Collection: Biography & Memoir

Celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare's legacy with this repackage of award-winning author Diane Stanley's tribute to the world-famous playwright William Shakespeare.

Nobody knows exactly when or why William Shakespeare left his boyhood home of Stratford-on-Avon for the great city of London, but it didn't take long for him to make a name for himself. His plays are now performed almost every day in just about every part of the world; even people who've never seen them use words and phrases he introduced into the English language.

How did a man from an unremarkable family create a legacy that the world, even 400 years after his death, has never forgotten? There will always be unsolved mysteries about Shakespeare, but what we do know of his life, his times, and his theater makes for a very dramatic story.

The 2022 Kirkus Prize Winner for Nonfiction

Fragrance has long been used to mark who is civilized and who is barbaric, who is pure and who is polluted, who is free and who is damned--

Focusing their gaze on our most primordial sense, writer and perfumer Tanaïs weaves a brilliant and expansive memoir, a reckoning that offers a critical, alternate history of South Asia from an American Bangladeshi Muslim femme perspective. From stories of their childhood in the South, Midwest, and New York; to transcendent experiences with lovers, psychedelics, and fragrances; to trips home to their motherland, Tanaïs builds a universe of memories and scent: a sensorium. Alongside their personal history, and at the very heart of this work, is an interrogation of the ancient violence of caste, rape culture, patriarchy, war, and the inherited ancestral trauma of being from a lush land constantly denuded, a land still threatened and disappearing because of colonization, capitalism, and climate change.

Structured like a perfume--moving from base to heart to head notes--IN SENSORIUM interlaces eons of South Asian perfume history, erotic and religious texts, survivor testimonies, and material culture with memoir. In Sensorium is archive and art, illuminating the great crises of our time with the language of Liberation.

From the very first book publication in 1920 to the recent film release of Death on the Nile, this investigation into Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot celebrates a century of probably the world's favourite fictional detective.

This book tells his story decade-by-decade, exploring his appearances not only in the original novels, short stories and plays but also across stage, screen and radio productions.

Poirot has had near-permanent presence in the public eye ever since the 1920 publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. From character development, publication history and private discussion concerning the original stories themselves, to early forays on to the stage and screen, the story of Poirot is as fascinating as it is enduring.

Based on the author's original research, review excerpts and original Agatha Christie correspondence, Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World is a lively and accessible history of the character, offering new information and helpful pieces of context, that will delight all Agatha Christie fans, from a new generation of readers to those already highly familiar with the canon.

Actor. Artist. Cultural Icon.

Dancing on the Edge

A bold memoir of an extraordinary, singular life lived by one of the world's most beloved and acclaimed figures: Russ Tamblyn.

With more than eighty years as a celebrated artist and actor under his belt, Russ Tamblyn has earned a cherished name among cinephiles and pop culture fans alike, working with such legendary directors as Robert Wise, David Lynch, and Quentin Tarantino. He tumbled through his acclaimed starring role in the original West Side Story as an actor and acrobatic dancer, taught Elvis Presley some signature dance moves, and became an unlikely visionary in the counterculture movement of the '60s alongside peers and friends Ed Ruscha and Dennis Hopper.

Russ deftly guides readers through his star-studded life and his search for a deeper, more connected existence: attending school with Elizabeth Taylor, earning an Academy Award nomination for Peyton Place, dropping out of Hollywood at the height of his career to become a fine artist in Topanga Canyon, and forging a lifelong friendship with Neil Young. He shares the painful breakup of a twenty-year marriage and the joy of finding true love and inspiration as a husband, father, and mentor in his own right.

Perfect for old and new fans alike, Dancing on the Edge is an intimate and powerful story about the singular life of one of our most gifted storytellers, artists, and stars of the silver screen.

Jack Kerkhoff was born to the news. His parents both worked at the Grand Rapids Herald, and Jack got an early start at the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Bigger papers followed: the Detroit News, New York Journal-American, and the New York Post.

But Kerkhoff's professional success was overshadowed by personal tragedy. His wife died suddenly in 1940 and then his 25-year-old daughter eight years later. Severe depression and two suicide attempts followed.

Kerkhoff had done some growing up in the Traverse City area - his parents owned a home on Old Mission Peninsula - and he was well aware of the form and function of the State Hospital.

How many times I had scampered up that driveway with my gang, fearful yet curious. How many times we had wandered outside the bleak, tower-topped buildings that had iron bars at the windows, and shouted at the men and women behind the bars and giggled over the obscenities they tossed back at us.

So, on a wintery November day, Kerkhoff checked himself into the asylum, hoping that the treatment provided there would lift the veil of sadness.

