Life Biography

In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than 50 years, award-winning historian Faragher brilliantly portrays America's famous frontier hero while illuminating the American hero-making process itself. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure trove of reminiscences gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher uses the methods of new social history to create a portrait of the man and the times he helped shape.

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival.

Former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives in the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt.

David Sedaris' collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. With every clever turn of a phrase, Sedaris brings a view and a voice like no other to every unforgettable encounter. You can also listen to Sedaris in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.

On the hellish battlefields of World War II Europe, Major Dick Winters led his Easy Company - the now-legendary Band of Brothers - from the confusion and chaos of the D-day invasion to the final capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest. But Winters' story didn't end there; it was only the beginning. He was a quiet, reluctant hero whose modesty and strength drew the admiration of not only his men but millions worldwide.

Whether in Kraftwerk or as an acclaimed solo artist, Karl Bartos has had an extraordinary impact on electronic music. In The Sound of the Machine, Bartos’ recollections include his childhood in postwar Germany, the early musical encounters that led him to Kraftwerk, and fascinating insights from his time with the group, such as the genesis of monumental songs like "The Robots," "The Model," and "Tour de France," and candid accounts of his relationships with the other bandmembers.

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts.

At age 26, Maarten Troost decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to a remote South Pacific island. The idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. But he should have known better.

Known as one of America's most dangerous cities, New Orleans plays host to incidents ranging from the tragic and disturbing to the completely bizarre - and during his career as an emergency medic, Jon McCarthy saw it all. He chronicles some of the most formative calls of his career in this autobiography that sounds like crime fiction. McCarthy demonstrates with detail and clarity that the difficult choice is often the right choice. While not for the faint of heart, each entry in this collection provides poignant insight into the bonds between medics and the people and city they serve.

In 1913, an unschooled young Indian clerk wrote a letter to G. H. Hardy, begging that preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Hardy, realizing the letter was the work of a genius, arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most remarkable collaborations ever chronicled.

A misfit kid at the best of times, Mishka Shubaly had his world shattered when, in a 24-hour span in 1992, he survived a mass shooting on his school's campus then learned that his parents were getting divorced. His father, a prominent rocket scientist, abandoned the family, and their home was lost to foreclosure. Shubaly swore to avenge the wrongs against his mother but instead plunged into a magnificently toxic love affair with alcohol.

Pastor and author Timothy Keller (1950–2023) built a lasting legacy in Christian ministry, planting Redeemer Presbyterian Church and cofounding the Gospel Coalition. With sharp biblical insight that has shaped countless church leaders, along with counsel on the Christian life that has stirred and strengthened audiences worldwide, Keller's teaching promises to influence generations to come. Synthesizing Keller's work topic by topic, each chapter of this book highlights a key aspect of the Christian life—covering his views on prayer, suffering, friendship, vocation, intimacy with God, and more

Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.​ Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York.

Bill Weir has spent decades telling the stories of unique people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of change. As the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news, he is immersed in the latest scientific warnings and breakthroughs while often on the frontlines of disasters, natural and manmade. After the birth of his son in April 2020, Bill began distilling these experiences into a series of Earth Day letters to his boy, weaving together worry and wonder into a poignant reminder that a better future can still be written.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days.

John Cage has been described as the most important composer of our time. He combined classical European training with Eastern spirituality to produce an American amalgam of such vitality and originality that it continues to define what we mean by avant-garde. His influence has touched generations of artists, including Philip Glass, David Byrne, and his longtime collaborator Merce Cunningham. His work and ideas have influenced not only the world of music but also dance, painting, printmaking, video art, and poetry.

This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers––and men––in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas.

Whatever we may think of Alexander - whether Great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopath - most people do not regard him as a religious leader. And yet religion permeated all aspects of his career. When he used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. In Egypt, he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh, and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king. When Alexander disregarded religion, he and his army suffered. In Iran, for instance, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted.

It was that voice, those eyes, that hair, the cars, the girls. Elvis Presley revolutionized American pop culture when, at age 21, he became a modern superstar. A Memphis Beau Brummel even before he found fame, Elvis had a personal style that, like his music, had an immediate impact on his audience that continues to influence us today.