Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Biography

"From the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting: a narratively driven, deeply human biography of the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai, also known as Li Po. In his own time (701-762), Li Bai's poems--shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life--were neve...

A monumental journey through Baltic history and culture, in which we encounter well-known personalities and forgotten ones, and a disconcerting picture of Europe in the twentieth century. From 1999 to 2010, Jan Brokken explored life stories in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The result was his ma...

Beyond the formidable combination of tulle and lycra, how much can an audience ever truly understand about the demands of being a ballet dancer? What really is the pain and pleasure of pointe shoes and jockstraps? Can a wardrobe malfunction derail a scene? What happens when injury sidelines a pri...

When Afghan entrepreneur Abdul Wade first brought his camel trains to the outback, he was hailed as a hero. Horses couldn't access many remote settlements, especially those stricken by flood or drought, and camel trains rode to the rescue time and time again. But with success came fierce oppositi...

"Baggage chronicles the actor's life in Hollywood and the ways in which work has repeatedly whisked him away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world. Taking us through the highs and lows of his career, his struggle with mental health, each failed relationship or encounter wit...

On a defining evening of the 1980s, Donald Trump hosted celebrities and high rollers in a Jersey Shore town to witness 21-year-old Mike Tyson knock out Michael Spinks in just 91 seconds, earning more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics combined. Only eight years ...

Meshel Laurie is all too aware that she's probably a very bad Buddhist, but every day she puts her energy into improving. She works in television and radio, creates podcasts, writes columns and books, and parents twins - so she also knows a thing or two about the mad juggle of modern life. In thi...

Australia has produced any number of great rock and roll frontmen and women. But none has left quite the same mark as AC/DC's Bon Scott. No-one had the same skill with lyrics as Bon, who called his words 'toilet poetry,' his 'dirty ditties'. Everything Scott delivered, either on stage or in the s...

One of the most critically acclaimed memoirs ever written. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist. Hailed as classic from its first pub...

This funny and personal memoir is the account of an audacious attempt by James Birch, a young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking retrospective of Francis Bacon's work at the newly refurbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988. Side-lined by the British establishment, Birch found...