It’s like a plot from a Hollywood potboiler: start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. But for many, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment—including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Michael Ovitz— started their dazzling careers in the lowly mailroom. Based on more than two hundred interviews, David Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution—in the voices of the people who lived it. Through nearly seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you’ll go where the trainees go, learn what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. A vibrant tapestry of dreams, desire, and exploitation, The Mailroom is not only an engrossing read but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood.
The bestselling autobiography of the legendary Louis Zamperini, hero of the blockbuster Unbroken. A modern classic by an American legend, Devil at My Heels is the riveting and deeply personal memoir by U.S. Olympian, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor Louis Zamperini. His inspiring story of courage, resilience, and faith has captivated readers and audiences of Unbroken, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. In Devil at My Heels, his official autobiography (co-written with longtime collaborator David Rensin), Zamperini shares his own first-hand account of extraordinary journey—hailed as “one of the most incredible American lives of the past century” (People). A youthful troublemaker, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller life than most. But on May 27, 1943, it all changed in an instant when his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Louis and two other survivors drifting on a raft for forty-seven days and two thousand miles, waiting in vain to be rescued. And the worst was yet to come when they finally reached land, only to be captured by the Japanese. Louis spent the next two years as a prisoner of war—tortured and humiliated, routinely beaten, starved and forced into slave labor—while the Army Air Corps declared him dead and sent official condolences to his family. On his return home, memories of the war haunted him nearly destroyed his marriage until a spiritual rebirth transformed him and led him to dedicate the rest of his long and happy life to helping at-risk youth. Told in Zamperini’s own voice, Devil at My Heels is an unforgettable memoir from one of the greatest of the “Greatest Generation,” a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of faith.
For twenty years, Miki "Da Cat" Dora was the king of Malibu surfers—a dashing, enigmatic rebel who dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and who still inspires the fantasies of wannabes to this day. And yet, Dora railed against surfing's sudden post-Gidget popularity and the overcrowding of his once empty waves, even after this avid sportsman, iconoclast, and scammer of wide repute ran afoul of the law and led the FBI on a remarkable seven-year chase around the globe in 1974. The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce" and Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." To fully capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing hundreds of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and fellow surfers to uncover the untold truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery.
What would my mother say? How would she want me to handle this situation? How can I make this tough decision and stay true to myself? What would my mother say? Sam Haskell still asks himself these questions every day. When Haskell was young, his devoted mother, Mary, instilled in her son the values of character, faith, and honor by setting an example and asking him to promise to live his life according to her lessons. He did, and those promises have served Haskell consistently from his Mississippi boyhood to his long career at the venerable William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. In this inspiring memoir full of touching stories and amusing anecdotes, Haskell reveals how he kept his pledge to his mother to live a decent life–even in the shark-infested waters of Hollywood, where he handled the hottest stars and packaged the highest-rated shows–by refusing to become the cliché of an amoral agent. Here is Haskell as a child in Amory, Mississippi (pop. 7,000), discovering the power of hope as he waits for an unlikely visit from the “Cheer Man” (a representative of the detergent company who gave ten dollars to anyone using the brand), learning humility after pursuing an eighth-grade “Good Citizenship” award he cockily assumed he’d win, confronting the complications of human character when a near-fatal car crash exposed his judgmental father’s true nature. Years later, in Hollywood, Haskell would rely on his mother’s teachings–honesty, self-reliance, and belief in God–as he swiftly rose from the William Morris mailroom to eventually become the company’s Worldwide Head of Television. His capacity for friendship and his insistence on living his version of the Golden Rule (being “thoughtfully political”) allowed him to handle various client crises and the tense negotiations that nearly scuttled the last years of Everybody Loves Raymond and the entire existence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Haskell has achieved success through self-respect, and from his story we learn how we, too, can maintain our dignity when faced with life’s challenges. This stirring memoir is a testament to mothers everywhere who instill in their sons the lasting values they need to become good men and devoted fathers.
