Classic Biography

This exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts, drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure...

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...

From the celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film--an essential work on the preeminent, indispensable movie directors and the ways in which their work has forged, and continues to forge, the landscape of modern film. Directors operate behind the scenes, managing...

A tribute to a great man, an important and interesting writer, an inspiring teacher, and a friend some will not likely find again. Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper wrote a memorable biography about their pal, C.S. Lewis. "...We have sought to tell his story as best we could, to lay before...

James Branch Cabell's career was short-lived - his works fit neatly within the 1920s literary escapist culture and then quickly declined in popularity as the author veered away from the fantasy niche. In his heyday, Cabell garnered praise from several of his contemporaries such as H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. Lewis even acknowledged Cabell's successful Jurgen in his 1930 Nobel Prize address.

Just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 36 Japanese bombers attacked Wake Island and destroyed eight of its 12 aircraft. Two more raids shortly followed, further reducing the defensive possibilities for the men who were left to defend this small area of American soil in the center of the Pacific Ocean. The Story of Wake Island takes the listener to the heart of the action from the point of view of the commanding officer. It is a brilliant account of this tragic event that demonstrated the fighting spirit of the American soldier even in the face of unbeatable odds.

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’s outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set...

A dazzling new look into the short but intense, tragic life and remarkable work of John Keats, one of the greatest lyric poets of the English language, seen in a whole new light, not as the mythologized Victorian guileless nature-lover, but as the subversive, bawdy complex cynic whose life and...

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

From longtime New York Times and Vanity Fair writer David Margolick comes the first definitive biography of Sid Caesar: founding father of television comedy and icon to generations of Americans. By the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was the most influential, highly paid, and enigmatic comedian in...

Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry Finalist for the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry Finalist for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection Postcolonial Love Poem, the brilliant second collection from Natalie Diaz, holds...

In the third volume of his bestselling series, Pastor Robert Morgan expands his material to include the great history of worship, the first biblical hymns, biographical sketches of the most interesting composers, and almost 60 generations of hymn singing. In 2003, Robert Morgan released what...

An affecting memoir from the country’s youngest sommelier, tracing her path through the glamorous but famously toxic restaurant world At just twenty-one, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country’s youngest sommelier at a...

"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite." —New York Times Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace...

Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, Seacole set out independently to the Crimea where she acted as doctor and 'mother' to wounded soldiers while running her business, the 'British Hotel'. A witness to key battles, she gives vivid accounts of how she coped with disease, bombardment and other hardships at the Crimean battlefront.

Three people – Indigenous, immigrant, and settler – journey over dangerous terrain in a race against time, and each other, to gain control of a vast parcel of land. YOU decide how events unfold, ultimately determining how the land is stewarded, and by whom. An urban couple are on a...

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.

Boswell's biography of his friend and hero Samuel Johnson is an acknowledged classic, full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization. Johnson's complex humanity (his depression, fear of death, intellectual brilliance and rough humor) is set within a vivid picture of 18th century London peopled by personalities of the time.

In Simone Weil, du Plessix Gray vividly evokes the life of an equally complex and intriguing figure. A patriot and a mystic, an unruly activist plagued by self-doubt, a pampered intellectual with a credo of manual labor, an ascetic who craved sensuous beauty, Simone Weil died at the age of...

For ten years Kathryn Sermak was at Bette Davis's side--first as an employee, and then as her closest friend--and in Miss D and Me she tells the story of the great star's harrowing but inspiring final years, a story fans have been waiting decades to hear. Miss D and Me is a story of two powerful...