One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye—forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye,...

The first full biography of the fearless and brilliant Maria Yudina, a legendary pianist who was central to Russian intellectual life.

"Heather Fegan was fifteen years old when she was tentatively diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. It started with a pain in her side. The dull ache turned into sharp, stabbing pains and wrenching cramps that clenched and tightened every time she ate. The diagnosis would change her life, but by the time she was nineteen she learned that she actually had another serious form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD): Crohn’s. There is no cure, no known...

"A superbly crafted study of Hunter S. Thompson's literary formation, achievement, and continuing relevance. Savage Journey is a "supremely crafted" study of Hunter S. Thompson's literary formation and achievement. Focusing on Thompson's influences, development, and unique model of authorship, Savage Journey argues that his literary formation was largely a San Francisco story. During the 1960s, Thompson rode with the Hell's Angels, explored the San...

"Greg King and Penny Wilson turn the original crime of the century on its head in this riveting exploration of the murder trial of Leopold & Loeb"-- In 1924 two wealthy and privileged teenagers-- Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb-- were charged and convicted for killing fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks for the thrill of it. The trial was made even more sensational by the revelation of a love affair between the defendants. Loeb has been portrayed as the...

Mowat's gripping account of how a young man, excited by the prospect of battle, is transformed into a war-weary veteran.

"One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives, she finds...

Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence's art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city's powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that "divine" poet. This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious...

"Best-selling author David McCullough tells the story of the settlers who began America's migration west, overcoming almost-unimaginable hardships to build in the Ohio wilderness a town and a government that incorporated America's highest ideals. As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of...

"In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and...