A “superb [and] often hilarious” memoir of a life in journalism, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Growing Up (The New York Times Book Review). “Baker here recalls his years at the Baltimore Sun, where, on ‘starvation wages,’ he worked on the police beat, as a rewrite man, feature writer and White House correspondent. Sent to London in 1953 to report on the coronation, he spent the happiest year of his life there as an innocent abroad. Moving to the New York Times and becoming a ‘two-fisted drinker,’ he covered the Senate and the national political campaigns of 1956 and 1960, and, just as he was becoming bored with routine reporting and the obligation to keep judgments out of his stories, was offered the opportunity to write his own op-ed page column, ‘The Observer.’ With its lively stories about journalists, Washington politicians and topical scandals, the book will delight Baker’s devotees—and significantly expand their already vast number.” —Publishers Weekly “Aspiring writers will chuckle over Baker’s first, horrible day on police beat, his panicked interview with Evelyn Waugh, and his arrival at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in top hat, tails, and brown-bag lunch.” —Library Journal “A wonderful book.” —Kirkus Reviews

LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE PRIZE 2020 Sammy and his three friends are country boys from Armagh, the disputed borderlands of a country cannbalising itself. They love sharp clothes, a drink, and a night on the town singing Perry Como's classics. Their dream is a Free State, and their methods for achieving this are uncompromising. Heading for Belfast - ground zero of the Troubles - they find themselves in the incongruous position of running a comic book shop by day. Their clandestine activities belong in the x-rated pages of graphic fiction: burglary, blackmail, extortion, torture, and murder. No criminal act is too taboo for these boys. But when punk rock arrives and the hard edge of the decade starts to reveal its true paranoid colours, Sammy finds himself increasingly isolated. Camaraderie and loyalty is the fuel of a terrorist cell. When those virtues prove faulty, the game is up - and Sammy's world starts to radically shrink. For the Good Times shouts and sings with visionary intensity and gallows humour. It is not just a book about the IRA, but an exploration of what it means to 'go rogue', and the heartbreak and devastation that commitment to 'the cause' can engender. It unpacks any dewy-eyed romance associated with the Troubles, and establishes David Keenan as one of our generation's most fearless and entertaining literary stylists.

Lee Bennet Hopkins, noted anthologist and educator, has collected a group of witty and whimsical poems that celebrate the joy of reading. Karla Kuskin, Jack Prelutsky, and Arnold Lobel are just a few of the acclaimed children's book authors whose poems are joined into this delightful ode to the world of words. Wonderfully wacky illustrations by Harvey Stevenson help make this a rollicking good book--and a rollicking good time.

This autobiographical comic drama by a noted cartoonist about growing up in an interracial neighborhood in the 1960s enjoyed a long Off Broadway run. Twelve year old best friends, one black and one white, stand by each other through upheaval and tragedy, in spite of each families disapproval. However, racial peer pressure eventually drives a wedge between the girls. Interspersed are songs of the period, some heard on the Victrola and others perform by the spirited cast.

The long-awaited memoir of the legendary drummer's life and times in the bands Small Faces, Faces, and The Who. From the Mod revolution and the British Invasion of the 1960s, through the psychedelic era of the 1970s, and into the exuberance and excesses of stadium rock in the 1980s, Kenney Jones helped to build rock and roll as we know it. He was the beat behind three of the world's most enduring and significant bands. He wasn't just in the right place at the right time. Along with Keith Moon, John Bonham, and Charlie Watts, Jones is regarded as one of the greatest drummers of all time, sought after by a wide variety of the best-known and best-selling artists to bring his unique skill into the studio for the recording of classic albums and songs—including, of course, the Rolling Stones's "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)." And Jones is no shallow rock star. He may play polo with royalty from across the globe now, but this is the story of a ragamuffin from the East End of London, a boy who watched his bandmates, friends since his teens, die early, combated dyslexia to find a medium in which he could uniquely excel, and later found a way through the wilderness years when the good times seemed to have gone and he had little to fall back on. Kenney Jones has seen it all, played with everyone, and partied with all of them. He's enjoyed the highs, battled the lows, and emerged in one piece. Let the Good Times Roll is a breathtaking immersion into music past that leaves readers feeling as if they lived it too.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir about coming of age in America between the world wars: “So warm, so likable and so disarmingly funny” (The New York Times). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Ranging from the backwoods of Virginia to a New Jersey commuter town to the city of Baltimore, this remarkable memoir recounts Russell Baker’s experience of growing up in pre–World War II America, before he went on to a celebrated career in journalism. With poignant, humorous tales of powerful love, awkward sex, and courage in the face of adversity, Baker reveals how he helped his mother and family through the Great Depression by delivering papers and hustling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post—a job which introduced him to bullies, mentors, and heroes who endured this national disaster with hard work and good cheer. Called “a treasure” by Anne Tyler and “a blessing” by Time magazine, this autobiography is a modern-day classic—“a wondrous book [with scenes] as funny and touching as Mark Twain’s” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “In lovely, haunting prose, he has told a story that is deeply in the American grain.” —The Washington Post Book World “A terrific book.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch