Record label executive, photographer, and author, Michael Alago takes readers through this amazing journey that is his life. Alago grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a large, spirited, and devoted Puerto Rican family. Through his early passion for music, art, theater, and photography, he soon found himself rubbing elbows with many downtown NYC scene makers, from Stiv Bators to Jean Michel Basquiat, Cherry Vanilla and Wayne County to Deborah Harry and Robert Mapplethorpe. As an underage teenager going to Max's Kansas City, CBGB, and various art galleries, Alago also began running The Dead Boys fan club. A few years later, he became the assistant music director for legendary nightclubs the Ritz and the Red Parrot. At age twenty-four, he began a storied career as an A&R executive at Elektra Records that started with signing Metallica in the summer of 1984, changing the entire landscape of rock 'n' roll and heavy metal. Alago continued to work in A&R for both Palm Pictures and Geffen Records. He was thrilled to executive-produce albums by Cyndi Lauper, Public Image Ltd, White Zombie, and Nina Simone. In the late 1980s, he was diagnosed with HIV, which manifested into full-blown AIDS ten years later. He survived to continue his music career, but in 2005, he left music to pursue his other love: photography. Alago went on to publish three bestselling books: Rough Gods, Brutal Truth, and Beautiful Imperfections with German-based publisher Bruno Gmünder. He has since overcome his longtime addiction to drugs and alcohol. In his clean and sober life, he has reconnected with his family, continues to be a working photographer as well as record producer, and only through the grace of his 12-Step program is he able to live this big, beautiful life. In 2017, a documentary directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex on Alago's wildly successful career in music was released in theaters and on Netflix, entitled Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago.

ASCAP Deems Taylor Award Winner and named one of 2018 Top Ten Music Books by Billboard! Nineteen seventy-seven. New York City. Dark. Dangerous. Thrilling. Punk Rock. Blondie. David Bowie. Drinking. Drugs. Happening at the speed of light. Seventeen-year old Laura, quaking within her skin while the bursting punk rock revolution explodes around her, starts a band with her teenage friends called the Student Teachers. She's the drummer. They play legendary clubs – CBGB, Max's Kansas City, Hurrah – they rehearse madly, write songs, and tour the East Coast. All between final exams at school. In comes Jimmy Destri from Blondie. He thinks the Student Teachers are terrific! And then – he falls in love with Laura. He pulls her into the glamorous life of Blondie and introduces her to David Bowie. Bowie takes an interest in Laura's band, attends their rehearsals, and sets them up to open for Iggy Pop at the Palladium on Halloween 1979. It's exhilarating! It's the beginning of amazing success in rock 'n' roll! Until it all comes to a stunning stop. After playing a show at Town Hall in 1980, Laura is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Does it all fall apart? Later, at a dinner with Bowie, he whispers something to Laura. And it helps her save her life. In prose that flows like music, Laura Davis-Chanin presents a rich work of narrative nonfiction that is not only deeply personal but also revealing of the punk rock heyday in New York City. Infused with rare photographs, this book is a journey through a unique, ephemeral life experience.

Metallica: The $24.95 Book features an in-depth look at Metallica's cultural significance with chapters devoted to each member, each album, touring, fashion, books, film, influences, fandom, and more, exploring the band's ideologies along the way. With over 125 million records sold worldwide, Metallica is the biggest metal band of all time. Four decades into their unparalleled career, Metallica is a massive cultural force who drastically changed the sound of popular music by creating their own rules. Yet for all their popularity, Metallica can seem impenetrable, raising more questions and inspiring more discourse as their mythos grows. Metallica questions run deeper than what people find on the internet. Metallica questions deserve a book. Metallica, by dedicated fan and music journalist Ben Apatoff (including a foreword by What Are You Doing Here? author Laina Dawes), is that book, honoring Metallica’s history of fighting retail price gouging in the title. Metallica provides an in-depth look at the band and their music that both die-hard fans and Metallica beginners can enjoy.

Rough Gods photographer Michael Alago has thrilled us with his ongoing series of erotically charged images which are powerful, seductive and sometimes a one two punch to the head that leaves you breathless. In BRUTAL TRUTH, the much anticipated follow up to his first sellout book "Rough Gods" he continues to share with us the masculinity of the macho men we all have come to adore; muscular, tattooed, strong and testosterone fueled. Come on in and enter the world of Alago's images. You will be delighted with the virile strength of these men in this provocative 260 page book.

Heavy Tales is the detailed never before told story as lived by Jonny Zazula on how he founded Megaforce Records out of a flea market in New Jersey with his wife Marsha and built a dynasty unmatched by many others forever changing the scope of Heavy Metal. The bands they worked with would go on to release some of the most prolific and important albums in Heavy Metal History giving it it's Golden Era. As a renegade youth who went from living on the city street to later work on Wall Street and then moving unexpectedly towards the music business, when in the winter of 1982 he received an unexpected demo tape of the underground, unsigned band Metallica while working in a flea market. Eager and determined to have the music heard by the entire world Jonny and Marsha founded Megaforce Records in 1983 and released Metallica's debut album, Kill 'Em All. Through this release Megaforce had cemented its position as the de-facto music label in America for Heavy Metal but that's just the start. Heavy Tales details the stories of how Jonny worked miracles by managing and releasing albums by Metallica, Anthrax, Testament, Overkill, Ace Frehley, King's X, Ministry and others. With a foreward written by Chuck Billy and over 100 photographs unearthed from the MegaVault and photographer friends, Heavy Tales is definitively an American story of a family man with a dream to prove to the world that Heavy Metal belonged on the stage, on the radio and in your living room. H.C.M. Jonny Zazula is the co-founder of Megaforce Records and CraZed Management. A lifelong music disciple and avid Nightmare Before Christmas toy collector he now spends retirement with his wife, Marsha, and the dogs in Orlando, Florida.

Born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone (1933-2003) began her musical life playing classical piano. A child prodigy, she wanted a career on the concert stage, but when the Curtis Institute of Music rejected her, the devastating disappointment compelled her to change direction. She turned to popular music and jazz but never abandoned her classical roots or her intense ambition. By the age of twenty six, Simone had sung at New York City's venerable Town Hall and was on her way. Tapping into newly unearthed material on Simone's family and career, Nadine Cohodas paints a luminous portrait of the singer, highlighting her tumultuous life, her innovative compositions, and the prodigious talent that matched her ambition. With precision and empathy, Cohodas weaves the story of Simone's contentious relationship with audiences and critics, her outspoken support for civil rights, her two marriages and her daughter, and, later, the sense of alienation that drove her to live abroad from 1993 until her death. Alongside these threads runs a more troubling one: Simone's increasing outbursts of rage and pain that signaled mental illness and a lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice.

This book introduces basic ROSE techniques and resources required to set up ROSE service. It reviews the cytomorphologic features that are recognizable during ROSE, including those important for sample adequacy, specimen triage, preliminary interpretation, and potential diagnostic pitfalls. Economic and regulatory aspects are discussed as well as the pros and cons of telecytology. The book is formatted for clinical settings, simulating the ROSE process that occurs in the ultrasound room, CT room, bronchoscopy suite, and endoscopy suite. Each chapter focuses on the cytomorphologic clues and pitfalls of the entities specific to that clinical setting. Rapid On-Site Evaluation: A Practical Guide will be a valuable resource for pathologists, cytotechnologists, physicians who perform biopsies and/or ROSE evaluation, and trainees for utilizing ROSE and improving diagnostic performance of biopsies.