Memoir

He went from performing in an empty San Francisco coffee house to hosting the Oscars. In his memoir Born Standing Up, out now in paperback, comedian Steve Martin talks about his early days as a stand-up comic — and why he quit.

Marlin Fitzwater spent 17 years as a government employee before being appointed White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan. He also worked for George H. W. Bush.

Record producer Jerry Wexler died on August 15. He was 91. Wexler created the careers of some of the greatest musicians of the time, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin.

Hostile womanizer, crack addict, New York Times journalist — David Carr has been all of those, sometimes simultaneously. For his memoir The Night of the Gun, Carr put on his investigative-reporter hat — to reconstruct his various sordid lives.

There are 100,000 private military contractors in Iraq. Mercenary John Geddes explains why he thinks this is a good thing. His new book Highway to Hell is an account of his experiences in Iraq as a soldier for hire.

Dorothy's Toto and Elle's Bruiser have a friend in common: animal trainer Bill Berloni. Berloni has been training stage animals for over 30 years. His new book is Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars.

McSweeney's contributor Dan Kennedy found what he thought was a dream job in the music industry: Director of Creative Development at Atlantic Records. Rock on: an Office Power Ballad is the tale of his time at the label — where he arrived just in time for what he describes as the collapse of the music business.

When Bob Morris' widowed father decided to start dating again — at the age of 80 — guess who found himself sorting through the personals? In Assisted Loving, Morris chronicles the search for Dad's new Ms. Right — and his own misadventures in the romantic jungle that is Manhattan's gay ghetto.

Artist Suze Rotolo — the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — was Dylan's girlfriend in the '60s. She's written about the relationship, and about that era's New York, in a new memoir.

The celebrated Irish memoirist, who had been battling lung cancer, died May 9. Her 1996 memoir — about growing up poor in the Ireland of the '40s and '50s — became a best-seller. Terry Gross talked to her in 2001.