Life Biography

A hilarious, heartfelt romp that will bring you home to yourself. You don’t have to be a knitter to fall in love with this book - any person who’s ever made anything with their hands will dive joyfully into these minutes and come back up renewed and ready to create. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron’s tales, each inspired by something she knitted, will speak to anyone who’s ever loved (or lost). From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every chapter has a moving story behind it.

The third of Judy Garland's five husbands, Sid Luft was the one man in her life who stuck around. He was chiefly responsible for the final act of Judy's meteoric comeback after she was unceremoniously booted off the MGM lot: he produced her iconic, Oscar-nominated vehicle A Star Is Born and expertly shaped her concert career.

In 1968, Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK’s hippest record label, Island. Three years later, however—having made three well reviewed but low-selling albums—Nick had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness. He returned to live in his family home in rural Warwickshire in 1971, and died in obscurity in 1974, aged just 26.

A 23-year veteran of emergency medical services, paramedic Matthew Sias took a detour in his career to pursue the death-care business and found a complementarity between two seemingly divergent careers. Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician is the record of some of the more memorable calls he has responded to through the years.

One of the first personal narratives written by an ex-slave, this is also one of the few written by a woman. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was enslaved, along with her family, in North Carolina under a ruthless master who sexually harassed her. After several failed escape attempts, and several years of hiding, she finally made her way North to freedom, where she was eventually reunited with her children. The book was published in 1861.

In 1978, Harvey Milk asked Gilbert Baker to create a unifying symbol for the growing gay rights movement, and on June 25 of that year, Baker's Rainbow Flag debuted at San Francisco's Gay Liberation Day parade. Baker had no idea his creation would become an international emblem of freedom. Rainbow Warrior is Baker's passionate personal chronicle, from a repressive childhood in 1950s Kansas to a harrowing stint in the US Army, and finally his arrival in San Francisco, where he bloomed as both a visual artist and social justice activist.

Since they were first discovered in the caves at Qumran, in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have aroused more fascination - and more controversy - than perhaps any other archaeological find. They appear to have been hidden in the Judean desert by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that existed around the time of Jesus, and they continue to inspire veneration and conspiracy theories to this day. John Collins tells the story of the bitter conflicts that have swirled around the scrolls since their startling discovery, and sheds light on their true significance for Jewish and Christian history.

While reflecting on the past, Abby accepts the shape of her present. No more driving, no more dancing, mostly sitting in a comfortable chair in a sunny corner with three dogs for company—as well as the birds and other critters that she watches out her window. Only this beloved writer could generate so much enthusiasm over what might seem so little. Vivid memories fall like confetti, as time contracts, shoots forward, loops and suddenly she is back in her twenties in New York City, drinking, sleeping with strangers, falling in and out of love, believing in a better world.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone form Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure akin to Sarah Bakewell's book on Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but also to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind for our own age.

Before being named President Trump's Secretary of Commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the "King of Bankruptcy" over his fifty-five-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-profile bankruptcies such as Pan Am and Texaco, Ross helped restructure more than $400 billion in assets, and was named among Bloomberg's fifty most influential people in global finance. After coming to Washington, Ross faced equally tough challenges, yet survived in his post for all four years.

A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture - and a whole new way of thinking - turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true.

In his own words, real life American Gangster Frank Lucas recounts his life as the former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who ran Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Determined to break the Italian mafia’s monopoly over drug smuggling in New York, Frank cut out middlemen and began smuggling heroin into the United States directly from his source in Vietnam using the coffins of dead American soldiers.

Born just outside London in 1942, Glyn Johns was 16 years old at the dawn of rock and roll. His big break as a producer came on the Steve Miller Band's debut album, Children of the Future. He went on to engineer or produce iconic albums for the best in the business, including Abbey Road with the Beatles. Even more impressive, Johns was perhaps the only person on a given day in the studio who was entirely sober, and so he is one of the most reliable and clear-eyed insiders to tell these stories today.

The Fighter is the compelling life story of Australian Muay Thai legend 'John' Wayne Parr - a fighter's odyssey full of twists, turns, world titles, personal challenges and triumphs. This is the story of a man who knows what it is to test himself, physically and mentally, and the life lessons he learnt along the way, all told with Wayne's characteristic sense of humour.

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism - because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.

Art T. Burton sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late 19th-century America - and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Fluent in Creek and other Southern native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Bass Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws, and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc.

Five Trips chronicles Emmy Award-winning journalist Kendis Gibson’s personal journey through five psychedelic experiences, exploring the access issues faced by the BIPOC community in using psychedelics for mental health conditions, set against the backdrop of his challenges as a Black journalist at ABC network and the racial treatment that fueled his public meltdowns.

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment.

Life at 15 isn't easy for a girl if she's shy and hates the way she looks. Each day is heaven or hell, depending on who talks to her, or who doesn't. So when she's finally accepted by a group, she doesn't refuse their party games, even if it means taking LSD. Soon she's taking little pills to wake up and others to go to sleep, and the days begin to blur. Based on a 15-year-old's diary, Go Ask Alice is the intimate account of one girl's fatal journey into the world of drug addiction.