Collection: Biography & Memoir

"A fierce, scholarly tour-de-force. . . . Hunting the Falcon brilliantly shows how time, circumstance and politics combined to accelerate Anne's triumph and tragedy." --Tina Brown, New York Times Book Review

"A sumptuous drama of lust, intrigue, and betrayal, underpinned by the harsh reality of politics."--Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

A groundbreaking, freshly-researched examination of one of the most dramatic and consequential marriages in history: Henry VIII's long courtship, short union, and brutal execution of Anne Boleyn.

Hunting the Falcon is the story of how Henry VIII's obsessive desire for Anne Boleyn changed him and his country forever. John Guy and Julia Fox, two of the most acclaimed and distinguished historians of this period, have joined forces to present Anne and Henry in startlingly new ways. By closely examining the most recent archival discoveries, and peeling back layers of historical myth and misinterpretation and distortion, Guy and Fox are able to set Anne and Henry's tragic relationship against the major international events of the time, and integrate and reinterpret sources hidden in plain sight or simply misunderstood. Among other things, they dispel lingering and latently misogynistic assumptions about Anne which anachronistically presumed that a sixteenth-century woman, even a queen, could exert little to no influence on the politics and beliefs of a patriarchal society. They reveal how, in fact, Anne was a shrewd, if ruthless, politician in her own right, a woman who steered Henry and his policies, often against the advice he received from his male advisers--and whom Henry seriously contemplated making joint sovereign.

Hunting the Falcon sets the facts-and some completely new finds-into a far wider frame, providing an appreciation of this misunderstood and underestimated woman. It explores how Anne organized her "side" of the royal court on novel and (in male eyes) subversive lines compared to her queenly predecessors, adopting instead French protocol by which the sexes mingled freely in her private chambers. Men could share in the women's often sexually charged courtly "pastimes" and had liberal access to Anne, and she to them--encounters from which she gained much of her political intelligence and extended her authority, and which also sowed the seeds of her own downfall.

An exhilarating feat of historical research and analysis, Hunting the Falcon is also a thrilling and tragic story of a marriage that has proved of enduring fascination over the centuries. But in the hands of John Guy and Julia Fox, even the most knowledgeable reader will encounter this story as if for the first time.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State--and she would do it alone.

Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

From the magical moments on set as Draco Malfoy to the challenges of growing up in the spotlight, get a backstage pass into Tom Felton's life on and off the big screen in this #1 New York Times bestseller.

Tom Felton's adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame in beloved films like The Borrowers catapulted him into the limelight, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come after he landed the iconic role of the Draco Malfoy, the bleached blonde villain of the Harry Potter movies. For the next ten years, he was at the center of a huge pop culture phenomenon and yet, in between filming, he would go back to being a normal teenager trying to fit into a normal school.

Speaking with great candor and his signature humor, Tom shares his experience growing up as part of the wizarding world while also trying to navigate the muggle world. He tells stories from his early days in the business like his first acting gig where he was mistaken for fellow blonde child actor Macaulay Culkin and his Harry Potter audition where, in a very Draco-like move, he fudged how well he knew the books the series was based on (not at all). He reflects on his experiences working with cinematic greats such as Alan Rickman, Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, and Ralph Fiennes (including that awkward Voldemort hug). And, perhaps most poignantly, he discusses the lasting relationships he made over that decade of filming, including with Emma Watson, who started out as a pesky nine-year-old whom he mocked for not knowing what a boom mic was but who soon grew into one of his dearest friends. Then, of course, there are the highs and lows of fame and navigating life after such a momentous and life-changing experience.

Tom Felton's Beyond the Wand is an entertaining, funny, and poignant must-read for any Harry Potter fan. Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) possessed one of the twentieth century's most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald's death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist.

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer's difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls' reformatory school--where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald's tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury.

Tick's compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald's complicated career in fresh and original detail, upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre's mainstream. As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop, she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz. Interpreting long-lost setlists, reviews from both white and Black newspapers, and newly released footage and recordings, the book explores how Ella's transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre.

