Classic Biography

Brought to you by Penguin. The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to...

As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century. Accounts of his eventful and stormy life have oscillated...

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.

A boy with a rifle walks into a middle school, intent on carrying out Western-style vigilante justice. A wife and mother of four kisses her twelve-year-old student and forever changes our definition of student-teacher conferences. The world's most famous serial killers put Washington on the map. A bathtub, a handgun, a meat grinder, and a burn barrel play a role in the murder of the captain of a freighter.

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.

From the best-selling and always-prescient author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal comes a bold indictment of America’s chronic obsession with creativity and innovation, showing how these beloved ideas came to dominate our political and economic conversation, all while...

New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen ( If Loving You Is Wrong, Starvation Heights) and veteran journalist Rebecca Morris ( Ted and Ann - The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy), authors of the upcoming If I Can’t Have You – Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance and the Murder of Her Children (St. Martins) take a new look at the Northwest’s most notorious crimes. Many of them made history.

The Bard was so incredibly prolific that even most Shakespeare scholars would welcome the occasional refresher course, and most of the rest of us haven't even got a clue as to what a petard actually is. Fear not, the best-selling authors of Homework for Grown-Ups are here to help.

"Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK) As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse...

In these lively and fascinating essays, scientists from around the world weigh in on the latest advances in the search for intelligent life in the universe and discuss just what that might look like. Since 2000, science has seen a surge in data and interest on several fronts related to E.T...

Now including a foreward by Bill Buford and photographs of Gellhorn with Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Gary Cooper, and others, this new edition rediscovers the voice of an extraordinary woman and brings back into print an irresistibly entertaining classic. "Martha Gellhorn...

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s...

A literary guide to Argentina by its most famous writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Argentina as only someone passionate about his homeland can. On Argentina reveals the many facets of his passion in essays, poems, and stories through which he sought to bring Argentina forward on the world...

Chanakya's Arthashastra is an unrivalled political treatise that has been used by scholars, academics and leaders across the world. In Chanakya and the Art of Getting Rich, Radhakrishnan Pillai brings out the inherent lessons from Arthashastra to present a strategic and practical way of...

Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser. "[Narrator] Marisa Calin's pleasant British accent is perfect for this exploration of Regency-era social codes and wild-hearted women." — AudioFile...

When the body of 45-year-old Glen Harrelson was found in his Denver home, police tried to contact his wife, but soon they made a startling realization. She had played the part of grieving widow once before: Her previous husband also had died a mysterious accidental death...

REMARKABLE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ICON There's little debate that Robert De Niro is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, screen actors of his generation, perhaps of all time. His work, particularly in the first 20 years of his career, is unparalleled. Mean Streets, the Godfather Part II, Taxi...

From one of our most acclaimed historians, a major new biography of one of history’s most disturbing, dubious masterminds, showing how a Siberian peasant, through his seduction of the imperial household, contributed to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world When Russia's Dowager...

“Vital” –The New York Times Book Review “Provocative…[Hazleton] paddles the river of doubt with energy and exuberance.” –The Seattle Times A widely admired writer on religion celebrates agnosticism as the most vibrant, engaging—and ultimately the most honest—stance toward the...

Early in May 1861, 21-year-old Sam R. Watkins of Columbia, Tennessee, joined the First Tennessee Regiment. He fought in all of its major battles, from Shiloh to Nashville. Twenty years later, with a "house full of young 'rebels' clustering around my knees and bumping about my elbows," he wrote the remarkable account of "Co. Aytch," its common foot soldiers, its commanders, its Yankee enemies, its victories and defeats, and its ultimate surrender on April 26, 1865.