Biographies & Memoirs

An extraordinarily open and moving account of Susan Sontag's final months, written by her son and drawing on previously unpublished letters and journals.

This work tells the story of seven hidden jews in Hitler's Berlin. Rather than risking so-called resettlement they found themselves living in a shadowy underworld where they had to survive without identity cards and ration books.

"He and his men were the terror of the country, always leaving a trail of bloodshed and devastation." The New York...

When he was very young, Simon Garfield lusted after rare stamps but could not afford them. But it is also a story of wooden legs, pornography in the Finchley Road, Pele's World Cup shirt, the man who guards stamps for the Queen, and a woman who is terrified of the Post Office Tower.

A dazzling portrait of the life and times of James Hogg.

Electric Shepherd is a likeness of James Hogg, Scottish Borderer and international literary star, who shared an epoch and an environment with Walter Scott.

When, as a boy, Mehta finds his father weeping uncontrollably on his mother's shoulder during a New York dinner party, he begins to unravel a family mystery that takes him on a painful and revealing voyage into his father's past in the exotic, closed world of British India.

First edited collection of the columns of Wilfred De'Ath, regular columnist with monthly mag the Oldie with an introduction by Melvin Bragg. Original cover artwork and line-drawings by renowned illustrator, Larry. Contains an insightful and humorous first-hand account of life as a homeless intellectual—who ...

Family & health.

A humorous memoir of growing up in Newry predominantly Catholic and sometimes fiercely Nationalist' in the 1940s and 50s. It focuses on the figures of the author's father, a hard working and deeply thoughtful family man, and especially his mother an ordinary/extraordinary' woman.

Since the 1980s, France has experienced a vigorous revival of interest in its past and cultural heritage. This has been expressed as part of a movement of remembering through museums and festivals as well as via elaborate commemorations, most notably those held to celebrate the bi-centenary of the ...

Born in 1940, one of eight children, Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America. This memoir recalls her first major work "The Woman Warrior" in which she blended Chinese myth with fiction and autobiography to reflect on her mother's past life in China and the experience of immigrants to America.

A gripping true tale of life in Russia, Turkey, and the United States, A Nomad's Journey shares the incredible story of Atilla Bektore and his father, Shevki Bektore. Born in Dobruja, Rumania, in 1888, Shevki Bektore dreams of being a teacher in his ancestral land of the Crimea. When the horrifying events ...

Leni Riefenstahl was a dancer, actress, mountaineer, photographer and world famous filmmaker. She was a protegee and confidante of Adolf Hitler, for whom she made her films "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia". During her post-war career, she has been both villainized for her lionization of Hitler and championed as an adventurer and artist.

Wit and heartbreak collide in a memoir of a life intertwined with an obsession with film. A 'Fever Pitch' for cinema lovers.

A concise biography of one of the most popular of Victorian novelists.

George IV continues to be admired as a collector of discernment and an architectural patron of genius. Yet his life was also stalked by tragedy and farce: his father was considered mad, his daughter died in childbirth and his secret marriage was illegal. This biography introduces the monarch.

In Imagined London, Quindlen walks through the city, moving within blocks from the great books of the 19th century to the detective novels of the 20th to the new modernist tradition of the 21st

Here the author offers an intimate account of the American immigrant experience, recounting the moving story of his grandparents' struggle to build a new life in turn-of-the-century America. By turns charming, wrenching, and poetic, this book is an intensely personal yet timeless tale that will appeal to nearly every descendant of immigrants.

This autobiography details the story of Larry Flynt's rise from small town beginnings to become one of the richest men in America, owning a string of nightclubs, sex outlets and, of course, the infamous pornographic magazine, "Hustler".

In 1764-65, the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais travelled to Madrid, where he immersed himself in the life and society of the day. This book is an account of Beaumarchais's visit to Madrid (he never went to Seville) and a re-creation of the society that fired his imagination.