In his autobiography we see him as a product of the Age of Enlightenment, a Yankee statesman who could use the language of Addison, Steele, Swift, and Defoe. Franklin asks himself, “Who am I, how did I come to be, and why am I a human being as I am?” He answers with honesty, wit, and charm,...

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping story of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture—except for one, the author. Her story...

Shant Kendarian's visit to Baghdad in 1980 at age seventeen was supposed to be short, just long enough to make peace with his estranged father before returning home to the United States.

In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. Recording his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that “pendant off the ear of India,” Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his...