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Biography and Memoir February 2026 |
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Living in the present with John Prine
by Tom Piazza
In the spring of 2018, Tom Piazza climbed into a 1977 Coupe de Ville with the great singer-songwriter John Prine to write an article for the Oxford American. Their Florida road trip ignited a deep friendship. Along the way, Prine invited Piazza to work with him on a memoir, with John telling sprawling, often hilarious stories of his youth and family in Chicago and Kentucky, his breakthrough into the national spotlight, his riotous early years in the Nashville country scene, and much more. When Prine died suddenly of COVID in April 2020, that unfinished memoir evolved into an intimate and very personal narrative of the artist's final years. In it, Piazza offers fans an unforgettable portrait of the beloved musician in his late glory--as a boyish cut-up, an epic raconteur, a great American poet, and, most important, a beloved friend.
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The company of owls : a memoir
by Polly Atkin
Circumscribed by a chronic illness to her cottage and the surrounding area in the heart of England's Lake District, Polly Atkin turns to the trees and the animals among them for companionship--especially the owl siblings who surprise and delight her. As Atkin watches them grow from curious fledglings into sleek raptors, she contemplates the act of survival and our place within it. When should a human intervene? When should nature take its course? What do the owls know that we do not?
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The flower bearers
by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles of away, Griffiths' closest friend and chosen sister, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Griffiths attempted to piece together her life as a newlywed with heartbreak in one hand and immense love in the other, a brutal attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma, Griffiths realized that in order to survive her grief, she would need to mourn not only her friend, but the woman she had been on her wedding day, a woman who had also died that day. In the process of rebuilding a self, Griffiths chronicles her friendship with Moon, the seventeen years since their meeting at Sarah Lawrence College. Alongside this unbreakable bond, Griffiths weaves the story of her relationship with Rushdie, of the challenges they have faced and the unshakeable devotion that endures.
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Fly, wild swans : my mother, myself and China
by Jung Chang
In this follow-up to Chang's Wild Swans, Deng Xiaoping opened the door of Communist China, and Jung--twenty-six years old and unstoppably curious, despite years of brainwashing--seized the propitious moment and became one of the first Chinese to leave the tightly sealed country and come to the West. This memoir chronicles her journey and that of her family, along with that of China, as it rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance. During those decades, although she lives in the West, Jung's life intertwines with her native land in unexpected ways, a rare relationship made more complex because all her books are banned there. Her family story mirrors the ups and downs of China's transformation, right up to today, as it enters another watershed.
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Next of kin : a memoir
by Gabrielle Hamilton
In her long-awaited new memoir, the author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award winner Blood, Bones & Butter tells the raw and darkly humorous story of her family's unexpected dissolution. The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother's sudden death and another's suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family's disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.
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Being Thomas Jefferson : an intimate history
by Andrew Burstein
Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. The author of the Declaration of Independence was both a gifted wordsmith and a bundle of nerves. His superior knowledge of the human heart is captured in the impassioned appeal he brought to the Declaration. But as a champion of the common man who lived a life of privilege on a mountaintop plantation of his own design, he has eluded biographers who have sought to make sense of his inner life. In Being Thomas Jefferson, acclaimed Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein peels away layers of obfuscation, taking us past the veneer of the animated letter-writer to describe a confused lover and a misguided humanist, too timid to embrace antislavery. Presenting a society that encouraged separation between public and private, appearance and essence, Burstein paints a dramatic picture of early American culture and brings us closer to Jefferson's life and thought than ever before.
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Pride and pleasure : the Schuyler sisters in an age of revolution
by Amanda Vaill
Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York's Hudson Valley during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became embroiled in the turmoil of America's insurrection against Great Britain--and rebelled themselves, in ways as different as each was from the other, against the destiny mapped out for them. Drawing on deep archival research, Amanda Vaill interweaves this family drama with its historical context, creating a narrative with the sweep and intimacy of a nineteenth-century novel. Full of battles and dinner parties, murky politics and transparent frocks, fierce loyalties and betrayals both public and personal, Pride and Pleasure brings two extraordinary American heroines to life.
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We did ok, kid
by Anthony Hopkins
Born and raised in a small Welsh steelworks town amid war and depression, Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up around men who eschewed all forms of emotional vulnerability in favor of alcoholism and brutality. A struggling student in school, he was deemed a failure with no future ahead of him. But, on a fateful Saturday night, the disregarded Welsh boy watched the 1948 adaptation of Hamlet, sparking a passion for acting that would lead him on a path that no one could have predicted. This is a raw and passionate memoir from a complex, iconic man who has inspired audiences with ... performances for over sixty years.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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