Collection: Biography & Memoir

Celebrate the unheralded people and stories that helped shape the game of baseball!

Meet unsung pioneers, like John "Bud" Fowler, William Edward White, and brothers Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weld Walker, four African Americans who integrated white teams decades before Jackie Robinson.

Discover unforgettable moments, like the time a 17-year old girl named Jackie Mtchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Marvel at records. Did you know that Japanese superstar Sadaharu Oh has a whopping 113 more career homers than Hank Aaron?

And that's just for starters! This lively illustrated collection of shiny nuggets of baseball lore will transform you into a superfan who knows the game better than anyone else. Someone who's got game.

Ever hear of Charlie Parker? The great jazz saxophone player? If you have or if you haven't, it's okay. Look at this board book and you'll hear Charlie Parker; you'll hear music in your mind. "Be bop. Fisk, fisk. Lollipop. Boomba, boomba." Look. That's Charlie swinging and spinning all over the pages. And that's Charlie's cat, waiting, waiting for him to come home...

Learn more about the renowned British scientist, professor, and author who spent his entire career trying to answer the question: "Where did the universe come from?"

Stephen Hawking was born exactly three hundred years after the death of the scientist Galileo, so maybe it was written in the stars that he would become a famous scientist in his own right. Although he was diagnosed with a neurological disease at age 21, Stephen did not let the illness define his life. Known for his groundbreaking work in physics, and identified by his wheelchair and computerized voice system, Stephen continued his research until his death in 2018. He is best known for his black hole theories and his best-selling book A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking is an example of a person who had a great mind, but an even greater spirit.

The latest in the perennially popular line of Studio Ghibli artbooks, which includes interviews, concept sketches, and finished animation cels from classics such as Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

The Wind Rises is Miyazaki's love letter to the power of flight and the imagination, an examination of the rise of Japan's military might in the years leading up to the Second World War, and a call for worldwide peace and harmony in the face of destruction. This book captures the art of the film, from conception to production, and features in-depth interviews with the filmmakers.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Based on a decade of research and reporting--as well as access to the Replacements' key principals, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson--author Bob Mehr has fashioned something far more compelling than a conventional band bio. Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate portrait, revealing the primal factors and forces that shaped one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive rock 'n' roll bands of all time.

Beginning with riveting revelations about the Replacements' troubled early years, Trouble Boys follows the group as they rise within the early '80s American underground. It uncovers the darker truths behind the band's legendary drinking, showing how their addictions first came to define them, and then nearly destroyed them.

A roaring road adventure, a heartrending family drama, and a cautionary showbiz tale, Trouble Boys has deservedly been hailed as an instant classic of rock lit.

"Jeanne's book not only inspired the documentary but has been a catalyst in changing our national understanding of Rosa Parks. Highly recommend!"--Soledad O'Brien, executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning documentary The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

"A must-read for young people."--Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

Now adapted for readers ages 12 and up, the award-winning biography that examines Rosa Parks's life and 60 years of radical activism and brings the civil rights movement in the North and South to life

The basis for the documentary of the same name executive produced by award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien, now streaming on Peacock. The documentary is the recepient of the 2022 Television Academy Honors Award.

A Chicago Public Library's "Best of the Best Books of 2021" Selection - A Kirkus Reviews "Best YA Biography and Memoir of 2021" Selection

Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known Americans today, but much of what is known and taught about her is incomplete, distorted, and just plain wrong. Adapted for young people from the NAACP Image Award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert shatter the myths that Parks was meek, accidental, tired, or middle class. They reveal a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Readers will understand what it was like to be Parks, from standing up to white supremacist bullies as a young person to meeting her husband, Raymond, who showed her the possibility of collective activism, to her years of frustrated struggle before the boycott, to the decade of suffering that followed for her family after her bus arrest. The book follows Parks to Detroit, after her family was forced to leave Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent the second half of her life and reveals her activism alongside a growing Black Power movement and beyond.

Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black freedom struggle across the twentieth century. Theoharis and Colbert show young people how the national fable of Parks and the civil rights movement--celebrated in schools during Black History Month--has warped what we know about Parks and stripped away the power and substance of the movement. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks illustrates how the movement radically sought to expose and eradicate racism in jobs, housing, schools, and public services, as well as police brutality and the over-incarceration of Black people--and how Rosa Parks was a key player throughout.

Rosa Parks placed her greatest hope in young people--in their vision, resolve, and boldness to take the struggle forward. As a young adult, she discovered Black history, and it sustained her across her life. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks will help do that for a new generation.

The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world. In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries--the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole--remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roald Amundsen would claim all four prizes. Renowned for his determination and technical skills, both feared and beloved by his men, Amundsen is a legend of the heroic age of exploration, which shortly thereafter would be tamed by technology, commerce, and publicity. FÃ(c)d in his lifetime as an international celebrity, pursued by women and creditors, he died in the Arctic on a rescue mission for an inept rival explorer.

