It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It


Robert Fulghum - 1989
    Now, picking up where he left off, Fulghum turns our eyes to show-and-tell, weddings, his own ten commandments, and more insightful and unique observations on what our world is and was....

Soul on Ice


Eldridge Cleaver - 1968
    Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel about What They Do


Studs Terkel - 1974
    Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Terkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... In the first trade paperback edition of his national bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel presents "the real American experience" (Chicago Daily News) -- "a magnificent book . . .. A work of art. To read it is to hear America talking." (Boston Globe)

Full Disclosure


Stormy Daniels - 2018
    That's the day she filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump over a nondisclosure agreement negotiated before the election but never signed.How did Stormy Daniels become the woman willing to take on a president? What is it like to be reviled by some, held up as a beacon of hope by others, and to be an object of fascination to all?In this book, Stormy Daniels tells her whole story for the first time: about how she came to be a leading actress and director in the adult film business, the full truth about her journey from a rough childhood in Louisiana onto the national stage, and everything about the events that led to the nondisclosure agreement and the behind-the-scenes attempts to intimidate her.Stormy is funny, sharp, warm, and impassioned by turns. Her story is a thoroughly American one, of a girl who loved reading and horses and who understood from a very young age what she wanted―and who also knew she'd have to get every step of the way there on her own.People can't stop talking about Stormy Daniels. And they won't be able to stop talking about her fresh, surprising, completely candid, nothing-held-back book.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Complete


Leonardo da Vinci
    Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer.

Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights


Jack N. Rakove - 2006
    Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Modern American politicians refer to “the founders” so often that they’re in danger of becoming clichés. But Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and the other authors included in this new collection were a wholly unique—and complex—group of individuals, graced with extraordinary intellectual powers, a profound dedication to their ideals, and a striking ability to articulate those ideals in clear and passionate prose. This original anthology of their writings, many of them far less familiar to us than they should be, demonstrates the depth of their thinking—and of their disagreements. It covers the full range of events from 1773 to 1789: that is, from the early debates about whether the North American colonies should declare their independence from England, to the ratification of the Constitution and the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights). Among the documents included are papers from the first and second Continental Congresses, the Articles of Confederation, Washington’s Farewell Address to his armies, and extensive excerpts from the Federalist papers and the Madison–Jefferson correspondence on the Constitution. Jack N. Rakove is W.  R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He is the author of four books on the American Revolutionary era, including The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic, and Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, which received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Seven Years in Tibet


Heinrich Harrer - 1953
    Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World


Louis Fischer - 1950
    This is the story of Mahatma Gandhi, a man who owned nothing-and gained everything!!

Joseph Anton: A Memoir


Salman Rushdie - 2012
    It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. Compelling, provocative, and moving, Joseph Anton is a book of exceptional frankness, honesty, and vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

Letters on England


Voltaire - 1733
    He was full of enthusiasm and freedom - as opposed to the tyrannical feudal society of his homeland. Letters on England discusses English religious sects, politics, scientists and writers with great admiration, yet the clever Voltaire also flattered his French readers with humorous references to the old-fashioned clothes and speech of the Quakers and to antics in the House of Commons. At first banned in France, this intriguing and often comic account of a culture viewed through foreign eyes was to prove highly influential in shaping French attitudes to England.Leonard Tancock's translation brilliantly captures Voltaire's ironic tone, and is accompanied by an introduction discussing his depiction of England and the events that led to his exile. This edition also includes notes, new further reading and chronology, and an appendix on Voltaire's verse translation of English works.

A Time to Keep Silence


Patrick Leigh Fermor - 1953
    During World War II, he fought with local partisans against the Nazi occupiers of Crete. But in A Time to Keep Silence, Leigh Fermor writes about a more inward journey, describing his several sojourns in some of Europe’s oldest and most venerable monasteries. He stays at the Abbey of St. Wandrille, a great repository of art and learning; at Solesmes, famous for its revival of Gregorian chant; and at the deeply ascetic Trappist monastery of La Grande Trappe, where monks take a vow of silence. Finally, he visits the rock monasteries of Cappadocia, hewn from the stony spires of a moonlike landscape, where he seeks some trace of the life of the earliest Christian anchorites.More than a history or travel journal, however, this beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life. Leigh Fermor writes, “In the seclusion of a cell—an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods—the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.”

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners


John Bunyan - 1666
    Augustine to Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place. In Grace Abounding, John Bunyan (1628?1688), the author of Pilgrim's Progress, describes his conviction of sin, his struggles against unbelief, his entrance into the meaning and comfort of the Holy Scriptures, and much more.

Mary Chesnut: A Diary From Dixie


Mary Boykin Chesnut - 1905
    Period photographs illustrate this you-are-there account of the daily lives and tribulations of all who suffered through the war, from ordinary people to the Confederacy's generals and political figures.

The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861


Stephen B. Oates - 1997
    Oates tells the story of the coming of the American Civil War through the voices, and from the viewpoints, of 13 principal players in the drama, including Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. This unique approach shows the crucial role that perception of events played in the sectional hostilities that bore the United States irreversibly into civil war. In writing the monologues, Oates draws on the actual words of Ills speakers and simulates how they would describe the crucial events in which they were the principal actors or witnesses. All the events and themes in the monologues adhere to historical record.The result is an exciting history that brings the personalities and events of the coming of the American Civil War vividly to life.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman


Ernest J. Gaines - 1971
    She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.