A search for shipwrecked ancestors, forgotten histories, and a sense of homeFascinating and intimate , The Girl from Foreign is one woman's search for ancient family secrets that leads to an adventure in far-off lands. Sadia Shepard, the daughter of a...

A meticulously researched biography of Jean Genet, one of France's most notorious writers. Acclaimed novelist and essayist Edmund White illuminates Genet's experiences in the worlds of crime, homosexuality, politics, and high culture, and gives a...

Critics across the country have raved about Joyce Carol Oates’s ground-breaking memoir A Widow’s Story, lauding its blazing honesty and raw emotion, calling it “immensely moving,” “searing,” “enthralling,” “brave,” “slyly mordant,” and “astonishingly...

Growing up, Robert Lipsyte was the smart-aleck fat kid, the bully magnet who went to the library instead of the ballpark. As the perpetual outsider, even into adulthood, his alienation from Jock Culture made him a rarity in the press box: the...

Small Memories is a . . . nourishing last gift from a great writer. Washington Post Shifting back and forth between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this is a mosaic of memories, a simply told, affecting look into the author...

In this volume, John Bowlby presents Charles Darwin - son, brother, husband, and father - in an intimate and human portrait. Bowlby, an eminent British psychologist, forges well past other biographies by showing Darwin not only in his work as a...

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeWinner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardSelected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the YearDrawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent...

The first volume in the life of America's greatest First Lady, "a woman who changed the lives of millions" (Washington Post).Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. Three: 1938-1962, will be published in November 2016.Eleanor Roosevelt was born into the privileges and...

A “devastatingly witty” biography of Louis XIV and the Court of Versailles—at once a historical record of late 17th- and early 18th-century France and a gossip-filled narrative of lovers and rivals, artists and warriors (New York Times)The Sun King is a...

A unique prison narrative that testifies to the power of books to transform a young man's lifeAt the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts-a good student from a lower- middle-class family-carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but...

Years in the making--the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a...

Greenwich Village in the 1950s was a haven to which young poets, painters, and jazz musicians flocked. Among them was Hettie Cohen, who'd been born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens and who'd chosen to cross racial barriers to marry the...

One of the most beloved stories of the Tibetan people and a great literary example of the contemplative lifeThe Life of Milarepa, a biography and a dramatic tale from a culture now in crisis, can be read on several levels. A personal and moving...

The first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as a political activist of prodigious energies, Wole Soyinka now follows his modern classic Ake: The Years of Childhood with an equally important chronicle of his turbulent life as an...

Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war...

"A fine, firsthand appreciation of the accomplishments, antagonisms, foibles, and failings of the hosts that made the scene that Sandler has spent his life chronicling and celebrating." —Artforum For over fifty years Irving Sandler has been a vital...

More than thirty years after the publication of his acclaimed memoir The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut continues his story in this searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling, and learning that willpower isn’t...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK •  “Colonel Roosevelt is compelling reading, and [Edmund] Morris is a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the highest level. . . . A moving, beautifully rendered account.”—Fred Kaplan,...

From Ivana Lowell, a member of the Guinness family and Executive Producer of 'House of Guinness' on Netflix, comes "a frank and, at times, comic account of growing up amid extreme privilege and eccentric personalities” (Vanity Fair)Born into one of the...

Régis Debray is one of France’s leading intellectuals, whose life has intersected with key moments of the twentieth century.In this explosive memoir, Debray recounts his journey from Louis Althusser and the Parisian lecture theatres, to Cuba and the...