Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress in 1955 Alabama, had no idea she was changing history when, work-weary, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail & triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., into the national spotlight. Who was she, before & after her historic act, & how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow?...

Strips away the tall tales of legend to reveal the essence of Crazy Horse, profiling him as a brilliant and ascetic warrior-hero whose life exemplified Native American tragedy and the end of the untamed West. Legends cloud the life of Crazy Horse, a seminal figure of American history but an enigma even to his own people in his own day. Yet his story remains an encapsulation of the Native American tragedy and the death of the untamed West. Crazy Horse...

A world-renouned religious thinker contemplates one of the world's most sacred figures. In a profound blend of biography, religion, history, and philosophy, Armstrong's highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Stone Diaries focuses on the life and fiction of Jane Austen in a critical biography of the reclusive author of Pride and Prejudice and other great novels. Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. Jane Austen reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and...

Recalls the ties between his family and the novelist and childhood moments spent with her, discussing her walks around his ancestral home, the progression of her well-known works, and her philosophy towards women's issues and war