Collection: Biography & Memoir

Konrad Bercovici was a celebrated author and journalist and friend of many leading 20th century figures, including John Reed, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, and Paul Robeson. Mirana Comstock is a screenwriter, poet, and musician who has recorded and performed in New York and the Boston area, where she now resides. She is currently adapting one of her grandfather's books as a miniseries.

The complete last essays of acclaimed writer Peter Schjeldahl, the great New Yorker art critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Foreword by Steve Martin
Introduction by Jarrett Earnest

When the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl published his widely read autobiographical essay "The Art of Dying" in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and his oncologist had given him six months to live, but his experimental treatment was showing some improvement. "These extra months," he wrote, "are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use." And he did. The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019-2022 begins with that essay and collects all 46 pieces that he wrote for the magazine before his death in October 2022.

These last works express Schjeldahl's hard-won reflections on art and life, against the backdrop of an intensely anxious period in America, spanning the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the 2020 presidential election, and the war in Ukraine. Schjeldahl, who was the leading art writer of his generation, wrote with generosity and openness about the art world during these tempestuous three years.

Growing up in a half-white, half-brown town and family in South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest struggled with her cultural identity. Upon turning thirty, she ventured to her mother's native Mexico to do some root-searching and stumbled upon a social movement that shook the nation to its core.

Mexican Enough chronicles her adventures rumbling with luchadores (professional wrestlers), marching with rebel teachers in Oaxaca, investigating the murder of a prominent gay activist, and sneaking into a prison to meet with indigenous resistance fighters. She also visits families of the undocumented workers she befriended back home. Travel mates include a Polish thief, a Border Patrol agent, and a sultry dominatrix. Part memoir, part journalistic reportage, Mexican Enough illuminates how we cast off our identity in our youth, only to strive to find it again as adults -- and the lessons to be learned along the way.

This new and updated edition covers the full life's work of iconic director Tim Burton, including the Netflix phenomenon Wednesday and the start of development on Beetlejuice 2.

Tim Burton is one of the most popular and remarkable filmmakers of the last 30 years, being responsible for such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland. He is famed for the visually arresting style of his films combined with highly original storylines.

A truly international filmmaker, Tim Burton has carved a reputation as one of the world's greatest creative directors. This stunning treasury explores the influences on his development as a filmmaker and assesses how he has captured the fruits of his imagination on screen.

Illustrated with many behind-the-scenes photographs and stunning film stills, chapters analyze the success and style of films such as Beetlejuice, Ed Wood and Mars Attacks!, and examine how Burton breathed new life into well-known stories that include Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Dumbo.

Tim Burton: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work is a must for anyone who enjoys the creativity of films and is a fitting appreciation of one of Hollywood's most dynamic movie directors. It takes you through his films, explaining how he got to where he is and why his films are so revered.

The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People's Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss--Chairman Mao.

Zhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People's Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister. He was the architect of the country's administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster. Richard Nixon proclaimed him "the greatest statesman of our era." Yet Zhou has always been overshadowed by Chairman Mao. Chen Jian brings Zhou into the light, offering a nuanced portrait of his complex life as a revolutionary, a master diplomat, and a man with his own vision and aspirations who did much to make China, as well as the larger world, what it is today.

Born to a declining mandarin family in 1898, Zhou received a classical education and as a teenager spent time in Japan. As a young man, driven by the desire for China's development, Zhou embraced the communist revolution as a vehicle of China's salvation. He helped Mao govern through a series of transformations, including the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet, as Chen shows, Zhou was never a committed Maoist. His extraordinary political and bureaucratic skill, combined with his centrist approaches, enabled him to mitigate the enormous damage caused by Mao's radicalism.

When Zhou died in 1976, the PRC that we know of was not yet visible on the horizon; he never saw glistening twenty-first-century Shanghai or the broader emergence of Chinese capitalism. But it was Zhou's work that shaped the nation whose influence and power are today felt in every corner of the globe.

Legendary singer and Civil Rights activist Mavis Staples has teamed with an award-winning children's poet to share her rousing life story in this spectacular picture book.

At 85, Mavis Staples is still singing in front of large audiences and sharing her message of love, faith, and justice. She's been performing since age eight as part of her family's gospel group The Staple Singers, and has become one of America's most admired musicians, with multiple Grammys, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But Mavis has been more than a thrilling singer; she has also stood alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., at numerous Civil Rights protests where her voice was a rallying cry to the country. Now she and acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford bring her story and her inspiring message to young people in this poetic, illuminating book, beautifully illustrated by Steffi Walthall.

