Book recommendations

In his own time (701-762), Li Bai's poems -- shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life -- were never given their proper due. Nonetheless, his deep desire for a higher, more perfect world gave rise to his nickname, the Banished Immortal. Ha Jin draws on a wide range of historical and literary sources to weave the great poet's life story.

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback, titled "The Double Helix", on her bed. She became enthralled.Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. Her story is a thrilling detective tale.

From his rapid-fire stand-up riffs to his breakout role in "Mork & Mindy" and his powerful Academy Award-winning performance in "Good Will Hunting", Robin Williams was a singularly innovative actor and comedian. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, "Robin" is a fresh and original look at a performer whose work touched so many of our lives.

This is the entwined tale of two exceptional women. One was a voluptuous eleven-inch-tall beauty who debuted at the 1959 Toy Fair in New York City and quickly became the treasure of 9 out of 10 American girls and their counterparts in 150 countries. The other was Ruth Handler, the tenth child of Polish Jewish immigrants.

In 2012, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hands of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude.

Douglass was born a slave and escaped at the age of twenty. He was fortunate to have learned to read as a boy, and he would develop this skill forbidden to slaves to become one of the great writers of his era. But first he would make his reputation as the most celebrated orator of the abolition movement. Over his lifetime he wrote three versions of his autobiography, all of which are classics of the slave narrative and of American memoir.

In 1974 Carmen, half-Swiss and half-Persian, married into the Bin Laden family. She was young and in love, an independent European woman about to join a complex clan and a culture she neither knew nor understood.

Victor Schoelcher was a French writer chiefly remembered for his part in the fight for the abolition of slavery. His "Life of Handel", translated into English by James Lowe, was published in 1857. It was regarded as one of the finest biographies ever written, and it was ahead of its time in the amount of research into primary sources which the author had undertaken.

"The Life of Robert Frost" presents a unique and rich approach to the poet that includes original genealogical research concerning Frost's ancestors, and a demonstration of how mental illness plagued the Frost family and heavily influenced Frost's poetry.

With unequaled authority and dramatic detail, Charles Moore's authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher reveals as never before the early life, rise to power, and first years as prime minister of the woman who transformed Britain and the world in the late twentieth century. The book sheds much new light on the whole spectrum of British political life from Thatcher's entry into Parliament in 1959 to what was arguably the zenith of her power -- victory in the Falklands in 1982.

"Minority Leader" is the handbook for outsiders, written with awareness of the experiences and challenges that hinder anyone who exists beyond the structure of traditional white male power -- women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make change. Stacey Abrams argues that knowing your own passion is the key to success.

In his brilliant memoir, Fletcher Wortmann takes us on an intimate journey across the psychological landscape of OCD, known as the "doubting disorder," as populated by God, girls, and apocalyptic nightmares. Wortmann unflinchingly reveals the elaborate series of psychological rituals he constructs as "preventative measures" to ward off the end times, as well as his learning to cope with intrusive thoughts through "Clockwork Orange"-like "trigger" therapy.

David Riggs evokes the atmosphere and texture of Marlowe's life, from the stench and poverty of a childhood spent near Canterbury's abattoirs to the fanatical pursuit of classical learning at school. Marlowe won a place at Cambridge University, where he entered its world of 18-hour working days, religious intrigue and twilight homosexuality, tolerated but unspoken.