Share in the childhood tales of A Girl Named Zippy. Hear Kenneth Branagh read Samuel Pepys' exuberant 17th-century diary. Be transformed by the extraordinary women of Half the Sky. You'll find these and other remarkable life stories under biography and memoir.
The first comprehensive biography of unjustly forgotten Japanese American war hero Ben Kuroki, who fought the Axis powers during World War II and battled racism, injustice, and prejudice on the home front. Learn More
Since serving in the Carter White House in the late 1970s, Hamilton Jordan has survived non-Hodgkins lymphoma, melanoma, and prostate cancer. Learn More
A Syria-born dancer offers his deeply personal story of war, statelessness, and the pursuit of the art of dance in this inspirational memoir. Learn More
by Nyasha Junior & Jeremy Schipper; read by David Sadzin
Before Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King was identified with Moses, African Americans identified those who challenged racial oppression in America with Samson. In Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon, Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper tell the story of how this biblical character became an icon of African American literature. Learn More
by Kirsten Imani Kasai; read by Adenrele Ojo, Ron Butler
The House of Erzulie tells the eerily intertwined stories of an ill-fated young couple in the 1850s and the troubled historian who discovers their writings in the present day. Learn More
Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist Saltire Literary Awards Shortlist Kirkus Best of 2017 2018 National Book Critics Circle Awards Finalist
Border is a scintillating, immersive travel narrative that is also a shadow history of the Cold War, a sideways look at the migration crisis troubling Europe, and a deep, witchy descent into interior and exterior geographies. Learn More
In Anima, Kapka Kassabova introduces us to the "pastiri" people—the shepherds struggling to hold on to an ancient way of life in which humans and animals exist in profound interdependence. Following her three previous books set in the Balkans, and with an increasing interest in the degraded state of our planet and culture, Kassabova reaches further into the spirit of place than she ever has before. Learn More
The Next Better Place explores the thin line between wanderlust and compulsion, between running away and arriving, and leaves us with the understanding that the journey is often more powerful than the destination. Learn More
As a medic and officer in Iraq, Jon Kerstetter balanced two impossibly conflicting imperatives—to heal and to kill. In Crossings, he beautifully illuminates war and survival, the fragility of the human body, and the strength of will that lies within. Learn More
A compelling insider's account by the trusted adviser and confidante to America's presidential giants and political legends as he draws the curtains back on his most private moments with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon during revolutionary changes in our economy, politics, communications, foreign policy, and culture. Learn More
Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Based on rigorous research into Franklin's voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin’s life. Learn More
Discover how eighteenth-century Princeton and its residents—including two signers of the Declaration of Independence—contributed to and were affected by the American Revolution. Learn More
The captivating story of Frédéric Chopin and the fate of both his Mallorquin piano and musical Romanticism from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Learn More
