Memoir & biography Books 133 results

Mark Hoppus

Sphere

Bill Gates

Collins

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age"A surprisingly candid memoir of the Microsoft mogul's early years...Reading this book feels like watching someone take a well-known black-and-white sketch, fill in the details, and paint it in vivid color." —GeekWireThe busines...

Bell Hooks

Abacus

One of bell hooks' foundational works introduced to the UK for the first time. 'With the emotion of poetry, the narrative of a novel, and the truth of experience, bell hooks weaves a girlhood memoir you won't be able to put down-or forget. Bone Black takes us into the cave of self-creation' Gloria Steinem Stitching together the threads of her girlhood memories, bell hooks sho...

Safiya Sinclair

Harper

Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Preaching fire and brimstone, her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the immoral, corrupting influence of the Western world just beyond their gate...

Elizabeth Beller

Gallery

A NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, and USA TODAY BESTSELLER *The basis for the forthcoming season of American Love Story on FX, directed by Ryan Murphy* This "intimate and sympathetic portrait of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy that is as enthralling as she was" (Dana Thomas, New York Times bestselling author) reexamines her life and legacy as never before. Perfect for fans of My T...

Alice Maddicott

Duckworth Books

What do we mean by atmosphere? Some travellers are driven by the need to scale a natural wonder, to see a city's sights or a place of history. Others, like Alice Maddicott, travel in search of a particular scene, feeling or atmosphere, often inspired by music, literature and art. Taking us deep into our emotional and creative responses to place, this extraordinary book explore...

Lili Anolik

Penguin

Chas Newkey-Burden

Harper

The #1 New York Times Bestseller As Taylor releases her 11th album, THE TORTURED POET'S DEPARTMENT, catch up on the full story of Taylor Swift's stratospheric rise to fame; all any dedicated Swifty needs to know about the pop superstar who's taking over the world A small-town girl with incredible talent - and the strength and determination to realise her dream - Taylor Swift ...

Jesmyn Ward

Bloomsbury

* AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * 'A spectacular achievement' ANTHONY DOERR 'Extravagantly beautiful' DAILY MAIL 'One of the greatest writers of all time' JACQUELINE WOODSON 'Extraordinary' GUARDIAN'The best book I've read in years' LOUISE KENNEDY ----------------------- The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand. On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survive...

Katherine Rundell

Faber & Faber

Beryl Gilroy

Faber & Faber

The rediscovered classic: an unforgettable memoir by a trailblazing black woman in post-war London, introduced by Bernardine Evaristo ('I dare anyone to read it and not come away shocked, moved and entertained.') Benjamin Zephaniah: 'A must-read. Her life makes you laugh. Her life makes you cry. Get to know her.' Jacqueline Wilson: 'A superb but shocking memoir about a brillian...

Janis Tomlinson

Princeton Press

The first major English-language biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes, who ushered in the modern eraThe life of Francisco Goya (1746-1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country's politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in society, the devastation of the Iberian Peninsula in the war against Napoleon, and ...

Gerald Murnane

Hit

This collection of essays leads the reader into the searching and wildly fertile imagination of Gerald Murnane, one of the masters of contemporary Australian writing, author of the classics 'Border Districts' and 'Tamarisk Row', and winner of the Patrick White Literary Award. `Someone has written that all art aspires to the condition of music. My experience is that all art, inc...

Matt Haig

Penguin

Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn't give up. The Comfort Book is a collection of little islands of hope. It gathers consolations and stories that give new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. Matt Haig's mix of philosophy, memoir and self-reflection builds on the wisdom of philosophers and survivors through the ages, from Marcus Aurelius to Nellie Bly, Emily D...

Emily Brand

Hodder

"In the early eighteenth century, Newstead Abbey was among the most admired aristocratic homes in England. It was the abode of William, 4th Baron Byron - a popular amateur composer and artist - and his teenage wife Frances. But by the end of the century, the building had become a crumbling and ill-cared-for ruin. Surrounded by wreckage of his inheritance, the 4th Baron's dissip...

Desmond Seward

Lume Books

From 1853 to 1870 Eugénie de Montijo was Empress of the French, sharing the Second Empire with her husband Napoleon III. The last woman to reign over France, she personifies the allure glimpsed in Winterhalter's portraits and the music of Jacques Offenbach. It was 'eighteen years of self-indulgence, folly and wild gaiety, of love affairs and unbelievable elegance', a survivor w...

Jenny Slate

Abacus

'Magical' MINDY KALING 'Funny and poignant and beautiful' JOHN MULANEY 'It made me remember I was alive' GEORGE SAUNDERS To see the world through Jenny Slate's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gases that are sc...

The Secret Barrister

Pan

Could the courts really order the death of your innocent baby? Was there an illegal immigrant who couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat? Are unelected judges truly enemies of the people? Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues i...

Jim Ottaviani

Abrams

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was the mathematician credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis. After the war, Turing went on to launch modern computer science through his creation of the universal Turing machine and the Imitation Game, an artificial-intelligence test that is still in use today. Turing kept his code-brea...

Vikki Warner

Penguin

A heartfelt coming-of-age memoir about taking the unbeaten path, owning a home, and holding it all--including yourself--together. Detouring from the traditional timeline of marriage-kids-house, twenty-six-year-old Vikki Warner skips straight to homeownership. She buys a downtrodden three-story house in Providence, Rhode Island, and suddenly finds herself responsible for a rotat...

Phil Knight

Simon & Schuster

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company's early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world's most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands. In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed 50 from his father and created a company with a simple mi...

Philip Gefter

Penguin

Winner of the Arts Club of Washington Marfield Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Selection This "admiring and absorbing biography" (Deborah Solomon, The New York Times Book Review) charts Sam Wagstaff's incalculable influence on contemporary art, photography, and gay identity. A legendary curator, collector, and patron of the arts, Sam Wagstaff was a "figure wh...

Emmanuel Carrère

Penguin

TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 Limonov is not a fictional character, but he could have been. He's lived a hundred lives. He was a hoodlum in Ukraine, an idol of the Soviet underground, punk-poet and valet to a billionaire in Manhattan, fashion writer in Paris, lost soldier in the Balkans, and now, in the chaos after the fall of communism a chari...

Anya Von Bremzen

Ladybird

Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya von Bremzen grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable. In 1974, when Anya was ten, she and her mother fled to the US...

Jung Chang

Vintage

In this ground-breaking biography, Jung Chang shows that under Cixi's rule China acquired virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, cars, electricity, telephones, Western medicine, an army and navy with modern weaponry. ...

Anthony Bourdain

Bloomsbury

After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris ...

Nigel Barley

Penguin

This witty introduction to the life of the social anthropologist describes Barley's experiences in the Cameroons. In his first foray into fieldwork, Barley discovers that the society of the Dowayo people refuses to conform to the rules of his new discipline. ...

Neal Gabler

Penguin

His classic films illuminated everyone's childhood. The theme parks are on every tourist itinerary. The movie empire is one of Hollywood's biggest. Walt Disney is one of the few men who unquestionably changed our culture. And Neal Gabler is the first author to have had complete access to the Disney Archives, enabling him to write the definitive biography of this remarkable man....

Andre Agassi

Harper

He is one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game. Now, in his frank and revealing autobiography, Agassi tells the story of a life framed by triumphs, obsession and personal struggles. He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court - but from ...

John Healy

Penguin

John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. This Penguin Classics edition includes an afterword by Colin MacCabe. In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging car...