From the singer's first performance at the Apollo Theatre's famous "Amateur Night" to the Savoy Ballroom, where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb's big band in the 1930s, Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail. She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s, as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then-husband, Ray Brown, in the world-touring Jazz at the Philharmonic, one of the first moments of high-culture acceptance for the disreputable art form.

Breaking ground as a female bandleader, Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness, deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations. Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire. This hybridity often confounded critics, yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ella reached audiences around the world, electrifying concert halls, and sold millions of records.

A masterful biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald describes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century.

In Building, a visionary carpenter shares indelible stories on building a life worth living, revealing powerful lessons about work, creativity, and design through his experience constructing some of New York's most iconic spaces.

"This book is for people who are interested in doing anything well."―Sam Sifton, The New York Times

Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award

For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you've never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named "Apartment of the Decade." His building projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.

Building: A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York's elite, before they're camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.

Blending Ellison's musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a robust life, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.

Garner gathers a literary chorus to capture the joys of reading and eating in this comic, personal classic.

Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book you're holding is a product of these combined gluttonies.

Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner's Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this book: breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.

Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father's famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family ("Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box"), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.

"A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide (Barack Obama)," this New York Times bestselling memoir is the inspiration for the Netflix limited series, hailed by Rolling Stone as "a great one." At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet.

Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent in service to upper middle class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor.

Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit.

"A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama's Summer Reading List

A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir.

"I cannot even begin to convey the clarity, the intensity, the power, the photographic storytelling of They Called Me a Lioness."--Ibram X. Kendi, internationally bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Kirkus Reviews

"What would you do if you grew up seeing your home repeatedly raided? Your parents arrested? Your mother shot? Your uncle killed? Try, for just a moment, to imagine that this was your life. How would you want the world to react?"

Ahed Tamimi is a world-renowned Palestinian activist, born and raised in the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, which became a center of the resistance to Israeli occupation when an illegal, Jewish-only settlement blocked off its community spring. Tamimi came of age participating in nonviolent demonstrations against this action and the occupation at large. Her global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at sixteen years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. The video went viral, and Tamimi was arrested.

But this is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the human-scale story of an occupation that has riveted the world and shaped global politics, from a girl who grew up in the middle of it . Tamimi's father was born in 1967, the year that Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and he grew up immersed in the resistance movement. One of Tamimi's earliest memories is visiting him in prison, poking her toddler fingers through the fence to touch his hand. She herself would spend her seventeenth birthday behind bars. Living through this greatest test and heightened attacks on her village, Tamimi felt her resolve only deepen, in tension with her attempts to live the normal life of a daughter, sibling, friend, and student.

An essential addition to an important conversation, They Called Me a Lioness shows us what is at stake in this struggle and offers a fresh vision for resistance. With their unflinching, riveting storytelling, Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri shine a light on the humanity not just in occupied Palestine but also in the unsung lives of people struggling for freedom around the world.

"Poignant and funny...a passionate book about unconditional love and commitment." --The Washington Post * "Captivating." --Associated Press * "Rich with imagery...It's impossible not to be smitten." --Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

From poet and painter Frieda Hughes, an intimate, charming, and humorous memoir recounting her experience rescuing and raising an abandoned baby magpie in the Welsh countryside.

When Frieda Hughes moved to a ramshackle estate in the wilds of Wales, she was expecting to take on a few projects: planting a garden, painting, writing her poetry column for The Times (London), and possibly even breathing new life into her ailing marriage. But instead, she found herself rescuing a baby magpie, the sole survivor of a nest destroyed in a storm--and embarking on an obsession that would change the course of her life.

As the magpie, George, grows from a shrieking scrap of feathers and bones into an intelligent, unruly companion, Frieda finds herself captivated--and apprehensive of what will happen when the time comes to finally set him free.

With irresistible humor and heart, Frieda invites us along on her unlikely journey toward joy and connection in the wake of sadness and loss; a journey that began with saving a tiny wild creature and ended with her being saved in return.

