In Memoriam

One of the highest-ranking defectors from Scientology exposes the secret inner workings of the powerful organization in this remarkable memoir. Mike Rinder's parents began taking him to their local Scientology center when he was five years old. After high school, he signed a billion-year contract and was admitted into Scientology's elite inner circle, the Sea Organization. Brought to founder L. Ron Hubbard's yacht and promised training in Hubbard's most advanced techniques, Mike was instead put to work swabbing the decks. Still, Rinder bought into the doctrine that his personal comfort was secondary to the higher purpose of Hubbard's world-saving mission, swiftly rising through the ranks. In the 1980s, Rinder became Scientology's international spokesperson and the head of its powerful Office of Special Affairs. He helped negotiate Scientology's pivotal tax exemption from the IRS and engaged with the organization's prominent celebrity members, including Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, and John Travolta. Yet Rinder couldn't shake a nagging feeling that something was amiss--Hubbard's promises remained unfulfilled at his death, and his successor, David Miscavige, was a ruthless and vindictive man who did not hesitate to confine many top Scientologists, Mike among them, to a makeshift prison known as the Hole. In 2007, at the age of fifty-two, Rinder finally escaped Scientology. Overnight, he became one of the organization's biggest public enemies. He was followed, hacked, spied on, and tracked. But he refused to be intimidated and today helps people break free of Scientology. In A Billion Years, the dark, dystopian truth about Scientology is revealed as never before. Rinder offers insights into the religion that only someone of his former high rank could provide and tells a harrowing but fulfilling story of personal resilience.

A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward--written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers. At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists--including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes--set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide. Two buses proceeded through Virginia, North and South Carolina, to Georgia where they were greeted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and finally to Alabama. There, the Freedom Riders found their answer: No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell, its riders narrowly escaping; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat several riders nearly to death. Buses Are a Comin' provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles Person accompanies his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation's violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.

Heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne shares his unbelievable story for the first time in this tell-all memoir of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Take what you thought was "rock and roll excess" and double it-you still wouldn't be anywhere near the dizzying life of Ozzy Osbourne. Born into a life so poor that the whole family slept in one room, music was his salvation, and his band Black Sabbath went on to change the musical landscape forever. But along with the rock and roll came the inevitable sex and drugs, and Ozzy soon fell into an epic relationship with booze and chemicals. The stories of Ozzy's days on the road are now those of legend-biting the head off a live bat, the tragic plane crash that took the life of his best friend and writing partner Randy Rhoades-but few know of the real heartbreak he suffered during those days of hard living. In the end, it was the love of his family that saved him. Told for the first time in the rocker's hilarious and inimitable voice, Ozzy finally comes clean.    

Finally . . . here is the first and only book that visually tells us the intimate story of Peter, Paul, and Mary and their music, with stirring images that follow their passionate, fifty-year journey to the center of America's heart. The very best of thousands of photographs, many rare and never before published, taken over five decades by some of the world's top photographers, follow them from their earliest performances in the 1960s, when Mary was the most desired, beautiful, and charismatic performer and a new role model for women. Follow the trio as they lead America to discover the passionate soul of folk music. Join the struggle for racial equality, social justice, and freedom in this memorable journey, from the historic 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., to the trio's appearance before a half million people in 1969 to end the Vietnam War, to their singing at the Hollywood Bowl for Survival Sunday in 1978, helping to launch the anti-nuke movement, the world's first international environmental movement. Through these images, you can feel and almost hear the trio's songs calling for a more caring, better world as you see them performing with a courage and conviction that became for so many the embodiment and sound track of their generation's awakening to conscience, to activism, and to a new dream for all of humankind. Peter, Paul, and Mary's songs of defiant hope and a certain unmasked innocence are still a powerful part of our American consciousness, and this book reenacts the history of how the trio marked our lives with their indelible stamp of honesty of the sort we yearn to recapture and recreate in our own time-for ourselves, our children, and the generations to come.

Wondering if science could explain how he survived his 40-year avalanche of drugs and alcohol, Ozzy Osbourne became one of a handful of people in the world to have his entire DNA mapped in 2010. It was a highly complex, $65,000 process, but the results were conclusive: Ozzy is a genetic anomaly. The "Full Ozzy Genome" contained variants that scientists had never before encountered and the findings were presented at the prestigious TEDMED Conference in San Diego-making headlines around the world. The procedure was in part sponsored by The Sunday Times of London, which had already caused an international fururoe by appointing Ozzy Osbourne its star health advice columnist. The newpaper argued that Ozzy's mutliple near-death experiences, 40-year history of drug abuse, and extreme hypocondria qualified him more than any other for the job. The column was an overnight hit, being quickly picked up by Rolling Stone to give it a global audience of millions. In Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy, Ozzy answers reader's questions with his outrageous wit and surprising wisdom, digging deep into his past to tell the memoir-style survival stories never published before-and offer guidance that no sane human being should follow. Part humor, part memoir, and part bad advice, Trust Me, I'm Dr. Ozzy will include some of the best material from his published columns, answers to celebrities' medical questions, charts, sidebars, and more.

Corazón Abierto: Mexican American Voices in Texas Music provides a wide view of the myriad contributions Mexican American artists have made to music in Texas and the United States. Based on interviews with longtime stalwarts of Mexican American music--Flaco Jiménez, Tish Hinojosa, Ernie Durawa, Rosie Flores, and others--and also conversations with newer voices like Lesly Reynaga, Marisa Rose Mejia, Josh Baca, and many more, Kathleen Hudson allows the musicians to tell their own stories in a unique and personal way. As the artists reveal in their free-ranging discussions with Hudson, their influences go far beyond traditionally Mexican genres like conjunto, norteño, and Tejano to extend into rock, jazz, country-western, zydeco, and many other styles. Hudson's survey also includes essays, poetry, and other creative works by Dagoberto Gilb, Sandra Cisneros, and others, but the core of the book consists of what she describes as "a collection of voices from different locations in Texas. . . . Some represent voices from the edge, while others give us a view from the center." Weaving together a tapestry that combines "family, borders, creativity, music, food, and community," the book presents an image as varied and difficult to define as the musicians themselves. By sharing the artists' accounts of their influences, their experiences, their family stories, and their musical and cultural journeys, Corazón Abierto reminds us that borders can be gateways, that differences enrich, rather than isolate.