American Women Biographies

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a collection of moving meditations on the beauty and complexity of women’s lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold, and on remorse, joy, ancestry...

In Azusa Street Mission and Revival, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. brings to bear expertise from decades of focused study in church history to reveal the captivating story of the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles, which became known as the Azusa Street Mission. From humble beginnings with few...

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page. Featuring more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls comes the never-before-told story of a small cadre of influential female spies in the precarious early days of the CIA—women who helped create the template for cutting-edge espionage (and blazed new paths for equality in...

Born into bondage in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley was able to purchase her freedom only after years of saving. She then went on to build a thriving business as a seamstress, eventually becoming modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln herself. In this dressmaking role, Keckley was a close confidante of Mary Todd, and her 1868 memoir recounted her incredible rise while also providing revelatory insights into everyday life among the Lincolns.

This book restores a little-known advocate of Indian rights to her place in history. In June 1889 a widowed Brooklyn artist named Catherine Weldon traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sitting Bull hold on to land that the government was trying to wrest from his people. Her efforts were counterproductive; she was ordered to leave the reservation, and the Standing Rock Sioux were bullied into signing away their land. But she returned with her teenage son, settling at Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the untold story of the pioneering Black women who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The epic true crime story of the most successful bootlegger in American history and the murder that shocked the nation, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy “Gatsby-era noir at its best.”—Erik...

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2016 by Bill Gates All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership-as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic...

The celebrated Fox News star and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a powerful, uplifting look at her life and her spiritual journey, reflecting on her family, her faith, and her successful career. In her bestselling children’s book Take Heart, My Child, Ainsley Earhardt drew on her...

Acclaimed Irish novelist Nuala O’Connor’s bold reimagining of the life of James Joyce’s wife, muse, and the model for Molly Bloom in Ulysses is a “lively and loving paean to the indomitable Nora Barnacle” (Edna O’Brien). Dublin, 1904. Nora Joseph Barnacle is a twenty-year-old from...

In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein examines the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, civil rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through releasing dozens of covers of her white male contemporaries.

The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa. King Peggy has the sweetness and quirkiness of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the hopeful sense of possibility of Half...

“A gutsy success story” (The New York Times Book Review) about one tenacious woman’s journey to escape rural poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business—without ever leaving the land she loves The youngest of her parents’ combined twenty-one children, Sarah Frey grew up on a...

Read by the author. Get a high-octane dose of encouragement from Lolo Jones, three-time Olympian and world champion hurdler and bobsledder. Growing up in a broken home, Lolo learned to shoplift at a young age just to eat at night and sometimes slept on the basement floor of the Salvation Army...

Much of what happens in our lives is not what we planned, not what we expected, and certainly not what we would have chosen. At a young age, Jaci Velasquez’s singing career rocketed to stardom, and her marriage thrived—then both suddenly crashed. Losing her reputation, her record label, and...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Capote’s Women, a penetrating examination of President John F. Kennedy’s complicated, tumultuous life told through the lens of the women with whom he surrounded himself—giving voice to the fascinating women left as footnotes in JFK’s legacy...

This biography, based on firsthand knowledge and interviews with Mrs. Astor's friends and the heads of New York's great cultural institutions, gives us back the woman so loved and admired. At the age of fifty-one, Brooke Astor wedded the notoriously ill-tempered Vincent Astor, who died in 1959.

Many people in history have claimed that Abraham Lincoln never loved Mary Todd Lincoln, and that in fact his love was focused upon Anne Rutledge. They have claimed that his wife hurt him politically though she drove him to the Presidency, that she embarrassed him financially as well as socially and inflicted on him the agony of adjustment to her psychopathic personality. Yet, is there any truth to any of these claims?

For more than twenty years since his New York Times bestseller Don’t Know Much About History first appeared, Davis has shown that Americans don’t hate history, just the dull version dished out in school. Now Davis turns his attention to what is arguably the most important and most...