Entre los mejores libros del 2023, de acuerdo a más de una decena de medios de prensa e instituciones de Estados Unidos. Mexikid es uno de los mejores títulos del año según Booklist, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, NPR.org, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, The New York Times, entre otros

Pedro/Peter Martín es un Mexikid, o un niño que nació en Estados Unidos de padres mexicanos: un niño que no pertenece a ninguno de los dos lugares.

Así que no sabe qué pensar cuando su padre anuncia que toda la familia ( 11 personas!) se apretará dentro del Winnebago para manejar 2,000 millas hasta México con una misión: traer a su misterioso abuelito de la era de la Revolución Mexicana a vivir con ellos.

Esta divertidísima memoria gráfica es la historia de un Mexikid en busca de su grito... en el viaje más importante de su vida.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Featured on an outstanding thirteen 'Best Of 2023' lists from the US! Booklist, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, NPR.org, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, The New York Times --among others-- consider Mexikid one of the best books of 2023

A poignant, hilarious, and unforgettable graphic memoir about a Mexican-American boy's family and their adventure-filled road trip to bring their abuelito back from Mexico to live with them.

Pedro/Peter Martín has grown up hearing stories about his abuelito--his legendary crime- fighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn't mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache. Along the way, Pedro finally connects with his abuelito and learns what it means to grow up and find his grito.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - An intimate memoir of love, desire, and personal growth that follows a happily married mother as she explores sex and relationships outside her marriage - "This book about open marriage is going to blow up your group chat"--The Washington Post

Molly Roden Winter was a mother of small children with a husband, Stewart, who often worked late. One night when Stewart missed the kids' bedtime--again--she stormed out of the house to clear her head. At a bar, she met Matt, a flirtatious younger man. When Molly told her husband that Matt had asked her out, she was surprised that Stewart encouraged her to accept.

So began Molly's unexpected open marriage and, with it, a life-changing journey of self-discovery. Molly signs up for dating sites, enters into passionate flings, and has sex in hotels and public places around New York City. For Molly it's a mystery why she wants what she wants. In therapy sessions, fueled by the discovery that her parents had an open marriage, too, she grapples with her past and what it means to be a mother and a whole person.

Molly and Stewart, who also begins to see other people, set ground rules: Don't date an ex. Don't date someone in the neighborhood. Don't go to anyone's home. And above all, don't fall in love. In the years that follow, they break most of their rules, even the most important one. They grapple with jealousy, insecurity, and doubts, all the while wondering: Can they love others and stay true to their love for each other? Can they make the impossible work?

More is an electric debut that offers both steamy fun and poignant reflections on motherhood, daughterhood, marriage, and self-fulfillment. With warmth, humor, and style, Molly Roden Winter delivers an unputdownable journey of a woman becoming her most authentic self.

If you were 99 years old and on your deathbed and were given a chance to come back to today, what would you do right now?

Matt Dahlia was a recent college grad with no direction in his life: his business was dead on arrival and all his friends had left town. He was broke and searching for belonging in a world that didn't understand him. That is, until he serendipitously met Thomas, who not only felt the same way he did, but had a project in mind: Together, along with two more like-minded strangers, they were going to move into a one-bedroom apartment and film themselves doing 30 things they had never done before in 30 days.

That summer project changed their lives forever: it pushed them out of their comfort zones, bonded them for life, and allowed them to reach a wide audience online. Their journey would eventually become Yes Theory, a massive movement of millions of people living by the philosophy of seeking discomfort.

In this memoir, Matt reveals the extreme highs and lows of Yes Theory, sharing his own along the way. This is a story about the sacrifices it takes to make a dream come true, what happens when a small group of friends suddenly have the attention of millions of strangers online, and what it means to say goodbye when everything seems to be going so well.

But most of all, it's a reminder to ask yourself that most important question: what do you want out of life?

The complete screenplay of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer centers on the life of the "father of the atomic bomb." Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film stars Cillian Murphy as the man who led the effort, in the midst of a world war, to unleash the power of the atom.

