Cultural & Regional

“In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only exceeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history.” –President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Honor ceremony ""Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set...

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief...

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird...

**The New York Times Bestseller** Now in paperback with a new chapter from Jada reflecting on the experience of writing and publishing Worthy, and the surprising conversations raised around sharing truth. ""[Smith] is candid and honest... For the first time she reveals the truth behind [the]...

A blend of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester’s Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know. For more than a...

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A glorious chronicle of a life like none other—enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering—and a testament to the world-changing power of Black motherhood “A beautiful and brave story of strong women, fierce mothering, and the power of...

The triumphant New York Times bestseller! “Warm and oddly patriotic...A working-class hero is something to be.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times An uproarious and “utterly charming” (The Washington Post) memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that...

Award-winning comedian Zarna Garg turns her astonishing life story into a hilarious memoir, spilling all the chai on her wild ride from escaping an arranged marriage and homelessness in India to carving her own path in America and launching a dazzling second act in midlife. “A deeply honest...

2017 Audie Award Finalist for Autobiography/Memoir From Taraji P. Henson, Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, and star of the award-winning film Hidden Figures and the 2023 film The Color Purple, comes an inspiring and funny memoir—“a bona fide hit” (Essence)—about family...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business...

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn...

* Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times * Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History * “Extraordinary…a great American biography” (The New Yorker) of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became...

For a world of devoted fans, a much-awaited new volume of absorbing stories and inspirational wisdom from one of our best-loved writers. Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou’s path to living well and living a life with...

Longlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction A reflection on "freedom" in a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans. Lea Ypi grew up in the last Stalinist country in Europe: Albania, a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and...

The New York Times bestselling story from the author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride...

Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper and proponent of the "do it yourself" idea....

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 THE WASHINGTON POST’S 5 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2025 THE ATLANTIC’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 TIME MAGAZINE’S BEST BOOKS...

“Defiance takes my breath away. A nail-biting tale of astonishing courage.” —Jeannette Walls #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle “A heartbreaking account of a young woman’s struggle for freedom against the rampaging forces of fanaticism and tyranny...

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her....

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times* *Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly,NPR, Broadly, BuzzFeed, and more* The powerful, provocative, award-winning...

The searing, visionary memoir of founding Black Panther Huey P. Newton Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party. From Newton's impoverished childhood on the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo...

Nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature ""An absolute must-read"" – Shondaland “[Rabbit] tells how it went down with brutal honesty and outrageous humor” – New York Times They called her Rabbit. Patricia Williams (aka Ms. Pat) was born and raised in Atlanta at the...

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner A New York Times Notable Book Best Book of the Year for The Washington Post* The New Yorker * Time * The Atlantic * Los Angeles Times * NPR * Harper’s Bazaar * Vulture * Town & Country * San Francisco Chronicle * Christian Science Monitor * Mother...

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete. The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his...

From The New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinbeck’s trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough’s signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as...

AUDIOBOOK READ BY THE AUTHOR “In writing a book about Minneapolis, Justin Ellis has really written a book about America's favorite lie—that good intentions lead to justice. Ellis is a rigorous historian and a visceral storyteller, and he has produced something essential: a reckoning with a...

On a quiet summer day in Bend, Oregon, a single phone call shattered a family’s world. Tiare — radiant, adventurous, and beloved — was gone. Named for the fragrant jasmine flower, she had been a bright presence wherever life took her: Hawaii, New England, the West Coast. She cheered, she laughed, she protected, she dreamed. She filled her room with posters and pink, and her family with joy.

"After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage" is the story of two marriages undone by a dowry and the fallout from that rift on three generations of a Southern Italian family. Enlisting Calabrian folklore, epigenetics, and psychology, Monardo writes from both sides of the ocean, charting her grandfathers’ immigration to a Pittsburgh steel town; her father’s WWII as a medical student in Naples; the family’s marriages—including her own—that were tainted by an Old World curse; and an unlikely path toward international adoption.

Top of the Morgen! charts the adventures of Laurence Falconer, a craic-loving Dubliner, as he tries to get to grips with a new life in Germany. In his hilarious, heart-warming and self-deprecating style, Laurence explores and celebrates the similarities between the Irish and the Germans...

This book isn't just another war story. It’s a raw, irreverent rollercoaster ride through addiction, absurdity, elite military service, and the relentless pursuit of something authentic in a world that rewards bullshit. With humor darker than a moonless night and a voice sharp enough to cut glass, the author takes you from childhood spelling bees in small-town North Carolina straight into the chaos of teenage rebellion, drugs, crime, and psych wards.

A Fight for a Cup of Chai is a short, accessible nonfiction audiobook about labor, migration, and resilience—told through lived experience. Set in Nepal, the story follows a young factory worker navigating poverty, work, and identity while revealing the human cost behind global supply chains. What begins as a personal journey opens into larger questions of dignity, sacrifice, and belonging.

The most famous female outlaw of the American West robbed no banks, led no gang, and was convicted of exactly one crime. The legend did the rest. On a muddy bottomland road in the Choctaw Nation, two days short of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley Starr was blasted from her horse by a shotgun fired from behind a fence. No one was ever convicted. Within weeks, the penny press resurrected her as "Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen" — a horseback Amazon in velvet and pistols who ruled a kingdom of thieves. Almost none of it was true. This is the documented woman behind the dime-...

From her first ski trip, Jean Waight is entranced by the beauty and welcoming feel of Oregon's old lodge—an inspired 1937 creation. Winter by winter, her friends share weather, mishaps, and ale. She braves a comical encounter with a pine marten and is less brave when alone in a freakish snow accident that takes her to life's very edge. But Timberline Lodge's whisperings only become clear after she has to give up skiing. When skiers and snowboarders head for the slopes and all is quiet inside, the past comes out to play. Even the linocut murals hold up a mirror to her own life.

What did growing up really feel like before screens, schedules, and constant supervision? A Little Dirt Never Hurt is a collection of true, humorous stories from a boyhood spent in rural America--where fun was homemade, trouble was easy to find, and lessons were usually learned the hard way.

I’ve spent plenty of time in football parking lots, concert fields, dive bars, bluegrass festivals, and places that probably shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Tailgating in America is a collection of stories from those gatherings and the characters who bring them to life. From Ball State football to Dead & Company, hometown bars to hidden festivals in the hills of Indiana, this essay explores the freedom, community, and controlled chaos that still make America worth showing up for.

He grew up without a father. Lost his mother at thirteen. Went in and out of jail. Sold drugs. Bounced at strip clubs. And ended up building churches in the mountains of Guatemala, rescuing orphans, and running a thriving business.

Part memoir, part philosophical reflection, part mentoring conversation, Reflections on a Golden Ball invites us not to chase perfection, but to better understand the forces already at work in our own lives.

Dreams Survived Despite Years Of Silence And Hardship tells a deeply human story of resilience, sacrifice, and the quiet determination that survives even in life’s darkest seasons. Through moments of heartbreak, loneliness, and uncertainty, this powerful biography follows an individual who refused to surrender the dreams once buried beneath fear and hardship. Every chapter reveals the emotional cost of perseverance and the courage required to keep moving forward.

What happens when a man slows down long enough to notice his own life? In The Cowboy in the Park, Gregg Patten brings together humor, observation, and reflection in a warm and thoughtful collection drawn from ordinary moments on a park bench. With the voice of a man who has lived, lost, learned, and kept going, these pieces explore identity, healing, relationships, aging, regret, faith, and the quiet courage it takes to remain yourself in a noisy world. Part memoir, part meditation, and part gentle conversation, this book offers the kind of wisdom that does not shout. It sits beside you.

This coming-of-age story from Declan Henry captures life growing up on a farm in Derrykinlough, a rural village on the Sligo/Mayo border in the Irish Republic during the 1970s and early 1980s. This is an evocative account of an Irish childhood and tells of a now vanished world - settled, highly traditional and moulded at every point by Catholicism. It's an account of self-discovery while encapsulating the hopes and ideals reminiscent of the time.

Accepting Me: Growing from Promise to Purpose is a powerful and deeply personal journey of resilience, faith, and self-discovery. Through a collection of heartfelt reflections and life experiences, Dr. Marilyn Bailey invites listeners to walk alongside her as she navigates childhood hardships, family bonds, loss, perseverance, and spiritual growth. From being the first in her family to graduate and pursue higher education, to surviving homelessness, emotional wounds, and societal challenges, this book reveals how purpose can emerge from pain.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Returning Home is a deeply personal memoir about healing, identity, and the long journey back to oneself. Todd Michael shares his story with honesty and clarity, inviting listeners into the moments that shaped his life and the breath that carried him...

The Indian Mate: Volume 2 uncovers a unique Australian experience through the eyes of an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) who later became an Australian citizen. With crushing expectations, $1000 and a bag full of dreams (his own and his family's), Divesh sets foot in Australia. Despite feelings of...

In 1947, India became independent, but was divided into two nations, forever changing the country and the lives of its inhabitants. The Indian Mate: Volume 1 charts the journey of one such family caught in the middle of the biggest migration in human history, along with around 14 million others...

THE DOOR, With Every Tear... A Little Wisdom... From the moment she was left at the doorstep of an orphanage, Miriam Fernandes faced a life filled with uncertainty, loss, and longing. Yet through every hardship, she discovered an inner strength that refused to be broken. In this deeply moving memoir, Miriam shares her journey from abandonment and adversity to hope, healing, and self-discovery. Guided by the love of an extraordinary woman who became her family, she learns that even the deepest wounds can give way to wisdom, courage, and grace.

The legal marijuana industry wasn't quite what I expected. Down and Out in Denver follows my years working inside Colorado's cannabis boom, rolling joints, trimming flower, chasing bonuses, and watching an emerging industry grow up in real time. Along the way are stories of the people, absurdities, successes, and disappointments that rarely make it into the headlines. Part memoir, part field report, this is a look behind the curtain of America's green rush from someone who lived it.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. The Bogs of Tipperary A short story from a winter on the Loony Line, Ireland, 1990 — buses, caravans, bender tents, and horses holding their ground against the rain, the mud, and the cold. The Bogs of Tipperary follows a community of Travellers and...

For every journey, there’s always at least another hidden one waiting to be discovered—a journey inside another journey, inside a bigger one; like a reverse Matryoshka. Only visible to those ready to close their eyes and open their hearts.

This book is about my life—from under my mother’s desk as a child in Ghana to the hills of Vermont as a PhD holder now. As a bubbly child who had her whole future ahead of her, I never dreamt of waking up one day and losing my legs to polio. But that is what happened. From then on my...