Classic Biography

“In these soaring, open-hearted essays, Vanessa Zoltan writes with fierce brilliance about suffering, survival, and the kind of meaning in life that can withstand real scrutiny.”—John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed A deeply felt...

From the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky, to the peaceful Amish communities of Pennsylvania, to the cities and towns crisscrossing Ohio, murder and mayhem has been a part of it all. Within the pages of this latest volume in Notorious USA's New York Times best-selling series you'll discover how the unsuspecting succumbed to the evil that caught them by surprise, and what the authorities had to do to stop the madness.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Yasmin Mwanza. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Sarah Salih. 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...

John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick . . . their names carry a powerful historical ring, still echoing today in the countless institutions that are part of their legacy, from universities to museums to banks. But who were the people behind the legends, and how did they rise to their positions of vast wealth and influence in the latter half of the nineteenth century?

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her fifteen remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the...

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...

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

En "Conversaciones con Billy Wilder" el legendario director, ya nonagenario, accedió por primera vez a hablar extensamente sobre su vida y obra. Entrevistado por Cameron Crowe, en sus páginas habla de su experiencia en el mismo corazón de Hollywood, así como sobre guiones, fotografía y...

The final volume in A History of the Plantagenets covers the century from 1377 to 1485 when civil war ravaged England, rebellious peasants marched on London and wandering preachers sowed dissent in the credulous poor. The last Plantagenet monarchs governed in violence and confusion. Kings came...

Meet these people: Bundle Bindu, so named because he likes his truth with a little embellishment, Jayant the shopkeeper who doesn't make any profit, and Lunchbox Nalini, Sudha Murty herself, who brings her empty lunchbox-to be filled with food-wherever she goes!Written in Sudha Murty's...

The audiobook version of The Prince, is prefaced with a biography of the author and a background of the work itself, shedding some light on the mind that produced it, and the era which shaped his perspective. Also included are an overview, synopsis, and analysis of the work. The summary is capped with a brief look at the historical context of Machiavelli's work, as well as the criticisms it has evoked, and the impact he has had on society.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR From the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, a spectacular volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings. Features “Family Treasures,” nominated for the Edgar Award for...

A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to reckon with the corrupting force of a system that trained children to become its willing executioners Strung Up examines how the lynching...

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...

For centuries, Augustine's writings have moved and fascinated readers. With the keen eye of a writer whose own intellectual analysis won him a Pulitzer Prize, Gary Wills examines this famed fourth-century bishop and seminal thinker whose grounding in classical philosophy informed his...

A biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America. From The Nation magazine columnist and New York Times bestselling author Dave Zirin...

In the uproarious sequel to Life Among the Savages, the author of The Haunting of Hill House confronts the most vexing demons yet: her children In the long out-of-print sequel to Life Among the Savages, Jackson’s four children have grown from savages into full-fledged demons. After bursting...

A sparkling translation that gives new life in English to Dante’s Vita Nuova, his transcendent love poems and influential statement on the art and power of poetry, and the most widely read of his works after the Inferno A Penguin Classic Dante was only nine years old when he first met young...

A human physiology expert lays out the basic facts to explain why the idea of biological sex as a binary is simply wrong. Biological sex is as nuanced as gender. Many of us are biologically more typically masculine in some ways and more typically feminine in others. The constellation of traits...

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi one of the greatest men to walk this earth, begins the story of his life with descriptions of his childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot in Gujarat, his schooldays, his early marriage, the lessons he learnt when he tried stealing, told lies and smoked cigrattes, and his...