Collection: Biography & Memoir

"Una historia desgarradora sobre el otro lado de la experiencia del inmigrante a EEUU- la penuria y la desolación de los niños dejados atrás por sus padres." --Sonia Nazario, ganadora del premio Pulitzer y autora de La travesía de Enrique

Cuando el padre de Reyna Grande deja a su esposa y sus tres hijos atrás en un pueblo de México para hacer el peligroso viaje a través de la frontera a los Estados Unidos, promete que pronto regresará con el dinero suficiente para construir la casa de sus sueños. Sus promesas se vuelven más difíciles de creer cuando los meses de espera se convierten en años. Cuando se lleva a su esposa para reunirse con él, Reyna y sus hermanos son depositados en el hogar ya sobrecargado de su abuela paterna, Evila, una mujer endurecida por la vida.

Los tres hermanos se ven obligados a cuidar de sí mismos. En los juegos infantiles encuentran una manera de olvidar el dolor del abandono y a resolver problemas de adultos. Cuando su madre regresa, la reunión sienta las bases para un capítulo nuevo y dramático en la vida de Reyna: su propio viaje a El otro lado para vivir con el hombre que ha poseído su imaginación durante años-- su padre ausente.

En esta memoria extraordinaria, la galardonada escritora Reyna Grande le da vida a sus años tumultuosos, capturando la confusión y las contradicciones de una infancia divida entre dos padres y dos países. Sólo en los libros, en la música y en su rica imaginación ella encontrará consuelo, un refugio momentáneo de un mundo en el que cada lugar se siente como El otro lado. La distancia entre nosotros capta el paso de una niña de la infancia a la adolescencia y más allá. Una divertida, lírica, pero desgarradora historia, nos recuerda que las alegrías y las tristezas de la infancia están siempre con nosotros, impresas en el corazón, recordándonos de ese lugar que fue nuestro primer hogar.

También disponible en inglés como The Distance Between Us.

This is the previously untold true story of Jessie and her Titanic voyage. Jessie was on the Titanic sailing from a last-minute change in plans, due to a coal strike in the British Isles. Unaware of what was to come a few days later, she eagerly boarded the unsinkable, luxury liner for its maiden voyage and return trip home from a visit to family. She settled into the opulent surroundings and met many friends onboard, who are named in the book. This is Jessie's story of what happened leading up to the tragic sailing, her experience onboard, enduring the horrific sinking, and what happened after the Titanic. The reader will come to understand how black water plays a role in tragedies for Jessie's life, how new beginnings bring happiness, and the impact of her getting into Lifeboat #9.

Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley was never truly understood . . . until now. Before her death in 2023, she'd been working on a raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir for years, recording countless hours of breathtakingly vulnerable tape, which has finally been put on the page by her daughter, Riley Keough.

Help your little one dream big with a Little Golden Book biography about comedian, actor, and filmmaker Mel Brooks. Little Golden Book biographies are the perfect introduction to nonfiction for young readers--as well as fans of all ages!

This Little Golden Book about Mel Brooks--legendary EGOT funnyman and director of classics such as Young Frankenstein and The Producers--is an inspiring read-aloud for young children and their parents and grandparents who are fans.

Look for more Little Golden Book biographies:
- Betty White
- Carol Burnett
- Lucille Ball
- Harry Belafonte
- Julie Andrews
- Dwayne Johnson

Written by soccer legend Pelé, this heart-warming story celebrates what he loves most about the game. This easy-to-read story also includes biographical information about Pelé's childhood and sports career.

What does the world's greatest soccer player love about soccer? The same things that you do! Speed, teamwork, dribbling, passing, taking your best shot--and making a G-O-O-A-A-A-L!

Award-winning artist Frank Morrison sets up the play by weaving together two dynamic visual stories: Pelé's inspiring rise to fame and a young athlete's efforts to follow in his hero's speedy footsteps. Together, words and pictures deliver all the fun and excitement of a closely matched game. World Cup fans, come play!

