Author Memoirs

“[A]nother hilarious essay collection from Phoebe Robinson.” —The New York Times Book Review “Strikes the perfect balance of brutally honest and laugh out loud funny. I didn’t want it to end.” —Mindy Kaling, New York Times bestselling author of Why Not Me? With sharp, timely...

Before he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death - sometimes hilarious and often poignant - and on what will or won't happen after his last breath is drawn. During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the single's bar; was a pioneer...

Zen monk Santoka Taneda (1882 - 1940) is one of Japan's most beloved modern poets, famous for his "free-verse" haiku, the dominant style today. This book tells the fascinating story of his life, liberally sprinkled with more than 300 of his poems and extracts from his essays and journals - compiled by his best friend and biographer Sumita Oyama and elegantly translated by William Scott Wilson.

The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell offers a wide-ranging reconsideration of Orwell's life and work, focusing on the extensive connections between his novels, essays, diaries, columns, letters, and reviews. Sections on Orwell's professional activities, his main literary influences, his politics, his intellectual fixations, his literary contemporaries, and his legacies structure the book, which moves thematically and topically through the full scope of his output.

Wie kann man über Thomas Mann heute schreiben? So: geistreich, komisch und mit lässigem Ernst. SAA STANII. Los Angeles in den 1940er-Jahren: Die Westküste ist ein Traumort, die Exilanten aus Europa trauen ihren Sinnen nicht, das Farbenspiel, das Licht, das Meer. Hier sind sie alle gestrandet, die im Deutschland der Nationalsozialisten keine Heimat mehr haben oder haben wollen: Arnold Schönberg, Vicki Baum, Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Helene Weigel, Max Horkheimer, Hanns Eisler, Franz und Alma Werfel und allen voran: Thomas Mann.

Scotland's beloved storyteller, George MacDonald, 19th-century Scottish novelist and poet, was reintroduced to 20th century Christians by C. S. Lewis, whose reading of MacDonald's Phantastes triggered his own spiritual awakening and conversion. Other renowned writers have voiced similar acknowledgements. G. K. Chesterton said of MacDonald, "If we test the matter of originality of attitude, George MacDonald was one of the three or four greatest men of the 19th century."

If Vasily Grossman's 1961 masterpiece, Life and Fate, had been published during his lifetime, it would have reached the world together with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. But Life and Fate was seized by the Russian KGB. When it emerged posthumously, decades later, it was recognized as the War and Peace of the 20th century.

Includes audiobook-exclusive bonus pep talks from Laurieann! A-list choreographer Laurieann Gibson guides creators of all kinds to embrace their passions and achieve success, providing a practical road map to never giving up on your dream. Have you felt stuck like you’re just running in place...

A leading voice for social justice reveals how he stopped arguing with white people who deny the ongoing legacy of racism—and offers a proven path forward for Black people and people of color based on the history of nonviolent struggle. “A moving personal journey that lends practical insight...

In her celebrated fiction, Shirley Jackson explored the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. But in Life Among the Savages, she takes on the lighter side of small-town life. In this witty and warm memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont, she delightfully exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist's gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature humor, Jackson turns everyday family experiences into brilliant adventures.

This is perhaps one of the best-loved of all journals. William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, began it in May 1800 and resolved to keep it for a short time. She continued it for nearly three years. In it, she brought the Dove Cottage years to vivid and intimate life. She noted the walks and weather, the friends, country neighbours, and travellers on the roads. She set down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, and the composition of Wordsworth's poetry.

Prisoner FF8282 gazes out from confinement on what he deems must be a glorious summer’s day, rays of sunlight bursting through the barred windows of his cell. Within the thick prison walls separating society from its dangerous criminals, a multitude of harrowing fates unfold, seldomly explored by the public. First-time offenders thrown in cells with hardened criminals, several inmates becoming heroin addicts and a system riddled with flaws. However, even in prison the sunlight cannot be kept out.

“Elaine gifts us all with a beautifully intimate and powerful retelling of her ever-unfolding journey. In sharing her joys, pitfalls, adventures, self-doubt, and successes, she reminds us that through uncovering and discovering the many facets of ourselves, we are more than enough.” —Yara...

Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another - how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising.

A group of notable writers - including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow - celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past.

For nearly two centuries, the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays has been challenged by writers and artists as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Malcolm X, and Sir Derek Jacobi. How could a young man from rural Warwickshire, lacking a university education, write some of the greatest works in the English language?

Ramachandra Guha takes us from Gandhi's birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London, and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi's contemporaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political, and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: "Great Soul".

Two days after the winter solstice in 2019, Kerri and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways 2020 was unlike any year we had seen before. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby.

“Smart, fast, clever, and funny (As f*ck!)” (Tiffany Haddish), this collection of side-splitting and illuminating essays by the popular stand-up comedian, alum of Chelsea Lately and The Mindy Project, and host of truTV’s Talk Show the Game Show is perfect for fans of the New York Times...

Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up. "Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of...