Presents the story of Burundi civil war survivor Deo, who endures homelessness before pursuing an education at Columbia and eventually returning to his native land to help people in both countries.

"A Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland. “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” So...

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable...

"Letters of a Woman Homesteader" is the fascinating true tale of life on the American frontier by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. First published in 1914, Stewart's work is a collection of 26 letters written by Stewart from 1909 to 1914 which follow her adventures in Wyoming. Born Elinore Pruitt in 1876 in Chickasaw Nation territory in modern day Oklahoma, her birth father died when she was very young and her mother and step-father both died when Stewart...

In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Author's memoir of growing up black in the 1930's and 1940's.

Benjamin Franklin is a man who needs little introduction. He wore many hats over the course of his fascinating life, from that of a printer, to an inventor, to a scientist, to a politician, a founding father and statesman, and even a postmaster-general. He was famous for all of these things in his day, but he was also famed for his keen insight into people and human nature, and his sparkling talent as a conversationalist.

Despite his

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At 22, the author thought she had lost everything: her mother had died, her family was scattered, and her marriage was over. 4 years later, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to Washington State, alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, but it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. [From publisher's description]