"'There are certain women,' Truman Capote wrote, 'who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.' Barbara 'Babe' Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy's sister) -- they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. These women captivated and enchanted Capote -- and at times, they infuriated him as well. He befriended them,...

"The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau" is a one-of-a-kind autobiography. Up until its publication in 1782, only two autobiographies had ever been written, and both were written by devout religious saints. Highly scandalous yet witty in nature, calling Rousseau's work an "autobiography" is a loose categorization of the text, as many of the stories and tales have been proven false, yet Rousseau told the truth about the spirit of his life through...

Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended. "I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan"...

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of supposition arranged around scant facts. With his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, and, emulating the style of his travelogues, records episodes in his own research. He celebrates Shakespeare...

When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this memoir. Featuring 78 poems and 78 essays, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine -- growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent,...

When Nina Sankovitch's sister died at the age of forty-six, Nina turned to books for comfort, escape, and introspection. In her beloved purple chair, she rediscovered the magic of such writers as Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ian McEwan, Edith Wharton, and, of course, Leo Tolstoy. Through the connections Nina made with books, authors, and other readers, her life changed in unexpected ways. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair also tells the story of...

In 1936, the celebrated American author Zane Grey arrived in the sleepy New South Wales town of Bermagui, with the express reason of angling for the world's largest fish - Marlin, sharks and Swordfish. Here is his little classic of the chase. Four miles out I sighted a long sickle fin cutting through a swell. Did I yell, "Marlin!"? I certainly did. An instant later Peter sighted another farther out, and this tail fin belonged to a large fish. I could...

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins delivers the long awaited tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe.

Helen Keller tells us about Anne Sullivan Macy, the woman who opened the world for her. Although the book was intended as a biography, it is also autobiographical in part since the lives of the author and subject were so closely intertwined for many years.

The author reveals how, shortly after giving birth to a child she adored, she drank herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide before a spiritual awakening led her to sobriety.