosen to live away from the madness of Hollywood and devote himself to his family. As this book sweetly illustrates, Johnny Depp has found the meaning of life itself in his relationships with his photogenic partner, French singing star Vanessa Paradis, and their children, who he aggressively shields from the media spotlight. This eyecatchingly designed tribute introduces us to the family man who also happens to be the greatest screen star on the planet.

The national bestseller celebrated as "the ultimate Johnny Cash biography . . . Rock writer great Robert Hilburn goes deep." -- Rolling Stone In this, the definitive biography of an American legend, Robert Hilburn conveys the unvarnished truth about a musical superstar. Johnny Cash's extraordinary career stretched from his days at Sun Records with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to the remarkable creative last hurrah, at age 69, that resulted in the brave, moving "Hurt" video. As music critic for the Los Angeles Times, Hilburn knew Cash throughout his life: he was the only music journalist at the legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968, and he interviewed both Cash and his wife June Carter just months before their deaths. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-seen material from the singer's inner circle, Hilburn creates an utterly compelling, deeply human portrait of a towering figure in country music, a seminal influence in rock, and an icon of American popular culture. Hilburn's reporting shows the astonishing highs and deep lows that marked the journey of a man of great faith and humbling addiction who throughout his life strove to use his music to lift people's spirits.

June Carter was born in the rugged mountains of Maces Springs, Virginia, to Ezra and Maybelle Carter, pioneers of country music. On stage from a very young age, June found her niche in the spotlight with her vivacious personality and down-home sense of humor. Her confidence and spirit were what attracted Johnny Cash to her in the late 1950s. On the road together, they quickly bonded. June was his helpmate and closest companion. They were married for forty years, through addiction and success, tragedy and triumph. Anchored in Love is an inside look into the life of June Carter Cash, through the eyes of her only child with Johnny Cash-John Carter Cash. With skillful prose, he reveals new information about the legendary woman through his tender memories and heartwarming stories.

In the 80s, a time before Photoshop and plastic surgeons offered picture perfect complexions, masking even the slightest imperfections, Johnny Rozsa captured the flawless features of Hollywood's fresh crop of celebrity beauty. Rozsa recorded the pristine beauty and the exuberance of 115 stars before they were famous, and shows us what they were like before they began following the plan for eternal youth, an elixir of Botox, surgical procedures, and editorial support in the form of computer generated beauty. From Hugh Grant to Halle Berry, Janet Jackson to Nicholas Cage, John Malkovich to Natasha Richardson, with a special section dedicated the legendary Leigh Bowery, Untouched, Rozsa's first monograph, captures the era's most enduring icons at a time where ingénues rubbed shoulders with luminaries like Charlton Heston, Jane Russell, Joan Collins, Dolly Parton, and Tina Turner.

Portraits are everywhere. One finds them not only in museums and galleries, but also in newspapers and magazines, in the homes of people and in the boardrooms of companies, on stamps and coins, on millions of cell phones and computers. Despite its huge popularity, however, portraiture hasn’t received much philosophical attention. While there are countless art historical studies of portraiture, contemporary philosophy has largely remained silent on the subject. This book aims to address that lacuna. It brings together philosophers (and philosophically minded historians) with different areas of expertise to discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre. The chapters in this collection are ranged under five broad themes. Part I examines the general nature of portraiture and what makes it distinctive as a genre. Part II looks at some of the subgenres of portraiture, such as double portraiture, and at some special cases, such as sport card portraits and portraits of people not present. How emotions are expressed and evoked by portraits is the central focus of Part III, while Part IV explores the relation between portraiture, fiction, and depiction more generally. Finally, in Part V, some of the ethical issues surrounding portraiture are addressed. The book closes with an epilogue about portraits of philosophers. Portraits and Philosophy tangles with deep questions about the nature and effects of portraiture in ways that will substantially advance the scholarly discussion of the genre. It will be of interest to scholars and students working in philosophy of art, history of art, and the visual arts.

John Herndon “Johnny” Mercer (1909–76) remained in the forefront of American popular music from the 1930s through the 1960s, writing over a thousand songs, collaborating with all the great popular composers and jazz musicians of his day, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, and as cofounder of Capitol Records, helping to promote the careers of Nat “King” Cole, Margaret Whiting, Peggy Lee, and many other singers. Mercer’s songs—sung by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and scores of other performers—are canonical parts of the great American songbook. Four of his songs received Academy Awards: “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.” Mercer standards such as “Hooray for Hollywood” and “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” remain in the popular imagination. Exhaustively researched, Glenn T. Eskew’s biography improves upon earlier popular treatments of the Savannah, Georgia–born songwriter to produce a sophisticated, insightful, evenhanded examination of one of America’s most popular and successful chart-toppers. Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World provides a compelling chronological narrative that places Mercer within a larger framework of diaspora entertainers who spread a southern multiracial culture across the nation and around the world. Eskew contends that Mercer and much of his music remained rooted in his native South, being deeply influenced by the folk music of coastal Georgia and the blues and jazz recordings made by black and white musicians. At Capitol Records, Mercer helped redirect American popular music by commodifying these formerly distinctive regional sounds into popular music. When rock ’n’ roll diminished opportunities at home, Mercer looked abroad, collaborating with international composers to create transnational songs. At heart, Eskew says, Mercer was a jazz musician rather than a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, and the interpenetration of jazz and popular song that he created expressed elements of his southern heritage that made his work distinctive and consistently kept his music before an approving audience.

Born in 1776 in East Anglia near the river Stour, John Constable was destined for his father's business of milling and grain-shipping. But he was obdurately opposed to this and persuaded his family he should become an artist instead. In the same determined spirit, he wooed Maria Bicknell in the teeth of opposition from her formidable grandfather, and persisted in painting landscapes at a time when history paintings and portraits were the fashion. Sometimes sharp and sarcastic, and often depressed, Constable in fact possessed a warm gift for intimate friendship. This is revealed in his letters to John Dunthorne, village handyman and housepainter, and to his best friend and patron, archdeacon John Fisher, to whom he wrote: 'I have a kingdom of my own, both fertile and populous - my landscape and my children'. In recent times, after a period of relative ignominy, Constable's influence on British landscape painting has been re-acknowledged, he has been more widely exhibited and his reputation has been reestablished as one of the masters of his genre. This important and absorbing biography explores his life and work, and highlights the dramatic tension between the two.