California Biographies

A vivid, highly evocative memoir of one of the reigning icons of folk music, highlighting the decade of the ’60s, when hits like “Both Sides Now” catapulted her to international fame. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is the deeply personal, honest, and revealing memoir of folk legend and...

From the author of The Honey Bus comes a wild and emotional memoir of family and self-discovery, featuring a lovable golden retriever named Edie Meredith May had a difficult childhood, with a mother who was physically present but emotionally absent. She learned early on to fend for herself, and...

The Hanging Judge of California probes outrageous decisions by the Federal 9th Circuit Court in overturning death penalty verdicts. California Judge Donald A. McCartin, who sent nine men to death row, speaks out in fury when convicted child killer Rodney Alcala's verdict was overturned after 23 years. The audiobook chronicles Alcala's crimes and trials, as well as the horrific murders committed by eight other killers who were sentenced by McCartin.

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird...

“Italy is a beautiful but complicated place, not so much a country as a collection of cultures and cuisines. Matt Goulding expertly navigates it’s wonders and eccentricities with wisdom and great passion.” -Anthony Bourdain ""Goulding is pioneering a new type of writing about food.""...

“Leaps at the throat of television history and takes down the patriarchy with its fervent, inspired prose. When Women Invented Television offers proof that what we watch is a reflection of who we are as a people.” —Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket...

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy presents another literary masterpiece, this time a true crime murder mystery about his own mother. In 1958 Jean Ellroy was murdered, her body dumped on a roadway in a seedy L.A. suburb. Her killer was never...

The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever created—William Mulholland’s Los Angeles aqueduct—a story of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man who's vision shaped the future and continues to impact us today. In 1907...

In 1891, a suffragist and social reformer named Alzire Chevaillier launched a moral crusade to destroy Fountaingrove, a utopian spiritualist community in northern California. Chevaillier accused the colony's leader, the poet and prophet Thomas Lake Harris, of perverting the teachings of the Bible to promote a “new sexology” that was “worse than Mormonism.” She insisted that Harris used magical powers of hypnosis to take sexual and financial advantage of his followers, turning them into a “spiritual harem” that practiced “free love” and other gross immoralities.

Essayist. Preservationist. Mountain man. Inventor. John Muir may be California’s best-known icon. A literary naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, Muir left his legacy on the landscape and on paper. But the celebrity of John Muir does not tell the whole story. In Essential Muir, for the first time, Muir's selected writings include those that show his ecological vision without ignoring his racism, providing a more complete portrait of the man.

For over a decade, I’ve been captivated by the idea of this book, which goes beyond profiling well-known locals in Orange County. It focuses on individuals who contribute significantly to the region’s culture and beyond, showcasing a diverse range of stories. Orange County isn’t just a location; it’s a hub of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation—from surf culture to tech giants.

National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, reveals how California’s Gold Rush forged the modern United States—and lit the long fuse to civil war In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow...

H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ...

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.

“Superb. Hiltzik makes a compelling case that California is the heartbeat of our nation.”—Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Spring Revolution From Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Hiltzik, a definitive new history of California—from the Spanish conquistadors to...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. “Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a...

As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now.

Popular YouTubers the Labrant Fam share their inspiring love story of how Savannah, a young, single mom, fell in love with Cole, a 19-year-old from Alabama, highlighting the redemptive, surprising nature of God at work in our lives. The Labrant Fam—Cole, Savannah, and their daughter...

The year was 1933, and the Great Depression had taken hold, but a young and adventurous writer, Ruthven Colquhoun McNairn, embarked on an incredible four month adventure from Hamilton Ontario to Chicago, Denver, and Colorado Springs exploring the cities and surrounding landscape, and then heading West, hitchhiking to Los Angeles through New Mexico, Arizona and California, capturing the unique people he met and traveled with and the strange new country he was exploring beautifully in his diary, which reads like a John Steinbeck novel.

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning historian John Boessenecker separates fact from fiction in the first new biography in decades of Black Bart, the Wild West’s most mysterious gentleman bandit. Black Bart is widely regarded today as not only the most notorious stage robber of...