Classic Biography

It is the evolution of Kali, from her origins as a Tantric Goddess to her metamorphosis into a divinity in mainstream religions, that the author captures brilliantly in this book...

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...

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...

Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how...

A playfully critical journey through the Coen brothers' filmography From such cult hits as Raising Arizona (1987) and The Big Lebowski (1998) to major critical darlings Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Ethan and Joel Coen have cultivated a bleakly...

Wolfgang Faust was the driver of a Tiger I tank with the Wehrmacht Heavy Panzer Battalions, seeing extensive combat action on the Eastern Front in 1943-45. This memoir is his brutal and deeply personal account of the Russian Front's appalling carnage. Depicting a running tank engagement lasting 72 hours, Faust describes how his Tiger unit fought pitched battles in the snows of Western Russia against the full might of the Red Army.

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.

The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic is an important revelation in the legacy of Thompson, with letters that survived precarious shipping and travel over decades, cloaked away from the public. “If Hell’s Angels hadn’t happened I never would have been able to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or anything else . . . I felt like I got through a door just as it was closing,” Hunter told Paris Review.

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...

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas... IN 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen...

The true story that inspired Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. In the summer of 1924, two brilliant young men set out to commit what they believed would be the perfect crime. The murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks shocked Chicago and culminated in one of the most famous courtroom dramas of the twentieth century. The Trial of Leopold & Loeb: Dickie & Babe presents this landmark case as a full-cast courtroom drama, constructed directly from trial transcripts, witness testimony, and contemporary reporting.

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an...

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...

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of T. E. Lawrence's role in the Arab Revolt against the Turkish Empire. The book is mostly set in the deserts of Arabia with a great deal of time spent marching through them with camels and the telling of the events through Lawrence's eyes.

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 chilling documentary history of the most notorious cults of the past two thousand years, from the Celtic druids whose ritual sacrifices inspired the folk horror film The Wicker Man all the way up to the Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate A Penguin Classic The word “cult” conjures images of...

Dive deep into the lives, successes, and failures of some of the most successful, and wealthiest, men on the planet - Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Richard Branson - and discover what drove them all to become super achievers.

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.

Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation’s history forever. In this classic theological...

Meditations is former U.S. President Bill Clinton's favorite book. This audio consists of a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161-180 AD, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy.