For poets, priests, and politicians--and especially ordinary Germans--in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the loving nuclear family gathered around the Christmas tree symbolized the unity of the nation at large. German Christmas was supposedly organic, a product of the winter solstice rituals of pagan "Teutonic" tribes, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the age-old customs that defined German character. Yet, as Joe Perry argues, Germans also used these annual celebrations to contest the deepest values that held the German community together: faith, family, and...

""I was born late and have been slow ever since.
I was supposed to be born in April, but I arrived on June 19.
Explaining my late arrival, the doctor said, 'Somebody made a mistake, ' and I took offense to that.""

-Joe Perry

Like life, Joe Perry's stories are a mixture of the sometimes humorous and sometimes serious. They all take place around the same time period as "Forrest Gump" (but without all that emphasis on running). And like Forrest, the author himself is an average person who has lived a life that is anything but. During his years of military service, he was a...

Joe Perry's New York Times bestselling memoir of life in the rock-and-roll band Aerosmith: "An insightful and harrowing roller coaster ride through the career of one of rock and roll's greatest guitarists. Strap yourself in" (Slash).

Before the platinum records or the Super Bowl half-time show or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Joe Perry was a boy growing up in small-town Massachusetts. He idolized Jacques Cousteau and built his own diving rig that he used to explore a local lake. He dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. But Perry's neighbors had teenage sons, and those sons had...