Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller’s "Bad Gays" is about prominent historical queer figures whose “evilness” is often overlooked when discussing the history of queer politics, and whose queerness is often overlooked when discussing the... Read More

Michael G. Long and Shea Tuttle’s biography of Phyllis Frye captures her struggle to challenge entrenched beliefs on gender and identity. Assigned male at birth, Frye seemed like a typical high achiever: she was an Eagle Scout, a... Read More

Veteran music journalist Caryn Rose became an instant Patti Smith fan at the age of twelve, when she saw Smith appear on Saturday Night Live. Her book "Why Patti Smith Matters" brings that fan enthusiasm to bear, resulting in an... Read More

The surfing culture that California embodied in the middle of the twentieth century wouldn’t have been possible without the sport’s Hawaiian origins—or without George Freeth, the surfing virtuoso and heroic lifeguard who helped... Read More

Antonia Fraser’s captivating biography of Caroline Norton follows her fight against inequality, which led to nineteenth-century legal reforms. Born in 1808, Norton was the granddaughter of author and politician Richard Brinsley... Read More

"Memory House" is a subtle, elegiac memoir about love and devotion. L.G. Mason’s ardent and incisive memoir of a marriage, "Memory House", juxtaposes memories of his wife before she developed dementia with the woman she became after... Read More

"Woman, Watching" is Merilyn Simonds’s account of the remarkable life and legacy of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, the amateur ornithologist and author who has been called “the Canadian Rachel Carson.” Born into Sweden’s landed... Read More

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s inspiring biography traces the rise of a Black American painter, the great grandson of slaves, to a place of eminence in twentieth-century American art, despite the racism he faced. Born in 1911 in North... Read More