Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

Seeing self-possession as the key to an existence lived 'in accordance with nature', the Stoic philosophy called for the restraint of animal instincts and the importance of upright ethical ideals and virtuous living....

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo....

At long last, millions of Dune fans can now hear the unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah....

New York Times best-selling author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses presents a revelatory glimpse into the mind and soul of our 16th president through his private notes to himself, explored together here for the first time....

At the start of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself....

As Assistant Private Secretary to four monarchs, 'Tommy' Lascelles had a ringside seat from which to observe the workings of the royal household and Downing Street during the first half of the 20th century.... 

The definitive anthology of Jim Morrison's writings with rare photographs and numerous handwritten excerpts of unpublished and published poetry and lyrics from his 28 privately held notebooks....

In this book I have attempted to solve each and every one of life's problems. And I have succeeded....

Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958....

During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife....

A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s....

Compelling, cathartic, and achingly honest, The Things You Would Have Said is a journey through the lives of people who have learned that there is always a second chance....

Seneca's Letters from a Stoic is considered one of the thought-leaders of philosophy in the history of classical literature. The compilation offers a comprehensive introduction to the stoic philosophy....

Amelia - 1942: The inside of my closet held the last bit of my freedom before I was torn from my home and shoved onto a dark train. Our destination was even darker....

The candid, poignant, unforgettable writing of the young girl whose own life story has become an everlasting source of courage and inspiration....

A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life by Pat Conroy is a new nonfiction collection of letters, interviews, and magazine articles spanning Conroy's long literary career....

Wistful, charming, surprising, and unfailingly optimistic, Dear Paris is a vicarious visit to one of the most iconic and beloved places in the world. 

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city....

Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then..."

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875-1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom....

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature....

Victory and defeat, love and loss are the prevalent realities of Letters from the Greatest Generation, a remarkable and frank collection of World War II letters penned by Americans....

Here is the astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns' highly acclaimed PBS television documentary The Civil War....

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose journalism, and life, were widely influential at the time and cleared a path for women who came after her....

A splendid new volume of missives about art, from the author of the best-selling Letters of Note collections....

"I first began to appreciate fully all we owed the World War II generation when I was covering the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of D-Day for NBC News. When I wrote in The Greatest Generation...

A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States....

Voyage of the Beagle foreshadows Darwin's world-changing On The Origin of Species (also a CSA Word audiobook read by Richard Dawkins), in its constant intellectual quest....

At the start of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself.....

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose journalism, and life, were widely influential at the time and cleared a path for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. She is most famous, to her enduring exasperation, as Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Long after their divorce, her short tenure as "Mrs. Hemingway" from 1940 to 1945 invariably eclipsed her writing and, consequently, she never received her full due. 

Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French 18th-century art.

A fascinating new volume of messages about fatherhood, from the author of the best-selling Letters of Note collections. In Letters of Note: Fathers, Shaun Usher collects together remarkable correspondence by and about fathers, including proud parental words of love, advice from experienced dads to new ones, as well as letters from both frustrated and adoring offspring.

Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another - how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising.

Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the furore that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in love and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty and sparkling humour, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another - how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both enthralling and uncompromising.

A brand-new collection from the internationally best-selling author of Letters of Note.

In Letters of Note: Sex, Shaun Usher collects together some of the most noteworthy missives ever written on the subject, from euphemism-laden, flirtatious exchanges and desire-driven expressions of passion to sincere and thoughtful meditations on the meaning of sex. Includes letters by John Cheever, Sigmund Freud, Dorothy Day, James Joyce, Margaret Mead, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Mae West and many others. 

In Letters of Note: Fathers, Shaun Usher collects letters celebrating weird and wonderful dads.

A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement and played a deeply influential role in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to mold him into an international symbol of nonviolence. 

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the Mother Goddess, whom he addressed as jagat janani, every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: there were seething sorrows, fleeting joys, lingering memories. In Modi's writings there was the enthusiasm of a youngster and the passion to usher in change. But every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. The pages of one diary, dating back to 1986, survived, however. 

Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen - potentially forever. In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable respon