Books: What to Know

Real Lives, Explained

The plot, the people, the point and the ending — then the Boovie film, where there is one.

The library

6,448 lives & letters

Twelve Naval Captains

Molly Elliot Seawell · biography

The story in one page

Twelve Years a Slave

A free man is drugged in Washington, sold into Louisiana cotton fields, and spends twelve years proving he is not property.

Solomon Northup · biography

Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India

W. S. R. Hodson · biography

Twentieth century Negro literature

D. W. Culp · biography

Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World

Clifton R. Wooldridge · biography

Twenty years a fakir

S. James Weldon · biography

Twenty Years at Hull House; with Autobiographical Notes

Jane Addams · biography

Twenty years at sea: Leaves from my old log-books

Frederic Stanhope Hill · biography

Twenty Years in Europe

S. H. M. Byers · biography

Twenty years in Roumania

Maude Rea Parkinson · biography

Twenty Years of Hus'ling

J. P. Johnston · biography

Twenty Years of My Life

Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen · biography

Twenty Years of Spoof and Bluff

Carlton · biography

Twenty Years on Horseback; or, Itinerating in West Virginia

W. M. Weekley · biography

Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter

Elliott O'Donnell · biography

Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

Frank Thorpe Porter · biography

Twenty-five years in the Black Belt

William James Edwards · biography

Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade

William Surtees · biography

Twenty-five years in the Secret Service: The recollections of a spy

Henri Le Caron · biography

Twenty-five years in the West

E. Manford · biography

Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West

Samuel Strickland · biography

Twenty-six years reminiscences of Scotch grouse moors

W. A. Adams · biography

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman

Austin Steward · biography

Twice-born Men in America

Harriet Earhart Monroe · biography

Two Chancellors: Prince Gortchakof and Prince Bismarck

Julian Klaczko · biography

Two Colored women with the American Expeditionary Forces

Addie W. Hunton · biography

Two diaries From Middle St. John's, Berkeley, South Carolina, February-May, 1865

Susan R. Jervey · biography

Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear

Theresa Gowanlock · biography

Two Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of Nonington, Kent, January 17, 1864

Herbert James · biography

Two Suffolk Friends

Francis Hindes Groome · biography

Two war years in Constantinople

Harry Stürmer · biography

Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French

Samuel Gibbs French · biography

Two years and four months in a lunatic asylum

Hiram Chase · biography

The story in one page

Two Years Before the Mast

A Harvard student trades his books for a tar bucket, a bunk in a wet forecastle, and a voyage around Cape Horn.

Richard Henry Dana · biography

Two Years in the Forbidden City

Princess Der Ling · biography

Two years' captivity in German East Africa

E. C. H. · biography

Ulysses S. Grant

Walter Allen · biography

Under England's flag

Charles Boothby · biography

Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft

Oscar S. Straus · biography

Under Many Flags

Katharine Scherer Cronk · biography

Under the German shells

Emmanuel Bourcier · biography

Annie Wittenmyer · biography

Under the periscope

Mark Herbert Joseph Bennett · biography

Under the Red Crescent

Charles S. Ryan · biography

Under the Stars and Bars

Walter A. Clark · biography

Universal Brotherhood, Volume XIII, No. 11, February 1899

E. August Neresheimer · periodical

Up from Methodism

Herbert Asbury · biography

The story in one page

Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

A man born in a slave cabin builds a university from a hen-house and teaches a new generation how to build bricks.

Booker T. Washington · biography