Into the Black begins on the eve of the release of Metallica's massive breakthrough with the eponymous LP that became known as "The Black Album." Suddenly, at the dawn of the '90s, Metallica was no longer the biggest thrash metal band in the world-they were the biggest rock band in the world, period. But with such enormous success came new challenges, as Metallica ran the risk of alienating their original fan base. They were beset by controversy over musical stylistic shifts, supposed concessions to the mainstream, even their choice of haircuts. During this transformative era, journalists Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood had unprecedented access to Metallica. They accompanied the band on tour and joined them in the studio, getting exhilarating eyewitness views into the belly of the beast. Together they amassed over 75 hours of interview material, much of it never in print before now. Through changes both musical and personal, Metallica struggled to maintain their identity and remain a viable creative force. A ferocious battle with the file-sharing company Napster saw the quartet attract the worst PR of their career. Meanwhile, communication breakdowns between James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newsted (who would leave the band in 2001) led to fierce internal arguments, as laid bare in the controversial documentary Some Kind of Monster. At the end of the century, Metallica had appeared to be a band teetering on the brink of self-destruction, but through setbacks and struggles they endured and thrived. From Load, Reload, and Garage, Inc. to the stunning return to form in Death Magnetic and the massive tours that accompanied them-including the real story behind the Big Four shows-Into the Black takes readers inside the heart of Metallica and concludes the saga of one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

In Performing Autobiography, Jenn Stephenson presents an innovative new approach to autobiography studies that links the growing field of research to drama. Stephenson’s analysis engages with performance histories to demonstrate the extent to which the dramatic form, which recasts autobiography as ambiguously fictive, ensures that the experience of the plays remains open to revision, alteration, and interpretation. As such, Performing Autobiography understands this form not to be the impossible documentation of the backward-looking narrative of one’s life, but rather an evolving process of self-creation and transformation. Stephenson explores the autobiographical form by analysing seven works by Canadian playwrights written and performed between 1999 and 2009, including Judith Thompson’s Perfect Pie, Daniel MacIvor’s In On It, and Timothy Findley’s Shadows. Her analysis encourages us to see autobiography as a uniquely political act, one that, where enacted on stage, illustrates the variety of ways that self-reflection and interpretation has an expanding role in contemporary culture.

The 1960s saw the nexus of the revolution in popular music by a post-war generation amid demographic upheavals and seismic shifts in technology. Over the past two decades, musicians associated with this period have produced a large amount of important autobiographical writing. This book situates these works -- in the forms of formal autobiographies and memoirs, auto-fiction, songs, and self-fashioned museum exhibitions -- within the context of the recent expansion of interest in autobiography, disability, and celebrity studies. It argues that these writings express anxiety over musical originality and authenticity, and seeks to dispel their writers' celebrity status and particularly the association with a lack of seriousness. These works often constitute a meditation on the nature of postmodern fame within a celebrity-obsessed culture, and paradoxically they aim to regain the private self in a public forum.

The importance of personal storytelling in contemporary culture and politics In an age where our experiences are processed and filtered through a wide variety of mediums, both digital and physical, how do we tell our own story? How do we “get a life,” make sense of who we are and the way we live, and communicate that to others? Stories of the Self takes the literary study of autobiography and opens it up to a broad and fascinating range of material practices beyond the book, investigating the manifold ways people are documenting themselves in contemporary culture. Anna Poletti explores Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, a collection of six hundred cardboard boxes filled with text objects from the artist’s everyday life; the mid-aughts crowdsourced digital archive PostSecret; queer zine culture and its practices of remixing and collaging; and the bureaucratic processes surrounding surveillance dossiers. Stories of the Self argues that while there is a strong emphasis on the importance of personal storytelling in contemporary culture and politics, mediation is just as important in establishing the credibility and legibility of life writing. Poletti argues that the very media used for writing our lives intrinsically shapes how we are seen to matter.

