We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool...

At the age of twenty-three, James Frey woke up on a plane to find his four front teeth had been knocked out. His nose was broken and there was a hole through his cheek. He had no idea where the plane was headed or what had happened ov...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  In the summer of 1962, nineteen-year-old Mimi Beardsley arrived in Washington, D.C., to begin an internship in the White House press office. After just three days on the job, the privileged but sheltered...

A dramatic and entertaining memoir by the award-winning actor and director describes growing up with a schizophrenic mother and renowned actor father, looking at the various turning points in his life and exploring the world around hi...

What does it really mean to be a good father? What did your father tell you, that has stayed with you throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are? Is there a special memo...

There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, g...

This book is a set of reflections and recollections of a driver's 40 plus years in the hard and unforgiving world of the haulage and transport industry. It delves into the methods resorted to, in order to survive and make ends meet fo...

Florence King’s hilarious memoir of being reared in an eccentric Southern family by a grande dame grandmother who tried to hammer her into the shape of a true Southern lady. Was Granny successful? That is for the readers to deci...

Without compromising on her beliefs and moral convictions, Marie Andari left the restricted life of her calling as a nun to pursue her goals in academia, and thence to campaign tirelessly for humanitarian Arab causes and for the emanc...

What do you do after you write a #1 bestselling book about your drunken, sexual misadventures that makes you rich and famous? Celebrate by getting more drunk and having insane amounts of sex, obviously. And pretty soon you've got anot...

With a family of twelve children, it's a good thing that both Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreth are efficiency experts. Running his family like a factory, yet acting like a kid himself, father Frank Gilbreth helps keep an already lively group eve...

Drawing on letters, diaries, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, and other primary source material, this incisive portrait focuses on the accomplishments of Wilbur and Orville Wright, in a volume celebrating the one hundredth anniver...

“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” —Cary GrantHe is Hollywood’s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archib...

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who "burned like a comet" in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining o...

In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American--the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenha...

An inspirational memoir of the teenage author's struggles to survive her youth in war-torn Kabul describes her witness to brutal conflicts between the mujahideen and the Soviets during her earliest years, her extensive injuries after ...

In a memoir about the joys and difficulties of straddling two cultures, the author of Arabian Jazz describes her life in upstate New York with an extended Arab and American family, her family's move 'home' to Jordan, and her return to...

“The Imaginary Girlfriend is a miniature autobiography detailing Irving’s parallel careers of writing and wrestling. . . . Tales of encounters with writers (John Cheever, Nelson Algren, Kurt Vonnegut) are intertwined with ...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning work by nature-writer Annie Dillard. Living alone on Tinker Creek in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, Dillard follows the progression of seasons and explores the cosmic significance of the beauty and violence coex...

Shoba Narayan’s Monsoon Diary weaves a fascinating food narrative that combines delectable Indian recipes with tales from her life, stories of her delightfully eccentric family, and musings about Indian culture.Narayan recounts ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •  “This Year’s Must-Read Memoir” (W magazine) about the choices a young woman makes in her search for adventure, meaning, and loveNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYVogue• Time• Esquire�...

'The author's well-written story comes at the reader fast and furiously…shocking readers into an awareness of the inhumanity of America's juvenile penal institutions.'-Publishers Weekly At age nine, a family tragedy forced ...

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 Catho...

Fascinating and inspiring.... Santiago is a born storyteller. - New York Times Book Review Enthralled admirers of Esmeralda Santiago's memoirs of her childhood have yearned to read more. Now, in The Turkish Lover, Esmeralda finally b...

'Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban.' In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba -- exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by the revolution. The memories of Carlos's life in Havana, cut ...

Welcome to Los Angeles, birthplace and residence of Tori Spelling. It's not every Hollywood starlet whose name greets you on a Virgin Airways flight into la-la land. But Tori Spelling has come to accept that her life is a spectacle. H...

The former valet and confidant of Frank Sinatra reveals never-before-told exploits, obsessions, courtships, friendships, political connections, and love affairs, citing Sinatra's relationships with Sam Giancana, Ava Gardner, Grace Kel...

In this collection of familiar essays, Jimmy Carter, the plain-speaking ex-President from Plains, Georgia, writes on the experiences that have stayed with him. Home truths are found in his pieces on baseball, the Navy, and fishing, al...

Anyone with the slightest interest in human rights will find this book heartwrenching. It is a well-written personal story that compels the reader to awareness of human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and of the true role designate...

"Number One" was a phrase my father—and, for that matter, my mother—repeated time and time again. It was a phrase spoken by my parents' friends and by their friends' children. Whenever adults discussed the great Chinese ...