Classic Biography

This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them.

The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what it’s loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life. Since the late...

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At 35. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all-important first year. From finding out her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out her best friend and greatest supporter, Pam, will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events making up a woman’s life.

Thomas's recording of this holiday classic is considered the first official audiobook. You'll hear the author's recollection of a holiday in the seaside town of his youth as well as some of his most celebrated poems, including "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

Finalist for the French-American Florence Gould Translation Prize A novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship that, unpublished in her lifetime, displays “Beauvoir's genius as a fiction writer” (Wall Street Journal) From the moment Sylvie and...

The Confessions by Saint Augustine is considered an all-time number one Christian classic. Augustine undertook his greatest piece of writing with the conviction that God wanted him to make this confession. The Confessions is, in fact, an extended poetic, passionate, intimate prayer.

""A hugely entertaining achievement."" –Esquire “An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists."" – Wall Street Journal ""As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on...

"Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" is considered to be the masterpiece of Stephen Leacock. Originally published in 1912, it is a set of tales occurring in the fictional hamlet of Mariposa, on the shores of Lake Wissanotti. Many of the characters in the stories are patterned on locals of Orillia, Ontario. The stories are gems of Canadian small town folklore. Leacock brings the quirks, eccentricities and flaws of these everyday people to life in the most humorous way. Every corner of Mariposa has a story to tell!

In her moving account of how she came to understand the world around her despite being blind and deaf since childhood, Helen Keller confirms that no physical obstacle can hinder the achievements of the human mind. Included with Keller's poignant autobiography are her letters, spanning 15 years, which reveal her remarkable intellectual growth and empathic soul. Commentary by her teacher, Anne Sullivan, and the book's original editor is also featured, providing illuminating insight from two of Keller's closest companions.

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole. Siân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two best-selling volumes of memoir Private Faces and Public Places will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author.

First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, one of the greatest speculators who ever lived. Now, almost 90 years later, it remains the most widely read, highly recommended investment book ever written. Generations of investors have found that it has more to teach them about themselves and other investors than years of experience in the market. They have also discovered that its trading advice and keen analyses of market price movements rings true.

This Jules Verne Collection will carry you away to underwater adventures, will take you deep inside the earth, and pull you on a journey around the world. Are you ready to travel to faraway lands, to be tracked by the authorities, and to encounter prehistoric monsters? If you are ready for adventure, then join us along with the protagonists of each of the three stories in this collection of science fiction and surreal tales.

Mary Karr told the prize-winning tale of her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir. The Liar's Club rode the top of The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and publications ranging from The New Yorker to People picked it as one of the best books of the year. But it left people wondering: How'd that scrappy kid make it outta there? Cherry dares to tell that story. Karr picks up the trail and dashes off into her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom.

Two works by the Roman historian, Tacitus. Agricola is a portrait of Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain, and the first surviving account of the geography, climate, and peoples of Britain. The German tribes of Northern Europe are discussed in Germania.

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...

“. . . a human and historical document of compelling interest.” — The Atlantic Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him. While ministering in...

How a Florentine orphanage rescued thousands of children and revolutionized childhood education amid the splendor of Renaissance art. The story begins with the abandonment of the newborn Agata Smeralda on February 5, 1445, in Florence’s Hospital of the Innocents, the first—but certainly not...

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cevennes.

En 1878, afin d'oublier ses amours impossibles avec Fanny Osbourne et d'améliorer sa santé fragile, Robert Louis Stevenson part à la rencontre du pays des Camisards dont l'histoire fait écho à celle des Covenantaires, mouvement religieux et politique écossais au XVIIe siècle. 12 jours durant, il rédige son journal de route : ses marches, ses rencontres, ses péripéties avec son ânesse Modestine... au cœur du pays cévenol.