Cemetery Gates takes you inside the minds of the most twisted icons of heavy metal - including Ozzy Osbourne, Axl Rose, Nikki Sixx, Trent Reznor, Peter Steele, Dimebag Darrell, Cliff Burton, Layne Stayley and John Bonham. Whatever their deadly sin, these prodigiously talented musicians haveall come dangerously close to the edge. Cemetery Gates is the ultimate tribute to the stoical survivors who dragged themselves back from the abyss - as well as the sainted icons who weren't so lucky. The likes of Dio and Dimebag may be gone, but this riotous epitaph - to men who've lived every day as if it was their last - ensures they'll never be forgotten.

The Routledge Introduction to Auto/biography in Canada explores the exciting world of nonfiction writing about the self, designed to give teachers and students the tools they need to study both canonical and lesser-known works. The volume introduces important texts and contexts for interpreting life narratives, demonstrates the conceptual tools necessary to understand what life narratives are and how they work, and offers an historical overview of key moments in Canadian auto/biography. Not sure what life writing in Canada is, or how to study it? This critical introduction covers the tools and approaches you require in order to undertake your own interpretation of life writing texts. You will encounter nonfictional writing about individual lives and experiences—including biography, autobiography, letters, diaries, comics, poetry, plays, and memoirs. The volume includes case studies to provide examples of how to study and research life narratives and toolkits to help you apply what you learn. The Routledge Introduction to Auto/biography in Canada provides instructors and students with the contexts and the critical tools to discover the power of life writing, and the skills to study any kind of nonfiction, from Canada and around the world.

Drawing on the writings of Rachel Carson, Betty Ford, Rose Kushner, and Audre Lorde, this book explores the various ways in which patient-centered texts continue to leave their mark on the political realm of breast cancer and, ultimately, the disease itself. Ordered chronologically, the selections trace the progression of discussions about breast cancer from a time when the subject was kept private and silent to when it became part of public discourse. The texts included are personal accounts, written by women struggling to play an active role in their healing process and, at the same time, hoping to help others do the same.

This book explores slash fan fiction communities during the pivotal years of the late 1990s and early 2000s as the practice transitioned from print to digital circulation. Delving into over ten years of online and in-person ethnography, the book offers an in-depth examination of slash fan fiction – original stories written by and circulated within female-centered communities about same-sex characters borrowed from previously published sources – to document the history of a feminist, queer media subculture whose infrastructure, creativity, and ways of life are often obscured in dominant histories of the internet’s development and by the contemporary focus on industry-friendly but often misogynist digital fan subcultures. Arguing that online slash communities created an alternate public space that provided opportunities for unanticipated encounters with a wide range of complex sexual, relational, and political practices, the book contends that slash thereby added to readers’ tools for experiencing and thinking about pleasure and ways of living by forming a “pocket public,” that is a digital space public enough to be found and protected enough to shield participants from harassment and censorship. This insightful and comprehensive study will interest students and scholars working in the areas of media studies, literary studies, anthropology, new media, audience communities, convergence culture, fan studies, women’s studies, and queer studies.

With the memoir boom, life storytelling has become ubiquitous and emerged as a distinct field of study. Reading Autobiography, originally published in 2001, was the first comprehensive critical introduction to life writing in all its forms. Widely adopted for undergraduate and graduate-level courses, it is an essential guide for students and scholars reading and interpreting autobiographical texts and methods across the humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of Reading Autobiography is the most complete assessment of life narrative in its myriad forms. It lays out a sophisticated, theoretical approach to life writing and the components of autobiographical acts, including memory, experience, identity, embodiment, space, and agency. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson explore these components, review the history of life writing and the foundations of autobiographical subjectivity, and provide a toolkit for working with twenty-three key concepts. Their survey of innovative forms of life writing, such as autographics and installation self-portraiture, charts recent shifts in autobiographical practice. Especially useful for courses are the appendices: a glossary covering dozens of distinct genres of life writing, proposals for group and classroom projects, and an extensive bibliography.