Becoming Madeleine by Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy
/
The element that makes Becoming Madeleine such a treasure of a book is the wealth of primary sources.
Read More
Napoleon: The Spirit of the Age: 1805-1810 by Michael Broers
/
Based on Napoleon's correspondence, this is the second of a three volume life of Napoleon that moves through many well-known landmarks of these five years.
Read MoreJoe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell
/
Joe Gould’s Secret, Joseph Mitchell’s 1965 book of New Yorker profiles about the eponymous writer, will appeal to all creatives.
Read MoreThe anniversary of a German cult classic
/
A raw and uncensored tale of child prostitution and teen drug abuse.
Read MoreJohn Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr
/
In honor of John Aubrey's birthday--his 392nd--we are sharing this appreciation of Ruth Scurr's 2015 biography of Aubrey.
Read MoreWilliam Howard Taft by Jeffrey Rosen
/
A densely-written and richly-researched biography of William Howard Taft, the nation's 27th President and its first Chief Executive to also hold the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Read MoreElizabeth's Rival by Nicola Tallis
/
This is the colorful material insanely prolific historical novelist Victoria Holt used for one of her best novels, 1979's My Enemy, the Queen.
Read MoreUnsung Hero: Reviving the Forgotten Career of a Theatrical Genius
/
This is a gobstopper of a book, despite its subject’s short life.
Read MoreTom Yawkey: Patriarch of the Boston Red Sox by Bill Nowlin
/
A wonky, magnificent work of baseball writing that will be necessary reading for all Red Sox fans.
Read MoreEisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World by Louis Galambos
/
A brisk, almost aphoristic biography, covering every stage of Eisenhower's life.
Read MoreGetting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction by Erica Garza
/
Erica Garza’s new memoir about sex and porn addiction, Getting Off, is candid, quick, and as structurally clever, as commercially savvy, as it is intimate and sincere. It isn’t an addiction memoir that tries to shock, or to sustain the reader’s interest with long gruesome episodes of lowpoints or shady dealings or binges.
Read MoreThe Vanity Fair Diaries 1983-1992 by Tina Brown
/
Brown was young when she became Vanity Fair’s editor – she turned thirty in 1983 - but she was by no means a newbie to the magazine-business. Before moving to the United States, she had been editor-in-chief at the British Tatler which she transformed from a nearly defunct 270-year old dinosaur into a successful modern society glossy.
Read MoreThe Cute One Redux
/
Picking a favorite Beatle is a rite of passage akin to choosing a political party or deciding between the Yankees and the Mets.
Read MoreQuarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War by Adam Nicolson
/
Adam Nicolson’s new book Quarrel with the King is a searching, thoughtful brief study of the earls of Pembroke (and their often formidable wives and sisters) through two hundred years, but there is another family drama, somewhat less ancient but no less fascinating, unfolding just beneath its surface.
Read MoreByron in Love by Edna O'Brien
/
When Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster Abbey, was asked by the late poet’s friends about the possibility of Lord Byron taking up a place in Poet’s Corner, they were sternly told, “Carry the body away and say as little about it as possible.” If all would-by Byron biographers had followed that sound advice since his death in 1824, the world would have been spared a great quivering mass of twaddle. . .
Read MoreA Buffalo in the House, The Extraordinary story of Charlie and His Family by R. D. Rosen
/
R.D. Rosen’s entertaining and enormously moving A Buffalo in the House, the story of how Veryl Goodnight and her husband Roger Brooks adopted a buffalo calf, named him Charlie, and made him a member of their bustling Santa Fe home. Charlie grows up (very quickly – two pounds a day!) to display a quiet good humor that is neither human nor canine nor feline but distinctly his own. . .
Read More