A masterpiece. . . . Farah Jasmine Griffin's magical words enchant and empower us like those of her towering heroes. -Cornel West. Farah Jasmine Griffin's beloved father died when she was nine, bequeathing her an unparalleled inheritance in closets full of remarkable books and other records of Black genius. In Read Until You understand-a line from a note he wrote to her-she shares a lifetime of discoveries: the ideas that framed the United States...

A true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist. At the age of twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in a squalored state. Co-inhabitants of

"Expert Victorian-era historian Judith Flanders explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dicken's novels, bringing life on the streets of London to vivid, fascinating life. The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented transformation, and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the capitol grew from a Regency town to the biggest city the world had ever seen, with more than 6.5 million people and railways, street-lighting...

"For fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank comes a captivating novel that offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, and the controversial and popular circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group. London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy...

"A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis C.S. Lewis is the twentieth century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, theyand their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis's Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that...

Her image appeared in periodicals and advertisements roughly twenty times daily; she rivaled FDR and Edward VIII as the most photographed person in the world. Her portrait brightened the homes of countless admirers: from a black laborer's cabin in South Carolina to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's recreation room in Washington, DC. A few years later her smile cheered the secret bedchamber of Anne Frank in Amsterdam. For four consecutive years Shirley...