Art & Literature

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy best seller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work....

Leonardo da Vinci created the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and engineering....

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation....

The troubadours of our times agree that they want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple: love is a mix tape....

The riveting personal story of a young French journalist who goes undercover and gets dangerously close to a key member of ISIS....

For more than 40 years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life - a story she’s never shared, until now....

David Sedaris' new collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes...

No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture....

From the New York Times best-selling author of Bad Feminist, a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself....

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life describes his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years....

James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the best-selling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print....

There is no doubt that Yolanda Saldívar pulled the trigger and killed Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Pérez on March 31, 1995. But does anyone know what really happened in room 158 of the Days Inn moments before the crime took place? Find out....

In Talking to GOATs, award-winning broadcaster Jim Gray looks back at his four decades of sports reporting from the unparalleled perspective of one of the world’s most respected and skilled interviewers....

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is his inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease....

On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 of the US Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a forest fire in the Montana wilderness....

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience....

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy....

Hailed by Lena Dunham as an "essential (and hilarious) voice for women", Lindy West is ferociously witty and outspoken, tackling topics as varied as pop culture, social justice, and body image....

Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft....

Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband....

You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants...

In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet....

James Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son, explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western society, most notably in regard to the mid-20th-century United States....

Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who has reported for 30 years on stories and communities in America often go ignored by the mainstream media. In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago....

Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One explores the critical junctions in his life and career....

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century, 1951, in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, in the middle of the largest generation in American history, the baby boomers....

From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments....

Who is Elmyr? Simply put, Elmyr de Hory is known by many as the most notorious art forger of all time. He believed that if a forgery hangs in a museum for long enough - as he claimed many of his works did - it eventually becomes real. Yet, as with many fraudsters, much of the myth is exaggeration or invention. 

Hugo Vickers's life took a dramatic turn in 1979 when the legendary Sir Cecil Beaton invited him to be his authorised biographer. The excitement of working with the famous photographer was dashed only days later when Cecil Beaton died. But the journey had begun - Vickers was entrusted with Beaton's papers, diaries and, most importantly, access to his friends and contemporaries. The resulting book, first published in 1985, was a best seller. In Malice in Wonderland, Vickers shares excerpts from his personal diaries kept during this period.

This brief, but quite remarkable, look at the life and work of Tolstoy includes a critical analysis of his novels, as well as his ethical philosophy. Includes a judicious selection of photographs....

In addition to the original text, a biographical introduction and an extensive selected works section have been included. To say that Oscar Wilde was an enigma would be a gross understatement. His enigmatic persona was eloquently laid out in Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, for anyone to examine. With Walter Pater/Henry Wotton on one shoulder and John Ruskin/Basil Hallward on the other in an angel vs. devil debate, it’s no wonder Oscar Wilde/Dorian Gray found himself in the middle being pulled to and fro.

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and “MacArthur Genius” Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe - how to be in the world. 

Dan Robson's father is a builder, a fixer. When he dies, nothing in his son's world feels steady anymore. Dan knows he is not the man his father was. Dan never learned the blue-collar skills he admired, because his father wanted him to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. Now that his father is gone, the acknowledgment of his sacrifices and the sheer longing to be close to him again in some way draw Dan to the tools that lie unused in the garage. So begins Dan’s year of learning the skills his father’s hands had long mastered, and trying to fill the steel-toe boots left behind.

Winston, a music journalist from Tennessee, is given an assignment to travel to Ohio in order to cover the live music scene and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where the famous Johnny Cash tour bus has remained parked for several years. He sets his sights on proving once and for all that the new music scene is still alive and well, but this, however, was no easy task. Initially, he struggles to find a concert that's worth attending, until he stumbles on a live rock show from one of the early pioneers.