Emeril Lagasse is the chef-proprietor of 12 restaurants across the country. He has received numerous Best Restaurant, Best Chef, and Best Service awards, and in 2013 received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation. His TV show, Emeril Live! airs on the Food Network and he has appeared on Bravo’s hit food series, Top Chef, and joined TNT as co-host for their cooking series, On the Menu. In Essential Emeril, Lagasse goes back to basics, presenting more than 130 recipes that defined his  career.

Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. To call him a “street artist” is a little deceptive. Although he rose out of the skateboarding scene creating his “Andre the Giant Has A Posse” sticker campaign in the late ’80s, he has a mainstream recognition that most street artists never achieve. The title of his new book, Covert to Overt: The Under/Overground Art of Shepard Fairey, acknowledges his evolution from unknown to established artist.

Richard Dawkins, voted Prospect magazine’s #1 World Thinker, has previously published 11 books, including The Selfish Gene,  The God Delusion, and his magnum opus The Ancestor’s Tale.  In Brief Candle in the Dark, an entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion.

Of all the charming misfits on television, there’s no doubt Raj from The Big Bang Theory—the sincere yet incurably geeky Indian-American astrophysicist—ranks among the best of the misfits.  He is every bit as loveable as the character he plays on TV. In this revealing collection of irreverent, hilarious, and self-deprecating essays, Kunal Nayyar traces his journey from a little boy in New Delhi who mistakes an awkward first kiss for a sacred commitment, gets nosebleeds chugging Coca-Cola to impress other students, and excels in the sport of badminton, to the confident, successful actor on the set of TV’s most-watched sitcom since Friends.

Mindy Kaling is the creator and star of The Mindy Project, and author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? She is also known for her work on the NBC sitcom The Office, where she portrayed the character Kelly Kapoor.  

Her new book, Why Not Me?, is a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal. 
 

Among the many successful films Jason Segel has written, starred in, produced, or written and performed songs for are The Muppets; Jeff Who Lives at Home; The Five-Year Engagement; I Love You, Man; and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Television credits include How I Met Your Mother and Freaks and Geeks. He played David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. In 2014, he broke into children’s publishing with the bestseller Nightmares!

Aasif Mandvi is well known for his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s Emmy-winning show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  He is writing, producing, and starring in the HBO series, The Brink, co-starring Jack Black and Tim Robbins. No Land’s Man is a collection of humorous and personal stories of a second-generation immigrant’s search for meaning and identity in an increasingly confusing world.  

Sen. Claire McCaskill was the first woman from Missouri elected as a United States senator in 2006 and continues to serve in that position today.  

“Senator McCaskill is a role model for women who aspire to win on their own terms. Plenty Ladylike is a powerful, unapologetic primer on the successful exercise of real power and what it takes to get it, keep it, and use it.  This is a brilliant memoir that nearly explodes with encouragement for women on how to achieve their dreams.” —Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of Lean In

Former Senator Gary Hart’s The Republic of Conscience is a meditation on the growing gap between the founding principles of the United States Constitution and our current political landscape. Focusing on the years after World War II, Hart tackles major American institutions—the military, the CIA, Congress—and outlines how these establishments have led the country away from its founding principles, not closer to them.

Patricia Marx is a writer for The New Yorker, former writer for Saturday Night Live, and the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon. Her books include the novel Him Her Him Again The End of Him, the children’s book Now Everybody Really Hates Me, and the humor book How To Regain Your Virginity.