Biography

When Eve Babitz died in 2021, her crumbling Hollywood apartment concealed a remarkable discovery: a stack of sealed boxes untouched for decades. Inside was a lost world—letters, artifacts, and intimate fragments of a dazzling, turbulent era that once pulsed through 7406 Franklin Avenue. That...

An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson. Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher, or a colleague—someone older, patient, and wise who saw you for who you were when you were young and searching. Someone who helped you view the world...

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene,...

In The White Album, Joan Didion turns her razor-sharp gaze on the fractured psyche of 1960s America, capturing a country in the throes of upheaval and uncertainty. First published in 1979, this landmark collection of essays blends personal narrative with cultural critique, tracing the...

A reflective and poetic essay in which Patti Smith blends memory, spirituality, and the creative process into a meditation on artistic devotion. Drawing on her deep admiration for writers such as Arthur Rimbaud, she explores the power of literature and its ability to transform...

Tara Westover grew up in the remote mountains of Idaho, the daughter of survivalists who shunned mainstream society. She was 17 the first time she entered a classroom. With no formal education and no one to protect her from a violent older brother, her...

In 2010, more than 750,000 people queued at Marina Abramović’s landmark MoMA retrospective, waiting for the chance to sit silently across from her in The Artist Is Present—an unprecedented durational performance that unfolded over 700 hours. This historic event, celebrating nearly five decades of...

In M Train, Patti Smith invites readers into her daily ritual at a quiet Greenwich Village café, where black coffee fuels reflections that drift between memory, dream, and reality. From this intimate starting point, her journey unfolds across a vivid landscape—visiting Casa Azul, the...

The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism. Unable to speak aloud, Naoki used an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct his thoughts, letter by letter. The result is a book that answers the questions so many have wanted to ask but never knew...

My Life with Asperger's. From an early age, John Robison struggled to connect with the world around him. As a teenager, his unusual behaviors earned him a reputation as a social misfit. It wasn’t until he was forty that Robison received a life-changing diagnosis:...

My Father Bleeds History. A landmark work of graphic literature, Maus transforms the history of the Holocaust into something intimate, immediate, and profoundly human. Using striking allegory—Jews portrayed as mice, Nazis as cats, Art Spiegelman chronicles his father’s survival through the unimaginable brutality of...

For several months, Joan Didion recorded conversations with her psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was...

A landmark memoir of mental illness, identity, and recovery, now published in a special 30th anniversary edition with a new introduction by the author. In Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen recounts her experiences as a young woman in the psychiatric ward of McLean Hospital, a...

I'm Glad My Mom Died is Jennette McCurdy's bestselling memoir, offering a candid, heartbreaking, and darkly humorous account of her life as a child actor and the complex relationship she shared with her mother. Pushed into the entertainment industry at a young age, McCurdy...

How Something Comes from Nothing. What makes a work of art truly extraordinary? In What Is the Work of Art?, Adam Moss takes readers on a guided tour inside the minds of creators, tracing the evolution of remarkable novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and...

From one of America’s most powerful writers comes a work of profound honesty about grief, memory, and the passage of time. In Blue Nights, Joan Didion reflects on the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, exploring the fears, doubts, and questions that accompany...

My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition). First published in 1995, this groundbreaking book presents an unprecedented perspective: Temple Grandin writes as both a scientist and a person with autism, offering an insider’s view of a world rarely understood from within. In her vivid and...

In less than a decade, Jean-Michel Basquiat rose from tagging walls in New York City to commanding the spotlight of the global art world. Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art traces his electrifying journey through the turbulent, glamorized 1980s—a time of artistic revolution, celebrity...

An extraordinary journey into the inner world of artist and musician Nick Cave. Formed from over forty hours of candid conversations with journalist Sean O’Hagan, this book is less a traditional biography and more a profound meditation on a life lived through creativity, loss...

In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto...

Sixteenth-century Europe saw an explosion of female rule. From Isabella of Castile, and her granddaughter Mary Tudor, to Catherine de Medici, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth Tudor, these women wielded enormous power over their territories, shaping the course of European history for over a century....

When Virginia Woolf met Vita Sackville-West in 1922, the acclaimed novelist and the charismatic aristocrat formed a connection that would evolve into one of the most celebrated literary relationships of the twentieth century. What began with curiosity and attraction grew into nearly two decades...

And Here My Troubles Began Widely regarded as one of the most important graphic novels ever created, Maus is a devastating and deeply personal account of survival, memory, and inherited trauma. Through stark, unforgettable imagery—Jews rendered as mice, Nazis as predatory cats—Art Spiegelman recounts...

The mind behind iconic songs like "Suzanne", "Bird on a Wire", and "Hallelujah" stands as one of the most influential songwriters of his era—an artist deeply engaged with questions of spirituality, love, power, and meaning. Long before his music career took off, Cohen had already...

