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A “sweet, touching” memoir about animals, loss, and finding a home in the world by the author of Shizuko’s Daughter and Yarn (Kirkus Reviews). Cat and Bird, a “memoir in animals,” is anchored around Kyoko Mori’s relationship with the six house cats who defined the major eras of her life as a writer: Dorian, Oscar, Ernest, Algernon, Miles, and Jackson.

Capirotada, Mexican bread pudding, is a mysterious mixture of prunes, peanuts, white bread, raisins, milk, quesadilla cheese, butter, cinnamon, and cloves, Old World sugar—"all this," writes Alberto Ríos, "and things people will not tell you." Like its Mexican namesake, this memoir is a rich mélange, stirring together Ríos's memories of family, neighbors, friends, and secrets from his youth in the two Nogaleses—in Arizona and through the open gate into Mexico. The vignettes in this memoir are not loud or fast.

When Bill Wilson, with his friend Dr. Bob Smith, founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, his hope was that AA would become a safe haven for those who suffered from this disease. Thirty years after his death, AA continues to help millions of alcoholics recover from what had been commonly regarded as a hopeless addiction. Still, while Wilson was a visionary for millions, he was no saint. After cofounding Alcoholics Anonymous, he stayed sober for over thirty-five years, helping countless thousands rebuild their lives.

Former NASCAR president, chairman, and CEO William Clifton France—known to most people as Bill France Jr.—is remembered and revered as the man who followed his visionary father at the helm of NASCAR, in the process becoming a visionary himself as he guided NASCAR to unprecedented levels of popularity.

"The most complete and engrossing biography yet of this exotic Southern girl...Excellent." —Liz Smith. She was the sex symbol who dazzled all the other sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento, and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him—but she knocked out his front teeth instead.

Award-winning novelist Reynolds Price provides a vivid portrait of his life in the mid-1950s leading up to the publication of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life. After two earlier autobiographical works, Clear Pictures and A Whole New Life, Price offers a full account of his experiences from the mid-1950s to 1962. Oxford University and Britain, still recovering from the demands of World War II, were places of vitality for Price, both academically and personally. From spotting J. R. R. Tolkien in Oxford to intimate dinners with W. H.

One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life the vibrant—and violent—society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire culture, revealing the dark side of Renaissance man and politician Lorenzo de' Medici. On a Sunday in April 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother as they attended Mass in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo scrambled to safety as Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor.

"An invaluable complement to an immortal testimony." - Kirkus Reviews. The first biography of the girl whose fate has touched the lives of millions. For people all over the world, Anne Frank, the vivacious, intelligent Jewish girl with a crooked smile and huge dark eyes, has become the "human face of the Holocaust." Her diary of twenty-five months in hiding, a precious record of her struggle to keep hope alive through the darkest days of this century, has touched the hearts of millions. Here, after five decades, is the first biography of this remarkable figure.

Who qualifies as the worst of Roman emperors and why? Join L. J. Trafford for a tour of the very worst leadership in ancient Rome featuring Caligula, Commodus, and many more. Between 27 BCE and 476 CE, a series of men became Roman Emperor, ruling a domain that stretched across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. Some of them did this rather well, expanding Rome’s territories further, installing just laws, and maintaining order within the city. Others, however, were distinctly less successful at the job.

Her central themes are the classics, universities, and teaching - and much else besides. In this second collection following on from the success of It's a Don's Life, Beard ponders whether Gaddafi's home is Roman or not, we share her "terror of humiliation" as she enters "hairdresser country," and follow her dilemma as she wanders through the quandary of illegible handwriting on examination papers and "longing for the next dyslexic" - on whose paper the answers are typed, not handwritten.