Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's courageous, candid memoir of his return to Earth after the historic moon landing and his personal struggle with fame and depression."We landed with all the grace of a freight elevator," Buzz Aldrin relates in the opening passages of Return to Earth, remembering Command Module Columbia's abrupt descent into the gravity of the blue planet. With that splash, Aldrin takes readers on a journey through the human side of ...

The never-before-told account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can catalyze genius.In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the N...

The Newbery Medal–winning author of A Wrinkle in Time paints an intimate portrait of her forty-year marriage to actor Hugh Franklin in this personal memoir.A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.As National Book Award-winnin author Madeleine L'Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and confl...

A revised edition of the New York Times bestselling classic: the epic story of the golden years of American space exploration, told by the men who rode the rocketsOn October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation’s most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last wa...

A sweeping biography of one of the greatest and most provocative athletes of all timeDecades after his final fight, Muhammad Ali remains larger than life in the imagination of hundreds of millions of people around the world. He won the heavyweight championship at age twenty-two by conquering Sonny Liston in dramatic fashion. The political establishment stripped him of his prize when he refused induction into the United States Army during the height of the war in Vi...

“Without self-esteem, the only change is an exchange of masters; with it, there is no need for masters.” —Gloria SteinemWhen trying to find books to give to “the countless brave and smart women I met who didn’t think of themselves as either brave or smart,” Gloria Steinem realized that books either supposed that external political change would cure everything or that internal change would. None linked internal and external change together in a seamless circle of ca...

When Green Beret Lieutenant James N. Rowe was captured in 1963 in Vietnam, his life became more than a matter of staying alive.In a Vietcong POW camp, Rowe endured beri-beri, dysentery, and tropical fungus diseases. He suffered grueling psychological and physical torment. He experienced the loneliness and frustration of watching his friends die. And he struggled every day to maintain faith in himself as a soldier and in his country as it appeared to be turning against him.H...

From the Apollo 17 commander and NASA veteran, "an exciting, insider's take on what it was like to become one of the first humans in space" ( Publishers Weekly).Eugene Cernan was a unique American who came of age as an astronaut during the most exciting and dangerous decade of space flight. His career spanned the entire Gemini and Apollo programs, from being the first person to spacewalk all the way around our world to the moment when he left man's last foo...

The New York Times bestselling definitive biography of Natalie Wood, Natasha is the haunting story of a vulnerable and talented actress whom many of us felt we knew.We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes—in Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and on and on. She has been hailed—along with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor—as one of the top three female movie stars in t...

That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould explains why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise. Nearly twenty years in the making, Can’t Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism.Beginning with their adolescence i...

This guidebook to the Big Apple goes beyond the traditional tour, offering visitors a fascinating exploration of the city's rich history.New York is a city of superlatives. It has the largest population, greatest wealth, broadest diversity, and most elegant museums in the nation. With that comes an amazing history that you can experience firsthand with this unique guide.George Washington took his first oath of office on the steps of Federal Hall. Visitors c...

At 11.00 hours on 11 November 1918, the guns fell silent across the battlefields of Europe. After the deadliest conflict the world had ever seen, peace had finally arrived. Since the withdrawal from the Somme and the repulse at Verdun, the Germans knew they could not win the war and had sought a negotiated end to the fighting. This was rejected by the Allies and the fighting continued until, almost two years later, with its economy on the verge of collapse, Germany had no choice but to acc...