Classic Biography

In February 2017, Gurmehar Kaur, a nineteen-year-old student, joined a peaceful campaign after violent clashes at a Delhi University college. As part of the campaign, Kaur's post made her the target of an onslaught of social media vitriol. Kaur, the daughter of a war martyr, suddenly became the...

"Business law in medieval and early modern India developed within thevoluminous and multifaceted texts called the Dharmashastras. These texts laiddown rules for merchants, traders, guilds, farmers and individuals in terms ofthe complex religious, legal and moral ideal of dharma.This exciting...

In this emotional and laugh-out-loud coming-of-age memoir, the co-creator of Hulu's brilliant Pen15 grapples with the reappearance of her estranged father —and whether it's possible to reconnect before it’s too late. For Anna Konkle’s childhood, her father was her hero—a...

Celebrato in tutto il mondo come un tesoro spirituale, questo classico di grande successo ha ispirato milioni di persone a intraprendere il proprio viaggio di trasformazione interiore, per giungere a una vita nuova e più profondamente appagante.

The Education of Henry Adams is among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. Henry Adams was the grandson of a president and the great-grandson of another one. He was also the son of the American Ambassador to England, and his secretery. As such he rubbed elbows, literally, with Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt and with many of the great figures of his time.

“In this brief sketch of our great Southern hero, I have endeavored to portray, amid the blaze of his matchless military genius, the unchanging rectitude of his conduct, the stern will-power by which he conquered all difficulties, his firm belief in an overruling Providence, and his entire submission to the Divine Will. These traits of character were the cornerstones upon which he reared the edifice of his greatness, and upon which the young people of our day will do well to build."

Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. He was called both "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia" and is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history.

From 1941 to 1953, director John Huston and actor Humphrey Bogart made one classic film after another, from The Maltese Falcon to The African Queen. Here is the story of their close but combative friendship that produced some of the best movies ever made. Their friendship was as dramatic as any of their movies. It survived nine marriages, a world war, the blacklist, leeches, alcohol, and Jack L. Warner.

In Wild Things, Vanity Fair contributing editor Bruce Handy revisits the classics of every American childhood, from fairy tales to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and explores the back stories of their creators, using context and biography to understand how some of the most insightful, creative, and witty authors and illustrators of their times created their often deeply personal masterpieces.

Jack London scrive questa "Autobiografia alcoolica" nei primi mesi del 1912, qualche anno prima della sua controversa e prematura morte, ancora avvolta nel mistero: un'overdose "volontaria" di antidolorifici, un'intossicazione o un definitivo attacco di sifilide? È comunque il momento di una pesante ricaduta nel vizio del bere. Subito dopo un tormentato viaggio a New York, lo scrittore, completamente sbronzo, decide di rasarsi a zero i capelli.

This compelling biography examines the extraordinary life and strange contrasts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the struggling provincial doctor who became the most popular storyteller of his age when he created Sherlock Holmes. From his youthful exploits aboard a whaling ship, to his often stormy...

After a notorious lawyer, at the behest of a famed composer, meticulously conceals a child's origins, his adoptive mother spares no effort to bury the truth. Pulling strings and enlisting influential allies—including a television icon—she constructs an elaborate facade to ensure he never uncovers his past.

Was wird als Rechtfertigung, Entschuldigung und Erklärung missbraucht, um Menschen zu misshandeln, zu vertreiben, zu ermorden? Die Wahrheit! Faschisten, Kommunisten, Diktatoren und Religionen bedienen sich ihrer gewissenlos, um ihre gehirntoten Horden hinter sich zu bringen. Unser Protagonist "Karl Duschek" weiß dies genau, denn er erlebt den Fanatismus verifizierter Staats- und Glaubensfacetten am eigenen Leib und Verstand.

Die 1792 fertig gestellten "Erinnerungen" von Giacomo Casanova lassen uns an einem, auch für heutige Verhältnisse unglaublich aufregenden Leben teilhaben. Sie bestechen durch ihre flüssige Sprache und lebendigen Dialoge und sind von hohem kulturhistorischem Wert. Sie erregten jedoch schon immer vor allem wegen der beschriebenen frivolen erotischen Abenteuer Aufsehen und machten Casanova weltweit zum Synonym für die hohe Kunst der Verführung.

«Este es un libro acerca de la virtud más admirable de todas las virtudes humanas: el valor. Ernest Hemingway la definió como “gracia bajo presión”. Y estos son los relatos sobre las presiones que experimentaron ocho Senadores de Estados Unidos y la gracia con la cual las enfrentaron»...

"A great story--how modernism brought down the regime of censorship--told as a great story. Kevin Birmingham's imaginative scholarship brings Joyce and his world to life. There is a fresh detail on nearly every page."--Louis Menand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Metaphysical Club For...

One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED―ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!―TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS No one who read Elif Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of...

A history of African Americans in New York City from the 1910s to 1960, told through the life of Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first black officer. When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City’s first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth...

Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In America's First Dynasty, Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still greatest dynasty -- the Adamses, the only family in our...

A masterful dual narrative of Napoleon Bonaparte and a tiny microbe that pits the height of human ambition and achievement against the supremacy of nature, from the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Blue Water “Gripping . . . Talty brings international politics and science...