Christopher Nolan has fashioned a story of discovery bathed in the light of a thousand suns - but one that is darkened by government surveillance and the travesty of a trial to which Oppenheimer was subjected.

In his introduction to the screenplay, Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus, praises Nolan's skill in taking an extremely complex life story and miraculously turning it into "visual art that is faithful both to the history and the man."

Celebrate the life of the extraordinary civil and human rights activist Coretta Scott King with this picture book adaptation of her critically acclaimed adult memoir.

This is the autobiography of Coretta Scott King--wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.; founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (the King Center); architect of the MLK, Jr. legacy; and global leader in movements for civil and human rights as well as peace. Learn about how a girl born in the segregated deep south became a global leader at the forefront of the peace movement and an unforgettable champion of social change.

Resilience, bravery, and joy lie at the center of this timeless story about fighting for justice against all odds.

Orca Monroe wants only one thing for her eighteenth birthday: to experience the Otherworld-the mysterious "mainland" across the sea that her father has forbidden her from visiting.

Growing up in a lighthouse on a remote island, Orca has lived isolated from the world... until one day when she finds a cell phone washed up on the beach. Orca has her first conversation with Jack Stevenson, a young man whose older brother, Adam, has gone missing after crashing his seaplane off the coast. Orca becomes Jack's lifeline and his reason to hope that Adam is still alive. While her father is away, she scours the island for the missing pilot-determined to help Jack find his brother and prove to her father that she's strong enough to take on the world.

One stormy night, Orca finds Adam Stevenson collapsed on her doorstep. As she nurses him back to health, she finds herself spellbound by his inquiring mind and rugged good looks. Simultaneously, Adam is captivated by her wild beauty and pure heart. But with a ten-year age gap between them-and her father's determination to keep Orca protected from outsiders-Adam knows they can never be together.

Resigned to give Orca up, Adam returns to the mainland-but Jack refuses to leave her trapped at the lighthouse. Blind to the fact that his brother is in love with her, Jack offers to show Orca the world she's always dreamed of. But when she leaves her island for the first time, Orca begins to realize that the mainland may hold more dark secrets than she ever imagined... and the two brothers she helped bring back together may be the very people she tears apart.

"Frustrated with our polarized culture? Take this incredibly fun ride through the life of modern day Renaissance man Vikram Mansharamani to appreciate a simple solution-open-minded, generalist thinking. This book is an enjoyable read that lays out a viable path to move beyond today's identity-driven, label-dominated world." -Christopher T. Sununu, Governor; State of New Hampshire

"As a modern day Indiana Jones, Vikram braves the wilds of today's uncertain world with remarkable tenacity and a devout commitment to identifying opportunities within risks. The generalist approach he models can help each of us create a better future for ourselves, our families, and quite possibly, our country." -David Tice, President, Paul Revere Films

Step into the fascinating world of Vikram Mansharamani, where the power of independent thinking takes center stage.

Vikram's remarkable journey has taken him from humble beginnings to being one of the most sought-after independent thinkers of our time in business, politics, and strategic decision-making. Filled with insights that show readers how to think and act for themselves, The Making of a Generalist reveals how Vikram learned to navigate uncertainty from a young age.

As the son of two working-class immigrants who moved to rural New Jersey, Vikram balanced demanding academics while pumping gas at his dad's garage. His parents modeled a powerful migrant mindset that shaped his worldview and taught him the importance of open-mindedness and the value of education. In school, his unbridled curiosity opened doors to an Ivy League education, a PhD from MIT, and faculty appointments at Yale and Harvard.

Nothing about Vikram's journey to the top was linear or easy. As a generalist in a world of specialists, he often watched his ideas get dismissed by experts brimming with overconfident certainty. But Vikram resisted the herd, embraced multi-dimensional thinking, and regularly spotted what experts missed.

Vikram's life shows how anyone can find unconventional success through an intentional focus on breadth over depth-the lynchpin to being an effective generalist. Written with heart-warming candor, The Making of a Generalist empowers readers to embrace challenges and view uncertainty as a gift of opportunity.