Biography & Autobiography - Historical

During the many years that they were separated by the perils of the American Revolution, John and Abigail Adams exchanged hundreds of letters. Writing to each other of public events and private feelings, loyalty and love, revolution and parenting, they wove a tapestry of...

"This is a magisterial retelling of who did what with and to whom--Ezra Pound, the Fitzgeralds, the Murphys, Getrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, Robert McAlmon, Bryher, H.D., and all the other major and minor players whose personal histories...

When Thomas Jefferson wrote his epitaph, he listed as his accomplishments his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute of religious freedom, and his founding of the University of Virginia. He did not mention his presidency or that he was second...

Model Nazi tells the story of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, Greiser was the territorial leader of the Warthegau, an area of western Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. In an effort to make...

"The glories of the Age of Anne"--the union of England and Scotland to form "this island of Britain", and its establishment as a European and a global power--were the achievements of two men above all: Queen Anne's captain-general, John Churchill, the first Duke of...

There are few American families that feature such a collection of characters, both heroic and ignoble, who have made such a mark on history as the Lees. In The Lees of Virginia, Paul Nagel chronicles seven generations of Lees, covering over two hundred years...

One of the greatest--and most enigmatic--Roman emperors, Hadrian stabilized the imperial borders, established peace throughout the empire, patronized the arts, and built an architectural legacy that lasts to this day: the great villa at Tivoli, the domed wonder of the Pantheon, and the eponymous...

More than half a century after his death, Mahatma Gandhi continues to inspire millions throughout the world. Yet modern India, most strikingly in its decision to join the nuclear arms race, seems to have abandoned much of his nonviolent vision. Inspired by recent events...

It was November 1806. The explorers had gone without food for one day, then two. Their leader, not yet thirty, drove on, determined to ascend the great mountain. Waist deep in snow, he reluctantly turned back. But Zebulon Pike had not been defeated. His...

Jean Cocteau delighted in shocking the world. In pubic, at least, the image he presented was one of great daring -- a man eager to defy, willing to experiment, ready to challenge. Cocteau's achievements in almost every artistic medium -- including poetry, film, illustration,...

Ernie Kovacs lived his life at fever pitch - a life that ended in 1962 when his car skidded out of control. Kovacsland is an engrossing and entertaining portrait of a television pioneer. Index; photographs.Author: Diana RicoISBN-10: 0156472503ISBN-13: 9780156472500Publisher: Mariner BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/31/1991Pages: 372Format:...

Virginia Woolf was an inventive, witty correspondent, whether commenting on a domestic crisis, politics, or the roving of the writer's mind. Edited and with an Introduction by Joanne Trautmann Banks; Index.Author: Virginia WoolfISBN-10: 015622030XISBN-13: 9780156220309Publisher: Mariner Books ClassicsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/31/1991Pages: 496Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.62lbsSize: 9.20h...

How did Abraham Lincoln, long held as a paragon of presidential bravery and principled politics, find his way to the White House? How did he become this one man great enough to risk the fate of the nation on the well-worn but cast-off notion...

From the "most celebrated and best-loved British historian in America" (Wall Street Journal), an elegant, concise, and revealing portrait of Winston Churchill In Churchill, eminent historian Paul Johnson offers a lively, succinct exploration of one of the most complex and fascinating personalities in history....

One of the greatest historians writing today gives us a defining portrait of the incomparable Winston Churchill In his landmark biography of Winston Churchill, acclaimed historian John Keegan offers a very human portrait of one of the twentieth century's enduring symbols of heroic defiance....

An icon remembered in death as vividly as she appeared in life, Diana, Princess of Wales, is one of the most enduring personalities of the twentieth century-and one of the most enigmatic. With exclusive access to all those closest to Diana, Sarah Bradford now...

From New York Times bestselling author Paul Johnson, "a very readable and entertaining biography" (The Washington Post) about one of the most important figures in modern European history: Napoleon Bonaparte In an ideal pairing of author and subject, the magisterial historian Paul Johnson offers...

Tough, resolute, fearless. Alexander was a born warrior and a ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 B.C.E. at age thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles,...

Now the subject of a new film directed by Pablo Larrain, "Jackie", starring Natalie Portman Acclaimed biographer Sarah Bradford explores the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the woman who has captivated the public for more than five decades, in a definitive portrait that is...

Xenophon's History recounts nearly fifty turbulent years of warfare in Greece between 411 and 362 BC. Continuing the story of the Peloponnesian War at the point where Thucydides finished his magisterial history, this is a fascinating chronicle of the conflicts that ultimately led to...

"You can boldly take me in the arms of your soul and kiss my mouth, my head, and my feet as sweetly as you want" The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary -...

The acclaimed actress and dedicated activist shares her personal journey of discovery, and destroys outdated ideas about partnership, love and family that will resonate with anyone in an unconventional life situation.Actress and activist Maria Bello made waves with her essay, "Coming Out as a...

"A dynamic portrait. . . . Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman well deserving of many historians' attention." -- BBC HistoryThe critically acclaimed author of Serving Victoria brilliantly illuminates the life of the little-known Bess of...

"Splendid stuff, 'history with attitude.' Written with energy and aplomb." --The Times (London)The colorful, often tempestuous courtships of Queen Elizabeth I of England (the "virgin Queen") are brought to breathtaking life in The Men Who Would Be King, a thrilling, utterly fascinating popular history...