Stephen R. Bown has unearthed archival material to give Amundsen's life the grim immediacy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, the exciting detail of The Endurance, and the suspense of a Jon Krakauer tale. The Last Viking is both a thrilling literary biography and a cracking good story.

From young Afghani activist and Amnesty International Global Youth Ambassador Pashtana Durrani, a deeply inspiring memoir about the power of learning and the value of educators in their many forms - from teachers, mentors, and role models, to fathers, mothers, and any one of us with the drive to stand against ignorance...

A Ms. Magazine Pick for Most Anticipated Feminist Books


"Pashtana's story highlights the resourcefulness and bravery of young women in Afghanistan. I hope readers will be inspired by her mission to give every girl the education she deserves and the opportunity to pursue her dreams."--Malala Yousafzai

Inspired by generations of her family's unwavering belief in the power of education, Pashtana Durrani recognized her calling early in life: to educate Afghanistan's girls and young women, raised in a society where learning is forbidden. In a country devastated by war and violence, where girls are often married off before reaching their teenage years and prohibited from leaving their homes, heeding that call seemed both impossible and dangerous.

Pashtana was raised in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan where her father, a tribal leader, founded a community school for girls within their home. Fueled by his insistence that despite being a girl, she mattered and deserved an education, Pashtana was sixteen when, against impossible odds, she was granted a path out of the refugee camp: admittance to a preparatory program at Oxford. Unthinkably and to her parents' horror, she chose a different path. She chose Afghanistan.

Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls in remote areas of the country, training teachers in digital literacy. Her commitment to education has made her a target of the Taliban. Still, she continues to fight for women's education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.

Courageous and inspiring, Last to Eat, Last to Learn is the story of how just one person can transform a family, a tribe, a country. It reminds us of the emancipatory power of learning and the transformational potential that lies within each of us.

A portion of proceeds from Last to Eat, Last to Learn will be donated to LEARN (LearnAfghan.org), the NGO dedicated to providing quality education and healthcare to communities in conflict zones.

This groundbreaking resource moves us from theory to action with a practical plan for reparations.

A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project gathers an accomplished interdisciplinary team of scholars--members of the Reparations Planning Committee--who have considered the issues pertinent to making reparations happen. This book will be an essential resource in the national conversation going forward.

The first section of The Black Reparations Project crystallizes the rationale for reparations, cataloguing centuries of racial repression, discrimination, violence, mass incarceration, and the immense black-white wealth gap. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in economics, history, law, public policy, public health, and education, the second section unfurls direct guidance for building and implementing a reparations program, including draft legislation that addresses how the program should be financed and how claimants can be identified and compensated. Rigorous and comprehensive, The Black Reparations Project will motivate, guide, and speed the final leg of the journey for justice.

Translated by Audie E. Bock.

"A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book.... Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction."
--Variety

"For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments."
--Washington Post Book World

From the acclaimed economist-historian and author of The Marshall Plan comes a dramatic and powerful new perspective on the political career of Henry Wallace--a perspective that will forever change how we view the making of US and Soviet foreign policy at the dawn of the Cold War.

Henry Wallace is the most important, and certainly the most fascinating, almost-president in American history. As FDR's third-term vice president, and a hero to many progressives, he lost his place on the 1944 Democratic ticket in a wild open convention, as a result of which Harry Truman became president on FDR's death. Books, films, and even plays have since portrayed the circumstances surrounding Wallace's defeat as corrupt, and the results catastrophic. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, among others, has claimed that Wallace's loss ushered in four decades of devastating and unnecessary Cold War.

Now, based on striking new finds from Russian, FBI, and other archives, Benn Steil's The World That Wasn't paints a decidedly less heroic portrait of the man, of the events surrounding his fall, and of the world that might have been under his presidency. Though a brilliant geneticist, Henry Wallace was a self-obsessed political figure, blind to the manipulations of aides--many of whom were Soviet agents and assets.

From 1933 to 1949, Wallace undertook a series of remarkable interventions abroad, each aimed at remaking the world order according to his evolving spiritual blueprint. As agriculture secretary, he fell under the spell of Russian mystics, and used the cover of a plant-gathering mission to aid their doomed effort to forge a new theocratic state in Central Asia. As vice president, he toured a Potemkin Siberian continent, guided by undercover Soviet security and intelligence officials who hid labor camps and concealed prisoners. He then wrote a book, together with an American NKGB journalist source, hailing the region's renaissance under Bolshevik leadership. In China, the Soviets uncovered his private efforts to coax concessions to Moscow from Chiang Kai-shek, fueling their ambitions to dominate Manchuria. Running for president in 1948, he colluded with Stalin to undermine his government's foreign policy, allowing the dictator to edit his most important election speech. It was not until 1950 that he began to acknowledge his misapprehensions regarding the Kremlin's aims and conduct.