How Thin the Veil is a 45-day account of Kerkhoff 's treatment, his conversations with the nurses and doctors (some of them with their real names), his interactions with the inmates, and his trips to downtown Traverse City watering holes. There's also romance in the form of Suzy, a pretty, lisping waif whose "bad spells" had kept her hospitalized for eight years.

First published in 1952, How Thin the Veil shines a "hard-boiled" light on the mid-century conditions of patients of mental illness. Booze and cigarettes abound. Insulin-shock therapy was in vogue, as was what the patients called "eloctros." However, the overall treatment is ultimately sympathetic and humane. Kerkhoff recovered and returned to work.

Congratulations!

So, you're all grown up and ready to spread your wings and leave the nest. But what's next? How much will it cost? How do you build a career that will support you and one day a family of your own?

As you have gotten older, you're now taking on more responsibilities, and it will be 100% up to you to accomplish them all.

There are many life skills that are NOT being taught in school!

Do not worry; with or without a starting budget, you can do this!

The good news is with this book you'll be able to avoid many pitfalls and start with a strong foundation of knowledge to build on.

Here's what's coming towards you very quickly...

You're going to have to build a career, build resumes, have successful interviews, transition all your bills from your parents to your name, have your own bank accounts, start budgeting and planning for your future, build a home for yourself, maintain your vehicle and so much more

Don't panic - you're in the right place. This book will share with you life lessons, tips & strategies to make your launch from your parent's home smooth, successful, and stress-free.

In this Adult's Survival Guide you'll discover:

★ How to manage your money, reconcile bank accounts and build budgets.

Included is a FREE downloadable pre-built reconciliation/budgeting worksheet.

★ Kickstarting your career from resume building to successful interviewing to land the job.

★ Banking 101, the basics of understanding banking and what you'll need.

★ How to build and grow your credit.

★ Essentials on moving out guide, transitioning from your family's home to your own home.

★ Tips and strategies on how to live on a small budget, DIY recipes

★ Healthy cooking and food skills, easy meal plans, and recipe ideas

★ Car skills everyone should know, tire care, jumpstarting a car, oil, and air filters even if you're not a mechanic.

With this book, you'll be able to look forward to being a successful and happy adult. So scroll up and grab a copy today.

This is an awesome high school graduation gift, especially with the downloadable pre-built reconciliation and budgeting worksheets.

The book is also the perfect high school graduation, new job, and college gift. It's packed full of adulting life hacks to help your child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or friend succeed in the world.

Archival documents and new writings on the intermedia collaborations of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry

Don Cherry and Moki Karlsson met in Sweden in the late '60s. They married and began to perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmental activism, children's education and pan-ethnic expression "Organic Music." Their home in Tågarp became a locus of artistic production, attracting free-spirited musicians, poets, actors and artists with the promise of collective life. There, Keith Knox assembled Tågarp Publication Number One to document the collectivistic practices blooming under the Cherrys' guidance. Reproduced here, the text includes interviews with Terry Riley and Cherry, a piece on Pandit Pran Nath, a report on the Bombay Free School and a survey of the esoteric Forest University by Bengt af Kintberg. This book explores Don Cherry's work of the period through additional interviews by Knox, a piece on his Relativity Suite and an essay by Fumi Okiji. Moki's writings on her workshops are featured alongside full-color reproductions of her tapestries, used as performance environments by Don's ensembles. Cherry collaborators Bengt Berger and Christer Bothén contribute travelogues from the era.

Every day, people face discrimination because of their sexuality and gender identity. The people between these pages have stood up for the queer community, whether on their own behalf or in support of people they love. Some made a difference by confronting injustice; others dared to be fully themselves.

Susan Ursel fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada for the right to have books with queer characters in schools. Sparkle Wilson runs an internship program for LGBTQ+ youth in San Francisco that helps them build skills and grow their confidence. Itzayana Gutiérrez Arillo discovered the joy and global community of queer tango. Their stories prove that we can all make the world a little safer, kinder, and more inclusive.

This photographic celebration of queer love and excellence gathers fourteen LGBTQ+ power couples, offering a glimpse into the journeys that led to their meaningful relationships and thriving careers.

From designer Debbie Millman's ardent courtship of writer Roxane Gay to the romantic and creative relationship forged between Perfume Genius bandmates Mike Hadreas and Alan Wyffels on stage during their first world tour, this beautiful book offers a closer look into the lives of fourteen inspiring LGBTQ+ couples and the meet-cutes, success stories, and personal reflections that made them the role models they are today. These icons come from a range of backgrounds--they are trailblazers who lead research labs, kitchens, and news organizations; create life-giving art and music; and tell queer stories in award-winning books, films, and television shows.

