Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Biographies & Memoirs

Popular biographer Carolly Erickson creates intimate and richly detailed portraits of her historical subjects. In this book she offers a provocative new perspective on Josephine and her fabled marriage to Napoleon.

Long considered a culinary renegade and a pioneering chef, Van Aken is an American original who chopped and charred, sweated and seared his way to cooking stardom with no formal training, but with extra helpings of energy, creativity, and faith. After landing on the deceptively breezy shores of Key West, Van Aken faced hurricanes, economic downturns, and mercurial moneymen during the decades when a restaurant could open and close faster than you can type haute cuisine.

A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the best-selling author of Claire of the Sea Light. Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. A moving tribute and a work of astute criticism, The Art of Death is an audiobook that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.

For over 100 years, the Mockett family has owned a 7,000 acre wheat farm in Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but foresworn it. At the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical wheat harvesters through the heartland as they follow the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho.

Teresa Rhyne vowed to get things right this time around: new boyfriend, new house, new dog, maybe even new job. But shortly after she adopted Seamus, a totally incorrigible beagle, vets told Teresa that he had a malignant tumor and less than a year to live. The diagnosis devastated her, but she decided to fight it, learning everything she could about the best treatment for Seamus. Teresa couldn't possibly have known then that she was preparing herself for life's next hurdle - a cancer diagnosis of her own.

A book reviewer for The Washington Post and NPR's Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan is obsessed with books - so much so that they caused her to delay marriage. This audiobook explores her obsession with all things literary. Corrigan expertly weaves together her own life story with the stories from the books she loves.

An extraordinary collection of essays, forewords, articles, and interviews, The Written World and the Unwritten World displays the remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit of prolific Italian writer Italo Calvino as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world.

My name is Mickey Rowe. I am an actor, a theatre director, a father, and a husband. I am also a man with autism. You think those things don’t go together? Let me show you that they do.

Award-winning author Philip Dray delves into the lesser-known side of an American icon in Stealing God's Thunder. Benjamin Franklin, more often viewed as a statesman and founding father than as a man of science, challenged religion, science, and reason with his inventions. But in a time when everything was blamed on sin, it was the lightning rod, Franklin's attempt to control the heavens, that caused the greatest controversy.

In this new memoir, the woman nicknamed 'The Black Widow' opens up about her legendary career and the rich, unpredictable life she's woven around it. Lee details her upbringing in a Korean-American household in the Bronx, her single-minded drive to reach the pinnacle of her sport, and her unlikely entry into the realm of mainstream celebrity in an era where female athletes rarely got their share of the limelight.

Written 200 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln shared a birthday on February 12, 1809, this insightful account sheds new light on two men who changed the way we think about the meaning of life and death. Award-winning journalist Adam Gopnik's unique perspective, combined with previously unexplored stories and figures, reveals two men planted firmly at the roots of modern views and liberal values.

NFL football star Vernon Davis delves into his astonishing career, from winning Super Bowl 50 in 2016 with the Denver Broncos to reinventing himself as an actor and producer, and recalls the hard-won lessons—including that infamous press conference—that paved his path to success.

George Marsden describes how Lewis gradually went from being an atheist to a committed Anglican - famously converting to Christianity in 1931 after conversing into the night with his friends, J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugh Dyson - and how Lewis delivered his wartime talks to a traumatized British nation in the midst of an all-out war for survival.

Churchill was an improbable hero for what was to be called "the century of the common man", not only because he was personally so very uncommon, but because he was from an elite British family and was never closely in touch with "ordinary people" in Britain, let alone the rest of the world. Yet to pigeonhole Churchill that way is misleading. Winston Churchill was seen even in his own lifetime as a historic figure, one of the great men of world history.

A layered saga, Vegas Concierge spans more than a decade and includes world-famous stars, violent “gorilla” pimps, crooked and honest cops, struggling journalists, ambitious FBI agents, influential casino executives, and high-profile political figures. It tells the inside story of this failed investigation and its countless twists, moving from the luxury hotel rooms of the Las Vegas Strip to the inner offices of the Las Vegas police, to the newsrooms of some of Nevada’s biggest news organizations.

In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse - a descendant of a slave named Coreen and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison - finally shares her family story, exploring legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.

Melissa Stockwell has been a restless force of nature from the time she was a little girl speeding around her neighborhood on her bike, to her tumbles and spills as a high-level gymnast and Olympic hopeful, to joining the ROTC in college as an outlet for her patriotism and love of America.

By acclaimed Forward Prize-winner, novelist, and poet, Kei Miller's linked collection of essays blends memoir and literary commentary to explore the silences that exist in our conversations about race, sex, and gender.

Marcus Heavy is the founder of the Heavy Sinners Motorcycle Club. They specialize in the drug game, prostitution, blackmail, and murder. You cross any member of the club, and that’s the end of your life. Marcus’ son, Darius, was supposed to take up the mantle as leader of the club, but Darius doesn’t want that life.

Este libro relata la vida de una familia y unos acontecimientos que cambiaron para siempre la historia de América Latina. Como nadie más podía hacerlo, Juanita nos adentra en el mundo familiar de los Castro, desde su infancia y juventud hasta las nuevas generaciones, pasando por la gesta contra Batista, la Revolución y el posterior desencanto de muchos.