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Employee Picks


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Employee Picks
Biography


There are 185 books in this aisle.

Featured Titles in Employee Picks - Biography
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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Cheryl Strayed
Staff Pick
I know this title is everywhere right now. I was very fortunate to get an advanced copy, and I immediately fell in love. Why? Well, like many, my favorite books are those that seem to have been written just for me. I deeply understood the raw ache of... (read more)

List Price $25.95
Your price: $18.50
Used - Hardcover

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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Vintage)
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Vintage)
by Cheryl Strayed
Staff Pick
I know this title is everywhere right now. I was very fortunate to get an advanced copy, and I immediately fell in love. Why? Well, like many, my favorite books are those that seem to have been written just for me. I deeply understood the raw ache of... (read more)

Your price: $15.95
New - Trade Paper

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Staff Pick
This is an absolutely fascinating account of a line of cells that would proliferate to such a degree that they became immortal. Shaved from a tumor in a poor black woman in the 1950s, cultured without her knowledge, and grown to amazing proportions... (read more)

List Price $16.00
Your price: $6.95
Used - Trade Paper

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The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
by Lidia Yuknavitch
Staff Pick
Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir, The Chronology of Water, is fierce and voluptuous. Intimate and expansive. Hard, hard stuff presented in gorgeous language. I picked it up on impulse, read the first line, and was crying before I reached the end of the opening... (read more)

List Price $15.95
Your price: $10.95
Used - Trade Paper

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How Literature Saved My Life
How Literature Saved My Life
by David Shields
Staff Pick
David Shields's new book is a collagist's and lit lover's dream come true. Erudite and thoughtful, if you've ever lived or read a novel, you'll find much to admire and ruminate upon.... (read more)

List Price $25.95
Your price: $21.00
Used - Hardcover

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The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
by Wes Moore
Staff Pick
The Other Wes Moore is the fascinating tale of two men who shared a name and a birthplace; their lives started out in similar circumstances and ended up very differently (one a Rhodes Scholar, the other serving a life sentence in jail). A moving... (read more)

List Price $15.00
Your price: $8.00
Used - Trade Paper

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Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
by Tracy Kidder
Staff Pick
Beautifully told, and entirely inspiring, Mountains Beyond Mountains is an exceptional look at the heroic life of Dr. Paul Farmer. Providing health care for hundreds of thousands in a remote, impoverished region of Haiti, Farmer's incomparable dedication... (read more)

List Price $16.00
Your price: $5.50
Used - Trade Paper

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The Reenactments: A Memoir
The Reenactments: A Memoir
by Nick Flynn
Staff Pick
As with Nick Flynn's other major prose works, The Reenactments is a compelling, vignette-style memoir. Flynn's 2004 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City was adapted into a film (Being Flynn) earlier this year, starring Robert De Niro, Julianne Moore, and... (read more)

List Price $15.95
Your price: $10.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
by Ann Patchett
Staff Pick
Patchett's eloquent prose gives a vivid portrait of the friendship that she and Lucy Grealy shared. I applaud Patchett's honesty and her refusal to gloss over the difficulties of their friendship. When I found out that Lucy Grealy had died, I was stunned... (read more)

List Price $14.99
Your price: $3.95
Used - Trade Paper

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The Year of Magical Thinking (Vintage International)
The Year of Magical Thinking (Vintage International)
by Joan Didion
Staff Pick
Best book of 2005, favorite book of the year...Slice the question any number of ways, but the book published last year that I'm most grateful for having read is The Year of Magical Thinking, a devastating affirmation of love and commitment, hope and... (read more)

List Price $14.95
Your price: $2.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Legs Get Led Astray
Legs Get Led Astray
by Chloe Caldwell
Staff Pick
I've read this book twice. And both times I've been blown away (and sometimes shocked) by the raw honesty in the pages. But if I were to tell you what shocked me, it wouldn't be the sex and drugs. It would be that I was left with an overwhelming sense of... (read more)

Your price: $13.50
New - Trade Paper

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The Bookseller of Kabul
The Bookseller of Kabul
by Asne Seierstad
Staff Pick
In this remarkable portrait, Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad recounts with brutal honesty the day to day lives of one Afghani family persevering through life in a country beset by chaos. With the assent of the Khan family with whom she lives... (read more)

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Your price: $1.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Just Kids
Just Kids
by Patti Smith
Staff Pick
In her memoir Just Kids, Smith chronicles her lifelong friendship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. A gifted wordsmith, she's vividly observant and sometimes painfully self-aware, with a voice possessed not only of yearning but also of experience.... (read more)

List Price $16.00
Your price: $7.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Bossypants 1st Edition
Bossypants 1st Edition
by Tina Fey
Staff Pick
Readers sometimes lower the bar when it comes to the quality of celebrity memoirs, but, in this case, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Tina Fey is a legitimately talented writer, and the stories from her personal life are just as zany and... (read more)

List Price $26.99
Your price: $6.95
Used - Hardcover

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Lit: A Memoir (P.S.)
Lit: A Memoir (P.S.)
by Mary Karr
Staff Pick
The best way I can describe this work is to say that it's absolutely delicious. More than a mere memoir, this fascinating jewel contains universal truths, with delicate and elegant phrasing, and, despite the subject matter, there's no sense of frivolous... (read more)

List Price $14.99
Your price: $6.50
Used - Trade Paper

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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
by Alexandra Fuller
Staff Pick
In her 2001 debut, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller recalled in vivid, often excruciating detail coming of age in Rhodesia as a long civil war raged in neighboring Mozambique and her own country slid down the violent path toward an... (read more)

List Price $16.00
Your price: $3.50
Used - Trade Paper

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Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
by Ruth Reichl
Staff Pick
With characteristic wit and aplomb, Ruth Reichl takes us behind the scenes of life as a restaurant critic — dining on the finest cuisine in the city, juggling the politics of the newspaper, and becoming a master of disguise. As funny as Tender at the... (read more)

List Price $16.00
Your price: $4.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
by Jon Krakauer
Staff Pick
My to-read list is long as it is, so I usually put off reading bestsellers until (a) the hype dies down and used copies start to become available or (b) someone chastises me for not having read something that came out forever ago. And so it was that 10... (read more)

List Price $15.00
Your price: $5.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
by Barbara Kingsolver and Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
Staff Pick
After 25 years in the Arizona desert, in 2004, Kentucky-bred Barbara Kingsolver moved back to the Appalachians, to a Virginia farm just hours from her childhood home. Family called. "Returning," she explains in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, "would allow my... (read more)

List Price $15.99
Your price: $8.95
Used - Trade Paper

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Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
by Jacob Tomsky
Staff Pick
Funny, familiar, and revealing, Jacob Tomsky's insider exposé on the hotel industry is an easy and entertaining read. Follow one man's journey through the hotel employment system, from valet to front desk to housekeeping, and learn how to work... (read more)

List Price $25.95
Your price: $17.50
Used - Hardcover

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