By: Barack Obama
Includes the senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention! In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a...
By: Frank McCourt
The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Angela's Ashes describes his coming of age as a teacher, storyteller, and writer, a personal journey during which he spent fifteen years finding his voice in the classroom...
By: Frank McCourt
Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood,' writes Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes. 'Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.' Welcome, then, to the pinnacle of the miserable Irish Catholic childhood....
By: Eric Clapton
“I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way.”With striking...
By: Anthony Swofford
A memoir of the Gulf War by a front-line infantry Marine recounts his struggles with the conflict on the front lines, his girlfriend's infidelity, his battles with fear and suicide, his brushes with death, and his identity as a soldier and an...
By: Duke Annie
A top-ranked woman poker player presents an insider's view of the World Series of Poker, in a personal account that describes her academic achievements, impulsive entry into the world of gambling, and insights into strategic tournament play.
By: George Crile
This investigative report on the secret CIA operations during the 1980s Russia-Afghanistan war tells of the billion-dollar-a-year effort to arm, supply, and train the Afghan resistance, and to maintain relations in the region--all centered on an...
By: Wen Ho Lee
Wen Ho Lee, a patriotic American scientist born in Taiwan, had devoted almost his entire life to science and to helping improve U.S. defense capabilities. He loved his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory and spent his leisure time fishing, cooking,...
By: CLAY AIKEN
Clay Aiken's interest in music began early with the usual round of local amateur productions in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. However, second place in the final of the popular TV talent show AMERICAN IDOL, together with his fresh-faced...
By: Gordon S. Wood
A leading historian of the American Revolution offers an incisive portrait of the complex, often contradictory figure of Benjamin Franklin, a man who was at once the quintessential American and a cosmolitan lover of Europe, a one-time loyalist turned...
By: Stephen Kirkpatrick
Lost is a resonant title for this direct, intense, true adventure story. Stephen Kirkpatrick is lost in his attempt to maintain closeness and trust in his post-divorce relationship with his three sons. Lost as an ex-husband in the painful aftermath...
By: Augusten Burroughs
When his dysfunctional family sent Augusten Burroughs away to be raised in the home of his mother’s therapist, he became part of an even more dysfunctional and unusual family dynamic. In this bestseller, which has become a classic of the...
By: Terry Gross
Exhilarating, thought-provoking interviews from the Peabody Award-winning public radio show. 'Fresh Air with Terry Gross,' the award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Each...
By: Kate Braestrup
When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was ten years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a...
By: James Herriot
In this very special collection of favorite stories about dogs great and small, James Herriot tells us about his own dogs and all the wonderful people and animals we have come to love so much. Fifty memorable tales move us to both laughter and tears,...
By: The Countess of Carnarvon
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes's Emmy Award–winning PBS show, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants: Lady Almina, the fifth...
By: Christopher Kennedy Lawford
Born into enormous privilege as well as burdened by gut-wrenching family tragedy, Christopher Kennedy Lawford now shares his life story, offering a rare glimpse into the private worlds of both Washington politics and the Hollywood elite. ...
By: SEAN ASTIN
[A] brutally frank, hard-hitting portrait of the film business....Astin comes across as a complex personality--courageous, impulsive, loving, abrasive--and these contradictory qualities make him an arresting centerpiece for a Hollywood story.
By: Rob Sheffield
Rock critic Rob Sheffield, an editor at Rolling Stone, uses 15 mix tapes to help structure his lively, funny, and surprisingly touching ode to the 1990s, rock music, and his punk-rock wife who died suddenly five years into their marriage.
By: Ed and Lois Smart
At 3:58 in the morning of June 5, 2002, Ed and Lois Smart awoke to the sound of their nine-year-old daughter Mary Katherine's frightened voice. 'She's gone. Elizabeth is gone.' At first they thought she was having a bad dream about her older sister,...
By: Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction...
By: Matthew Long
New York City firefighter's emotional and inspiring memoir of learning to run again after a debilitating accident, based on the wildly popular March 2009 piece in Runner's WorldOn the morning of December 22, 2005, Matt Long was cycling to work in...
By: Joseph M. Marshall
In the great oral tradition of the Lakota people, author Joseph M. Marshall III shares the compelling history of a man, a tribe, and a legacy of courage and endurance.Tasunke Witko, or Crazy Horse, as he is often remembered, brought the U.S....
By: Bill Buford
From one of our most interesting literary figures – former editor of Granta, former fiction editor at The New Yorker, acclaimed author of Among the Thugs – a sharp, funny, exuberant, close-up account of his headlong plunge into the life of a...
By: Alan Alda
On the heels of his acclaimed memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, beloved actor and bestselling author Alan Alda has written Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, an insightful and funny look at some of the impossible questions he’s...
By: Bob Spitz
Challenging popular myths attributed to the Beatles, an extensively researched band portrait traces their individual experiences of rising from young, angry rock-and-roll musicians to fame; in an account that endeavors to provide balanced coverage of...
By: Rick Bragg
In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin' and continued with Ava's Man, Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own...
By: Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong spent seven years in a convent (which she described in a previous memoir) and, when she left, was at a loss as to what to do with her life. In THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, she writes about her difficulties, as she first picked up a couple of...
By: Amy Tan
Amy Tan was born into a family that believed in fate. In The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, she explores this legacy, as well as American circumstances, and finds ways to honor the past while creating her own brand of destiny. She discovers...
By: Linda Greenlaw
Just before Christmas, Linda meets up with her best friend and fellow fisherman Alden Leeman for lunch and a drink at the Dry Dock, a well-worn watering hole in Portland, Maine. Alden, the captain of Linda's first fishing expedition, has seen his...