Biography & Autobiography Archives

President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier

In this magisterial biography, C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixer and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated. James Abram Garfield was all these things and more. […Learn More]

Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice

“A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister’s murderer to justice years after the fact” (The Boston Globe), from “one of Mexico’s greatest living writers” (Jonathan Lethem).

I seek justice, I finally said. I seek justice for my sister. . . . Sometimes it takes twenty-nine years to say it out loud, to say it out loud on a phone call with a lawyer at the General Attorney’s office: I seek justice. […Learn More]

Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions

Queens of a Fallen World tells a story of betrayal, love, and ambition in the ancient world as seen through a woman’s eyes. Historian Kate Cooper introduces us to four women whose hopes and plans collided in Augustine’s early adulthood: his mother, Monnica of Thagaste; his lover; his fiancée; and Justina, the troubled empress of ancient Rome. Drawing upon their depictions in the Confessions, Cooper skilfully reconstructs their lives against the backdrop of their fourth-century society. […Learn More]

JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity

The fascinating, suppressed history of how JFK pioneered supply-side economics.

John F. Kennedy was the first president since the 1920s to slash tax rates across-the-board, becoming one of the earliest supply-siders. Sadly, today’s Democrats have ignored JFK’s tax-cut legacy and have opted instead for an anti-growth, tax-hiking redistribution program, undermining America’s economy. […Learn More]

The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson

The notorious psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, rediscovered nearly a century after it was written by Sigmund Freud and US diplomat William C. Bullitt, sheds new light on how the mental health of a controversial American president shaped world events. […Learn More]

Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War

The dramatic, first-hand account of the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland—the definitive weekend that was the key turning point in the Cold War—by President Reagan’s arms control director, Ken Adelman. […Learn More]

Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen

The first modern biography of one of the most influential yet long-neglected rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra.

“A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens.” —Emma Southon […Learn More]

The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders That Stunned Victorian England

A brilliant work of historical true crime charting a pivotal event in the 19th century, the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin, that gripped the world and forever altered the course of Irish history, from renowned journalist, former New Yorker London editor, and Costa Biography Award finalist Julie Kavanagh. […Learn More]

Demetrius: Sacker of Cities

The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world. With no monarch able to take Alexander’s place, his empire fragmented into five pieces. […Learn More]

Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation

Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of being present and embodied. […Learn More]