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.
This definitive biography reclaims Nelson Algren as a towering literary figure and finally unravels the enigma of his disappearance from American letters. Learn More
For readers of Anne Lamott, Abigail Thomas, and Ayelet Waldman, a post-divorce memoir, one woman’s story of starting over at 60—in youth-obsessed, beauty-obsessed Hollywood. 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
Xiaolu Guo is one of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation, an iconoclastic and completely contemporary voice. Her vivid, poignant memoir, Nine Continents is the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. Learn More
by Mark Bailey; read by Alana Kerr Collins and Alan Smyth
In the spirit of David McCullough's Brave Companions, this anthology of popular American history presents the stories of nine incredible Irish immigrants as written by nine contemporary Irish Americans. Learn More
Featuring never-before-told stories, No Encore! takes you on tour with over sixty iconic musicians as they relive their weirdest, wildest, most embarrassing gigs. 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
Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." She had a point. Between 1930 and 1950, over forty percent of film industry employees were women, twenty five percent of all screenwriters were female, one woman ran MGM behind the scenes, over a dozen women worked as producers, a woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times, and press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender equality and employment. Learn More
Library Journal Best Book Kirkus Best of 2017 New York Times Notable Book
Nomadland is a revelatory work of in-depth narrative journalism about a new American workforce and a shift away from retirement as we know it. Learn More
Shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing
Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last. Learn More
Pulitzer Prize Finalist New York Times Notable Book Book Page Best of 2017
Blending memoir, journalism, and history, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America's place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation―a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil. Learn More
While the role of the first lady has changed dramatically over the course of the nation’s history, one thing remains constant: Americans have always been fascinated by the wives of the President. Learn More
Go behind the scenes inside the nation's preeminent Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where good people fight the good fight amid the tragedies and absurdities of our age. Learn More
The writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” now brings her quirky and compassionate take on holding local office. Learn More
by Sonya Bilocerkowycz; read by Sonya Bilocerkowycz
In these linked essays, Sonya Bilocerkowycz invites listeners to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate. Learn More