In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux returns to a defining moment in her past. Fifty years earlier, during the summer of 1958, the eighteen-year-old Ernaux found herself overwhelmed by another person’s will and desire. She surrendered to a man who soon abandoned her, leaving...

In 1963, twenty-three-year-old Annie Ernaux discovers she is pregnant. Unmarried and alone, she is overwhelmed by shame and fear. In a society where such a pregnancy would mark both her and her family with social disgrace, she knows she cannot keep the child. Written...

Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the...

The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright is often remembered as a towering egotist who valued little beyond his own genius. Less visible is the man who understood—and suffered for—the choices he made. In this masterful biography, Paul Hendrickson reveals...

40 Songs, One Story. As one of the most iconic figures in music, and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono has been written about for decades. But in Surrender, he finally tells his own story. In his unmistakable voice, Bono takes...

ctor and dancer Alyson Stoner offers a raw and unflinching memoir—spanning family violence, betrayal, eating disorders, and religious trauma. Though their story begins in Hollywood, its haunting relatability speaks to anyone navigating identity, privacy, and mental health in a digital age. Raised on sets...

How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life. An editor and writer's vivaciously entertaining, and often moving, chronicle of his year-long adventure with fifty two books—a true story about reading that reminds us why we should all make time in our...

In her acclaimed first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast turns her sharp wit and unmistakable style to one of life’s most difficult subjects: aging parents. Told through a blend of four-color cartoons, family photographs, documents, and a candid, often laugh-out-loud narrative, Chast’s memoir...

A Tyranny of Truth. Hannah Arendt—one of the twentieth century’s most profound political thinkers—remains a figure both celebrated and misunderstood. Best known for her seminal 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt offered a fierce defense of openness, freedom, and critical thought in political...

How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up With the Universe. From 1911 to 1912, the city of Prague played host to two of the 20th century’s most enigmatic minds: Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka. Though they moved in different circles, the...

An extraordinary journey into the inner world of artist and musician Nick Cave. Formed from over forty hours of candid conversations with journalist Sean O’Hagan, this book is less a traditional biography and more a profound meditation on a life lived through creativity, loss...

At the turn of the 20th century, a young Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris—drawn by the brilliance of Auguste Rodin and unsettled by the city’s contradictions. Over the years, Paris became both muse and mirror for Rilke, inspiring reflections on art, beauty, poverty,...

A lyrical and intimate memoir recounting the passionate and tumultuous relationship between Suzanne Mallouk and the renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Set against the vibrant backdrop of 1980s New York City, the narrative delves into Suzanne's life as a young Canadian runaway who becomes Basquiat's...

In this profound memoir, Yiyun Li confronts the unimaginable grief of losing both of her teenage sons, Vincent and James, to suicide. Vincent died in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Li refrains from labeling her experience as "grieving,"...

Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest A groundbreaking blend of science, memoir and nature writing, Finding the Mother Tree reveals the hidden, interconnected world of forests—and the woman who uncovered their secrets. Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard transformed how we understand trees. Her pioneering research...

 A poignant memoir by journalist Rachel Louise Snyder, acclaimed for her work on domestic violence. In this deeply personal narrative, Snyder recounts her tumultuous journey from a childhood marked by loss and religious extremism to her evolution as a reporter confronting global injustices. At...

The second volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Seasonal Quartet, the acclaimed Norwegian author continues his intimate project of writing to his unborn daughter, offering her glimpses of the world she is about to enter. 2 December - It is strange that you exist, but...

Written as a letter to his unborn daughter, Karl Ove Knausgaard sets out to introduce her to the world she will soon enter—not through grand declarations, but through the small, often overlooked details that make up a life. Each short essay, written daily, captures...

In this deeply personal and inspiring memoir, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares the story of her extraordinary journey—from growing up on the South Side of Chicago to becoming a lawyer, a mother, and a historic figure in American life. With honesty, warmth, and...

From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. After the sudden death of her mother, the collapse of her family and the unraveling of her marriage, she found herself in a deep emotional spiral....

Genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which...

Acclaimed author Rachel Cusk offers a raw account of life after the collapse of her ten-year marriage. Set in the aftermath of personal upheaval, the memoir follows Cusk as she navigates the complex process of rebuilding her identity—not just as a writer or woman,...

Flora Sandes, the only Western woman to officially serve as a soldier in World War I, became a national heroine when she fought alongside the Serbian Army and rose through its ranks. This compelling biography traces her remarkable journey—from her spirited almost tomboyish childhood...

On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons....

In her first work of memoir, Arundhati Roy, the acclaimed author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, turns inward to tell the deeply personal story of her relationship with her mother, Mary Roy—a fierce, unconventional, and formidable woman whose...

For decades, Amy Griffin ran—from the dirt roads of Amarillo to the University of Virginia, New York City, motherhood, marriage, and a successful career. To the outside world, her life looked perfect. But she was unknowingly running from a buried childhood trauma. When her...