Nonfiction Biography

Named Temujin at birth by his nomadic family in early Mongolia, the great Genghis Khan used his skill and cunning to create the Mongol Empire and conquer almost the entire continent of Asia. As ruler of the largest empire in human history, he was as respected as he was feared. Learn more about the man and the legend in Who Was Genghis Khan?

Paris in the 1940s was a place of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation, and secrets. During the occupation, the swastika flew from the Eiffel Tower and danger lurked on every corner. While Parisian men were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories, the women of Paris were left behind where they would come face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis, as waitresses, shop assistants, or wives and mothers, increasingly desperate to find food to feed their families as hunger became part of everyday life.

Between 1930 and 1932, Henry Ford sent 450 of his Detroit employees plus their families to live in Gorky, Russia, to operate a new manufacturing facility. This is the true story of one of those families—Carl and Elisabeth Werner and their young daughter Margaret—and their terrifying life in Russia under brutal dictator Joseph Stalin.

One night at a dinner party in Florence, historian Daniel Lee was told about a remarkable discovery. An upholsterer in Amsterdam had found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the cushion of an armchair he was repairing. They belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich's Ministry of Economics and Labor in Nazi-occupied Prague during the war.

Take a dive into an abundance of stories. recreated through imaginable thoughts, filling in the mystery of unbelievable murders that took place in this world we live in. Names and places have been hidden to protect the victims identity.

Germany's success in the Second World War was built upon its tank forces; however, many of its leading generals, with the notable exception of Heinz Guderian, are largely unknown. This biographical study of four German panzer army commanders serving on the Eastern Front is based upon their unpublished wartime letters to their wives. David Stahel offers a complete picture of the men conducting Hitler's war in the East, with an emphasis on the private fears and public pressures they operated under.

Sally Hobart Alexander continues the story of her journey into blindness in this uplifting tale of a life rebuilt and love renewed. Suzanne Toren’s perceptive narration perfectly expresses the emotions of Sally’s sometimes fun, often arduous, and always interesting journey. Also available is Taking Hold, My Journey Into Blindness, which tells the first half of Sally’s story.

This book chronicles the long history of the fight for women's voting rights, beginning in 1848, with a focus on the years between 1913 and 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. The book includes profiles of notable women in the struggle.

In early 1968 the grisly on-the-job deaths of two African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, prompted an extended strike by that city's segregated force of trash collectors. Workers sought union protection, higher wages, improved safety, and the integration of their work force. Their work stoppage became a part of the larger civil rights movement and drew an impressive array of national movement leaders to Memphis, including, on more than one occasion, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King added his voice to the struggle in what became the final speech of his life.

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus's cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting "Death to Judas!" In this book, Maurice Samuels gives listeners new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus's early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil's Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.

Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were White; her friends were White; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to Black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Where Have All the Bullets Gone?, written and read by Spike Milligan. Back to those haunting days in Italy in 1944, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, with lava running in great red rivulets down the slope towards us, and Jock taking a drag on his cigarette and saying, "I think we've got grounds for a rent rebate."

With compelling realism mixed with equal doses of self-deprecating wit, youthful bravado, and hard-earned humility, Symptoms of Withdrawal chronicles Lawford's deep and long descent into near-fatal drug and alcohol addiction, and his subsequent formidable path back to the sobriety he has preserved for the past 20 years.

Normal. Who is to say what this word means? For Magda Newman, it was a goal. She wanted her son Nathaniel to be able to play on the playground, swim at the beach, enjoy the moments his friends took for granted. But Nathaniel’s severe Treacher Collins syndrome - a craniofacial condition - meant that other concerns came first. Could he eat without the aid of a gastrointestinal tube? Could he hear? Would he ever be able to breathe effortlessly? But Nathaniel looks at “normal” from a completely different perspective.

David Kherdian re-creates his mother's voice in telling the true story of a childhood interrupted by one of the most devastating holocausts of our century....Vernon Dumehjian Kherdian was born into a loving and prosperous family. Then, in the year 1915, the Turkish government began the systematic destruction of its Armenian population.

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor.

While America held its breath in the days immediately following 9/11, a small but determined group of CIA agents covertly began to change history. This is the riveting first-person account of the treacherous top-secret mission inside Afghanistan to set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and launch the war on terror. As thrilling as any novel, First In is a uniquely intimate look at a mission that began the US retaliation against terrorism - and reclaimed the country of Afghanistan for its people.

In her memoir Do You Dream in Color?, Laurie Rubin looks back on her life as an international opera singer - who happens to be blind. From her loneliness and isolation as a middle school student to her experiences skiing, Rubin offers her young listeners a life story rich in detail and inspiration drawn from everyday challenges. Beginning with her childhood in California, Rubin tells the story of her life and the amazing experiences that led her to a career as an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano.

Physicians used to make house calls. Today, a few veterinarians still do. Duncan MacVean, DVM, is one such vet. His patients range from cats and dogs to pigs and lizard - each of them a unique personality. Every animal and every home is different, but every owner is the same in their affection for their companions. Without warning, MacVean finds himself in odd situations: stepping into a basement full of free-flying bats or struck speechless by a pig who loves opera so much that she falls into a trance.

In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement.