From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and The Two Popes comes the fascinating account of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s friendship—one of the most impactful relationships in history, and the basis of an upcoming play and film.Few friendships have had such far-reaching implications for the world—from finance to technology to philanthropy—than that between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. After meeting at a party in 1991, the two played cards and golf, shared jokes, swapped trade secrets, ate junk food, talked and listened. Their growing friendship would impact each man and lead to change on a grander scale, culminating in the development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which holds nearly $50 billion in assets.How did such an unusual union blossom? In what ways specifically did each man begin to influence the other? How did these two avid wealth accumulators jointly decide to address some of the world’s most critical problems—poverty, disease, inequality—by giving their wealth away? And what, finally, does their giga-wealthy partnership mean for the rest of us in an age of great wealth—and great inequality? This book gives the fullest account yet of this extraordinary relationship and explores how it has transformed these two men—and is changing the world for the better for all of us.

Six-time Emmy Award-winning funny man Tim Conway—best known for his roles on The Carol Burnett Show—offers a straight-shooting and hilarious memoir about his life on stage and off as an actor and comedian.In television history, few entertainers have captured as many hearts and made as many people laugh as Tim Conway. What’s So Funny? follows Tim’s journey from life as an only child raised by loving but outrageous parents, to his tour of duty in the army, to his ascent as a national star. Conway’s often-improvised humor, razor-sharp timing, and hilarious characters have made him one of the funniest and most authentic performers to grace the stage and studio. As Carol Burnett, who also provides an intimate foreword to the book, has said, “there’s no one funnier” than Tim Conway. What’s So Funny? shares hilarious accounts and never-before-shared stories of behind-the-scenes antics on McHale’s Navy and The Carol Burnett Show as well as his famous partnerships with entertainment greats like Harvey Korman, Don Knotts, and Dick Van Dyke; and his friendships with stars like Betty White and Bob Newhart. Filled with warmth, humor, and heart, What’s So Funny will delight and inspire fans everywhere.

Betsy Prioleau’s biography of Gilded Age female tycoon Miriam Leslie is “an appropriately twisty tale of someone trying to outrun her origins. . . . Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for” (New York Times Book Review).   Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt—is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal: she flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both during and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth.  Diamonds and Deadlines reveals the previously unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: she left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage—a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In this dazzling biography, cultural historian Betsy Prioleau draws from diaries, genealogies, and published works to provide an intimate look at the life of one of the Gilded Age’s most complex, powerful women and unexpected feminist icons.   Ultimately, Diamonds and Deadlines restores Mrs. Frank Leslie to her rightful place in history as a monumental businesswoman who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic, and vivid epochs in American history.  Includes Black-and-White Images

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir about finding meaning in life through acts of creativity and imagination. As seen on PBS American Masters "Unintended Memoir."In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals the ways that our memories and personal experiences can inform our creative work. Drawing on her vivid impressions of her upbringing, Tan investigates the truths and inspirations behind her writing while illuminating how we all explore, confront, and process complex memories, especially half-forgotten ones from childhood.With candor, empathy, and humor, Tan sheds light on her own writing process, sharing her hard-won insights on the nature of creativity and inspiration while exploring the universal urge to examine truth through the workings of imagination—and what that imaginative world tells us about our own lives. Where the Past Begins is both a unique look into the mind of an extraordinary storyteller and an indispensable guide for writers, artists, and other creative thinkers.

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller! “It's the best memoir I've ever read.” —Oprah Winfrey“Will Smith isn't holding back in his bravely inspiring new memoir . . . An ultimately heartwarming read, Will provides a humane glimpse of the man behind the actor, producer and musician, as he bares all his insecurities and trauma.” —USA TodayWinner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had.Will Smith’s transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale—but it’s only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over.  This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.

Experience romance and wartime London in the collected letters between two English lovers separated while serving their country during World War II.On July 17, 1939, Eileen Alexander, a recent Cambridge graduate, writes a letter to fellow student Gershon Ellenbogen. It is the beginning of a stirring correspondence that lasts seven years, through the darkest days of World War II, and spans many hundreds of letters.Recently discovered and meticulously curated, these extraordinary records that “tell a rich, multilayered story—a wealthy and bright young woman’s day-by-day experience in London during the war, the growth of her love for a young man, and her insider’s view of a fascinating slice of upper-class Jewish life in mid-twentieth-century England,” writes Thomas Rick in the New York Times Book Review. “One of her closest friends is Aubrey Eban, who would later become Abba Eban, the influential foreign minister of Israel. Simply ‘everybody’ she knows from Cambridge University, where she took a first in English just before the war, has gone to work at Bletchley Park, famous nowadays as the headquarters for British code breaking during the war. She lunches with Anthony Eden, dines with Orde Wingate, chats with Bernard Lewis, and argues about politics with Michael Foot.”Equal parts heartrending and heartwarming, Love in the Blitz is a timeless romance and a deeply personal story of life and resilience amid the violence and terror of war.