Life Biography

Preface by National Geographic Explorer-in-residence Meave Leakey. 120 colour & b/w photos. 6.6″ x 9.5″ A Who’s Who of 120 contemporary adventurers—with names like Survivorman Les Stroud, Robert Ballard, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Sea Hunter Jim Delgado, Bertrand Piccard, the Trieste's Don Walsh, Lucy discoverer Don Johanson, seven summits pioneer Pat Morrow, National Geographic Explorer-in-residence Wade Davis and Sir Chris Bonington—recall in their own words that indelible Aha! Moment they experienced in their youths that raised the sails on their lives’ exciting courses. But what ...

When Bozoma Saint John's husband, Peter, died of cancer, she made one big decision: to live life urgently. Bozoma was no stranger to adversity, having lost her college boyfriend to suicide, navigated an interracial marriage, grieved a child born prematurely—a process that led to her and Peter's separation—and coparented the daughter who she and Peter shared.

In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decision to return as CEO, eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company to become chairman. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul.

Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry.

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.

As the brother in law to JFK and a member of the Rat Pack, Peter Lawford was one of America's most acclaimed movie stars. Lawford led an extraordinary life. His story, as told by the woman who knew him best, is the always candid, sometimes shocking unveiling of the most intriguing show business personalities and significant political events of our time.

David L. Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. The Shipwreck Hunter chronicles his most intriguing finds. It describes the extraordinary techniques used, the detailed research, and mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck thousands of feet beneath the sea, plus the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. Combining the adventuring derring-do of Indiana Jones with the precision of a scientist, The Shipwreck Hunter opens an illuminating porthole into the shadowy depths of the ocean.

At the onset of World War II, Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own "Hannibal Trek." Billy Williams became a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them, but his story has since been forgotten.

Why do people race in Ironmans? Only a person whose good sense was severely impaired would decide to do a race marked by such agony and suffering - a race that makes no sense to normal people. Russell Newell would find out when he signed up for the second oldest Ironman in the country: Lake Placid, in the idyllic Upstate New York village nestled in the Adirondacks. Russell would then question his sanity and test his resolve as he attempted to finish the 2018 Ironman Lake Placid...despite almost drowning, crashing on his bike, and more.

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.

Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891, became the leader of the Italian Communist Party in his early 30s, was arrested by Mussolini’s police in 1927, and remained imprisoned until shortly before his death 10 years later. The posthumous publication of his Prison Notebooks established him as a major thinker whose influence continues to increase. Fiori’s biography enlarges upon the facts of Gramsci’s life through personal accounts, and through Gramsci’s own writings to relatives and friends.

With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves.

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts.

Since the age of 21, Paul McCartney has lived one of the ultimate rock 'n' roll lives, played out on the most public of stages. Now Paul's story is told by rock music's foremost biographer, with McCartney's consent and access to family members and close friends who have never spoken on the record before.

Told with humor and honesty, A Clean Mess is Tiffany Jenkins’s story of how she learned to live and feel for the first time without numbing herself with drugs—and how she discovered inner reserves of strength she didn’t know she had. From her tentative first days of sobriety, to seeing two pink lines on a pregnancy test weeks later, to navigating anxiety, a new marriage, and motherhood at the same time, to surviving betrayal and divorce, Jenkins shows how she got through it all when her crutches and Band-Aids were taken away from her.

It was that voice, those eyes, that hair, the cars, the girls. Elvis Presley revolutionized American pop culture when, at age 21, he became a modern superstar. A Memphis Beau Brummel even before he found fame, Elvis had a personal style that, like his music, had an immediate impact on his audience that continues to influence us today.

Pastor and author Timothy Keller (1950–2023) built a lasting legacy in Christian ministry, planting Redeemer Presbyterian Church and cofounding the Gospel Coalition. With sharp biblical insight that has shaped countless church leaders, along with counsel on the Christian life that has stirred and strengthened audiences worldwide, Keller's teaching promises to influence generations to come. Synthesizing Keller's work topic by topic, each chapter of this book highlights a key aspect of the Christian life—covering his views on prayer, suffering, friendship, vocation, intimacy with God, and more

TRUE CRIME! PTA president Kelli Peters had a normal, happy life in Orange County, California, where she volunteered at her daughter's school, carpooled, and took care of her family. When a school parent angrily accused Kelli of keeping her son waiting during the afterschool pick-up, it appeared to be a simple confrontation with an overprotective mother. Kelli soon learned, however, that she was the target of a twisted plot against her that involved drugs, lies, schemes, and a campaign to ruin her life. The vendetta led to reputations tarnished, careers lost, secret lives uncovered, two ...

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, cofounder of the notorious Crips gang, is a death-row inmate. But in his two decades of incarceration, Williams has also become a respected author and activist whose dedication to ending gang warfare in the lives of inner-city children has earned him a 2001 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. In this award-winning book, which has drawn praise from educators, government leaders, and families alike. Williams describes the brutal reality of being an inmate.