Biography

This inspiring memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father and captivating DNC speaker is the story of one family's pursuit of the American dream.

NAMED ONE OF THE FIVE BEST MEMOIRS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

"Moving . . . a story about family and faith, told with a poet's sensibility . . . Khizr Khan's book can teach all of us what real American patriotism looks like." --The New York Times Book Review

In fewer than three hundred words, Khizr Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And when he offered to lend Donald Trump his own much-read and dog-eared pocket Constitution, his gesture perfectly encapsulated the feelings of millions. But who was that man, standing beside his wife, extolling the promises and virtues of the U.S. Constitution?

In this urgent and timeless immigrant story, we learn that Khizr Khan has been many things. He was the oldest of ten children born to farmers in Pakistan, and a curious and thoughtful boy who listened rapt as his grandfather recited Rumi beneath the moonlight. He was a university student who read the Declaration of Independence and was awestruck by what might be possible in life. He was a hopeful suitor, awkwardly but earnestly trying to win the heart of a woman far out of his league. He was a brilliant and diligent young family man who worked two jobs to save enough money to put himself through Harvard Law School. He was a loving father who, having instilled in his children the ideals that brought him and his wife to America--the sense of shared dignity and mutual responsibility--tragically lost his son, an Army captain killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq. He was and is a patriot, and a fierce advocate for the rights, dignities, and values enshrined in the American system.

An American Family shows us who Khizr Khan and millions of other American immigrants are, and why--especially in these tumultuous times--we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.

Praise for An American Family

"An American Family is a small but lovely immigrant's journey, full of carefully observed details from the order in which Ghazala served tea at a university event, to the schedule of the police patrols in the Boston Public Garden where Khan briefly slept while he was in between apartments, to the description of Humayun's headstone as a 'slab of white marble with soft streaks the color of wood smoke.'"--Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A revelatory new biography of one of the most misunderstood and vilified First Ladies in American history: Mary Todd Lincoln.

Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society's expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary's early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.

But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies--influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.

Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood--by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait--of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America's greatest presidents.

Claiborne Pell (1918-2009) was Rhode Island's longest serving U.S. senator, with six consecutive terms from 1961 to 1997. A liberal Democrat, Pell is best known as the sponsor of the Pell Grants. He was also the force behind the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a visionary in high-speed rail transportation and other areas. An early environmentalist and opponent of the Vietnam War, Pell left his mark on several treaties and peace initiatives.

Born into the wealthy family that settled the Bronx, New York, Pell married Nuala O'Donnell, an heiress to the A&P fortune. He lived on the waterfront in exclusive Newport, Rhode Island, yet was a favorite of blue-collar voters. Frugal and quirky, he believed in ESP and UFOs, and was often seen jogging in a sports coat and shorts. Both his hard work and his personality left an indelible mark on this small but influential state--and on America. This lively biography was written with the cooperation of the senator's family, and with exclusive access to family records and the extensive archives at the University of Rhode Island.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland--now with a new introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy--exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling--does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.