This Level 2 reader encourages developing readers to sound out loud and includes more complex stories with simple vocabulary.

A Spanish edition, Por amor al fútbol. La historia de Pelé, is also available.

'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.'
In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is also implicitly to educate and warn those in his own day who wielded power. In prose that is rich, elegant and sprinkled with learned references, he explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. While drawing chiefly on historical sources, he brings to biography a natural story-teller's ear for a good anecdote. Throughout the ages Plutarch's Lives have been valued for their historical value and their charm. This new translation will introduce new generations to his urbane erudition. The most comprehensive selection available, it is accompanied by a lucid introduction, explanatory notes, bibliographies, maps and indexes.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"An elegiac yet exuberant new memoir" (The New York Times Book Review)--Bill Walton's New York Times bestselling memoir about his recovery from debilitating physical injury and how lessons from John Wooden at UCLA (and the music of the Grateful Dead) have inspired his darkest hours.In February 2008, Bill Walton suffered a spinal collapse so devastating he was unable to get up. It was the culmination of a lifetime of injury. Although Walton had played fourteen seasons in the NBA, he actually missed more games than he played during those years due to injury. From the time of his spinal collapse until his eventual recovery, he spent most of three years flat on the ground. The pain was excruciating, and he thought seriously about killing himself. But he survived, and Back from the Dead is the story of his injury and recovery, set in the context of his amazing athletic career. Walton grew up in southern California in the 1950s and was deeply influenced by the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s. Although Walton identified strongly with the counterculture, especially in music, the greatest influence on him outside his family was Coach John Wooden, a thoughtful, precise mentor who seemed immune to the turmoil of the times. The two men would speak every day for forty-three years until Wooden's death at age ninety-nine. John Wooden once said that no greatness ever came without sacrifice. In this "frequently stirring memoir...Walton's love for life and the people and things in it--including his college coach, John Wooden--is infectious. You can't stop reading, or rooting for the man" (Publishers Weekly). Back from the Dead shares his dramatic story, including his basketball and broadcasting careers, his many setbacks and rebounds, and his ultimate triumph as the toughest of champions. "[Walton] scores another basket--a deeply personal one." (Kirkus Reviews)

The now-classic tale of a sixteenth-century miller facing the Roman Inquisition.

The Cheese and the Worms is an incisive study of popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, the miller known as Menocchio, who was accused of heresy during the Inquisition and sentenced to death. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records to illustrate the religious and social conflicts of the society Menocchio lived in.

For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed--just as cheese is made out of milk--and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels."

Ginzburg's influential book has been widely regarded as an early example of the analytic, case-oriented approach known as microhistory. In a thoughtful new preface, Ginzburg offers his own corollary to Menocchio's story as he considers the discrepancy between the intentions of the writer and what gets written. The Italian miller's story and Ginzburg's work continue to resonate with modern readers because they focus on how oral and written culture are inextricably linked. Menocchio's 500-year-old challenge to authority remains evocative and vital today.

Dragon Bones is a picture book biography of fossil-hunter Mary Anning, who discovered a dinosaur skeleton that changed the landscape of paleontology.

At home in her seaside town in England, little Mary Anning stared out her window. Unlike other children, Mary couldn't wait for a rainy day. Because when it rained... the bones were revealed.

With her father and brother, Mary would go out searching the damp soil after a storm, with the hopes of finding something nobody had seen before: a dinosaur.

After her father dies, Mary must continue her search, picking up his tools and venturing out alone. In her life, she discovered several creatures, but was never given credit...until recently.

This eye-opening biography of the legendary Mary Anning, illustrated by Maris Wicks, shatters expectations and brings together two creators who are as passionate about their subject as they are about their art. Inspiring, this true adventure begs for re-reads.

When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects--in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus--enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.

