American History Biographies

In chronicling the adventurous life of legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our understanding of the Vietnam War. In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908-1987) best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneered a "hearts and mind" diplomacy, first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America's giant military bureaucracy.

First published in 1789, this autobiography of Olaudah Equiano comprises a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel tale, and spiritual journey. It recounts Equiano's time as a slave, and chronicles his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his freedom.

Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years At the heart of the book is its...

The long-awaited biography of the genius who masterminded Henry VIII's bloody revolution in the English government, which reveals at last Cromwell's role in the downfall of Anne Boleyn "This a book that - and it's not often you can say this - we have been awaiting for four hundred years."...

The New York Times bestselling story from the author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride...

Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography “A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and disability to hide...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A powerful, candid, and richly detailed memoir from an American icon, revealing what life looks like after the presidency: triumphs, tribulations, and all. On January 20, 2001, after nearly thirty years in politics—eight of them as president of the United...

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy “Remarkable . . . Barbara Demick movingly traces this...

To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: Young Black men are an endangered species.

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.

One of the most acclaimed books of our time—the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and...

With rich detail, compelling honesty, and a storyteller’s gift, RFK Jr. describes growing up Kennedy in a tumultuous time in history that eerily echoes the issues of nuclear confrontation, religion, race, and inequality that we confront today. This powerful book combines the best aspects of...

One of today’s premier biographers, Jean Edward Smith, has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details. We see how Roosevelt’s restless energy, fierce intellect, personal...

The companion volume to the multimillion-copy bestseller No Easy Day by former Navy SEAL Mark Owen reveals the evolution of a SEAL Team Six operator. Mark Owen’s instant #1 New York Times bestseller, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, focused on the...

Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years At the heart of the book is its...

The instant New York Times bestseller. A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we're living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks. “Captivating and compelling.” —The New York Times "Niall Ferguson has again...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the...

Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years At the heart of the book is its...

This acclaimed New York Times bestselling biography of the legendary Sioux warrior Red Cloud, is “a page-turner with remarkable immediacy…and the narrative sweep of a great Western” (The Boston Globe). Red Cloud was the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army in a...

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists...