Collection: Biography & Memoir

Krys Malcolm Belc's visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood--conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson--eventually clarified his gender identity.

Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as "the natural mother of the child."

By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of "motherhood" don't fully align with Belc's own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir in essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one's life--childhood photos, birth certificates--and addresses his deep ambivalence about the "before" and "after" so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience.

The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

"It's really quite good." - Elon Musk

Twelve Against the Gods was an instant bestseller when it first published in 1929. In his trademark journalist style, author William Bolitho details the lives of twelve great adventurers--Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, Lola Montez, Cagliostro (and Seraphina), Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I, Lucius Sergius Catiline, Napoleon III, Isadora Duncan, and Woodrow Wilson. Bolitho shines light on both the struggles and successes that made these figures so iconic, and demonstrates how they all battled convention and conformity to achieve enduring fame and notoriety.

"We are born adventurers," Bolitho writes, "and the love of adventures never leaves us till we are very old; old, timid men, in whose interest it is that adventure should quite die out. This is why all the poets are on one side, and all the laws on the other; for laws are made by, and usually for, old men." Though his essays are nearly one hundred years old, they encompass the timeless values of perseverance, bravery, and strength of spirit that have proven to resonate with the pioneers and thought leaders of today.

Popular travel YouTuber and content creator Drew Binsky, who has visited every single country, walks readers through the most amazing places in the world and shares everything you need to know to go anywhere you want.

In 2021, Drew Binsky completed his 10-year journey to travel to every country in the world--all 197 of them. Now, for the first time, Drew reveals his craziest stories and best moments, even from places the UN deems the most "dangerous" like Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

As you'll discover with Drew as your guide, the world is more accessible than you think--and no matter where we're from, people around the globe have more in common with us than differences.

Just Go offers readers the adventure of a lifetime, presenting not only the tricks Drew himself used in his trips, but also the best-kept secrets from every corner of the world. Just Go is equally a practical handbook for globetrotters and aspiring travelers as it is an intimate and heartwarming celebration of people and cultures all over.

In this fun and friendly guide, Drew will show you how to:

• Obtain visas for obscure destinations
• Make fast friends with trustworthy locals
• Find and enjoy street food like a pro
• Navigate language barriers
• Have the greatest adventure of your life

As one of the few people who traveled the globe in 2020, Drew witnessed and recorded the pandemic response in countries everywhere--and realized how crucial it is for the world to reconnect. In Just Go, filled with photos, stories, and tips Drew has never before shared, you'll find the toolkit and the inspiration to do just that: get out there and go wherever you want!

An inspiring book for young adult readers that Kirkus Reviews says offers "many inspiring, resilient role models along with encouraging advice to take away."

A fascinating group of women from all walks of life share their inspirations, advice, and what they wish they'd known when they were younger.

If you could go back and share words of wisdom with your younger self, what would you want to say? Thirty-five barrier-breaking women answer that question in the empowering new young adult anthology Dear Younger Me: What 35 Trailblazing Women Wish They'd Known as Girls. Emmy Award-winning journalist Elisa Boxer delivers in-depth profiles of these inspirational women, detailing their struggles and achievements and featuring a personal message from each woman written just for this book. The women include activists, entrepreneurs, a Holocaust survivor, WWII code breaker, author, educator, musician, athlete, politicians, scientists, and more.

Featuring well-known trailblazers such as Nancy Pelosi, Gabby Giffords, and Sheryl Sandberg alongside lesser-known yet equally important women from all walks of life, Dear Younger Me will inspire readers of all ages to tap into their courage, find their voice, embrace failure as an opportunity to grow, stand up for what they believe in, and be the best version of themselves.

Learn all about the US presidents with this fun and colorful board book perfect for leaders-in-training!

Leading our country.
Helping you and me.
Keeping all fifty states
safe, happy, and free.
Little presidents have a great big job.

Now even the youngest patriots can learn about America's presidential history with this bright and playful board book. Highlighting ten of the most memorable presidents--and featuring the first forty-four on the last page--parents and presidents-in-training alike will love sharing this fun primer full of age-appropriate facts, leadership skills, and White House history.

Scared, abused and taken to the limit of a person's capacity to endure tragedy, Elizabeth "Liz" Huntley reveals the perils of a childhood that would lead most to a broken life or premature death. Liz, now a successful attorney at a prestigious southern law firm, recounts her journey from unimaginable darkness to radiance thanks to the early intervention of teachers, a pastor and caring people, strategically placed in her life by God. Decidedly unembellished, inherently poignant, More Than a Bird gives a glimpse of horror yet leaves only hope. Through her life story, Liz proves that on the wings of God, there is no height she cannot reach.

Share in the joyful, adventure-filled shenanigans of a child growing up in a small mud hut in Inner Mongolia in this charming, illustrated memoir for young middle grade readers.

Growing up in Inner Mongolia, Jin Wang was rambunctious and boisterous and did not always listen to her Ma. Jin and her family were poor, but like kids everywhere, she still found a way to have fun and get into lots of mischief climbing trees, digging for mushrooms, and even looking for wolves.

Paired with delightful, kid-friendly illustrations, this early middle grade memoir invites readers to join Jin and her family in the outskirts of Inner Mongolia to remind us that though we all have different customs and traditions, we are more alike than not, and that mischief lives within all of us.

From the National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand

Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero--the woman who, despite being barely five feet tall, illiterate, and suffering from a brain injury, managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some 750 people. You could almost say she's America's Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood.

Tiya Miles's extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman's life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes the more palpable the more we understand it--a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

This Spanish language edition of Yuyi Morales's Pura Belpré Award winner and New York Times Bestseller Dreamers is now available in paperback!

Caldecott Honor artist and six-time Pura Belpré winner Yuyi Morales's gorgeous book Dreamers, and its Spanish language version Soñadores, are about making a home in a new place. Yuyi and her son Kelly's passage was not easy, and Yuyi did not speak any English at the time. But together, they found an unexpected, unbelievable place: the public library. There, book by book, they untangled the language of this strange new land, and learned to make their home within it.
Soñadores is a celebration of what migrants bring with them when they leave their homes. It's a story about family. And it's a story to remind us that we are all dreamers, bringing our own gifts wherever we roam. Beautiful and powerful at any time but given particular urgency as the status of our own Dreamers becomes uncertain, this is a story that is both topical and timeless.
The lyrical text is followed by a brief autobiographical essay about Yuyi's own experience, a list of books that inspired her (and still do), and a description of the beautiful images, textures, and mementos she used to create this book. It has been translated by the acclaimed Teresa Mlawer.
Dreamers was listed on Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018, School Library Journal's Best Books of 2018, Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2018 and the Amazon Best Books of 2018. It won a Eureka! Nonfiction Children's Book Award Honor, 2018, was a Kirkus Prize finalist, 2018, and was included on the Horn Book Fanfare list 2018.
Dreamers has been awarded the 2019 Pura Belpre Award for illustration, The Flora Stieglitz Strauss Award from Bank Street College, and the Tomás Rivera award.
This exquisite book is now available in paperback!

Called the "Great Pathfinder", Daniel Boone is most famous for opening up the West to settlers through Kentucky. A symbol of America's pioneering spirit Boone was a skilled outdoorsman and an avid reader although he never attended school. Sydelle Kramer skillfully recounts Boone's many adventures such as the day he rescued his own daughter from kidnappers.

A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (★★★★)

"Little and Often is a beautiful memoir of grief, love, the shattered bond between a father and son, and the resurrection of a broken heart. Trent Preszler tells his story with the same level of art and craftsmanship that he brings to his boat making, and he reminds us of creativity's power to transform and heal our lives. This is a powerful and deeply moving book. I won't soon forget it." --Elizabeth Gilbert

Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive.

Preszler's only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler. He did not work with his hands--but maybe that was the point. In his grief, he wondered if there was still a way to understand his father, and with that came an epiphany: he would make something with his inheritance. Having no experience or training in woodcraft, driven only by blind will, he decided to build a wooden canoe, and he would aim to paddle it on the first anniversary of his father's death.

While Preszler taught himself how to use his father's tools, he confronted unexpected revelations about his father's secret history and his own struggle for self-respect. The grueling challenges of boatbuilding tested his limits, but the canoe became his sole consolation. Gradually, Preszler learned what working with his hands offered: a different per-spective on life, and the means to change it.

Little and Often is an unflinching account of bereavement and a stirring reflection on the complexities of inheritance. Between his past and his present, and between America's heartland and its coasts, Preszler shows how one can achieve reconciliation through the healing power of creativity.

"Insightful, lyrical...Little and Often proves to be a rich tale of self-discovery and reconciliation. Resonating with Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it is a profound father-and-son odyssey that discovers the importance of the beauty of imperfection and small triumphs that make extraordinary happen." --USA Today (★★★★)

The pivotal true story of the first fifty-three days of the standoff between Imperial Japanese and a handful of Marine aviators defending the Americans dug in at Guadalcanal, from the New York Times bestselling author of Indestructible and Race of Aces.

On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered in the 20th century, which prompted the abandonment of the Marines on Guadalcanal.

The Marines dug in, and waited for help, as those thirty-one pilots and twelve gunners flew against the Japanese, shooting down eighty-three planes in less than two months, while the dive bombers, carried out over thirty attacks on the Japanese fleet. Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island follows Major John L. Smith, a magnetic leader who became America's top fighter ace for the time; Captain Marion Carl, the Marine Corps' first ace, and one of the few survivors of his squadron at the Battle of Midway. He would be shot down and forced to make his way back to base through twenty-five miles of Japanese-held jungle. And Major Richard Mangrum, the lawyer-turned-dive-bomber commander whose inexperienced men wrought havoc on the Japanese Navy.

New York Times bestselling author John R. Bruning depicts the desperate effort to stop the Japanese long enough for America to muster reinforcements and turn the tide at Guadalcanal. Not just the story of an incredible stand on a distant jungle island, Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island also explores the consequences of victory to the men who secured it at a time when America had been at war for less than a year and its public had yet to fully understand what that meant. The home front they returned to after their jungle ordeal was a surreal montage of football games, nightclubs, fine dining with America's elites, and inside looks at dysfunctional defense industries more interested in fleecing the government than properly equipping the military. Bruning tells the story of how one battle reshaped the Marine Corps and propelled its veterans into the highest positions of power just in time to lead the service into a new war in Southeast Asia.

When Thomas Edison began wiring New York City with a direct current electricity distribution system in the 1880s, he gave humankind the magic of electric light, heat, and power; in the process, though, he inadvertently opened a Pandora's Box of unimaginable illness and death.

Dirty Electricity tells the story of Dr. Samuel Milham, the scientist who first alerted the world about the frightening link between occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields and human disease. Milham takes readers through his early years and education, following the twisting path that led to his discovery that most of the twentieth century diseases of civilization, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and suicide, are caused by electromagnetic field exposure.

In the second edition, he explains how electrical exposure does its damage, and how electricity is causing our current epidemics of asthma, diabetes and obesity.

Dr. Milham warns that because of the recent proliferation of radio frequency radiation from cell phones and towers, terrestrial antennas, Wi-Fi and Wi-max systems, broadband internet over power lines, and personal electronic equipment, we may be facing a looming epidemic of morbidity and mortality. In Dirty Electricity, he reveals the steps we must take, personally and as a society, to coexist with this marvelous but dangerous technology.

Before becoming the critically acclaimed filmmaker responsible for such iconic films as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining, Stanley Kubrick spent five years as a photographer for Look magazine. The Bronx native joined the staff in 1945, when he was only 17 years old, and shot humanist slice-of-life features that celebrate and expose New York City and its inhabitants.Through a Different Lens reveals the keen and evocative vision of a burgeoning creative genius in a range of feature stories and images, from everyday folk at the laundromat to a day in the life of a debutant, from a trip to the circus to Columbia University. It features around 300 images, many previously unseen, as well as rare Look magazine tear sheets and an introduction by noted photography critic Lucy Sante.These still photographs attest to Kubrick's innate talent for compelling storytelling, and serve as clear indicators of how this genius would soon transition to making some of the greatest movies of all time.

This is the story of an emancipation, that of a young black and poor woman living in an America marked by segregation. This is the story of a fierce battle, that of a musician involved in the civil rights movement. This is the story of a long career, that of a pianist and singer as talented as determined. This is the story of Nina Simone, a unique artist, role model, and inspiration for generations to come. Genius pianist, fabulous singer and committed artist, Nina Simone remains an inspiration for generations.

Newly single fortysomethings Maria Bamford and Scott Cassidy each signed up on the dating site OkCupid, under the respective usernames "Hogbook" and "Lazer Eyes." They went on a date, and then another, and soon, despite a history of Bipolar II disorder and unhealthy relationships for each of them, they fell in love and were married in 2015. We view all of this through the prism of their pug housemates, including Blueberry and Bert (who has an unnatural obsession with Michael Flatley of "Riverdance" fame), and the elderly bonded pair Betty and Arnold (who recount their star turn as interplanetary canine scientists in the second season of Lady Dynamite).

Cassidy's fine art training translates with ease into graphic storytelling, with a naturalistic illustrative style that is a pitch-perfect match for Bamford's comic timing, making Hogbook and Lazer Eyes a beautifully illustrated love story, told by some incredibly charming pugs.