Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

"A landmark biography of the great American writer Stephen Crane"--

An account of the brilliant writer and a fiery social critic Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) who became the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley's newspaper, and served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. Amid all these strivings and achievements, she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century....

A biography of the author of "Little Women" describes how she struggled to achieve her dream of becoming an author and discusses her private life and her accompishments.

"A biography of Edgar Allan Poe with an emphasis on his engagement with the scientists and scientific discoveries of his era"--

"To coincide with the bicentennial of Thoreau's birth in 2017, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of one modern history's most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of Thoreau's life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms. This sweeping, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau's world as the mystic himself saw it:...

"Louisa on the Frontlines is the first narrative nonfiction book focusing on the least-known aspect of Louisa May Alcott's career--her time spent as a nurse during the Civil War. Though her service was brief, the dramatic experience was one that she considered pivotal in helping her write the beloved classic Little Women. It also deeply affected her tenuous relationship with her father, and inspired her commitment to abolitionism. Through it all,...

Examines the life and career of American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Traces the birth of modern America as reflected by the writings of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warrant Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith, placing their achievements and personal lives against a backdrop of the post-Gold Rush era in California.

"More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces readers to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee...