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Biography & Memoir June 2025 |
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Warhol's Musesby Laurence Leamer“Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil,” Andy Warhol confessed, “of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them.” Obsessed with celebrity, the silver-wigged artistic icon created an ever-evolving entourage of stunning women he dubbed his “Superstars”—Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Ultra Violet, Viva, Brigid Berlin, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Mary Woronov, and Candy Darling. He gave several of them new names and manipulated their beauty and talent for his art and social status with no regard for their safety, their dignity, or their lives. In Warhol’s Muses, bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer shines a spotlight on the complex women who inspired and starred in Warhol’s legendary underground films—The Chelsea Girls, The Nude Restaurant, and Blue Movie, among others. Drawn by the siren call of Manhattan life in the sixties, they each left their protected enclaves and ventured to a new world, Warhol’s famed Factory, having no sense that they would never be able to return to their old homes and familiar ways again. Sex was casual, drugs were ubiquitous, parties were wild, and to Warhol, everyone was transient, temporary, and replaceable. It was a dangerous game he played with the women around him, and on a warm June day in 1968, someone entered the Factory and shot him, changing his life forever. Warhol’s Muses explores the lives of ten endlessly intriguing women, transports us to a turbulent and transformative era, and uncovers the life and work of one of the most legendary artists of all time.
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Mark Twain by Ron ChernowBefore he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.
Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.
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Tiger, Tiger by James PattersonOn April 13, 1986, ten-year-old Tiger Woods watches his idol, Jack Nicklaus, win his record sixth Masters. Just over a decade later, chants of “Ti-ger, Ti-ger!” ring out as the twenty- one-year-old wins his first Green Jacket. He blazes an incredible path, winning fourteen major titles (second only to Nicklaus himself) by the time he’s thirty- three, smashing records and raising standards. Then come multiple public scandals and potentially career-ending injuries. The once-assured champion becomes an all-American underdog. “YouTube golfer” is how his two children know their father—winless since 2013—until he wins the 2019 Masters, his fifteenth major, before their eyes. But the story doesn’t end there.Tiger, Tiger is the first full-scale Woods biography of the decade. In James Patterson’s hands, this story is a hole-in- one thriller.
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The Warriorby Christopher ClareyIn The Warrior, Christopher Clarey illuminates the skill and determination it took to accomplish Rafael Nadal’s most mind-blowing achievement: 14 French Open titles. Nadal has won big on tennis's many surfaces en route to becoming one of the greatest players of all time: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and four U.S. Open titles on cushioned acrylic hardcourts. But clay, the slowest and grittiest of the game’s playgrounds, is where it all comes together best for his tactical skills, whipping topspin forehand and gladiatorial mindset. Clay is to Rafael Nadal what water is to Michael Phelps, which helps explain one of the most impressive individual sports achievements of the 21st century. Clarey draws on interviews over many years with Nadal and his team and with rivals like Roger Federer. Not just a book about tennis, The Warrior draws much wider lessons from Nadal’s approach to competition.
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Cabinby Patrick HutchisonWit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations. Cabin is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction, of seeing what could be instead of what is. It is a book for those who know what it’s like to bite off more than you can chew, or who desperately wish to.
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Looking at Women Looking at Warby Viktoriëiìa AmelinaWhen Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Now she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author. Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book. On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.
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John Hancock by Willard Sterne RandallA contemporary of Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washington, and the Marquis de Lafayette, Hancock had a list of contacts that read like a who’s who of the American Revolution. But shockingly little has been written about Hancock himself. John Hancock tells the story of a man who deserves far more credit for his contribution to the American Revolution than he previously received—and award-winning scholar Willard Sterne Randall is determined to give him his due at last. Born into relatively modest means, Hancock was sent to live with his wealthy uncle and aunt as a child. The couple raised him as their own and prepared him to take over the family company. A remarkably successful businessman, Hancock got involved in politics in the mid-1760s. He quickly rose in the ranks, eventually serving as the president of the Continental Congress and the first governor of Massachusetts.John Hancock details all of the major moments in the Revolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the battles of Lexington and Concord to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hancock’s actions fundamentally altered each of these events—and ultimately the course of the United States—in ways never taught in the history books. Randall also dives into lesser-known parts of Hancock’s life with nuance and compassion, including his education and controversial work with Harvard; his long courtship and complicated marriage to Dorothy Quincy; and his close relationship and eventual bitter rivalry with Samuel Adams. John Hancock enjoyed great popularity in Massachusetts during the Revolution, but he left behind few personal writings, making it hard to tell his story. Through extensive research, Randall aims to restore Hancock to his rightful place, celebrated for his achievements as one of our Founding Fathers at last.
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Their Accomplices Wore Robesby Brando Simeo StarkeyTheir Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness. Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.
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Belle Starrby Michael WallisIn the annals of legendary Wild West desperadoes, Belle Starr is remembered to this day as the Bandit Queen. Shortly after her murder in 1889, a highly romanticized, sensational book titled Bella Starr ... The Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James was published―the first in a series of high-profile portraits to brand Starr as a villain. Now, celebrated author Michael Wallis parses over a century of mythmaking to reveal the woman behind the renegade legend. Wielding compelling research, including correspondence, official records, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Wallis traces Starr’s beginnings to Carthage, Missouri, where she was born Myra Maibelle Shirley in 1848 and was classically educated to be a Southern belle. Myra’s early years were characterized by the chaotic violence of the Civil War―she was traumatized by the death of her brother, who was killed riding with “bushwhackers,” one of the many insurgent guerilla groups supporting the Confederate Army. From then on, she swore revenge against all Yankees and became a willing “friend to any brave and gallant outlaw.” The crimes committed by Starr’s innermost circle―stagecoach stickups, bank robbery, horse theft―would take her from war-torn Carthage to rollicking Scyene, Texas, until she finally settled in Indian Territory (present Oklahoma). And although Starr indeed ran in the same circles as notorious outlaws Jesse James and the Younger brothers, the crimes ascribed to her were greatly embellished―including the fact that the allegedly bloodthirsty Starr more than likely never killed a single person. Turning a redemptive eye to Belle Starr’s tarnished legacy, Wallis crafts an illuminating portrait of a woman demonized for refusing to accept the genteel Victorian ideals expected of her, a woman who chose instead to live her life outside the law, riding sidesaddle with a pearl-handled Colt .45 strapped to her hip.
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L.A. Coronerby Anne Soon Choi L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye. Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s–80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture.
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