Craig Ferguson – författare

The comedian and former late-night host discusses his life, career, struggles with drugs & alcohol, and his love of the United States in this memoir.In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark—as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer.To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a glass of sherry.) But his story has a happy ending: success on the hit sitcom The Drew Carey Show, and later as the host of CBS''s Late Late Show. By far Ferguson''s greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008.In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson talks a red, white, and blue streak about everything our Founding Fathers feared."Ferguson admirably avoids wisecracks and instead goes for something like wisdom. . . . If "American on Purpose" is, in part, a memoir about Ferguson''s alcoholism and his triumph over it, it is also an account of an addiction he''s unlikely to kick: his obsession with America." —New York Times

In "American on Purpose", Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the entertainment capital of the world. Along the way he stumbled through several attempts to make his mark - as a punk rock musician, a modern dancer, a bouncer, a construction worker and a stand-up comedian. To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a beer.) But his story has a happy ending: in 1993, the washed up Ferguson washed up in the United States - which, from the age of seven, he had always seen as a beacon of goodness and possibility. Finally sober, Ferguson landed a breakthrough role on the hit sitcom "The Drew Carey Show", a success that eventually led to his current starring role as the host of CBS' "The Late Late Show". By far Ferguson's greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008, just before his command performance.

From the comedian, actor, and former host of The Late Late Show comes an irreverent, lyrical memoir in essays featuring his signature wit.  Craig Ferguson has defied the odds his entire life. He has failed when he should have succeeded and succeeded when he should have failed. The fact that he is neither dead nor in a locked facility (at the time of printing) is something of a miracle in itself. In Craig’s candid and revealing memoir, readers will get a look into the mind and recollections of the unique and twisted Scottish American who became a national hero for pioneering the world’s first TV robot skeleton sidekick and reviving two dudes in a horse suit dancing as a form of entertainment.    In Riding the Elephant, there are some stories that are too graphic for television, too politically incorrect for social media, or too meditative for a stand-up comedy performance. Craig discusses his deep love for his native Scotland, examines his profound psychic change brought on by fatherhood, and looks at aging and mortality with a perspective that he was incapable of as a younger man. Each story is strung together in a colorful tapestry that ultimately reveals a complicated man who has learned to process—and even enjoy—the unusual trajectory of his life.

From the comedian, actor, and former host of The Late Late Show comes an irreverent, lyrical memoir in essays featuring his signature wit.  Craig Ferguson has defied the odds his entire life. He has failed when he should have succeeded and succeeded when he should have failed. The fact that he is neither dead nor in a locked facility (at the time of printing) is something of a miracle in itself. In Craig’s candid and revealing memoir, readers will get a look into the mind and recollections of the unique and twisted Scottish American who became a national hero for pioneering the world’s first TV robot skeleton sidekick and reviving two dudes in a horse suit dancing as a form of entertainment.    In the book, there are some stories that are too graphic for television, too politically incorrect for social media, or too meditative for a stand-up comedy performance. Craig discusses his deep love for his native Scotland, examines his profound psychic change brought on by fatherhood, and looks at aging and mortality with a perspective that he was incapable of as a younger man. Each story is strung together in a colorful tapestry that ultimately reveals a complicated man who has learned to process and even enjoy the unusual trajectory of his life.

Forty-Second Street, 1977. The marquees never go dark and neither does he.He is nineteen, a St. Jude's Academy blazer buttoned over a body that still remembers every hand that's ever been laid on it wrong. He carries his grandmother's crucifix the way other men carry a blade. He believes, with the total clarity of the truly lost, that God has given him a list.Her name is Serafina. She works the corner under a marquee with half its bulbs burned out, and she is, to him, the last untouched thing in a city built to ruin everything it touches. Every man who has hurt her — a landlord, a cop, a priest, a man named Rico who owns the block she stands on — becomes a station on a walk he is certain is holy.He keeps something from each of them. He tells himself it's evidence. It's closer to a relic.HOLY GHOST AND THE HARLOT'S CROSS is a gothic-noir descent through the Deuce at its ugliest and most alive — a story about faith curdled into obsession, mercy mistaken for murder, and a boy who never once, from the first page to the last, tells you the whole truth.

The cyclone didn't just take her house. It took her into hell.When the storm rips Dorothy Gale from a Kansas farm already haunted by the restless dead, it deposits her in a land far stranger than any fairy tale — a world of emerald spires and golden roads, where the graves have opened and refuse to stay closed.The Scarecrow hangs half-eaten on his pole. The Tin Man stands frozen mid-swing, rusted and alone. The Lion has spent his whole life running from a war he was always strong enough to win. And somewhere to the west, two witches — sisters, once — have learned to raise the dead and bend them to their will, building armies out of everyone's buried grief.Dorothy didn't come to Oz to save it.She came to survive it.But an axe in the right hands has a way of turning survival into something else entirely — and by the time the Yellow Brick Road is finally behind her, she will have buried tyrants, broken kingdoms, and taught an entire ravaged land exactly what a Kansas farm girl is capable of when the only way home runs straight through the dead.This is not the story you were told as a child. It is the one nobody dared tell you until now.A blood-soaked re-imagining of L. Frank Baum's beloved classic for readers who always suspected there was more happening behind that curtain than a kindly old man