With in-depth original interviews by journalist Hannah Murphy Winter and intimate photography by their wife, Billie Winter, this diverse collection is a jubilant celebration of queer love and an empowering reminder to younger LGBTQ+ generations of their limitless possibilities.

AMAZING PROFILES: This superlative collection features more than twenty-five queer leaders in film and TV, the music industry, journalism, academia, fine art, and nonprofits. Read about showrunner ND Stevenson and comic artist Molly Knox Ostertag, astrologer Chani Nicholas and nonprofit founder Sonya Passi, director Anthony Hemingway and actor Steven Norfleet, chefs Aisha Ibrahim and Samantha Beaird, and many more inspiring figures.

BEAUTIFUL IMAGES: Intimate, joyful, and moving, the photography of Billie Winter captures a diverse group of queer icons in the worlds they have built for themselves. Her candid, organic images of the couples share intimate moments of laughter, conversation, and comfortable silence. And at the end of every photoshoot, she asked the couples to photograph each other -- capturing the couples' love and connection with a vulnerability that only they could. This gorgeous book presents LGBTQ+ relationships in all their multiplicity.

OWN VOICES: This is a book about queer power couples created by a queer couple. In-depth original interviews conducted by journalist Hannah Murphy Winter offer insightful context into the lives and careers of the LGBTQ+ changemakers, and photographs by her wife, Billie Winter, capture genuine, unscripted moments between the subjects. This is a meaningful gift for queer folks, allies who want to learn more about queer culture, and anyone who wants to uplift the stories of the LGBTQ+ community.

Perfect for:

• Queer young people and adults and their loved ones
• Allies, advocates, and activists
• Fans of portrait anthologies and storytelling projects like Humans of New York
• Fans of LGBTQ+ photography books like Loving: a Photographic History of Men In Love 1850s-1950s, We Are Everywhere, and Queer Love In Color
• Gift-giving for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Pride Month, and other special occasions

Help kids ages 6 to 9 discover the life of Albert Einstein―a story about unleashing your imagination and discovering big things

Albert Einstein became one of the most important scientists in history for his discoveries about physics and how our universe works. Before everyone knew him as a genius, Albert was a curious kid who loved reading, learning, and experimenting with new ideas. He asked big questions and wasn't afraid to make mistakes.

Explore how Albert Einstein went from being a young Jewish boy growing up in Germany to the most celebrated physicist ever.

The Story of Albert Einstein includes:

• Visual timeline―Watch Albert progress from curious kid to famous scientist.
• Helpful glossary―Find definitions for some of the more advanced words and ideas in the book.
• Lasting change―Learn about how Albert made the world a better place for future generations.

How will Albert Einstein's life encourage your own curiosity about the world?

An intensely personal story from Ukrainian writer Sergey Maidukov that Kirkus Reviews says is "affecting" and a "moving look at a deeply riven Russian-Ukrainian family and how they rejected Russian aggression."

Driven from Ukraine by Russia in early 2022, author Sergey Maidukov and his family joined millions of refugees trying to piece together their lives in the wake of Putin's war. Rich with emotion, the story follows their flight to Poland and eventual return to Kyiv, as they search for moments of love, courage, and hope.

This memoir is a firsthand glimpse into the lives of Ukrainians through one family's story. Sergey Maidukov, with gravity and passion, tells the story of how he escaped Ukraine along with his wife, daughter, and granddaughter in February 2022, their second displacement by Russia's terror. With stories of family, hardship, hope, and fear, the author has captured a journey that has revealed much more than suffering; it has taken them to new levels of patriotism, new values, and a new appreciation for their home country.

A bestselling and prizewinning memoir by African American ballerina Misty Copeland, Life in Motion is the vividly told story of her journey to the world-class American Ballet Theatre--and delves into the harrowing family conflicts that nearly drove her away from ballet as a thirteen-year-old prodigy.

Determination meets dance in this New York Times bestselling memoir by the history-making ballerina Misty Copeland, recounting the story of her journey to become the first African-American principal ballerina at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre. When she first placed her hands on the barre at an after-school community center, no one expected the undersized, underprivileged, and anxious thirteen-year-old to become one of America's most groundbreaking dancers . A true prodigy, she was attempting in months roles that take most dancers years to master. But when Misty became caught between the control and comfort she found in the world of ballet and the harsh realities of her own life, she had to choose to embrace both her identity and her dreams, and find the courage to be one of a kind.

With an insider's passion, Misty opens a window into the life of an artist who lives life center stage, from behind the scenes at her first classes to her triumphant roles in some of the world's most iconic ballets. A sensational memoir as "sensitive" and "clear-eyed" (The Washington Post) as her dancing, Life in Motion is a story of passion, identity and grace for anyone who has dared to dream of a different life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

NOW WITH A NEW WORKBOOK

Deena Kastor was a star youth runner with tremendous promise, yet her career almost ended after college, when her competitive method--run as hard as possible, for fear of losing--fostered a frustration and negativity and brought her to the brink of burnout. On the verge of quitting, she took a chance and moved to the high altitudes of Alamosa, Colorado, where legendary coach Joe Vigil had started the first professional distance-running team. There she encountered the idea that would transform her running career: the notion that changing her thinking--shaping her mind to be more encouraging, kind, and resilient--could make her faster than she'd ever imagined possible. Building a mind so strong would take years of effort and discipline, but it would propel Kastor to the pinnacle of running--to American records in every distance from the 5K to the marathon--and to the accomplishment of earning America's first Olympic medal in the marathon in twenty years.

Let Your Mind Run is a fascinating intimate look inside the mind of an elite athlete, a remarkable story of achievement, and an insightful primer on how the small steps of cultivating positivity can give anyone a competitive edge.

The saga of the greatest tornado chaser who ever lived: a tale of obsession and daring and an extraordinary account of humanity's high-stakes race to understand nature's fiercest phenomenon from Brantley Hargrove, "one of today's great science writers" (The Washington Post).At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science's every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider. In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn't attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing. As his ambitions grew, so did the risks. And when he finally met his match--in a faceoff against the largest tornado ever recorded--it upended everything he thought he knew. Brantley Hargrove delivers a "cinematically thrilling and scientifically wonky" (Outside) tale, chronicling the life of Tim Samaras in all its triumph and tragedy. Hargrove takes readers inside the thrill of the chase, the captivating science of tornadoes, and the remarkable character of a man who walked the line between life and death in pursuit of knowledge. The Man Who Caught the Storm is an "adrenaline rush of a tornado chase...Readers from all across the spectrum will enjoy this" (Library Journal, starred review) unforgettable exploration of obsession and the extremes of the natural world.

A Los Angeles Times Best Seller
A 2020 NPR Best Book of the Year

Is there life after baseball? Starting from this simple question, The Wax Pack ends up with something much bigger and unexpected--a meditation on the loss of innocence and the gift of impermanence, for both Brad Balukjian and the former ballplayers he tracked down. To get a truly random sample of players, Balukjian followed this wildly absurd but fun-as-hell premise: he took a single pack of baseball cards from 1986 (the first year he collected cards), opened it, chewed the nearly thirty-year-old gum inside, gagged, and then embarked on a quest to find all the players in the pack.

On Balukjian's trip in the summer of 2015, he spanned 11,341 miles through thirty states in forty-eight days. Actively engaging with his subjects, he took a hitting lesson from Rance Mulliniks, watched kung fu movies with Garry Templeton, and went to the zoo with Don Carman. In the process of finding all the players but one, he discovered an astonishing range of experiences and untold stories in their post-baseball lives. While crisscrossing the country, Balukjian retraced his own past, reconnecting with lost loves and coming to terms with his lifelong battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Alternately elegiac and uplifting, The Wax Pack is part baseball nostalgia, part road trip travelogue, and all heart, a reminder that greatness is not found in the stats on the backs of baseball cards but in the personal stories of the men on the front of them.

The Life-Changing Magic of Chess isa beginner's guide to the strategy game for children, with secrets from Grandmaster Maurice Ashley.

Discover why the world's first Black Grandmaster Maurice Ashley thinks that chess is one of the best skills in life. Follow him on a journey from Jamaica to New York to the world stage where he has taught thousands of young people the life philosophies of the game.
Part biography, part skills and fully oozing with passion, this book offers:

• A child-friendly, joy-filled introduction to the game of chess
• Step-by-step illustrations of basic and advanced chess skills
• Tips and motivation from the first Black Grandmaster, Maurice Ashley

Learn about the chess board and pieces, sequences such as Scholar's Mate, and skills like castling. With fun-filled, engaging illustrations from Denis Angelov, and in the inspirational words of Maurice Ashley, this is the perfect book to inspire a child to find their life's passion.

Life-Changing Magic Series
The Life-Changing Magic of Skateboarding by Sky Brown and illustrator Shaw Davidson
The Life-Changing Magic of Chess by Maurice Ashley and illustrator Denis Angelov
The Life-Changing Magic of Baking by Joy Wilson
The Life-Changing Magic of Druming by Nandi Bushnell