Legendary Hollywood supermanager and producer Bernie Brillstein reveals his collection of wisdom gleaned from his fifty years of insight, instinct, and experience in both business and life. An uncommon collection of common sense, The Little Stuff Matters Most delivers the hard and fast lessons of Brillstein’s unparalleled business experience in fifty pithy, wise, and completely entertaining essays. Brillstein, whose name is synonymous with some of the highest-profile Hollywood careers, shares these invaluable lessons in the clever, unfailingly honest, and inimitable tone for which he is known and loved. Memorable tips include: Know the difference between "hot" and "good" Only doctors and hookers need pagers Don’t pet the snakes Have an opinion, even it it’s wrong It’s all lies, and that’s the truth When your time has come, success will find you The stomachache—and other gastrointestinal warnings Each of the book’s fifty "Bernie-isms" is followed by refreshing commentary, peppered with colorful tales from Bernie’s career and clever drawings by acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress. This book is the next best thing to having your own personal manager on call 24/7—without having to fork over 15 percent of your paycheck.
In 2016, Google’s Site Reliability Engineering book ignited an industry discussion on what it means to run production services today—and why reliability considerations are fundamental to service design. Now, Google engineers who worked on that bestseller introduce The Site Reliability Workbook, a hands-on companion that uses concrete examples to show you how to put SRE principles and practices to work in your environment. This new workbook not only combines practical examples from Google’s experiences, but also provides case studies from Google’s Cloud Platform customers who underwent this journey. Evernote, The Home Depot, The New York Times, and other companies outline hard-won experiences of what worked for them and what didn’t. Dive into this workbook and learn how to flesh out your own SRE practice, no matter what size your company is. You’ll learn: How to run reliable services in environments you don’t completely control—like cloud Practical applications of how to create, monitor, and run your services via Service Level Objectives How to convert existing ops teams to SRE—including how to dig out of operational overload Methods for starting SRE from either greenfield or brownfield
New York Times bestseller More than 100,000 copies in print Completed just two days before Louis Zamperini’s death at age ninety-seven, Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In shares a lifetime of wisdom, insight, and humor from “one of the most incredible American lives of the past century” (People). Zamperini’s story has touched millions through Laura Hillenbrand’s biography Unbroken and its blockbuster movie adaptation directed by Angelina Jolie. Now, in his own words, Zamperini reveals with warmth and great charm the essential values and lessons that sustained him throughout his remarkable journey. He was a youthful troublemaker from California who turned his life around to become a 1936 Olympian. Putting aside his track career, he volunteered for the army before Pearl Harbor and was thrust into World War II as a B-24 bombardier. While on a rescue mission, his plane went down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where he survived against all odds, drifting two thousand miles in a small raft for forty-seven days. His struggle was only beginning: Zamperini was captured by the Japanese, and for more than two years he courageously endured torture and psychological abuse in a series of prisoner-of-war camps. He returned home to face more dark hours, but in 1949 Zamperini’s life was transformed by a spiritual rebirth that would guide him through the next sixty-five years of his long and happy life. Louis Zamperini’s Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In is an extraordinary last testament that captures the wisdom of a life lived to the fullest.
A juvenile delinquent, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a World War II bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a life fuller than most when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty-seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith -- and the ever-present sharks. On the forty-seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips finally spotted land -- and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as prisoners of war. Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subjected to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labor, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird -- a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sent official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive. Somehow Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short-lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking. A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," Devil at My Heels is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.
CONFESSIONS OF A LATE-NIGHT TALK-SHOW HOST is written by the host of THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. It is a double whammy of satire, irreverently told in Garry Shandling's inimitable style which deftly weaves together fact and fiction. This is an exclusive up-close-and-personal inspection of what makes Larry Sanders tick: his loves, his addictions, his friends and his enemies. This will be the Hollywood tell-all to end all Hollywood tell-alls; indeed, Larry Sanders might never be able to eat lunch in that town again!
Bob is more than a name. It's a verb, an attitude, an entire way of life. The full meaning of Bobness is now revealed in the words of famous and regular Bobs themselves in this offbeat, humorous tribute to Bobs everywhere. Illustrated with celebrity photographs throughout.
The talent agent who worked with the likes of John Belushi, Jim Henson, Phil Hartman, and Dennis Miller reveals how he began at the mail room at the William Morris Agency, working his way to the top in the cutthroat world of the entertainment industry. Reprint.
