Books like Suits Me by Diane Wood Middlebrook

Mark Manson offers a candid guide to happiness, arguing that caring more about fewer things—and dropping the rest—leads to a richer, more authentic life.

A groundbreaking guide to embracing vulnerability and courage.

Jen Sincero’s guide to personal growth offers humor‑laden, practical steps to break self‑sabotage, shift mindset, attract abundance, and build a life you love.

Explore how embracing vulnerability, courage, compassion, and connection can lead to authentic self‑acceptance and wholehearted living.

In 1949, from relative obscurity, Montreal-born Oscar Peterson blazed on the scene with a Carnegie Hall debut. He was 24 and offered a unique "swing" style punctuated by the dazzling virtuosity that no one had seen before. Lees recounts Peterson's childhood and what it meant to be black and talented in 1940s Canada. He provides vivid description of his father, Daniel, a railway porter and severe taskmaster, anxious for his children's future and opposed to his son choosing jazz over classical music (Peterson's brother and sister both being accomplished musicians, themselves).

The long-awaited memoir by one of the most influential jazz musicians and composers of our time.

The autobiography of Tina Turner chronicles her rise as a rock‑and‑roll icon, detailing her groundbreaking career and the triumphs and tribulations she faced in both the music industry and her personal life.

Presenting twelve breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavors, this book is the dynamic product of an extraordinary partnership. It combines Benjamin Zander's experience as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and his talent as a teacher and communicator with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander's genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment. The authors' harmoniously interwoven perspectives provide a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life. Through uplifting stories, parables, and personal anecdotes, the authors invite readers to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplished composers in the history of American music, the creator of a body of work that includes such standards as "Take the 'A' Train," "Lush Life," and "Something to Live For." Yet all his life Strayhorn was overshadowed by another great composer: his employer, friend, and collaborator, Duke Ellington, with whom he worked as the Ellington Orchestra's ace songwriter and arranger. Lush Life, David Hajdu's sensitive and moving biography of Strayhorn, is a corrective to decades of patchwork scholarship and journalism about this giant of jazz. It is also a vibrant, absorbing account of the "lush life" led by Strayhorn and other jazz musicians in Harlem and Paris. A musical prodigy who began a career as a composer while still a teenager in Pittsburgh, Strayhorn came to New York City at Duke Ellington's invitation in 1939; soon afterward he wrote "'A' Train," which became the signature song of the Ellington Orchestra, one of the most popular jazz bands in the country. For the next three decades, Strayhorn labored under a complex agreement whereby Ellington thrived in the role of public artist to Strayhorn's private one, often taking the bows for Strayhorn's work. Strayhorn was alternately relieved to be kept out of the limelight and frustrated about it. In Harlem and in the cafe society downtown, the small, shy black composer carried himself with singular style and grace as one of the few jazzmen to be openly homosexual. His compositions and elegant arrangements made him a hero to other musicians, but when he died at age fifty-two, his life cut short by alcohol abuse and cancer, few people fully understood the vital role he played in the Ellington Orchestra's development into a vehicle for some of the greatest, most ambitious American music of this century.

Universally acknowledged as one of the most influential of all jazz pianists. Bill Evans (1929-1980) brought an unequaled finesse of touch to the keyboard. Classically trained on flute, violin, and piano, Evans chose jazz - specifically, the jazz piano trio - as the medium for his life's achievement. Peter Pettinger's biography tells Evans's story for the first time. Based on extensive research and conversations with many of Evans's friends and colleagues, as well as Pettinger's firsthand memories of performances at the Village Vanguard in New York and Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London, it describes the life, the musicmaking, and the legacy of this major American jazz artist. Pettinger assesses Evans's recordings and analyzes his expressive technique, tone production, approach to group playing, and compositional methods. With a full discography and dozens of photographs, the volume will be welcomed by jazz fans and general readers alike.