I am the grown-up little girl who loved to read. I loved novels and children’s biographies—Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Annie Oakley. I imagined that if I could learn to write books that inspired readers and moved them to tears like my favorite books, I would have accomplished a great good. My first biography, The Peabody Sisters, took twenty years and won awards for historical writing. My second biography, Margaret Fuller, won the Pulitzer. But what matters more than all the prizes is when people tell me they cried at the end of my books. I hope you, too, will read them and weep over lives lived fully and well.
Alice Jameschanged my life as a writer. It completely opened up the field of biography and pointed the way to the work I’ve been doing for almost four decades: writing women’s lives. Before Alice James, biographies had to be of famous people, usually men. Here was a book about the little sister of the great novelist Henry James and the eminent philosopher William James, a woman who had essentially done nothing with her own talent and brilliance except—luckily!—keep a diary. Jean Strouse read that diary and used it as the entry point for a whole book about the dynamics of an extraordinary family, about women’s choices in 19th century America, about invalidism and suppressed ambition. It’s a riveting psychological tale full of poignance and unexpected heroism.
Alice James was the youngest child and only girl in a family that produced two of the most brilliant individuals in 19th-century America. Her elder brother, William, became the foremost psychologist of his time and her second brother, Henry, its greatest novelist. Her story reveals a troubled, highly intelligent woman who struggled to extract a sense of meaning and self from a life that had every outward appearance of failure. She was articulate, politically radical, funny, wise, difficult and intensely involved with her brothers and friends. This portrait sheds new light on the history of women, on the nature of…
Stacy Schiff is a master biographer. Any subject she chooses (Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine de St. Exupéry, the accused witches of Salem) is elevated by the passion and persistence she brings to research and writing. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Véra Nabokov, the wife of Vladimir, is another pioneering work that proves you don’t have to be at center stage to be worthy of a book. What did Véra do for Vladimir, and he for her? This is no take-down, not the kind of exposé that reveals the great man’s wife as the true genius, exploited and forgotten. It’s a love story of equals, two against (and for) the world.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award–winning author of The Revolutionary and The Witches comes “an elegantly nuanced portrait of [Vladimir Nabokov’s] wife, showing us just how pivotal Nabokov’s marriage was to his hermetic existence and how it indelibly shaped his work.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
ONE OF ESQUIRE’S 50 BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL TIME
“Monumental.”—The Boston Globe “Utterly romantic.”—New York magazine “Deeply moving.”—The Seattle Times
Stacy Schiff brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time: Vladimir Nabokov, émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire;…
Nell Painter’s biography of Sojourner Truth breaks new ground in a different way. Sojourner Truth is famous, an iconic freedom fighter and advocate for Black and female suffrage. Weall know her demand for recognition, “Ain’t I a woman?” Or do we? Painter’s research reveals a much more complicated woman and investigates why history has reduced a fascinating life story to that one simple question, which might never have been asked, at least in those precise words. Read this book to find out the true story of Sojourner Truth.
Sojourner Truth first gained prominence at an 1851 Akron, Ohio, women's rights conference, saying, "Dat man over dar say dat woman needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches. . . . Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles . . . and ar'n't I a woman?"
Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight-talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women--indeed, for all strong women. Like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, she is regarded as…
Anyone who admires the portraits of John Singer Sargent is sure to know his gorgeous Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the exquisite grouping of four girls in white pinafores emerging from the shadowy rooms of an elegant Parisian apartment. But do you know the girls, and how Sargent came to paint them? And what became of them all? Erica Hirshler, a curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where the painting is on permanent exhibition, has written a book that reveals all in a stylish and richly nuanced historical detective story.
John Singer Sargent’s renowned portrait “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” is examined in an aesthetic, philosophical, and personal tour de force that has been called “thoroughly absorbing” (New York Times Book Review); “brilliant and insightful”?(Wall Street Journal); “an attractive, well-illustrated scholarly book, further enlivened by the author’s warm and friendly tone” (Times Literary Supplement); “a uniquely crafted history” (The Magazine Antiques); “a brilliant work of criticism, without a word of jargon in it” (Maine Antique Digest); “sensitive and penetrating” (Choice); and “a meticulously researched account of [the Boits’] milieu, their eccentric lifestyle, its unintended effects on their daughters, and…
Janice Nimura has uncovered a marvelous and strange tale of five Japanese girls selected by the Meiji Restoration government to travel to the United States to learn Western ways during a period of modernization. Three of them remained through their school years, their lives entwining with host families and new friends as they overcame prejudice and proved themselves bright, eager learners. Yet they returned with their new knowledge to a Japan once again suspicious of outside influence, their lives forever altered by their time away as the human subjects of a grand social experiment with unintended consequences. I loved getting to know these girls as they grew into womanhood, striving to realize their hopes and dreams as the world changed around them.
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan.
Raised in traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors-Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda-grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits…
Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall recounts the trailblazing life of Margaret Fuller: Thoreau’s first editor, Emerson’s close friend, daring war correspondent, tragic heroine. After her untimely death in a shipwreck off Fire Island, the sense and passion of her life’s work were eclipsed by scandal. Marshall’s inspired narrative brings her back to indelible life.
Whether detailing her front-page New-York Tribune editorials against poor conditions in the city’s prisons and mental hospitals, or illuminating her late-in-life hunger for passionate experience—including a secret affair with a young officer in the Roman Guard—Marshall’s biography gives the most thorough and compassionate view of an extraordinary woman. No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving.
So many books, so little time! If you're a nonfiction fan, this field guide may help you make better choices about what to read.
Just like a field guide helps you identify plants or birds, this book helps you navigate the rich world of nonfiction. You’ll uncover how your favorite authors break down complex topics, keep you hooked, and forge those deep, personal connections that make their work unforgettable.
Practice spotting techniques "in the wild" and track your responses in the Field Notes. Record your own preferences and favorites in the Field Observations. With this guide by your side, you'll…
Attention nonfiction book lovers, this guide is for you!
If your nightstand is stacked with histories or essays, how-to guides or science books, The Curious Reader’s Field Guide to Nonfiction is going to be your new favorite companion.
Just like a field guide helps you identify plants or birds, this book helps you navigate the rich world of nonfiction. You’ll uncover how your favorite authors break down complex topics, keep you hooked, and forge those deep, personal connections that make their work unforgettable.
More than just a guide—a reading companion
This isn’t just a book you flip through—it’s an interactive…