Athletically gifted, Louis Zamperini propelled himself from the tough streets of Southern California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and to an NCAA mile record at USC that stood for 20 yeas. When war came he left the track for a B24 - a move that would have heartbreaking consequences.
The story of the critically acclaimed musician's personal odyssey from his childhood under a Greek military dictatorship to his wild years playing rock-and-roll across America.
A noted Hollywood manager and producer draws on his own fifty-year career to provide fifty important lessons, insights, words of wisdom, and rules that can be applied to the business world, including such memorable tips as "Don't pet the snakes," "Have an opinion, even if it's wrong," "It's all lies, and that's the truth," and "Know the difference between hot and good." 50,000 first printing
Run your entire corporate IT infrastructure in a cloud environment that you control completely—and do it inexpensively and securely with help from this hands-on book. All you need to get started is basic IT experience. You’ll learn how to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a private Windows domain, complete with Active Directory, enterprise email, instant messaging, IP telephony, automated management, and other services. By the end of the book, you’ll have a fully functioning IT infrastructure you can operate for less than $300 per month. Learn about Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and other AWS tools you’ll use Create a Windows domain and set up a DNS management system Install Active Directory and a Windows Primary Domain Controller Use Microsoft Exchange to set up an enterprise email service Import existing Windows Server-based virtual machines into your VPC Set up an enterprise-class chat/IM service, using the XMPP protocol Install and configure a VoIP PBX telephony system with Asterisk and FreePBX Keep your network running smoothly with automated backup and restore, intrusion detection, and fault alerting
Loaded with tips and tricks, these pages show how to unleash the power of the most popular database management software for Windows NT servers and workstations. The CD-ROM features a complete sample SQL database and all T-SQL and other code from the text, plus third-party tools.
It’s like a plot from a Hollywood potboiler: start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. But for many, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment—including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Michael Ovitz— started their dazzling careers in the lowly mailroom. Based on more than two hundred interviews, David Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution—in the voices of the people who lived it. Through nearly seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you’ll go where the trainees go, learn what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. A vibrant tapestry of dreams, desire, and exploitation, The Mailroom is not only an engrossing read but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood.
The first and most complete narrative biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, by acclaimed music journalist and Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne "Riveting." -People Magazine "This is one of the great rock and roll stories." -New York Times Book Review Even in the larger-than-life world of rock and roll, it was hard to imagine four more different men. Yet few groups were as in sync with their times as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Starting with the original trio's landmark 1969 debut album, their group and individual songs-"Wooden Ships," "Ohio," "For What It's Worth" (with Stills and Young's Buffalo Springfield)-became the soundtrack of a generation. But their story would rarely be as harmonious as their legendary vocal blend. Over the decades, these four men would continually break up, reunite, and disband again-all against a backdrop of social and musical change, recurring disagreements, and self-destructive tendencies that threatened to cripple them as a group and as individuals. In Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup, Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne presents the ultimate deep diveinto rock and roll's most musical and turbulent brotherhood. Featuring exclusive interviewswith band members, colleagues, fellow superstars, former managers, employees,and lovers-and with access to unreleased music and documents-this is the sweepingstory of rock's longest-running, most dysfunctional, yet pre-eminent musical family,delivered with the epic feel their story rightly deserves.
What would my mother say? How would she want me to handle this situation? How can I make this tough decision and stay true to myself? What would my mother say? Sam Haskell still asks himself these questions every day. When Haskell was young, his devoted mother, Mary, instilled in her son the values of character, faith, and honor by setting an example and asking him to promise to live his life according to her lessons. He did, and those promises have served Haskell consistently from his Mississippi boyhood to his long career at the venerable William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. In this inspiring memoir full of touching stories and amusing anecdotes, Haskell reveals how he kept his pledge to his mother to live a decent life–even in the shark-infested waters of Hollywood, where he handled the hottest stars and packaged the highest-rated shows–by refusing to become the cliché of an amoral agent. Here is Haskell as a child in Amory, Mississippi (pop. 7,000), discovering the power of hope as he waits for an unlikely visit from the “Cheer Man” (a representative of the detergent company who gave ten dollars to anyone using the brand), learning humility after pursuing an eighth-grade “Good Citizenship” award he cockily assumed he’d win, confronting the complications of human character when a near-fatal car crash exposed his judgmental father’s true nature. Years later, in Hollywood, Haskell would rely on his mother’s teachings–honesty, self-reliance, and belief in God–as he swiftly rose from the William Morris mailroom to eventually become the company’s Worldwide Head of Television. His capacity for friendship and his insistence on living his version of the Golden Rule (being “thoughtfully political”) allowed him to handle various client crises and the tense negotiations that nearly scuttled the last years of Everybody Loves Raymond and the entire existence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Haskell has achieved success through self-respect, and from his story we learn how we, too, can maintain our dignity when faced with life’s challenges. This stirring memoir is a testament to mothers everywhere who instill in their sons the lasting values they need to become good men and devoted fathers.
