American History Biographies

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...

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

Ernesto Che Guevara was a voyager - and thus a letter writer - for his entire adult life. The letters collected in I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967 range from letters home during his Motorcycle Diaries trip, to the long letter to Fidel after the success of the Cuban revolution in early 1959 (from which the book's title comes).

It is dawn on Thursday, 14 February 2019, and armed FSB agents are raiding Michael Calvey’s Moscow apartment. He is being arrested for a crime that never happened.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, from the rise of autocracy unleashed by Trump to the January 6 insurrection, and a warning that those forces remain as potent as ever—from the congressman who led the first impeachment of...

""[This book] captures the gut-wrenching shifts of a filmmaker’s life—the bizarre whipsaw from success to disaster.” —Variety An acclaimed memoir from William Friedkin, a maverick of American cinema and Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection...

“McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable.”—Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of...

From Wall Street to Main Street, John Brooks, longtime contributor to the New Yorker, brings to life in vivid fashion twelve classic and timeless tales of corporate and financial life in America. What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible...

Amazing Grace is the surprising true story of John Newton, author of the song that has touched millions. A biography that reads like a novel, it reveals Newton’s dramatic story of sin and salvation as a slave trader before his ultimate transformation to speaking out against the horror of...

In this intimate book of inspiration, Tyler Perry writes of how his faith has sustained him in hard times, centered him in good times, and enriched his life. Higher Is Waiting is a spiritual guidebook, a collection of teachings culled from the experiences of a lifetime, meant to inspire...

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...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001...

A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2025 An NPR Book We Love 2025 A New Yorker Best Book of the Year So Far A New York Times Editors' Choice CBS Sunday Morning Summer Book Report Pick New York Times “Books to Read in July” A Town and Country Best Book of July...

“Practically every paragraph has a line or two that demands to be read aloud to the mirror, tattooed on foreheads, carved on tombstones.” –Rolling Stone “Morrissey is a pop star of unusual writing talent.” –The New York Times Autobiography covers Morrissey’s life from his birth...

From one of America’s leading reporters comes a deeply personal, extraordinarily powerful look at the most volatile crises he has witnessed around the world, from New Orleans to Baghdad and beyond. Dispatches from the Edge of the World is a book that gives us a rare up-close glimpse of what...

A New York Times Notable Book A shocking and assiduously reported biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker whose techno-authoritarian worldview is coming to dominate our collective reality “Max Chafkin’s...

In Seven Men, New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas presents seven exquisitely crafted portraits of widely known--but not well understood--Christian men, each of whom uniquely showcases a commitment to live by certain virtues in the truth of the gospel. Each of the seven men...

The USA Today bestselling author of The Gown returns with another enthralling and royal-adjacent historical novel—as the lives of three very different residents of London’s historic Blue Lion hotel converge in a potentially explosive climax on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. It...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published."—The Washington Post A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker and Financial Times "The book everyone is talking about."—Politico The inside story of the four years when...

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...