Showing titles in Authors

Immortalized as Dean Moriarty by Jack Kerouac in his epic novel, On the Road, Neal Cassady was infamous for his unstoppable energy and his overwhelming charm, his savvy hustle and his devil-may-care attitude. A treasured friend and traveling companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Ken Kesey, to name just some of his cohorts on the beatnik path, Cassady lived life to the fullest, ready for inspiration at any turn. Here are his autobiographical writings, the rambling American saga of a free man.

Drawing on deep archival research and decades of scholarship, Ann Schmiesing tells the affecting story of how the Grimms’ ambitious projects gave the brothers a sense of self-preservation through the atrocities of the Napoleonic Wars and a series of personal losses.

When Jeanette Winterson left home at 16 because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: "Why be happy when you could be normal?" This book is the story of a life's work to find happiness. It is the story of how the painful past returned to haunt Jeanette's later life, and send her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. It is also a book about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking.

Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire: The trick is there is no trick. You eat fire by eating fire. Two journeys - a daughter’s and a mother’s - bear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman.

In this groundbreaking biography, Richard Ben Cramer presents a stunning, often shocking portrait of the hero nobody knew. It is a story that sweeps through the 20th century, bringing light to America's national game, movie stars, mobsters, as well as the birth - and the price - of national celebrity.

A handsome recluse, plagued by indecision and hypochondria, Franz Kafka nonetheless exhibited an extraordinary strength. He developed the uncanny ability to observe himself with cool objectivity, and he cultivated this ability in his writing, where it appeared in increasingly original metaphorical form. His works became among the greatest of the twentieth century, and his influence permeated far and wide, transcending literature.

The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.

A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. As Newbery Medal winner Madeleine L'Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and conflict, she beautifully evokes the life she and her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, built and the family they cherished. Beginning with their very different childhoods, L'Engle chronicles the twists and turns that led two young artists to New York City in the 1940s.

Putting a century of scholarship on one of the world's most enduring popular novels into accessible, narrative form, this new approach to a classic of world literature is written for a wide general audience. Packed full of information about the book's origins and later career on stage and screen, The Novel of the Century brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d'etat, and political exile.

The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California's limitless bounty and appalled by the country's refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice - paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy.

Elena Ferrante is the best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend, now an HBO original series. Collected here for the first time are the seeds of future novels, the timely reflections of this internationally beloved storyteller, the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” (New York Times).

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - from its beginnings as a UK radio series, to its expansion into a wildly popular book trilogy, and onto incarnations in various media including stage, records, film, computer games, and even, um, tea towels.

The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated 18th-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind.

A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.

From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.

A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, JELL-O Girls is a family history, a feminist history, and a story of motherhood, love, and loss. In crystalline prose, Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family, but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience.

Ernest Hemingway's passion was writing, and he was inspired by a lifetime of daring adventures and encouraged by the many women in his life. His masculine, adventurous spirit appealed to women of all ages, including four wives and a long list of legendary actresses, and he frequently transformed the women in his life into memorable fictional characters.

Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an 11-year-old de Rosnay read and reread Rebecca, becoming a lifelong devotee of Du Maurier's fiction. Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following Du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old to a rebellious 16-year-old, a 20-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady.

When he graduated from Columbia in 1958, John Giorno was handsome, charismatic, ambitious, and eager to soak up as much of Manhattan's art and culture as possible. Poetry didn't pay the bills, so he worked on Wall Street, spending his nights at the happenings, underground movie premiers, art shows, and poetry readings that brought the city to life. An intense romantic relationship with Andy Warhol - not yet the global superstar he would soon become - exposed Giorno to even more of the downtown scene, but after starring in Warhol's first movie, Sleep, they drifted apart.