Books – Detail

Click on a genre link to see the matching books; click again to return to the full Athenaeum Bookshelf.

book
336 pp. Hardcover
Biography
All Before Me
Esther Rutter

In her early twenties, Esther Rutter suffered an acute mental breakdown while teaching English in Japan. Sectioned and held in a Japanese psychiatric institution until she could be flown home under escort, her recovery only began when she came to live and work in the Lake District at Dove Cottage, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.

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book
212 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Alphabetical Diaries
Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries. From the award-winning author of Pure Color. 

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book
224 pp. Paperback
Biography
Antoni Gaudí
Michael Eaude

An accessible account of the contradictory life and work of the modernist Catalan architect.

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book
292 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones
Priyanka Mattoo

From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one woman’s search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles—standalone essays that together form a sweeping portrait of a peripatetic life.

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book
495 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
Natalie Dykstra

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum, and the art she collected.

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book
464 pp. Paperback
Biography
Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays
Joseph Epstein

A collection of personal essays from America’s most revered essay writer, Joseph Epstein.

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book
272 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Fi: A Memoir of My Son
Alexandra Fuller

From the award-winning New York Times-bestselling author of Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller, comes a career defining memoir about grieving the sudden loss of her twenty-one-year-old child.

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book
191 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Grief Is for People
Sloane Crosley

Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley's memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

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book
256 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Knife
Salman Rushdie

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.

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book
320 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Liliana's Invincible Summer
Cristina Rivera Garza

“A searing account of grief and the quest to bring her sister’s murderer to justice years after the fact” (The Boston Globe), from “one of Mexico’s greatest living writers” (Jonathan Lethem).

Pulitzer Prize Winner; National Book Award Finalist; A New York Times Notable Book

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book
309 pp. Hardcover
Biography
The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
Lara Love Hardin

New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

Oprah's Book Club Pick

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book
198 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Nephew: A Memoir in 4-Part Harmony
M.K. Asante

As urgent, resonant, and essential as The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me, a poetic, raw, and inspirational love letter from the bestselling author of Buck, written to a nephew who was shot nine times and survived—a reflection on life, overcoming odds, finding your voice, and the power of music and family.

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book
152 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Night
Elie Wiesel

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent.

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book
464 pp. Hardcover
Biography
On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service
Anthony Fauci M.D.

The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents.

#1 New York Times Bestseller

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book
320 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII
Jane Marguerite Tippett

Using never before seen sources, Once a King is a fresh, revelatory and gripping insight into the Duke of Windsor - King Edward VIII - who gave up the throne to marry the woman he loved, twice divorced American Wallis Simpson.

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book
298 pp. Hardcover
Biography
One Way Back
Christine Blasey Ford

The compelling true story behind the testimony that awed the nation. The book reveals riveting new details about the leadup to her testimony and its overwhelming aftermath and describes how she continues to navigate her way out of the storm.

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book
373 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent
Judi Dench

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

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book
177 pp. Paperback
Biography
This Part Is Silent: A Life Between Cultures
SJ Kim

A searing essay collection that explores displacement and loss, creativity and change, institutional power and progress.

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book
304 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
Rob Henderson

In this unflinching portrait of shattered families, desperation and determination, the author, born to a drug-addicted mother, recounts growing up in foster care, and despite his military career, undergraduate education from Yale and a PhD from Cambridge,he argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments.

A National Bestseller

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book
480 pp. Hardcover
Biography
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
Doris Kearns Goodwin

From one of America’s most beloved historians, an artfully woven biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

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book
254 pp. Hardcover
Biography
We Loved It All: A Memory of Life
Lydia Millet

This lucent anti-memoir from celebrated novelist Lydia Millet explores the pain and joy of being a parent, child, and human at a moment when the richness of the planet’s life is deeply threatened.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by the Washington PostOprah Daily, and Literary Hub

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book
293 pp. Hardcover
Biography
Whiskey Tender
Deborah Taffa

Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.

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book
175 pp. Hardcover
Biography
A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last
Stephen Levine

In A Year to Live, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial bestseller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully—as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to practice dying as the highest form of wisdom. Levine decided to live this way himself for a whole year, and now he shares with us how such immediacy radically changes our view of the world and forces us to examine our priorities.

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