Sam Smith The Biography

On the morning of 9 February 2014, when Sam Smith woke up and saw the four statuettes he’d taken home from the previous night’s Grammy Awards Ceremony, it must have felt like a dream come true. At only twenty-two years old and coming just eight months after the US release of his debut album, In the Lonely Hour, calling Sam Smith’s victory an ‘overnight success story’ seemed wholly appropriate.In fact, Sam had been working towards releasing his own music for over a decade and training his voice for even longer. After falling under the spell of Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan as a child, straining his voice to imitate them and match their incredible vocal ranges, tuition from a local jazz singer and time spent in a local theatre group and youth choir encouraged Sam to pursue singing as a career.But Sam’s first attempts to become a professional singer floundered and left him disillusioned and jaded. By the time he turned eighteen, Sam had seen six different managers come and go, he’d recorded a whole album’s worth of songs which were never released and he was beginning to think he’d never get his big break.Then in 2010, giving himself one more year to make it, Sam moved to London. After spending a year working full-time in a bar, a chance encounter with Elvin Smith, a fellow musician turned artist manager, changed Sam’s life forever. In just over eighteen months, Sam’s voice had featured on a number-one song and he was about to sign his own major label deal.The songs Sam wrote for his debut album would go on to capture the hearts of a massive international audience. Along the way there were celebrity friendships, number-one records, world tours and the inevitable press speculation about his personal life. In this revealing biography, Joe Allen charts the meteoric rise of Britain’s singing sensation. With his multi-platinum debut barely scratching the surface of what we can expect from Sam in the future, the next decade is sure to be as eventful as the last.

In 2012, Derrick Rose was on top of the world. After growing up in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, Rose achieved an improbable childhood dream: being selected first overall in the NBA draft by his hometown Chicago Bulls. The point guard known to his family as “Pooh” was a phenom, winning the Rookie of the Year award and electrifying fans around the world. In 2011, he became the youngest MVP in league history. He and the Bulls believed the city's first berth in the NBA Finals since the Jordan era was on the horizon. Rarely had a bond between a player and fans been so strong, as the city wrapped its arms around the homegrown hero. Six years and four knee surgeries later, he was waived by the Utah Jazz, a once surefire Hall of Fame career seemingly on the brink of collapse. Many speculated his days in the NBA were over. But Derrick Rose never doubted himself, never believed his struggles on and off the court were anything other than temporary setbacks. Rather than telling the world he had more to give, he decided to show them. I'll Show You is an honest, intimate conversation with one of the world's most popular athletes, a star whose on-court brilliance is matched only by his aversion to the spotlight. Written with New York Times bestselling author Sam Smith, Rose opens himself up to fans in a way they've never seen before, creating a document that is as unflinching—and at times as uncomfortable—as a personal diary. Detailing his childhood spent in one of his city's most dangerous neighborhoods; his relationships with both opponents and teammates; the pain and controversies surrounding his career-altering injuries; his complicated relationship to fame and fortune; and his rise, fall, and reemergence as the player LeBron James says is “still a superhero,” I'll Show You is one of the most candid and surprising autobiographies of a modern-day superstar ever written.

Are you the world's biggest Sam Smith fan? Or do you want to find out everything there is to know about one of the world's greatest singer-songwriters of modern times? If so, then this is the book for you! Contained within are over one hundred facts about Sam, from his life before making it big in the music industry to his relationships, likes, dislikes plus much, much more. The book is easily organised into sections so you can find the information you want fast and is an unmissable addition to any fan’s bookshelf.

This is the story that shows what can happen "when freeman shall stand!" Here is a tribute to the un-sung patriot and his life of service. Smith is a bold example of true American heroism and wisdom from one of the darkest days of our existence as a free people. Inspiring us all today, this book is the authors' homage to the early Republic, and Sam Smith's fight for freedom and liberty, illuminating the leadership lessons which teach us how one American can make all the difference in preserving the "land of the free and the home of the brave." - Back cover

Sam Steele, “the man who tamed the Gold Rush,” had a high-profile public career, yet his private life has been closely protected. Sam Steele: A Biography follows Steele’s rise from farm boy in backwoods Ontario to the much-lauded Major General Sir Samuel Benfield Steele. Drawing on the vast Steele archive at the University of Alberta, this comprehensive biography vividly recounts some of the most significant events of the first fifty years of Canadian Confederation—including the founding of the North-West Mounted Police, the opening of the North through the Klondike, and Canada’s participation in the South African War—from the perspective of a policeman who became a military leader. Impeccably researched and accessibly written, Sam Steele is perfect for anyone interested in Canada’s early decades.

Heather and Picket are extraordinary rabbits with ordinary lives until calamitous events overtake them, spilling them into a cauldron of misadventures. They discover that their own story is bound up in the tumult threatening to overwhelm the wider world. Kings fall and kingdoms totter. Tyrants ascend and terrors threaten. Betrayal beckons, and loyalty is a broken road with peril around every bend.Where will Heather and Picket land? How will they make their stand?

An incisive biography of the prolific photo-essayist W. Eugene Smith Famously unabashed, W. Eugene Smith was photography’s most celebrated humanist. As a photo essayist at Life magazine in the 1940s and ’50s, he established himself as an intimate chronicler of human culture. His photographs of war and disaster, villages and metropolises, doctors and midwives, revolutionized the role of images in journalism, transforming photography for decades to come. When Smith died in 1978, he left behind eighteen dollars in the bank and forty-four thousand pounds of archives. He was only fifty-nine, but he was flat worn-out. His death certificate read “stroke,” but, as was said of the immortal jazzman Charlie Parker, Smith died of “everything,” from drug and alcohol benders to weeklong work sessions with no sleep. Lured by the intoxicating trail of people that emerged from Smith’s stupefying archive, Sam Stephenson began a quest to trace his footsteps. In Gene Smith’s Sink, Stephenson merges traditional biography with rhythmic digressions to revive Smith’s life and legacy. Traveling across twenty-nine states, Japan, and the Pacific, Stephenson profiles a lively cast of characters, including the playwright Tennessee Williams, to whom Smith likened himself; the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with whom he once shared a Swiss chalet; the artist Mary Frank, who was married to his friend Robert Frank; the jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Sonny Clark, whose music was taped by Smith in his loft; and a series of obscure caregivers who helped keep Smith on his feet. The distillation of twenty years of research, Gene Smith’s Sink is an unprecedented look into the photographer’s potent legacy and the subjects around him.