Legends cloud the life of Crazy Horse, a seminal figure in American history but an enigma even to his own people in his own day. This superb biography looks back across more than 120 years at the life and death of this great Sioux warrior who became a reluctant leader at the Battle of Little Bighorn. With his uncanny gift for understanding the human psyche, Larry McMurtry animates the character of this remarkable figure, whose betrayal by white representatives of the U.S. government was a tragic turning point in the history of the West. A mythic figure puzzled over by generations of...

The life and work of the great Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452 1519) have proved endlessly fascinating for generations. In Leonardo da Vinci, Sherwin Nuland completes his twenty-year quest to understand an unlettered man who was a painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. What was it that propelled Leonardo s insatiable curiosity? Nuland finds clues in his subject s art, relationships, and scientific studies as well as in a vast quantity of notes that became widely known in the twentieth century. Scholarly and passionate, Nuland...

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.

Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills brings the same fresh scholarship, lively prose, and critical appreciation that characterize his well-known books on religion and American history to this outstanding biography of one of the most influential Christian philosophers.

Saint Augustine follows its subject from his youth in fourth-century Africa to his conversion and subsequent development as a theologian. It challenges the widely held misconceptions about Augustine's sexual...

Marshall Frady, the reporter who became the unofficial chronicler of the civil rights movement, here re-creates the life and turbulent times of its inspirational leader. Deftly interweaving the story of King s quest with a history of the African American struggle for equality, Frady offers fascinating insights into his subject s magnetic character, with its mixture of piety and ambition. He explores the complexities of King s relationships with other civil rights leaders, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and the FBI s J. Edgar Hoover, who conducted a relentless vendetta against him....

A biography of the greatest musical mind in Western history
Mozart's unshakable hold on the public's consciousness can only be strengthened by historian and biographer Peter Gay's concise and deft look at the genius's life. Mozart traces the development of the man whose life was a whirlwind of achievement, and the composer who pushed every instrument to its limit and every genre of classical music into new realms.

A witty, lively and wholly fascinating (The New York Times) portrait of an iconic Southern hero

With lively storytelling and full-hearted Southern directness, Roy Blount, Jr., presents a unique portrait of Robert E. Lee. Fascinated by the qualities that made Lee such a charismatic, though reluctant, leader, Blount vividly conveys Lee's audacity and uncanny successes in battle, as well as his humility, his quirky sense of humor, and the sorrowful sense of responsibility he felt for his outnumbered, half-starved army. The first concise biography of this American legend,...

A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock ?n? roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In Country

To this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock ?n? roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist's insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was ?one of us.? Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking singer who reveled in his celebrity and the soft-spoken,...