“Bang your head! Metal Health’ll drive you mad!” — Quiet Riot Like an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music on steroids, Bang Your Head is an epic history of every band and every performer that has proudly worn the Heavy Metal badge. Whether headbanging is your guilty pleasure or you firmly believe that this much-maligned genre has never received the respect it deserves, Bang Your Head is a must-read that pays homage to a music that’s impossible to ignore, especially when being blasted through a sixteen-inch woofer. Charting the genesis of early metal with bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden; the rise of metal to the top of the Billboard charts and heavy MTV rotation featuring the likes of Def Leppard and Metallica; hitting its critical peak with bands like Guns N’ Roses; disgrace during the “hair metal” ’80s; and a demise fueled by the explosion of the Seattle grunge scene and the “alternative” revolution, Bang Your Head is as funny as it is informative and proves once and for all that there is more to metal than sin, sex, and spandex. To write this exhaustive history, David Konow spent three years interviewing the bands, wives, girlfriends, ex-wives, groupies, managers, record company execs, and anyone who was or is a part of the metal scene, including many of the band guys often better known for their escapades and bad behavior than for their musicianship. Nothing is left unsaid in this jaw-dropping, funny, and entertaining chronicle of power ballads, outrageous outfits, big hair, bigger egos, and testosterone-drenched debauchery.
Do you wish the existing books on site reliability engineering started at the beginning? Do you wish someone would walk you through how to become an SRE, how to think like an SRE, or how to build and grow a successful SRE function in your organization? Becoming SRE addresses all of these needs and more with three interconnected sections: the essential groundwork for understanding SRE and SRE culture, advice for individuals on becoming an SRE, and guidance for organizations on creating and developing a thriving SRE practice. Acting as your personal and personable guide, author David Blank-Edelman takes you through subjects like: SRE mindset, SRE culture, and SRE advocacy What you need to get started and hired in SRE and what the job will be like when you get there What you need to bring SRE into an organization and what is required for a good organizational fit so it can thrive there How to work with your business folks and management around SRE How SRE can grow and mature in an organization over time Ready to become an SRE or introduce SRE into your organization? This book is here to help.
Their ever-evolving popularity notwithstanding, audiobooks remain a rather undertheorized phenomenon. The prevailing handful of existing studies seem to have adopted an inherently historicist approach, which fails to identify and scrutinize their aesthetic importance. Thus, rather than regarding them as mere recorded ‘versions’ of existing literary works, this book explores them as the unique products of a hitherto undefined artistic genre. As performance-based aural artefacts, the very act of listening to them is rendered an aesthetic experience in its own right. By effectively embracing an interdisciplinary approach and introducing a set of aesthetic questions and philosophical conundrums (ignited by a paradigmatic application of the New Institutional Theory of Art), this study establishes a new aesthetic category—which, in turn, not only classifies audiobooks as artworks to all intents and purposes, but also generates the criteria and parameters for evaluating their merit. Since the proof of the proverbial pudding is purportedly in the eating, in surveying a series of concrete case studies—each highlighting different degrees of complexities—this study mainly examines first-person narratives as the most natural medium for the aesthetics of the audiobook. As such, the investigation herein provides one with comparative close listenings, appropriately analyzing and debating their aesthetic properties. Finally, in exploring what this study identifies as one’s informed intuition and its role in the craft of casting audiobooks, this study also proposes a new understating of how aesthetic appreciation works in action.
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