Irving Stone Books in Order

Stone's biographical novel of Vincent van Gogh traces his restless search for calling, from ministry in Belgian coal country to blazing canvases in Arles, drawing on the artist's letters to show his friendships, breakdowns, and fierce need to paint.

Stone's portrait of Jack London follows the writer from a rough Oakland childhood through seafaring, Klondike adventures, socialist politics, and literary fame, emphasizing the restless energy that fueled both his success and the personal excesses that shortened his life.

This biographical novel tells the story of socialist leader Eugene V. Debs and his wife Kate, whose horror at radical politics makes her his 'adversary in the house,' setting up a lifelong clash between his public convictions and their private life.

This nonfiction portrait follows Earl Warren from his Bakersfield childhood and work as a California prosecutor and governor to his years as chief justice of the United States, when the Warren Court reshaped American law on race, voting, and criminal justice.

Stone's biography of famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow covers his rise from small-town attorney to national figure in labor battles, the Leopold and Loeb case, the Scopes 'monkey trial,' and other courtroom dramas defending unpopular clients and causes.

Here Stone centers Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter of a powerful senator and wife of explorer and politician John C. Frémont, following their marriage through western expeditions, Civil War intrigue, and the booms and busts of nineteenth-century American politics.

This novel is based on the life of American painter John Noble, following him from a Kansas boyhood to Paris cafés and New York galleries as his hunger for art, drink, and experience drives both his creativity and his self-destruction.

Focusing on Rachel and Andrew Jackson, this biographical novel traces their controversial courtship, second marriage, frontier hardships, and the bitter attacks that followed Jackson into the White House, portraying a love story shadowed by scandal and politics.

This novel tells Mary Todd Lincoln's story in her own voice, from a spirited young woman in Kentucky to Abraham Lincoln's partner through Illinois politics, wartime Washington, personal grief, and the strains of public life on a private marriage.

Stone's history of the Far West follows explorers, miners, Mormons, speculators, and settlers as they push into California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado between 1840 and 1900, turning wilderness into boomtowns and shaping the region's myths and conflicts.

This volume collects Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, selected and edited by Stone, offering an intimate self-portrait of the painter as he writes about art, money, faith, illness, and the daily struggle to keep working.

A large-format art book presenting more than one hundred of Michelangelo's drawings in facsimile, with brief commentary that places these studies of bodies, architecture, and biblical scenes alongside the finished sculptures and frescoes they helped inspire.

Stone's novel follows Michelangelo from his apprenticeship in Florence through the carving of the Pietà and David and the painting of the Sistine Chapel, tracing his battles with popes, rivals, family, and his own relentless standards.

In this nonfiction study, Stone profiles losing candidates in U.S. presidential races, from Henry Clay to Adlai Stevenson, exploring their lives, campaigns, and ideas and asking how history might look different if voters had chosen them instead.

Abigail Adams narrates this biographical novel of her marriage to John Adams, from flirtatious courtship and long wartime separations to the strain of politics and the early American presidency, highlighting both passion and partnership behind the public story.

Edited by Stone, this centennial volume gathers personal essays from University of California, Berkeley alumni and faculty, creating an informal 'autobiography' of the campus from its frontier beginnings through world wars, protest years, and scientific breakthroughs.

This large anthology samples Stone's career with long excerpts from his biographical novels, biographies, history, and essays, framed by appreciative introductions and his own comments on research, giving new readers an easy way to try several subjects.

This long biographical novel follows Sigmund Freud from medical school in Vienna through his pioneering work on dreams, neuroses, and the unconscious, showing his marriage, friendships, controversies, and eventual flight from Nazi Europe.

In this brief essay, Stone reconsiders the many faces of Mary Todd Lincoln, weighing letters, eyewitness accounts, and later criticism as he asks how history has treated her and what a fairer judgement of her life might look like.

This historical novel tells the story of businessman-turned-archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann and his Greek wife Sophia as they hunt for ancient Troy and Mycenae, mixing romance, rivalry, and early archaeological fieldwork in Ottoman lands.

Stone's Darwin novel begins with a young gentleman naturalist boarding the Beagle and follows him through storms, fossils, family life, and illness as he slowly shapes the theory of evolution and wrestles with what it means for faith and society.

This biographical novel follows Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro from his Caribbean youth to the streets of Paris, charting his friendships with Monet, Cézanne, and others and his long, uncertain fight to paint the modern world on his own terms.

Stone traces California's turbulent decade from a quiet coastal settlement to Gold Rush chaos and admission as the thirty-first state, following settlers, Californios, soldiers, and fortune hunters as they collide over land, power, and sudden wealth.