Author Memoirs

From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view.

“An illuminating . . . biography and cultural history” (The New York Times) of Virgil Abloh’s iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry, which embodied a groundbreaking transformation of the relationship between who we are and what we wear. “[Robin Givhan] captures that shift with...

This program is read by the author. A lightning-strike dispatch of hilarious, intimate, luminous essays from the brain (and voice!) of Emmy Award-nominated actress and writer Betty Gilpin. Oh. Hi. *takes six long gulps of water during which you’re like, may I help you?* My name is Betty. I...

Lord Byron was the most celebrated of all the Romantic poets. Troubled, handsome, sexually fluid, disabled, and transgressive, he wrote his way to international fame—and scandal—before finding a kind of redemption in the Greek Revolution. He also left behind the vast trove of thrilling letters (to friends, relatives, lovers, and more) that form the core of this remarkable biography.

When Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s art critic and the leading art writer of his generation, published his eye-opening autobiographical essay, “The Art of Dying,” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and had been given six months of life. Fortunately, his treatment was showing some improvement, and so, he wrote, “These extra months are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use.”

Immaculée Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives...

Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married, and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was.

A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. As Newbery Medal winner Madeleine L'Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and conflict, she beautifully evokes the life she and her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, built and the family they cherished. Beginning with their very different childhoods, L'Engle chronicles the twists and turns that led two young artists to New York City in the 1940s.

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

Two decades after its groundbreaking debut, millions of fans worldwide remain enthralled with the incredible exploits of Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers as well as Angel. Now, go behind the scenes of these legendary series that ushered in the new Golden Age of Television, with the candid recollections of writers, creators, executives, programmers, critics, and cast members. Together they unveil the oftentimes shocking true story of how a failed motion picture became an acclaimed cult television series.

Upon her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to “capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.” She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love.

Step into the vivid, paradoxical world of G. K. Chesterton—where saints dance with skeptics, riddles reveal truth, and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Best known for his wit and philosophical insight, Chesterton’s poetry is a rich blend of humor, faith, social commentary, and fierce imagination. From the rousing rhythms of “Lepanto” to the introspective depth of “The Ballad of the White Horse”, this curated selection showcases Chesterton’s signature style: playful yet profound, grounded yet soaring.

In the Nłeʔkepmxcín language, spíləx̣m are remembered stories, often shared over tea in quiet hours between Elders. Rooted within the British Columbia landscape, and with an almost tactile representation of being on the land and water, Spíləx̣m explores resilience, reconnection, and narrative memory through stories. Captivating and deeply moving, this story basket of memories tells one Indigenous woman’s journey of overcoming adversity and colonial trauma to find strength through creative works and traditional perspectives of healing, transformation, and resurgence.

Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

This is the first biography of Greer for two decades, drawing on unprecedented access to her extensive personal archive, opened at Melbourne University in 2016. Kleinhenz has interrogated Greer's personal and professional files, spoken to people who have known her from her school days onwards, and read every word written by and about her. Beginning with Greer’s troubled early life in 1940s Melbourne, it traces her career, relationships with men and women, her travels and her home life and examines Greer’s work and ideas from The Female Eunuch to the #MeToo movement.

This Is Not A Pity Memoir has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist's life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life's work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is one of the most beloved poets in English. Yet after his death a largely negative image of the man himself took hold; he has been portrayed as a racist, a misogynist and a narcissist. Now Larkin scholar James Booth, for seventeen years a colleague of the poet's at the University of Hull, offers a very different portrait. Drawn from years of research and a wide variety of Larkin's friends and correspondents, this is the most comprehensive portrait of the poet yet published.

El verano de Cervantes surge de toda una vida leyendo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Durante el proceso de escritura de este libro, Antonio Muñoz Molina va entreverando recuerdos de su infancia y de sus primeras lecturas con la revelación del lugar que Don Quijote ha ocupado en su vocación literaria, mostrando además su influencia en otros autores, como Melville, Balzac, Joyce, Thomas Mann o Mark Twain, que han consolidado la novela como la forma narrativa suprema siguiendo la estela de Cervantes.

À partir de la correspondance adressée à Louise entre 1851 et 1855 (près de 250 lettres), André Versaille a bâti une longue lettre, sorte de thèse emblématique de la correspondance du Flaubert des années Bovary. Ce texte n'est pas seulement un témoignage exceptionnel sur la genèse au quotidien d'une grande œuvre, il constitue également un très personnel « Qu'est-ce que la littérature ? » À ses idées sur l'art, le roman et la critique, Flaubert mêle des attaques vengeresses contre la bêtise et le grotesque de la vie, décochées d'une plume jubilatoire.