New Biographies Memoirs

After a tumor bursts in Mike Scalise's brain, leaving him with a hole in the head and malfunctioning hormones, he must navigate a new alien world of illness maintenance. His mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, becomes a complicated model as she competes with him for the status of "best sick person". The Brand New Catastrophe is a moving, funny exploration of how we define ourselves by the stories we choose to tell.

Consulting with internationally known CEOs and participating in high-stakes projects with millions of dollars and thousands of jobs on the line, Rich Moran knew the rule: there’s no room for error—no fumbling, misgivings, or delays. While attempting to lull a crying son to sleep, a wrong turn on a drive through Sonoma County sets him and his family on a life-changing adventure. They can’t resist a promise-laden 19th century home, looking past its rotting wraparound porch and leaky roof.

An Epidemic of Absence asks what will happen in developing countries, which, as they become more affluent, have already seen an uptick in allergic disease: Will India end up more allergic than Europe? Velasquez-Manoff also details a controversial underground movement that has coalesced around the treatment of immune-mediated disorders with parasites. Against much of his better judgment, he joins these do-it-yourselfers and reports his surprising results.

The long agony of the “sick man of Europe”, an expression used by the tsar of Russia to depict the falling Ottoman Empire, could almost blind people to its incredible power and history. Preserving its mixed heritage - coming from both its geographic position, rising above the ashes of the Byzantine Empire, and the tradition inherited from the Muslim conquests - the Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries.

At 12.16 a.m. on Wednesday, June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded in the service pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. A 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was found holding the smoking gun and convicted of murder. That is the official history - but Tim Tate and Brad Johnson have uncovered a different story.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims". The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths - their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter.

A painfully honest story of human weakness and God's unending forgiveness. Thirteen years ago, amidst scandal, sin, and shattered lives, Michael English fell from the pinnacle of the Christian music world. In 1994, newspapers around the world blared the headline, "Gospel Singer Named Artist of...

While free markets have brought positive change, traditional capitalism cannot solve problems of inequality and poverty because of its view of people as solely profit-driven. In fact, humans have other drives and passions, including spiritual, social, and altruistic.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Lessons for all of us in how to approach life—from someone in the process of dying. "Simon Boas was a gifted storyteller with a rare ability to find humor and humanity in life’s most profound moments. A Beginner’s Guide to Dying showcases his wit, warmth...

The definitive history of the rise and heyday of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, based on new research and first-hand interviews with many of its legendary performers Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a...

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (“I start with my life as a schoolgirl.... My own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse”), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be 22 when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbeck’s early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer.

In his darkest depression, one idea brought Christian Lewis out of the depths - and into a new life. Finding Hildasay, read by the author, is a brutal and beautiful true story of depression, survival, walking, and the meaning of home. ‘Now I was finally out of the force of the wind, my body...

“A gutsy success story” (The New York Times Book Review) about one tenacious woman’s journey to escape rural poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business—without ever leaving the land she loves The youngest of her parents’ combined twenty-one children, Sarah Frey grew up on a...

Over the course of seven months in 1988, eleven women disappeared off the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a gloomy, drug-addled coastal town that was once the whaling capital of the world. Nine turned up dead. Two were never found. And the perpetrator remains unknown to this day. In Killing Season, Smith takes listeners into a close-knit community of working-class men and women, an underworld of prostitution and drug abuse, and the halls of New England law enforcement to tell the story of an epic failure of justice.

An NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints and a widely read and followed commentator on social media, Watson has taken the Internet by storm with his remarkable insights about some of the most sensitive and charged topics of our day. Now, in Under Our Skin, Watson draws from his own life, his family legacy, and his role as a father to sensitively and honestly examine both sides of the race debate and appeal to the power and possibility of faith as a step toward healing.

Born in 1891, Dorothy Tiffany was the last child in the long line of the famous Tiffany dynasty of jewelers and artisans. As was expected of the young heiress, Dorothy married a wealthy member of the American plutocracy, Dr. Robert Burlingham. But the lackluster life of wealthy young women in early 20th century America held little appeal for Dorothy. Leaving behind her socially prominent husband, she took her children and moved to Europe, where she underwent psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud.

When Mark McKenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, he had no idea what he would discover. One event in 1934 - the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry - stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time. But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today.

Reimagining Blue is a passionate and personal analysis of a misunderstood profession from the vantage point of female Police Chief Kristen Ziman. Ziman credits her colorful childhood for the temperament that led her to gravitate toward policing, a profession where chaos is all in a day’s work. Many times, she learned life and leadership lessons through the revelation of what not to do. But nothing could have prepared Kristen for the turmoil that would unfold during her tenure.

The real-life Alex Vause from the critically acclaimed, top-rated Netflix show Orange Is the New Black tells her story in her own words for the first time—a powerful, surprising memoir about crime and punishment, friendship and marriage, and a life caught in the ruinous drug trade and beyond...