"A bittersweet modern love story that] reads as easily as a novel." --Vogue"Fascinating. . . . A detailed, grittier portrait of the woman Hemingway loved and left." --NewsdayHadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of...

Combining the historical urgency of The Burning Tigris, the cultural sweep of Middlesex, and the psychological complexity of Bending Toward the Sun, Garin K. Hovannisian's Family of Shadows is a searing history of Armenia, realized through the lives of three generations of a single...

"[A] remarkably revealing history....This well-researched, opinionated account does a fine job of filling a surprisingly empty historical niche."--Publishers Weekly Citizen-in-Chief, The Second Lives of the American Presidents, is a smartly researched, surprising, often witty, and always revealing look at former presidents from George Washington...

As a boy, Stephen J. Dubner's hero was Franco Harris, the famed and mysterious running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Dubner's father died, he became obsessed--he dreamed of his hero every night; he signed his school papers "Franco Dubner." Though they never met,...

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims....

"I was born with skins too few. Or they were scrubbed off me by...robust and efficient hands."The experiences absorbed through these "skins too few" are evoked in this memoir of Doris Lessing's childhood and youth as the daughter of a British colonial family in...

Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan's cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called "Miss Anne," who became Harlem Renaissance insiders. The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion--with...

The ideals of the French Revolution inflamed a longing for liberty and equality within courageous, freethinking women of the era--women who played vital roles in the momentous events that reshaped their nation and the world. In Liberty, Lucy Moore paints a vivid portrait of...

In Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico. Shedding new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera, his affair with Rivera's wife Frida Kahlo, and...

On Christmas morning in the year 800, Pope Leo III placed the crown of imperial Rome on the brow of a Germanic king named Karl--a gesture that enabled the man later hailed as Charlemagne to claim his empire and forever shape the destiny of...

Karen Spears was nine years old, living with her family in a trailer in rural Tennessee, when her father, David Spears, was killed in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam. It was 1966--in a nation being torn apart by a war nobody wanted, in...

A work Booklist called ଯving and life-affirming, Crossing Over is the true story of one woman's extraordinary flight from the protected world of the Amish people to the chaos of contemporary life.Ruth Irene Garrett was the fifth of seven children raised in Kalona, Iowa,...

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands?With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and...

Ophelia Field's 'Kit-Cat Club' is a story of a changing time in 17th-century Britain, during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I, when a group of men and their enterprising initiatives paved the way for new literary and political viewpoints, born out of...

What does it take to control the minds of millions of people-and influence their thoughts and actions into complete devastation? After years of historical research, Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern-a third generation survivor-reveals her discoveries in Goebbels: Nazi Master of Illusion.During the fateful final year...

"The 50's were a time of economic growth after World War 2.A population explosion that developed into the baby boomer generation. I am a product of that time. The 60's harbored many tragedies. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. The killing of Martin Luther...

Melodie Vervloet was the first in her family to read the diaries of her grandmother. As she poured over the details, Melodie became fascinated with life in the 1930s and 40s. However, what began as an interesting story, soon revealed deep spiritual truths that...

Melodie Vervloet was the first in her family to read the diaries of her grandmother. As she poured over the details, Melodie became fascinated with life in the 1930s and 40s. However, what began as an interesting story, soon revealed deep spiritual truths that...

The twentieth century was a time of evolution from what we were as a nation to what we are now. Unfortunately, the familiar history of America taught in our schools and celebrated during our holidays doesn't match the reality experienced by many. By detailing...

The Pope of Pot: And Other True Stories of Marijuana and Related High Jinks is a pocket collection, by the award-winning journalist (and former Rolling Stone drugs correspondent) Mike Sager, highlighting his dispatches from the cannabis underground. In "When Should a Man Stop Smoking...

Famous for leading the Doolittle (or Tokyo) Raid, America's first strike against Japan in World War II, Jimmy Doolittle led a remarkable life as an American pilot. This firsthand account by his granddaughter Jonna Doolittle Hoppes reveals an extraordinary individual: - An aviation pioneer...

Tony Powell was born on March 16, 1955 in Charlottetown, Labrador, NL, on the Northeast Coast of Canada, son of the late Benjamin and Effie Powell. Together they had nine children-seven boys and two girls. Six boys become bush pilots. Tony is married to...

Tony Powell was born on March 16, 1955 in Charlottetown, Labrador, NL, on the Northeast Coast of Canada, son of the late Benjamin and Effie Powell. Together they had nine children-seven boys and two girls. Six boys become bush pilots. Tony is married to...

How do you feel that for centuries, educators have purposely miseducated you about black history and the history of the Caribbean? Just think about it. When was the last time (or first time) you learned anything about the history of the Caribbean? You didn't...

A boy and the town that raised him - Growing up in Atlin, BCWith natural story-telling ease and wit, Brad tells his story of growing up in an isolated, northern gold rush town, surrounded by his family's many huskies and malamutes. It was an...

This memoir was written by one of the few remaining Montford Point Marines. Captain Eddie Q Hicks served honorably fromApril 1948 to October 1972. This first-person account of his experiences reveals his reasons for enlisting; his arrival at Montford Point and revelations about the...