La historia de un niño pobre de Brasil que se convirtió en el mejor jugador de fútbol de todos los tiempos y uno de los atletas más importantes del siglo XX.

The story of a poor boy from Brazil who became the greatest soccer player of all time and one of the most important athletes of the twentieth century!

Tal vez sus padres lo hayan llamado Edson Arantes do Nascimento, pero para el resto del mundo, era conocido como Pelé. El delantero de fútbol sorprendió a Brasil cuando comenzó a jugar para el club de fútbol Santos a los quince años. Luego, cautivó al mundo cuando se unió al equipo nacional de fútbol de su país y los ayudó a ganar tres campeonatos de la Copa del Mundo. Aunque fue aclamado como un héroe nacional por sus logros en el fútbol, Pelé también fue una persona influyente tanto dentro como fuera del campo. Su trabajo con organizaciones como UNICEF ayudó a mejorar las condiciones de los niños en todo el mundo. Los jóvenes lectores pueden aprender más sobre el hombre que conectó el fútbol con la frase "El Juego Bonito".

His parents may have named him Edson Arantes do Nascimento, but to the rest of the world, he is known as Pelé. The now-retired professional soccer forward stunned Brazil when he began playing for the Santos soccer club at age fifteen. He then went on to captivate the world when he joined his country's national soccer team and helped them win three World Cup championships. Although he's hailed as a national hero for his accomplishments in soccer, Pelé has been an influential person both on and off the pitch. His work with organizations like UNICEF has helped improve conditions for children around the world. Young readers can learn more about the man who connected soccer with the phrase "The Beautiful Game."

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds--including Naomi Osaka!

Naomi Osaka grew up in Japan and the US, with one foot in each place. But wherever she was, she loved to play tennis--and she worked hard at it too, always practicing and improving. Many people doubted that she would make it as a professional player, but she persisted and showed the world that she is a champion. Her talent on the court and her activism for racial justice and mental health causes off it have made Naomi an inspiration to fans everywhere.

In this chapter book biography by NAACP Image Award-winning author and Coretta Scott King Honor recipient Kekla Magoon, readers learn about the amazing life of Naomi Osaka--and how she persisted.

Complete with an introduction from Chelsea Clinton, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and a list of ways that readers can follow in Naomi Osaka's footsteps and make a difference! A perfect choice for kids who love learning and teachers who want to bring inspiring women into their curriculum.

And don't miss out on the rest of the books in the She Persisted series, featuring so many more women who persisted, including Florence Griffith Joyner, Diana Taurasi, Simone Biles, and more!

A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways.

It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner's for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies, embarking on a frolicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted over 40 years. Babbs calls the 70 stories of this book "burlesques" because, after 85 years of living, much of it in the wide friendly center of an evolving, at times psychedelic culture, memory no longer can, or even should include an exact retelling, but only a tasty sprinkling of the truth, mixed with an endless enigma, all topped with the best of humor and heart.

The troupe of characters include the Kens Kesey and Babbs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Pigpen, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mountain Girl, Sonny Barger, Larry McMurtry, Wavy Gravy, Hunter S. Thompson, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Jan Kerouac, Bill Walton, Wendell Berry, a pick-up bed-sized sturgeon, and always the many free-spirited, creative, friendly men and women who made up the Merry Band of Pranksters.

Come along for the ride on the famous bus trip to Manhattan. Join the Hells Angels at their partying best. Drop in for the early Acid Tests. Experience the Berkeley Vietnam anti-war rally. Relish the stories of Kesey's pot busts and "suicide." Climb aboard--"Board!"--for six months on the lam in Mexico. Take the Further tours with the Grateful Dead. Make the ultimate move to Oregon, where Babbs and Kesey grew a magical friendship and collaboration until Kesey passed in 2001.

Irreverent, unencumbered by social norms, literary and poetic, Cronies is a poignant view of the Sixties and beyond from someone who was there, and remembers it well. Kind of...

"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."-National Public Radio

When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation.

Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton.

Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.

A National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first work of nonfiction: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her missing birth mother and, along the way, learning the priceless power of self-knowledge.

In 2020, Tracy O'Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she'd never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea.

After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O'Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done, picking up the trail of clues and becoming her own hell-bent detective. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover--the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own--was too tempting.

Written like a mystery novel, Woman of Interest is a tale of self-discovery and fugitivity from convention that features a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family. O'Neill gorgeously bends the detective genre to her own will as a writer, stepping out of the shadows of her own self-conception to illuminate the hopes of the woman of interest she is both chasing and becoming.

A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary--and often overlooked--adventurers, from Sacagawea to Matthew Henson to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny.

The archetype of the American explorer, a rugged white man, has dominated our popular culture since the late eighteenth century, when Daniel Boone's autobiography captivated readers with tales of treacherous journeys. But our commonly held ideas about American exploration do not tell the whole story--far from it.

The Explorers rediscovers a diverse group of Americans who went to the western frontier and beyond, traversing the farthest reaches of the globe and even penetrating outer space in their endeavor to find the unknown. Many escaped from lives circumscribed by racism, sexism, poverty, and discrimination as they took on great risk in unfamiliar territory. Born into slavery, James Beckwourth found freedom as a mountain man and became one of the great entrepreneurs of Gold Rush California. Matthew Henson, the son of African American sharecroppers, left rural Maryland behind to seek the North Pole. Women like Harriet Chalmers Adams ascended Peruvian mountains to gain geographic knowledge while Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride shattered glass ceilings by pushing the limits of flight.

In The Explorers, readers will travel across the vast Great Plains and into the heights of the Sierra Nevada mountains; they will traverse the frozen Arctic Ocean and descend into the jungles of South America; they will journey by canoe and horseback, train and dogsled, airplane and space shuttle. Readers will experience the exhilarating history of American exploration alongside the men and women who shared a deep drive to discover the unknown.

Across two centuries and many thousands of miles of terrain, Amanda Bellows offers an ode to our country's most intrepid adventurers--and reveals the history of America in the process.

Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp by Ann Kirschner is the definitive biography of a Jewish girl from New York who won the heart of Wyatt Earp.

For nearly fifty years, she was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp: hero of the O.K. Corral and the most famous lawman of the Old West. Yet Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp has nearly been erased from Western lore. In this fascinating biography, Ann Kirschner, author of the acclaimed Sala's Gift, brings Josephine out of the shadows of history to tell her tale: a spirited and colorful tale of ambition, adventure, self-invention, and devotion. Reflective of America itself, her story brings us from the post-Civil War years to World War II, and from New York to the Arizona Territory to old Hollywood.

In Lady at the O.K. Corral, you'll learn how this aspiring actress and dancer--a flamboyant, curvaceous Jewish girl with a persistent New York accent--landed in Tombstone, Arizona, and sustained a lifelong partnership with Wyatt Earp, a man of uncommon charisma and complex heroism.

A brilliant graphic memoir debut, this is a loving son's exploration of his tumultuous relationship with his father, told through the lens of the Vietnam War and its lasting effects long after returning home.

As a college dropout amidst the tumult of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, David Sciacchitano enlisted in the Air Force and volunteered to be sent overseas. An aircraft mechanic away from the front lines, David nevertheless experienced the chaos of war during the Tet Offensive and the 1975 evacuation. But although David returned home from the war with no physical injuries, it would be as if a part of him was forever left behind.

Set against one of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century, The Heart That Fed is a beautifully illustrated and moving story of trauma and love--told by a son seeking to understand a father forever changed by PTSD and the horrors of war.

Mitsuko "Mitzi" Asai was not yet ten years old in the spring of 1942 when President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry--about two-thirds of them US citizens--from their homes on the West Coast to inland prison camps. They included Mitzi and most of her family, who owned a fruit orchard in Hood River, Oregon. The Asais spent much of World War II in the camps while two of the older sons served in the Pacific in the US Army. Three years later, when the camps began to close, the family returned to Hood River to find an altered community. Shop owners refused to serve neighbors they had known for decades; racism and hostility were open and largely unchecked. Humiliation and shame drove teenaged Mitzi to reject her Japanese heritage, including her birth name. More than a decade later, her life took another turn when a Fulbright grant sent her to teach in Japan, where she reconnected with her roots.

In From Thorns to Blossoms, Mitzi recounts her rich and varied life, from a childhood surrounded by barbed wire and hatred to a successful career as a high school English teacher and college instructor in English as a Second Language. Today, Asai descendants continue to tend the Hood River farm while the town confronts its shameful history. Originally published in 1990 as Made in Japan and Settled in Oregon, this revised and expanded edition describes the positive influence Mitzi's immigrant parents had on their children, provides additional context for her story, and illuminates the personal side of a dark chapter in US history. It's the remarkable story of a transformation from thorns into blossoms, pain into healing.