Biography and Memoir
August 2025
Recent Releases
Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution
by Molly Beer

Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton’s “saucy” sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s “charming coterie” of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed. A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage. She was born as Engeltje, a Dutch-speaking, slave-owning colonial girl who witnessed the Stamp Act riots in the Royal British Province of New York. She came of age under English rule as Angelica, the eldest daughter of the most important family on the northern part of Hudson’s River, raised to be a domestic diplomat responsible for hosting indigenous chiefs and enemy British generals at dinner. She was Madame Church, wife of a privateer turned merchant banker, whose London house was a refuge for veterans of the American war fleeing the guillotine in France. Across nationalities, languages, and cultures, across the divides of war, grievance, and geography, Angelica wove a web of soft-power connections that spanned the War for Independence, the post-war years of tenuous peace, and the turbulent politics and rival ideologies that threatened to tear apart the nascent United States.
On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports
by Christine Brennan

America has never seen an athlete quite like Caitlin Clark. Attracting record-shattering attendance and TV ratings, she has riveted the nation with her famous logo threes and thrilling passes and changed how fans across the country view women's sports. Drawing on dozens of extensive interviews and exclusive, behind-the-scenes reporting, veteran journalist Christine Brennan narrates Clark's rise -- including the formative experiences that led to her scoring more points than any woman or man in major college basketball history -- and delivers fascinating new details about Clark's Olympic snub by USA Basketball, the safety concerns around her that led to charter flights for all players, the WNBA's lack of preparation for heightened national scrutiny, and troubling outbreaks of jealousy and resentment as a white player became the top story in a predominantly Black league. The 2024 season was a watershed. Always taking the high road in the face of criticism, Clark proceeded to write herself into WNBA record books as one of the league's most talented rookies ever. And her winning persona -- on full display whether surrounded by children begging for autographs or reporters hanging on her every word -- made Clark such a fan favorite that increasingly larger arenas needed to be found to accommodate the hordes who traveled hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles to watch her play. Clark arrived as a sports and cultural icon a little more than fifty years after the passage of Title IX, the 1972 law that opened the floodgates for girls and women to play sports in America. On Her Game is a sports story, certainly, but it's also the story of a nation falling in love with what it has created because of that law -- millions of new athletes, led by the magical Caitlin Clark.
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
by Kelly Ramsey

When Kelly Ramsey drives over a California mountain pass to join an elite firefighting crew, she's terrified that she won't be able to keep up with the intense demands of the job. Not only will she be the only woman on this hotshot crew and their first in ten years, she'll also be among the oldest. As she trains relentlessly to overcome the crew's skepticism and gain their respect, megafires erupt across the West, posing an increasing danger both on the job and back home. In vivid prose that evokes the majesty of Northern California's forests, Kelly takes us on the ground to see how major wildfires are fought and to lay bare the psychological toll, the bone-deep weariness, and the unbreakable camaraderie that emerge in the face of nature's fury. Despite the wear and tear of her rookie year in fire, Kelly gears up for a second season, determined to prove that not only can a woman survive this work, she can excel. But when her plans to marry her partner start to crumble and sparks fly with a fellow crew member, Kelly wrestles with whether she's truly outgrown the self-destructive patterns she learned from her father, whose drinking and itinerant ways haunt her. And as the season wears on, she discovers how tenuous "belonging" can be amid ever-changing crew dynamics. In this vivid, visceral, and intimate memoir, Kelly wrestles with the immense power of fire for both destruction and renewal, confronted with the questions: Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?
The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made...
by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
 
 
In 1928, a young social worker and hobby pilot named Amelia Earhart arrived in the office of George Putnam, heir to the Putnam & Sons throne and hitmaker, on the hunt for the right woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic. A partnership—professional and soon otherwise—was born. The Aviator and the Showman unveils the untold story of Amelia's decade-long marriage to George Putnam, offering an intimate exploration of their relationship and the pivotal role it played in her enduring legacy. Despite her outwardly modest and humble image, Amelia was fiercely driven and impossibly brave, a lifelong feminist and trailblazer in her personal and professional life. Putnam, the so-called “PT Barnum of publishing” was a bookselling visionary—but often pushed his authors to extreme lengths in the name of publicity, and no one bore that weight more than Amelia. Their ahead-of-its time partnership supported her grand ambitions—but also pressed her into more and more treacherous stunts to promote her books, influencing a certain recklessness up to and including her final flight. Earhart is a captivating figure to many, but the truth about her life is often overshadowed by myth and legend. In this cinematic new account, Laurie Gwen Shapiro emphasizes Earhart’s multifaceted human side, her struggles, and her authentic aspirations, the truths behind her brave pursuits and the compromises she made to fit into societal expectations. Drawing from a trove of new sources including undiscovered audio interviews, The Aviator and the Showman is a gripping and passionate tale of adventure, colorful characters, hubris, and a complex and a vivid portrait of a marriage that shaped the trajectory of an iconic life.
It Rhymes with Takei
by George Takei, Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger

George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one piece missing—one face he did not show the world. There was one very intimate fact about George that he never shared…and it rhymes with Takei. Now, for the first time ever, George shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. Following the phenomenal success of his first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, George Takei reunites with the team of Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger for a jaw-dropping new testament. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame asv an actor and the terrible fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, It Rhymes with Takei offers a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history. Combining historical context with intimate subjectivity, It Rhymes with Takei shows how the personal and the political have always been intertwined. Its richly emotional words and images depict the terror of entrapment even in gay community spaces, the anguish of speaking up for so many issues while remaining silent on his most personal issue, the grief of losing friends to AIDS, the joy of finding true love with Brad Altman, and the determination to declare that love openly—and legally—before the whole world. Looking back on his astonishing life on both sides of the closet door, George Takei presents a charismatic and candid account of how far America has come…and how precious that progress is.
JFK: Public, Private, Secret
by J. Randy Taraborrelli

In this definitive portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy--one of America's most consequential and enigmatic presidents--J. Randy Taraborrelli delivers a deeply researched and authoritative biography. More than the story of a presidency, this is an intimate study of a man whose public triumphs were shaped--and at times overshadowed--by the complex realities of his private life, from his legendary family to his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy. Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted over twenty-five years--as well as candid, first-hand oral histories from the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential Library, rare internal reports from the Secret Service, detailed files from the National Archives, and intelligence documents from both the CIA and FBI. This is JFK as never before captured by history: brilliant yet fallible, revered yet human--a figure whose legacy continues to shape America and the world.
Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend
by Michael Wallis

In 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.
Saving Five : A Memoir of Hope
by Amanda Nguyen

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard. Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change―not only for herself but for survivors everywhere. A heart-wrenching memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five boldly braids the story of Nguyen’s activism―which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016―with a second, beautifully imagined adventure, of Nguyen's younger selves as they―at ages five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty―navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood. The result is a groundbreaking work that seamlessly blends memoir with a moving journey toward acceptance and hope, forging a path ahead that is as inspiring as it is instructive. From one of the most influential activists (and now astronauts) of her time, Saving Five is at once a tribute to resilience, a celebration of healing through action, and a resounding cry to change the world.
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