Biography & Memoir

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa is the lyrical and luminous memoir of Kenya that launched a million tourist trails, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . . . Up in this high...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of...

The New York Times bestselling author of A Work in Progress and Note to Self moves fully into adulthood with his illuminating, soulful, bleeding collection of narrative, poetry, and original film photography.I'm thankful for it all, really. The pain and...

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An “urgently readable” (Newsweek) biography of the captivating tsar who changed Russian history—from the New York Times bestselling author of Nicholas and Alexandra, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great“Enthralling . . . as...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “absorbing” (Los Angeles Times) biography of one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in Russian history—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The...

A “magnificent and intimate” (Harper’s) modern classic of Russian history, the spellbinding story of the love that ended an empire—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great“A moving, rich book . . ...

Marpa the Translator, the eleventh-century farmer, scholar, and teacher, is one of the most renowned saints in Tibetan Buddhist history. In the West, Marpa is best known through his teacher, the Indian yogin Nâropa, and through his closest disciple,...

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction  Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021 This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Learn how to apply the principles of Charles Koch’s revolutionary Market-Based Management® system to generate good profit in your organization, company, and life“This book helps show you the way to good profit—whether you work...

ccOver the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures-Americans...

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler,...

The Guerilla Girls famously said that ""less than 5% of the artists in Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female."" From art history courses, museums, and media exposure, art history has largely reflected the male perspective, only...

A true story of royal intrigue—with famed diarist Samuel Pepys as the main protagonist—as a fatal shipwreck on the shores of Restoration Britain sparks a mystery that now may finally be solved.In 1682, Charles II invited his scandalous younger brother,...

This is a gripping tale of true-life mystery and true-life action and adventure by the marine archaeologist who headed two Antarctic expeditions leading to the discovery of the 1915 wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance. For the legions of...