Collection: Biography & Memoir

Todd was a classic gray area drinker who looked like he had it all together on the outside: a successful attorney, a nice house, a beautiful family. But on the inside, he was tormented by his relationship with alcohol. He loved drinking and being the life of the party, yet there was so much about drinking he didn't like: the control it had on him, how it consumed his every thought, and how he felt after drinking too much.

He spent six years evaluating his relationship with alcohol and employing every moderation hack in the book. Some of them worked, but it was exhausting, and the victories were always short-lived. All the things he didn't like about drinking-they always came back.

By 2019, Todd was growing tired of fighting his internal battle. He was worn down by the constant negotiating and obsessing, and was sick of the torment, shame, and regret. Then, in the fall of that year, his wife whispered something into his ear that would change his life forever. It was the last straw in a string of countless other incidents over several years-some tiny, some big, most somewhere in between-that finally tipped the scales for good. He decided to quit drinking.

Giving up alcohol was scary and overwhelming. Even though Todd knew it was the right decision, he also thought life without alcohol would be a little dull and boring, a bit like a prison sentence for not being able to "drink like a normal person."

What he discovered, however, was that giving it up was the farthest thing from a prison sentence. On the other side of alcohol was a life of deeper connection, richer fulfillment, and unending gratitude that he didn't even know existed. He found a sense of clarity and peace that he had never felt before. He discovered a new and better way of living that so far outweighs what alcohol ever gave him. He wishes he would have done it sooner.

I Didn't Believe It Either is the raw, honest, vulnerable, and sometimes funny story of Todd's journey to quitting the one thing he thought he couldn't live without and his discovery that sobriety is better than he ever imagined.

A chronicle of the comeback performance that marked Elvis Presley's return from the screen to the stage. Includes exclusive content from the show's director, Steve Binder. The book contains a foreword by noted film director Baz Luhrmann, whose film credits include Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby, and the 2022 Warner Bros. feature film Elvis.

Take a tour behind the scenes at the NBC television special that relaunched Elvis Presley's career as a stage musician. Author Steve Binder--who directed the TV special--provides exclusive content that gives fans even more insight into the performance that many see as a high point in the King of Rock's reign of American music. Elvis '68 Comeback includes full-color photographs and detailed commentary on the show's development and production, making this an excellent addition to the shelf of every Elvis fan. Foreword by film director Baz Luhrmann.

Author Steve Binder's feature-length documentary Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback is available to stream on Paramount+.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A SELECTION ON BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST

The definitive history of the 1990s New York Knicks, illustrating how Pat Riley, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, and Anthony Mason resurrected the iconic franchise through oppressive physicality and unmatched grit.

For nearly an entire generation, the New York Knicks have been a laughingstock franchise. Since 2001, they've spent more money, lost more games, and won fewer playoff series than any other NBA team.

But during the preceding era, the Big Apple had a club it was madly in love with--one that earned respect not only by winning, but through brute force. The Knicks were always looking for fights, often at the encouragement of Pat Riley. They fought opposing players. They fought each other. Hell, they even occasionally fought their own coaches.

The NBA didn't take kindly to their fighting spirit. Within two years, league officials moved to alter several rules to stop New York from turning its basketball games into bloody mudwrestling matches. Nevertheless, as the 1990s progressed, the Knicks endeared themselves to millions of fans; not for how much they won, but for their colorful cast of characters and their hardworking mentality.

Now, through his original reporting and interviews with more than two hundred people, author Chris Herring delves into the origin, evolution, and eventual demise of the iconic club. He takes us inside the locker room, executive boardrooms, and onto the court for the key moments that lifted the club to new heights, and the ones that threatened to send everything crashing down in spectacular fashion.

Blood in the Garden is a portrait filled with eye-opening details that have never been shared before, revealing the full story of the franchise in the midst of the NBA's golden era. And rest assured, no punches will be pulled. Which is just how those rough-and-tumble Knicks would like it.

One of the central firsthand accounts of slavery in America

A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as a slave in North Carolina and of her final escape and emancipation, Harriet Jacobs's classic narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published pseduonymously in 1861, tells firsthand of the horrors inflicted on slaves. In writing this extraordinary memoir, which culminates in the seven years she spent hiding in a crawl space in her grandmother's attic, Jacobs skillfully used the literary genres of her time, presenting a thoroughly feminist narrative that portrays the evils and traumas of slavery, particularly for women and children.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

When you delete your adjectives, who are you?

Most people limit themselves to their labels. They embrace barriers based on the box that society puts them in. But your adjectives aren't your destiny.

In Delete the Adjective: A Soldier's Adventures in Ranger School, Lisa Jaster proves your merit should always trump your labels. Lisa didn't confine herself to the adjectives of "middle-aged" or "female." Instead, she became one of the first three women to graduate from the United States Army Ranger program. For those six months in the program, her adjectives didn't matter. What mattered was that she slept on the same forest ground as her peers (typically twenty-three-year-old men on active duty). She ran the same mock missions and battle drills. She demonstrated the fortitude of a Ranger.



Delete the Adjective relives Lisa's experiences, written in the field notebook every student in Ranger School carries. Throughout the Ranger course, Lisa proved that mettle breaks down any barriers society might place on you.

For readers of Late Migrations and H is for Hawk

A stunning meditation on gardening and the wisdom of plants, " that rare book that will appeal to nonfiction readers everywhere. . . Candid, tender, thoughtful and absorbing."--Shelf Awareness (STARRED Review)

"With chapters. . . [that] shimmer like lantern slides, lit with luminous imagery. . . Seed to Dust is an invitation to read this world as Mr. Hamer does--with a close eye to what changes, and what does not."--The Wall Street Journal

Marc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It's rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of its secrets. But it's not his garden. It belongs to his wealthy and elegant employer, Miss Cashmere. But the garden does not really belong to her, either. As Hamer writes, "Like a book, a garden belongs to everyone who sees it."

In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that "belongs to everyone." He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he's in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and--now--feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.

As the seasons change, Hamer also reflects on the changes he has observed in Miss Cashmere's life from afar: the death of her husband and the departure of her children from the stately home where she now lives alone. At the book's end, Hamer's connection to Miss Cashmere changes shape, and new insights into relationships and the beauty and brutality of nature emerge.

Just like all good books and gardens, Seed to Dust is filled with equal parts life and death, beauty and decay, and every reader will find something different to admire.

In this enchanting miscellany, Galchen notes that literature has more dogs than babies (and also more abortions), that the tally of children for many great women writers--Jane Bowles, Elizabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Willa Cather, Patricia Highsmith, Iris Murdoch, Djuna Barnes, Mavis Gallant--is zero, that orange is the new baby pink, that The Tale of Genji has no plot but plenty of drama about paternity, that babies exude an intoxicating black magic, and that a baby is a goldmine.

How do you pick baseball's GOATs? Is Sandy Koufax the greatest pitcher to take the mound? Is Ted Williams the greatest pure hitter the game has seen? It comes down to stats, history, and hunches. Read more about some of the legends of baseball and see if you agree that they're the greatest of all time.

A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Named a best book of the year by The Economist Financial Times New Statesman The Telegraph

"[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." --Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic

"This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." --Peter Frankopan, Financial Times

Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin's Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?

In Putin's People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin's Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia's economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB's revanche--a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad.

Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn's Brighton Beach--and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match--Putin's People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

Unicorns--companies that reach a valuation of more than $1 billion--are rare. Uri Levine has built two.

And in Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, he shows you just how he did it.

As the cofounder of Waze--the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date, and which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion--Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly valued companies.

Levine offers an inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike. He offers tips on: