Authors

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.

An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

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

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

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have....

Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances....

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...

A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse.

She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone....

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

From the political writer and podcaster, a ferociously honest and disarmingly funny memoir about her elusive mother’s encroaching dementia and a reckoning with her complicated childhood.

Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, delivers the first biography of Robert Crumb—one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—whose iconic, radically frank and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists.

In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known - and controversial - writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end, fits into none of them....

The extraordinary story of the creative and romantic partnership between Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife and muse, Fanny Van de Grift, A Wilder Shore unfolds with all the richness and complexity of a timeless epic.

In this book, C.S. Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity....

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars comes an enthralling literary adventure that introduces listeners to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

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

“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart....

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

Aged 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him, and learned to live again.

Over a quarter of a century after its first publication, the great and simple wisdom in this book continues to influence women's lives....

In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border....

Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, Daily Rituals is irresistible, addictive, magically inspiring....

David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the best-selling Infinite Jest....

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

In the six lectures of The Great Gatsby at 100, you will join Sheila Liming of Champlain College to revisit the context and culture of the Roaring ‘20s, which inspired the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his disastrous pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. As you’ll discover, while Gatsby is framed as a love story, it’s also a story of the American experience, revealing the unspoken rules of wealth and class and the false promises of self-made success in a world of Old Money privilege.

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods.

H.P. Lovecraft was a visionary writer, and his works of horror fiction redefined the genre by creating a mythos so terrifying that his characters, monsters, and writing style are still copied today. His stories are still being made into popular films almost ninety years after his death. In this short biography, we’ll look at the life and career of H.P. Lovecraft, whose imagination invented ancient gods like Cthulhu, forbidden texts like the Necronomicon, and the entirely new genre of cosmic horror, a type of storytelling that demonstrates humanity’s insignificance and isolation in an ...

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

Based on her popular class at Yale, this masterful, intimate essay collection from one of our greatest living playwrights and teachers, Sarah Ruhl, is a testament to the singular impact of teachers across every stage of our lives. Anchored in stories both personal and universal, drawing on Sarah’s experiences with her parents and children, with schoolteachers, creative influences, and beyond, Lessons from My Teachers offers an uplifting perspective on our basic human need to teach and learn from each other as we navigate the surprising paths that shape our lives.

American Notes for General Circulation is Dickens' vivid, sharp, engaging account of his 1842 visit to the United States. This travelogue blends keen observations with sharp social commentary, offering Dickens’ reflections on the American landscape, politics, and society. Dickens explores the bustling cities, vast wilderness, and the cultural contradictions of a young nation in its infancy. At once humorous, critical, and insightful, American Notes paints a complex portrait of America during a transformative period.

Curious by Design describes a journey of invention, imagination, and the occasional malfunctioning animatronic. From an untethered childhood to designing the world’s most complex theme park attractions, Steve Alcorn has spent a lifetime exploring the crossroads of art and engineering. Along the way, he’s built companies, created rides, composed music, coded operating systems, mentored thousands of writers—and still found time to sculpt a few nudes. Spanning decades of creative adventure, this is the story of one man’s relentless curiosity: how things work, how stories are told, and ...

"Recuerdo la mañana en que conocí a Octavio Paz. Fue el 11 de marzo de 1976, en el Panteón Jardín, cuando un grupo de amigos despedíamos al gran ensayista Daniel Cosío Villegas [...] Me acerqué a él para proponerle la publicación en su revista Plural de un ensayo mío sobre el ilustre liberal recién desaparecido. Días después, mi nombre apareció junto al suyo, pero nunca sospeché que ese vínculo sería permanente."

Anthony Trollope is among the best-loved novelists in the English language. This Very Short Introduction will place Trollope's work in the context of his life and times, drawing on recent scholarship to illuminate his central interests and literary strategies. The major series of novels (the six novels located in the fictional Barsetshire, and the six Palliser novels) are explored alongside the novels set in Ireland, his travel writing, and his less well-known fiction.

虐待、いじめ、家庭内暴力、無理心中未遂 毒母との38 年の愛憎を描いた壮絶ノンフィクション

Offering answers to those questions and more through a mix of travelogue and social history, A Month of Sundays entertainingly charts the story of what author Daniel Gray argues is the People's Day. Told through Sundays whiled away in places from the Hebrides to Hyde Park – via Sunderland, Scarborough, Liverpool and beyond – Gray's latest book is a charming journey in time and place. A Month of Sundays offers nostalgia, people's history and affectionate, absorbing writing – a book drenched in the scent of gravy and summoning the faint sound of church bells.

La artista Paula Bonet interviene el texto de Chirbes con reproducciones de sus pinturas, inspiradas en la lectura y en la revisión de los espacios comunes que comparten ambos creadores. "Pocos escritores han celebrado la luz de Valencia, el agua, nuestra gastronomía y nuestros cañaverales, la juventud y la carne como lo ha hecho Rafael Chirbes. La luz que describe en los pasajes más hermosos de sus obras más pesimistas se vuelca en la página como si fuera oro porque, como buen pintor, supo mirar y caminar entre las sombras, no le tembló el pulso a la hora de abordarlas.

Australia, primi anni del Novecento. Stella Miles Franklin è la maggiore di sette tra fratelli e sorelle, vive in una fattoria dell’entroterra. Si vede libera, padrona del suo destino. Nel 1901, a vent’anni, scrive un romanzo, La mia brillante carriera, che inaspettatamente diventa un bestseller proiettandola agli onori della cronaca.

Что итальянец может рассказать нам про величайшую русскую поэтессу? Анна Ахматова — та, что, как говорил Иосиф Бродский, "одним только тоном голоса или поворотом головы превращала вас в гомо сапиенс". Женщина, пережившая две мировые войны и ставшая самым популярным голосом России в тяжелые для страны времена. Она страдала, как страдают души, которые, даже сдаваясь, не сдаются. Она не переставала писать, даже когда ее стихи могли передаваться только из уст в уста. В конце жизни она смогла стать тем, кем хотела — величайшей поэтессой своего времени.

La Biblioteca Elena Poniatowska reúne la obra narrativa, ensayística y periodística de una escritora inmersa en la escena cultural iberoamericana. En Ida y vuelta se encuentran algunas de las entrevistas más icónicas de quien convirtió la virtud de escuchar en un arte.