Open Road Distribution: 425 books

“Flor Fernandez Barrios ushers readers into startling proximity to a Cuba seen through the eyes of a woman whose childhood was both shaped and shattered by the beautiful island. The indelible quality of Barrios’s observations, specific and true, make Blessed by Thunder an important chronicle of...

The Grandes Dames gives brief and lively portraits of eight American women who wielded their wealth and influence to reshape the nation in the period between the 1870s and the Second World War.  

Since his teens, Chris Markham’s hitchhiking thumb has carried him into adventures across America. His first book, Mississippi Odyssey, is a journal of his experiences hitchhiking boat rides down the Mississippi River.  

The Right Places is Stephen Birmingham’s witty 1973 exploration of where the other half lives—the other half being the elite, of course. The legendary chronicler of the rich shows that the wealthy reside well beyond the tony New York suburbs: the tide of money has reached such far-flung places as Sun Valley, Idaho, and Kansas City, Missouri.  

Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Barbara Stanwyck—to name a few—maintained their images as glamorous big-screen sex symbols complete with dashing escorts, handsome husbands, and scores of male admirers, thanks to studio publicity departments. But off the set, all three box office divas were...

The author of “Our Crowd” takes readers inside the gossip-tinged world of the 1970s Black elite, one obsessed with history, standing and appearance.  

You’re smart. You’re self-aware. You have a lot to offer. So why do you need this book? Because you’re savvy enough to know it’s what you don’t yet know that can make all the difference in whether you land or lose that coveted job. Distilled from The Wow Factor, *Wow Your Way into the...

One of the most influential men of the twentieth century, Jacques Cousteau was an eco-emissary whose own life of derring-do brought him fame and the means to proselytize his cause. Ecologist, adventurer, celebrity, businessman—Cousteau was a brilliant and complex individual, and Madsen’s biography...

Between 1938 and 1942 the Federal Writers’ Project set out to create a first-person portrait of America by sending young writers—many of whom later became famous—around the country to interview people from all occupations and backgrounds. This book presents 80 of these diverse life histories,...

In these five profiles, four of which originally appeared in the* New Yorker*, the author evokes the life and work of seven gifted artists. Among those presented, often through lively conversations, are Jean Hélion, Mark Rothko, R.B. Kitaj, and Dennis Creffield. Chief among those portrayed however...

Tom Miller’s On the Border frames the land between the United States and Mexico as a Third Country, one 2,000 miles long and twenty miles wide. This Third Country has its own laws and its own outlaws. Its music, language, and food are unique. On the Border, a first-person travel narrative, portrays...

This series of entwined biographical sketches recounts how, in the Romantic Era, love affairs, often illicit, were transformed into novels, memoirs, and published correspondences. We make the intimate acquaintance of great writers like Mme de Staël, Chateaubriand, George Sand, and Anatole France,...

Looking for Mr. Gilbert is an account of the quest to uncover the heretofore unknown life of Robert A. Gilbert, an African American serving man who worked for the ornithologist William Brewster. A man of many talents, Gilbert went on to become the first African American landscape photographer.

A dual biography of the two most influential socio-political moralists of the twentieth century, whose lives were intertwined personally and intellectually for more than forty-six years. Madsen provides an engrossing view of the luminously transparent relationship that was unconventional yet faithful to its ideals.