Nonfiction Biography

Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe by collecting the best writing on travel from the books that shaped him, as a reader and a traveler. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates “The Contents of Some Travelers’ Bags”...

Nightline anchor Dan Harris embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable. After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan...

The ancient Sibylline prophecies had foretold that the Roman Empire would last for 1000 years. As the time for the expected dissolution approached in the middle of the third century AD, the empire was lapsing into chaos, with seemingly interminable civil wars over the imperial succession. The western empire had seceded under a rebel emperor and the eastern empire was controlled by another usurper. Barbarians took advantage of the anarchy to kill and plunder all over the provinces.

The author of the world’s best-selling book on negotiation draws on his nearly fifty years of experience and knowledge grappling with the world’s toughest conflicts to offer a way out of the seemingly impossible problems of our time. Conflict is increasing everywhere, threatening everything...

"It’s f*cking great!!! Raw, intimate, hilarious, actually inspiring.” –Jon Stewart *A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM BUSTLE, GOODREADS, GOODREADS, SHEREADS, BOOKRIOT, AND MORE* A dynamic memoir-in-essays by comedian, screenwriter, and podcaster Chelsea Devantez, detailing her tumultuous...

Read by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey with exclusive bonus material contributed by Rainn Wilson, Creed Bratton, Oscar Nunez, Brian Baumgartner, Steve Carell, Ed Helms, Ellie Kemper, Kate Flannery and Jennifer Garner. An intimate, behind-the-scenes celebration of beloved The Office co-stars...

Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford started off as insatiably curious tinkerers. That curiosity led them to become inventors - with very different results. As Edison invented hit after commercial hit, gaining fame and fortune, Henry struggled to make a single invention (an affordable car) work. Witnessing Thomas' glorious career from afar, a frustrated Henry wondered about the secret to his success.

In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so Americans could leave.

Charlotte Runcie has always felt pulled to the sea, lured by its soothing, calming qualities but also enlivened and inspired by its salty wildness. When she loses her beloved grandmother and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely. In Salt on Your Tongue Charlotte explores what the sea means to us and particularly what it has meant to women through the ages.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Martin Pistorius's miraculous journey back from life on the brink will inspire you to celebrate life and fight for those around you. When you lose your voice, who will speak for you? When it all seems hopeless, how do you get through each day? In the New York...

""Lucid and wrenching...Forward puts [Wambach's] achievement in context with painful and beautiful candor."" —NPR ""Forward is the powerful story of an athlete who has inspired girls all over the world to believe in themselves."" —Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, New York Times...

From the bestselling, prize-winning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies...

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience...

New York Times Bestseller From the first FDNY chief to respond to the 9/11 attacks, an intimate memoir and a tribute to those who died that others might live When Chief Joe Pfeifer led his firefighters to investigate an odor of gas in downtown Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, he had no idea...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler—the “female Oskar Schindler”—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. In 1942, one...

Written with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this biography of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, is “a stunning achievement” (The Sunday Times, London), and “a masterly work of Tudor history that is engrossing, sympathetic, suspenseful, and...

While America held its breath in the days immediately following 9/11, a small but determined group of CIA agents covertly began to change history. This is the riveting first-person account of the treacherous top-secret mission inside Afghanistan to set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and launch the war on terror. As thrilling as any novel, First In is a uniquely intimate look at a mission that began the US retaliation against terrorism - and reclaimed the country of Afghanistan for its people.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GLAMOUR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A hilarious new essay collection from Samantha Irby "engages readers with her characteristic combination of laugh-out-loud moments, heartfelt passages and plenty of awkward experiences.... Quietly Hostile will delight established...

From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970...

One of the most acclaimed books of our time—the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and...