Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

Written by a friend and scientific collaborator with Albert Einstein, this remarkable study is a model of what a biography of a scientist should be. In this book, we come to know Albert Einstein as the “backward” child; the academic outcast; the reluctant world celebrity; the exile; the pacifist; the philosopher; the humanitarian; the tragically saddened “father” of the atomic bomb; and above all, the unceasing searcher after scientific truth.

Anthony Trollope is most famous for his portrait of the professional and landed classes of Victorian England, especially in his Palliser and Barsetshire novels. But he was also the author of one of the most fascinating autobiographies of the nineteenth century. Trollope was born in 1815, the product of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father who was socially ambitious for his sons. He was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. But he had inherited his mother's determination, and managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment to writing. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5:30 a.m. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every fifteen minutes has become part of literary legend. His efforts resulted in over sixty books, a sizable fortune, and fame, and his autobiography. Trollope looks back on his life with satisfaction. Perhaps as interesting as the facts he reveals and the opinions he records about Dickens and George Eliot, politics and the civil service are the judgments he passes on his own character.

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which appeared first in 1901 and was then expanded in a series of subsequent editions, has proved to be one of Freud's most popular works, and one of his most influential during his lifetime. It was here that he proposed that many slips and errors of memory common to the average man in everyday life actually signals unconscious issues that beset the individual, and, if examined, can be extremely revealing.

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....

The daughter of a respectable self-made businessman, the middle-aged Eliot was cast into social exile when she began a scandalous liaison with married writer and scientist George Henry Lewes. Only her burgeoning literary success allowed her to overcome society's disapproval and eventually take her proper place at the heart of London's literary elite. The territory of her novels encompassed the entire span of Victorian society.

Few scientists have enthralled more people than Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Six Easy Pieces and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Beloved for his engaging character and zest for life, he is an American icon. In this selection of letters, Feynman's towering genius and singular personality shine like dazzling stars.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.

In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.

In 1913, an unschooled young Indian clerk wrote a letter to G. H. Hardy, begging that preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Hardy, realizing the letter was the work of a genius, arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most remarkable collaborations ever chronicled.

The White Witch, Aslan, fauns and talking beasts, centaurs and epic battles between good and evil: these have become a part of our collective imagination through the classic volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia. Yet who was the man who created this world? This audiobook attempts to unearth the making of the first Narnian, C. S. Lewis himself.

Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is the first definitive biography in a generation to tell the larger-than-life story of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Drawing upon the trove of letters, diaries, and notebooks Goethe left behind, as well as correspondence and criticism from Goethe's contemporaries, Safranski weaves a rich tale of Europe in the throes of revolution and of the man whose ideas heralded a new era.

William Sidis, 1897-1944, was the world's greatest child prodigy. His IQ was an estiamted 50 to 100 points higher than Einstein's, the highest ever recorded or estimated. His father, a pioneer in the field of abnormal psychology, believed that he and his wife could create a genius in the cradle. They hung alphabet blocks over the baby's crib-and within six months little Billy was speaking. At 18 months he was reading The New York Times; at three, Homer in the original Greek. At six he spoke at least seven languages.

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution.

Few scientists have enthralled more people than Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Six Easy Pieces and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Beloved for his engaging character and zest for life, he is an American icon. In this selection of letters, Feynman's towering genius and singular personality shine like dazzling stars.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.

This work, unsurprisingly, offers invaluable insights into the life and times of Charles Darwin, his personality and the formative influences that made him what he was, for here we have his own words and ‘voice’ at the close of a prodigiously productive career. He tells of his childhood, his student days at Edinburgh and Cambridge, his love of beetles, shooting and geology and of his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. He talks at some length about his meetings with the great scientific men of the age, his attitudes to his critics, to religion and of his theories of evolution.

In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.

A Life Observed tells the inspiring story of Lewis' spiritual journey from cynical atheist to joyous Christian. Drawing on Lewis' autobiographical works, books by those who knew him personally, and his apologetic and fictional writing, this spiritual biography brings the beloved author’s story to life while shedding light on his best-known works.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Dava Sobel returns with the captivating, little-known true story of a group of women whose remarkable contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

Lady Susan Vernon, middle-aged and recently widowed, has retained her looks and appealing vivacity. She makes use of her bereavement and her loss of wealth by imposing herself on the hospitality of relatives, and by amusing herself in flirtation with the various men who fall under her spell. Lady Susan has a daughter, Frederica, who is bashful and innocent—in stark contrast to her unfeeling and manipulative mother. Her mother is anxious to marry Frederica off to a spouse of appropriate wealth and social standing, and also, perhaps, to capture a new mate for herself.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of C. S. Lewis' death, celebrated Oxford don Dr. Alister McGrath presents us with a compelling and definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis, the author of the well-known Narnia series. For more than half a century, C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series has captured the imaginations of millions. In C. S. Lewis - A Life, Dr. Alister McGrath recounts the unlikely path of this Oxford don, who spent his days teaching English literature to the brightest students in the world and his spare time writing.

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.

Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.

Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.

An accessible, expert introduction to one of the greatest minds of 19th century. Whether you're completely new to him, or if you're already familiar with his work, Kierkegaard: A Single Life presents a fresh understanding of his life and thought. Kierkegaard was a brilliant and enigmatic loner whose ideas permeated culture, shaped modern Christianity, and influenced people as diverse as Franz Kafka and Martin Luther King Jr. Though few people today have read his work, that lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is changing with this biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse.

In What Matters in Jane Austen?, John Mullan shows that we can best appreciate Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction. Asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals the inner workings of their greatness. In 20 short chapters, each of which explores a question prompted by Austen’s novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most in her beloved fiction.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations.