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 recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the U.S. effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly. Learn More
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner comes this surprising portrait of Wendell Willkie, the businessman–turned–presidential candidate who (almost) saved America’s dysfunctional political system. Learn More
From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatra—one of the Bard's most riveting and memorable female characters. Learn More
by Ingrid Rowland & Noah Charney; read by Jennifer M. Dixon
Lauded by Sarah Bakewell as "insightful, gripping, and thoroughly enjoyable," The Collector of Lives reveals how one Renaissance scholar completely redefined how we look at art. Learn More
A candid, heartfelt love story set in contemporary California that challenges the idea of what it means to be American, liberated, and in love. Learn More
A searing and controversial story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation, told with the charismatic energy of Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the revelatory power of Burroughs' Junky. Learn More
Countless times throughout our lives, we're presented with a choice to help another soul. Rescuing Ladybugs highlights the true stories of remarkable people who didn't look away from seemingly impossible-to-change situations and instead worked to save animals. Learn More
Let It Bang is an utterly original look at American gun culture from the inside, and from the other side—and, most movingly, the story of a young black man's hard-won nonviolent path to self-protection. Learn More
A re-release of the first book ever published in America about the legendary Motown Record Company, with a new foreword by legendary music journalist Greil Marcus. Learn More
Overlooking the Border: Narratives of Divided Jerusalem by Dana Hercbergs continues the dialogue surrounding the social history of Jerusalem. 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
Leslie Zemeckis continues to discover the forgotten feminist histories of the golden age of entertainment, turning her sights on the lost stories of Sally Rand and Faith Bacon—icons who each claimed to be the inventor of the notorious fan dance. Learn More
National Book Award finalist Sy Montgomery reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals—her friends—who have profoundly affected her in this stunning, poetic, and life-affirming memoir. Learn More