New Memoirs

In this dramatic and fascinating account, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter shows how Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his first 100 days in office to lift the country from the despair and paralysis of the Great Depression and transform the American presidency.

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money 10 years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to 15 months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187-424 - one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system.

The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English–that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief.

While free markets have brought positive change, traditional capitalism cannot solve problems of inequality and poverty because of its view of people as solely profit-driven. In fact, humans have other drives and passions, including spiritual, social, and altruistic.

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her.

For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth ruled over an institution and a family. During her lifetime she was constant in her desire to provide a steady presence and to be a trustworthy steward of the British people and the Commonwealth. But times change. Recent years have brought grief and turmoil to the House of Windsor. In The New Royals, journalist Katie Nicholl provides a nuanced look at Elizabeth’s remarkable and unrivalled reign, with new stories from Palace courtiers and aides, documentarians, and family members.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims". The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths - their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter.

"We are the people our parents warned us about" is the motto of the Bandidos, one of the world's most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs. For ten years, Steve Utah was a Bandidos insider. He arranged the security of their clubhouses. He 'cooked' ecstasy and ice for them. He was at meetings where interstate and overseas drug and weapons smuggling was planned. He saw stolen military weapons being sold. He witnessed vicious beatings, helped dump corpses.It all became too much and, in an attempt to regain control of his life, Utah resorted to the unthinkable....

In this revelatory memoir, doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth other doctors don’t always understand and often won’t share if they do - that chronic illness is complicated, and that treatment is not just a matter of test results and prescriptions but requires a more comprehensive approach. By sharing her own struggle with a disabling autoimmune crisis, which forced her to question her own conventional medical training and embrace the integrative principles of functional medicine, Li reveals the insider knowledge sufferers need to truly begin healing - mind, body, and spirit.

From 1910 to 1919, New Orleans suffered at the hands of its very own Jack the Ripper-style killer while two innocent men nearly paid for one of his crimes with their lives. The story has been the subject of websites, short stories, collections of true crime, novels, a graphic novel, and the FX television series American Horror Story. But the real story of the Axeman of New Orleans has never been written - until now.

In this bold, momentous work, the pope, in his first book written as Benedict XVI, seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from recent "popular" depictions and to restore Jesus' true identity as discovered in the Gospels. Through his brilliance as a theologian and his personal conviction as a believer, the pope shares a rich, compelling, flesh-and-blood portrait of Jesus and incites us to encounter, face-to-face, the central figure of the Christian faith.

Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion.

Chants of a Lifetime offers an intimate collection of stories, teachings, and insights from Krishna Das, who has been called "the chant master of American yoga" by the New York Times. Since 1994, the sound of his voice singing traditional Indian chants with a Western flavor has brought the spiritual experience of chanting to audiences all over the world. Now he offers a unique book-with-audio download combination that explores his fascinating path and creates an opportunity for just about anyone to experience chanting in a unique and special way.

In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark.

The life of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), ruler of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long intrigued biographers. But the elusive nature of the man (despite an abundance of documentation), his relentless travel and the control of his own image, together with the complexity of governing the world's first transatlantic empire, complicate the task.

In 2007, Russell Edwards, fuelled by fascination and determination, discovered a shawl – an unexpected key in the historical mystery of Jack the Ripper. With an intriguing blend of forensic investigation and historical research, the book explores the gripping evidence, a blood-stained shawl, connected to the universally infamous criminal, Jack the Ripper. Persistent and fearless, Edwards embarks on a captivating seven-year quest to authenticate the shawl and unearth its concealed truths. His search takes him deeper into the heart of one of history's most chilling real crime stories.

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of 31 men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community.

With laugh-out-loud funny parenting observations, the New York Times best-selling author and award-winning comedian delivers a book that is perfect for anyone who has ever raised a child, been a child, or refuses to stop acting like one. Along with hilarious and poignant stories he has never shared before, this audiobook is sprinkled with poetry Jen wrote as she navigated the same rocky shores of new parenthood.

At a distance of 20 centuries, the figure of Jesus of Nazareth can seem impossibly obscure - indeed, some skeptics even question whether he existed. And yet we have an eyewitness account of his life, death, and resurrection from one of his closest companions, the sherman Simon Bar-Jonah, better known as the Apostle Peter. Peter's disciple Mark wrote down the apostle's account of the life of Jesus as he told it to the first Christians in Rome. The vivid, detailed, unadorned prose of the Gospel of Mark conveys the unmistakable immediacy of a firsthand account.