Penguin / Biography & autobiography

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

by Elizabeth Gilbert

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success...

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

by Jennifer Worth

The highest-rated drama in BBC history returns to PBS Presents in March 2013   Less than a year after the first season finale, PBS’s hit series Call the Midwife returns to Sunday nights this spring with...

A School for My Village: A Promise to the Orphans of Nyaka

by Twesigye Jackson Kaguri & Susan Urbanek Linville

The extraordinary story of one man's gift to orphaned children in need of hope

Can one person really make a difference in the world? Twesigye Jackson Kaguri overcame tremendous odds as he followed his dream...

The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, from Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister

by John Campbell & David Freeman

The Iron Lady, the definitive Margaret Thatcher biography, is available just in time for the movie starring Meryl Streep as one of the most infamous figures in postwar politics.

Whether you love her or hate...

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting.  Amy Chua argues that Western parenting...

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua...

AN Ordinary Man: An Autobiography

by Paul Rusesabagina & Tom Zoellner

The remarkable life story of the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda Readers who were moved and horrified by Hotel Rwanda will respond even more intensely to Paul Rusesabagina’s unforgettable autobiography....

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

by Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl’s bestselling memoir of her time as an undercover restaurant critic for The New York Times

Ruth Reichl, world-renowned food critic and former editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, knows a thing...

Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle

by Ingrid Betancourt

"Betancourt's riveting account...is an unforgettable epic of moral courage and human endurance." -Los Angeles Times

In the midst of her campaign for the Colombian presidency in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt traveled...

Just Don't Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness

by Josh Sundquist

Read Josh Sundquist's posts on the Penguin Blog.

"Just Don't Fall is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read-not too mention poignant and funny." -A.J. Jacobs

This winning memoir of triumph over...

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

by Mark Kurlansky

From the Bestselling Author of Salt and The Basque History of the World

Cod, Mark Kurlansky’s third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, is the biography of a single species of fish,...

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

by Sudhir Venkatesh

In this "riveting"(The New York Times) work of nonfiction, a sociologist infiltrates the world of Chicago's crack-dealing gangs

First presented in Freakonomics, the story of a young sociologist who embedded...

The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts

by Jr., Tom Farley

The New York Times bestselling biography of an American comedy legend

After three years of sobriety, Chris Farley's life was at its creative peak until a string of professional disappointments chased him back...

The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

by Craig M. Mullaney

"One of the most thoughtful and honest accounts ever written by a young Army officer confronting all the tests of life." -Bob Woodward

In this surprise bestseller, West Point grad, Rhodes scholar, Airborne...

Diana

by Sarah Bradford

Published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of her death-the definitive biography of Diana, Princess of Wales

An icon remembered in death as vividly as she appeared in life, Diana, Princess of Wales, is...

Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine

by Jennifer Scanlon

The biography of the revolutionary magazine editor who created the “Cosmo Girl” before Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw was even born

As the author of the iconic Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and the...

Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome

by Luca Spaghetti & Antony Shugaar

"Luca Spaghetti is not only one of my favorite people in the world, but also a natural-born storyteller. . . . This [is a] marvelous book." -Elizabeth Gilbert

When Luca Spaghetti (yes, that's really his name)...

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

by William Deresiewicz

Before Jane Austen, William Deresiewicz was a very different young man. A sullen and arrogant graduate student, he never thought Austen would have anything to offer him. Then he read Emma—and everything changed....

Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood

by Elif Shafak

A thoughtful and incisive meditation on literature, motherhood, and spiritual wellbeing from Turkey's leading female author

After the birth of her first child, Elif Shafak experienced a profound personal crisis....

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy

by Sarah Bradford

The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance—incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet,...