Meticulously researched and deftly written, The World That Wasn't is a spellbinding work of political biography and narrative history that will upend how we see the making of the early Cold War.

**Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner**
**Middle School Book of the Year -- Northern Lights Book Awards**
**Skipping Stones Honor Award Winner**

For the first time, middle readers can learn the complete story of the courageous girl whose life, which ended through the effects of war, inspired a worldwide call for peace.

In this book, author Sue DiCicco and Sadako's older brother Masahiro tell her complete story in English for the first time--how Sadako's courage throughout her illness inspired family and friends, and how she became a symbol of all people, especially children, who suffer from the impact of war. Her life and her death carry a message: we must have a wholehearted desire for peace and be willing to work together to achieve it.

Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Ten years later, just as life was starting to feel almost normal again, this athletic and enthusiastic girl was fighting a war of a different kind. One of many children affected by the bomb, she had contracted leukemia. Patient and determined, Sadako set herself the task of folding 1000 paper cranes in the hope that her wish to be made well again would be granted.

Illustrations and personal family photos give a glimpse into Sadako's life and the horrors of war. Proceeds from this book are shared equally between The Sadako Legacy NPO and The Peace Crane Project.

[Jerusalem] is a small miracle: concise, even-handed, highly particular. --The Guardian

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is the acclaimed graphic memoirist Guy Delisle's strongest work yet, a thoughtful and moving travelogue about life in contemporary Jerusalem. Delisle expertly lays the groundwork for a cultural road map of the Holy City, utilizing the classic stranger in a strange land point of view that made his other books required reading for understanding what daily life is like in cities few are able to travel to. Jerusalem explores the complexities of a city that represents so much to so many. It eloquently examines the impact of conflict on the lives of people on both sides of the wall while drolly recounting the quotidian: checkpoints, traffic jams, and holidays.

When observing the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations that call Jerusalem home, Delisle's drawn line is both sensitive and fair, assuming nothing and drawing everything. A sixteen-page appendix to the paperback edition lets the reader behind the curtain, revealing intimate process sketches from Delisle's time in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a masterfully hewn travelogue; topping Best of 2012 lists from The Guardian, Paste, and the Montreal Gazette, it was the graphic novel of the year.

Was your mother preoccupied, distant, or even demeaning? Have you struggled with relationships--or with your own self-worth? Often, the grown children of emotionally absent mothers can't quite put a finger on what's missing from their lives. The children of abusive mothers, by contrast, may recognize the abuse--but overlook its lasting, harmful effects.

Psychotherapist Jasmin Lee Cori has helped thousands of men and women heal the hidden wounds left by every kind of undermothering. In this second edition of her pioneering book, with compassion for mother and child alike, she explains:

• Possible reasons your mother was distracted or hurtful--and what she was unable to give
• The lasting impact of childhood emotional neglect and abuse
• How to find the child inside you and fill the "mother gap" through reflections and exercises
• How to secure a happier future for yourself (and perhaps for your children).

Game warden work is not glamorous. There will be days when you are shivering and cold and your legs are covered with mud up to your knees. There will be other days when you are hot and sweating and your arms are covered with fish scales up to your elbows. There are hurricanes, tornados. mass shootings, explosions, and every other kind of calamity. You will get a front row seat to all of it.

CAMPFIRE CONFESSIONS is a companion to Benny's first book TALES OF A TEXAS GAME WARDEN, recalling the adventures of one of Texas' most well- known game wardens. These are his stories.

Pura Belpré Illustrator Award Honor - American Library Association (ALA)

A fascinating bilingual picture book biography of Peruvian archaeologist and national icon Julio C. Tello, who unearthed Peru's ancient cultures and fostered pride in the country's Indigenous history.

Growing up in the late 1800s, Julio Tello, an Indigenous boy, spent time exploring the caves and burial grounds in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes. Nothing scared Julio, not even the ancient human skulls he found. His bravery earned him the boyhood nickname Sharuko, which means "brave" in Quechua, the language of the Native people of Peru.

At the age of twelve, Julio moved to Lima to continue his education. While in medical school, he discovered an article about the skulls he had found. The skulls had long ago been sent to Lima to be studied by scientists. The article renewed Julio's interest in his ancestry, and he decided to devote his medical skills to the study of Peru's Indigenous history.

Over his lifetime, Julio Tello made many revolutionary discoveries at archaeological sites around Peru, and he worked to preserve the historical treasures he excavated. He showed that Peru's Indigenous cultures had been established thousands of years ago, disproving the popular belief that Peruvian culture had been introduced more recently from other countries. He fostered pride in his country's Indigenous ancestry, making him a hero to all Peruvians. Because of the brave man once known as Sharuko, people around the world today know of Peru's long history and its living cultural legacy.