Nonfiction Biography

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than 50 of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces.

From the start, his path was never predictable. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of 20, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack. Then came the core and hallmark of his genius - his exacting insistence on perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries.

An artist who helped define a period in popular culture, Johnny Marr tells his story in a memoir as vivid and arresting as his music. The Smiths, the band with the signature sound he cofounded, remains one of the most beloved bands ever and have had a profound influence on a number of acts that followed - from the Stone Roses, Suede, Blur, and Radiohead to Oasis, The Libertines, and Arctic Monkeys.

Amid the excitement of the early twentieth century, hundreds of young women spend their days hard at work painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. The painters consider themselves lucky—until they start suffering from a mysterious illness. As the corporations try to cover up a shocking secret, these shining girls suddenly find themselves at the center of a deadly scandal. The Radium Girls: Young Readers Edition tells the unbelievable true story of these incredible women, whose determination to fight back saved countless lives.

The Unfiltered Truth Behind Sailing’s Greatest Madness The Vendée Globe is not just a race—it is a solitary pilgrimage across the planet’s most hostile oceans, a test of endurance, ingenuity, and raw will. In The Epic Story of the Vendée Globe 2020–21, the drama of the world’s toughest sailing challenge unfolds in all its brutal beauty. The 2020-21 Vendée Globe was supposed to be just another edition of the world’s toughest solo yacht race. Instead, it became a white-knuckle psychodrama of shattered boats, broken minds, and the kind of raw human moments that get scrubbed from...

My life's path that I ventured upon reminds me much of the biblical character Joseph's life. Having GOD'S PROVIDENCE spoken over me while still inside my mother's womb. I did not start out in a Spiritual atmosphere. That came later in my life. I have fought my whole life through one triumphant storm to another though I did not understand what I was being prepared for. This is my story of the people who helped take me where I was meant to be, even if the hand was negative or Positive. As far as memory would serve me; I can admit that like my brother in the biblical story of "Joseph," I lost ...

There are few women in English history more famous or controversial than Queen Anne Boleyn. In this vivid and engaging account of the triumphant and harrowing final year of Queen Anne Boleyn's life, the author reveals a very human portrait of a brilliant, passionate, and complex woman.

John Walker was a Miami undercover narcotics agent in the 1970s. Ten years later, he was in prison for smuggling 12,000 pounds of marijuana. In prison, he connected with a South American drug lord who was still running the family operation from inside the federal pen. Within months of being paroled, John began smuggling again—this time uncut Colombian cocaine. And this time, he put everything on the line: his freedom, his family and, ultimately, his life.

In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so Americans could leave.

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.

As a woman in today’s world, you know what it’s like to feel pressure on all sides from clashing cultural expectations. How can you stay true to who God has uniquely created you to be in the face of the script you’ve been given? What’s more, how can you stand your ground with grace? The classy confidence you know and love - whether it’s on set at Full House or Fuller House, Dancing with the Stars, The View, or Candace’s Hallmark films - is no act. But it hasn’t come easy. In fact, learning to stay true to herself with grace has been one of the biggest fights of Candace’s life.

In the summer of 1879, the young writer Robert Louis Stevenson received a telegram from America. Fanny, a dear friend in California, was ill. Stevenson packed his bags and left his home in Scotland. When the steamer reached the east coast of America, his journey had just begun. Stevenson had little money, so he traveled across America the cheapest way: he went by train.

At one time Lew Alcindor was just another kid from New York City with all the usual problems: He struggled with fitting in, with pleasing a strict father, and with overcoming shyness that made him feel socially awkward. But with a talent for basketball and an unmatched team of supporters, Lew Alcindor was able to transform and to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

From New York Times best-selling authors Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski comes the young listeners' edition of an unbelievable memoir about an unlikely friendship that forever changed the lives of a busy sales executive and a hungry 11-year-old boy. On one rainy afternoon, on a crowded New York City street corner, eleven-year-old Maurice met Laura. Maurice asked Laura for spare change because he was hungry, and something made Laura stop and ask Maurice if she could take him to lunch.

This short account documents Joseph’s tour in India in the closing days of World War Two, based on his diaries and letters to his wife Mary, the account is augmented with some of the stories he loved to tell us. This is not a tale of high adventure, nor an intricate analysis of the battles and politics in WWII. It is the diary and missive of an ordinary man being plucked from his home and wife at the tender age of 23 to be deployed in a country which was completely alien to him. There are three phases of the story, shock and bewilderment at the living conditions he faced, learning to ...

★ IT WAS THE BET OF A LIFETIME! ★ Overcome with patriotic fervour, New Zealander Justin Brown bets an Australian mate that the All Blacks will thrash the Wallabies in an up-coming rugby match. They don't. Forced to pay his debt, Justin has to busk his way around England until he earns enough money for his airfare home. THE DEAL If Justin's favourite team loses he must door-door-busk his way around the United Kingdom. If Justin's supposed best mate's favourite team loses he must streak at the Wimbledon Grand Final. THE OUTCOME Justin's teams loses. He is forced to go to the other side of...

When Rabbi Naomi Levy came across this poignant letter by Einstein it shook her to her core. His words perfectly captured what she has come to believe about the human condition: That we are intimately connected, and that we are blind to this truth. Levy wondered what had elicited such spiritual wisdom from a man of science? Thus began a three-year search into the mystery of Einstein’s letter, and into the mystery of the human soul.

For years, people have been asking Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, the brash, outspoken, and fiercely loyal eldest brother in the Emanuel clan, the same question: What did your mom put in the cereal? Middle brother Rahm is the mayor of Chicago, erstwhile White House chief of staff, and one of the most colorful figures in American politics. Youngest brother Ari is a Hollywood super-agent, the real-life model for the character of Ari Gold on the hit series Entourage.

Everyone's a New Yorker on Thanksgiving Day, when young and old rise early to see what giant new balloons will fill the skies for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Who first invented these "upside-down puppets"? Meet Tony Sarg, puppeteer extraordinaire!

Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author's grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed "perhaps the 20th century's most discriminating publisher" by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.