Millions of people with addictions have pursued their recovery journeys through Alcoholics Anonymous' twelve-step program. However, many people with addictions also suffer from mental health disorders, which more traditional twelve-step workbooks do not address. Similarly, the healthcare system has generally failed to implement addiction-mental health integrated treatments. Since 1996, Dual Diagnosis Anonymous has addressed this crucial healthcare need via personal, community, and political advocacy for those persons that are dually diagnosed and their families.

A culmination of decades' worth of ideas and advice, Dual Diagnosis Anonymous: A Journey Through the Twelve Steps Plus Five is a strategic workbook that offers hope for achieving recovery from the dual diagnosis of addiction and mental illness.

Real-life accounts of the world's most notorious pirates--both men and women, from the Golden Age of Piracy and beyond--compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of A True Account: Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself

A Penguin Classic

Spanning three centuries and eight thousand nautical miles, and compiled by a direct descendant of a sailor who waged war with pirates in the early nineteenth century, The Penguin Book of Pirates takes us behind the eye patches, the peg legs, and the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger and into the no-man's-land of piracy that is rife with paradoxes and plot twists. Here, in a fascinating array of accounts that include trial transcripts, journalism, ship logs, and more, are the grit and patois of real maritime marauders like the infamous Blackbeard; the pirates who inspired Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Stede Bonnet in Max's Our Flag Means Death, and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride; the astoundingly egalitarian multi-ethnic and multilingual crews that became enmeshed in historical horrors like the slave trade; and lesser-known but no less formidable women pirates, many of whom disguised themselves as men. By turns brutal, harrowing, and inspiring, these accounts of the "radically free" sailors who were citizens more of the oceangoing world than of any nation on land remind us of the glories and dangers of the open seas and the seductive appeal of communities forged in resistance.

An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father's new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country--from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream.

"What a joy it is to read Malaka Gharib's It Won't Always Be Like This, to have your heart expertly broken and put back together within the space of a few panels, to have your wonder in the world restored by her electric mind."--Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot

It's hard enough to figure out boys, beauty, and being cool when you're young, but even harder when you're in a country where you don't understand the language, culture, or social norms.

Nine-year-old Malaka Gharib arrives in Egypt for her annual summer vacation abroad and assumes it'll be just like every other vacation she's spent at her dad's place in Cairo. But her father shares news that changes everything: He has remarried. Over the next fifteen years, as she visits her father's growing family summer after summer, Malaka must reevaluate her place in his life. All that on top of maintaining her coolness!

Malaka doesn't feel like she fits in when she visits her dad--she sticks out in Egypt and doesn't look anything like her fair-haired half siblings. But she adapts. She learns that Nirvana isn't as cool as Nancy Ajram, that there's nothing better than a Fanta and a melon-mint hookah, and that her new stepmother, Hala, isn't so different from Malaka herself.

It Won't Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib's childhood memories--each summer a fleeting moment in time--and a powerful reflection on identity, relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides.

Warren Buffett is one of the most successful and followed investors in the world. Besides being the richest, he is one of the most known people for donating personal wealth. Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska of distant French Huguenot descent. Buffett displayed an interest in business and investing at a young age. While still in high school, he made money deliveringnewspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and detailing cars, among other means. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway. In 2008, Buffett became the richest person in the world, with a total net worth of estimated at $ 62 billion by Forbes and $ 58 billion by Yahoo, overtaking Bill Gates, who had been number one on Forbes' list for 13 consecutive years. Despite being a wealthy man on earth, he has set various standards of simple living. Even though he is recognized as the world's third richest man with a fortune of $ 46 billion, investor Warren Buffett, the 'Wizard of Omaha', still lives in the same modest home he bought in 1958 for $31,500 only.

Here is an entertaining collection of famed conservationist John Muir's most exciting adventures in nature, representing some of his finest writing. From the famous avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent weathering a windstorm at the top of a tree to death-defying falls on Alaskan glaciers, the renowned outdoorsman's exploits are related in passages that are by turns exhilarating, unnerving, dizzying, and outrageous.