Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Biography

"Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a ground-breaking journalist, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging them to become close observers of the world, ...

For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration -- first as a speechwriter, then as deputy national security advisor, and finally as a multipurpose aide and close collaborator. He started every morning in the Oval Office with the Pres...

Is this what it feels like, I thought, losing everything? Steel shutters were clanging down in my head: I dared not even think about my son, just emerging from his teenage years, or of my sorry future. But I could safely bear witness and carry on writing in my head. A correspondent from a hidden ...

Samuel Johnson was a critic, an essayist, a poet and a biographer. He was also, famously, the compiler of the first good English dictionary, published in 1755. A polymath and a great conversationalist, his intellectual and social curiosity were boundless. Yet he was a deeply melancholy man, haunt...

"The emotional and exhilarating story of the tenth person and first dog to walk around the world. Together, Turcich and his dog, Savannah, covered twenty-eight thousand miles over the course of seven years. Through deserts, jungles, cities, and mountains, Turcich meditated on what's important in ...

The follow-up to Fiona Wright's essay collection Small Acts of Disappearance - winner of the Nita B. Kibble Award and the Queensland Literary Award for Non-fiction, shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the NSW Premier's Award for Non-fiction. Our bodies and homes are our shelters, each one intima...

What makes us fall in love with a song? What makes us want to write our own songs? Do songs help? Do songs help us live better lives? And do the lives we live help us write better songs? Following publication of Let's Go (So We Can Get Back) and How To Write One Song, both New York Times bestsell...

Clarice Beckett was one of Australia's most important early Modernist painters, excelling in portraiture, still-life and landscape. The discovery of a trove of her artworks has led to her remarkable talent and evocative art being recognised afresh and greatly admired. Clarice Beckett was self-eff...