Leisure Reading: Biography/Memoir

The heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move ahead.

A stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric, and severely misguided family.

This companion volume to the PBS documentary distills more than thirty years of thinking and writing about the Roosevelts. Despite the fierce partisanship of their eras, the Roosevelts were far more united than divided.

Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, the author paints a full portrait of Washington's life and career in the context of eighteenth-century America, richly detailing his private life and illustrating the ways in which it influenced his public persona.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling biography of America’s founding father and second president that was the basis for the acclaimed HBO series, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

This multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

A dynamic history of the muckracking press and the first decade of the Progressive era as told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912 when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that cripples the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history.

Two couch potatoes in their 40s set out to hike the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail.

In her early thirties, [the author] had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want - husband, country home, successful career - but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she felt consumed by panic and confusion. This ... is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and of what she found in their place. Presents the memoir of a magazine writer's yearlong travels across the world in search of pleasure, guidance, experience, and meaning.

The memoir of a young diplomat's wife who must reinvent her dream of living in Paris-one dish at a time When journalist Ann Mah's diplomat husband is given a three-year assignment in Paris, Ann is overjoyed. A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post-alone. Suddenly, Ann's vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Light is turned upside down.

A powerful, blazingly honest, inspiring memoir: the story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.