Life Biography

She is one of the most recognizable women of our time. America knows Jane Fonda as an actress and an activist, a feminist and a wife, a workout guru and a role model. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, Fonda reveals that she is so much more. From her youth among Hollywood's elite and her early film career to the challenges and triumphs of her life today, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths.

Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia at the brink of World War II. Most never saw their parents again. This is his story.

Karen Grassle, the beloved actress who played Ma on Little House on the Prairie, grew up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in a family where love was plentiful but alcohol wreaked havoc.

Politician, evangelist, and reformer William Jennings Bryan was the most popular public speaker of his time. In this acclaimed biography - the first major reconsideration of Bryan's life in 40 years - award-winning historian Michael Kazin illuminates his astonishing career and the richly diverse and volatile landscape of religion and politics in which he rose to fame.

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in 18th-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine.

Whether in Kraftwerk or as an acclaimed solo artist, Karl Bartos has had an extraordinary impact on electronic music. In The Sound of the Machine, Bartos’ recollections include his childhood in postwar Germany, the early musical encounters that led him to Kraftwerk, and fascinating insights from his time with the group, such as the genesis of monumental songs like "The Robots," "The Model," and "Tour de France," and candid accounts of his relationships with the other bandmembers.

In only 90 seconds, a fire in The Station nightclub in Rhode Island left 100 people dead or dying and injured hundreds more. It would take years to find out why - and who was really at fault. Best-selling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Scott James investigates all the central figures, including the band’s manager and lead singer, the fire inspector, the maker of the acoustical foam, as well as the brothers.

Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Scotty Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the town's stars and starlets. He began sleeping with some himself, and connecting others with his coterie of young, attractive, and sexually free-spirited friends.

​Diane von Furstenberg, entrepreneur and philanthropist, presents her words to live by. In an easy-to-navigate A-Z dictionary format, designed to be browsed or listened to as a whole, Own It offers listeners Diane’s well-earned wisdom for enjoying both personal and professional growth at any age.

Posing as a jewel thief Donnie Brasco, FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone worked undercover for six years to infiltrate the flamboyant and deadly community of Mafia wise guys, captains, and bosses. Now his eyewitness account brings to pulsing life the code of honor, loyalties, treacheries, and dirty dealings of unforgettable characters.

Robert Foley had only been in Vietnam for six months when he was promoted to captain and given command of a rifle company. In November 1966, Foley led his men on a mission to rescue another company that had been pinned down by Viet Cong forces. His leadership that day inspired his men and led to a successful operation—and the Medal of Honor. His actions in Vietnam were only a small portion of a long and varied career of service in the US Army, but Foley did not always seem marked for success.

When Michael K. Williams died on September 6, 2021, he left behind a career as one of the most electrifying actors of his generation. From his star turn as Omar Little in The Wire to Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire to Emmy-nominated roles in HBO’s The Night Of and Lovecraft Country, Williams inhabited a slew of indelible roles that he portrayed with a rawness and vulnerability that leapt off the screen.

In this revelatory, dynamic biography, Benson Bobrick, profiles George H. Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who diminished his successes in their favor in their own memoirs.

The definitive account of the O. J. Simpson trial, The Run of His Life is a prodigious feat of reporting that could have been written only by the foremost legal journalist of our time. First published less than a year after the infamous verdict, Jeffrey Toobin's nonfiction masterpiece tells the whole story, from the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman to the ruthless gamesmanship behind the scenes of "the trial of the century".

By the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back comes a magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges - some of the worst largely unknown until now. Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion.

Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan’s East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York’s sights and sounds—the feral energy of its nightclubs, the angular roar of its bands, the magnetic personalities within its orbit. But more than anything, he wanted to make music—to create indelible sounds that would move, provoke, and inspire. His dream came to life in 1981 with the formation of Sonic Youth, a band Moore cofounded with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo.

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. Neurosurgeon Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress. Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere.

In the glorious chronicles of the US Marine Corps, no name is more revered than that of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. The only fighting man to receive the Navy Cross five separate times - a military honor second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor - he was the epitome of a professional warrior.

On a March night in 2000, two deputy sheriffs serving a warrant were shot in Atlanta, Georgia. One was severely wounded while the other would die a day later. The shooting kicked off a large manhunt in search of the alleged cop killer. Four days later in Alabama, authorities found their man—Jamil Al-Amin. He was a Muslim leader with the title of Imam in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. He was also the man formerly known as H. Rap Brown. He was a charismatic Black radical in the late '60s.

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.