Biography & Autobiography - Historical

With 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations Now in paperback, the first fully documented biography of the legendary Polish-born Nazi hunter--a revelatory account of a man whose life, though part invention, was wholly dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for their...

Twenty years after he and his family were deported from Sighet to Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel returned to his town in search of the watch--a bar mitzvah gift--he had buried in his backyard before they left.Author: Elie WieselISBN-10: 0805207139ISBN-13: 9780805207132Publisher: Schocken Books IncLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/13/1987Pages:...

A generous feat of biographical sleuthing by an acclaimed historian rescues one child victim of the Holocaust from oblivion When the German Remembrance Foundation established a prize to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, it was deliberately named after a victim...

This is the first comprehensive collection of remarks attributed to Abraham Lincoln by his contemporaries. Much of what is known or believed about the man comes from such utterances, which have been an important part of Lincoln biography. About his mother, for instance, he...

"Dearly beloved Child of my Heart, we are probably standing at the end of our beautiful and rich life together. Because tomorrow the People's Court intends to sit in judgment on me and others. I hear that we have been expelled from the army....

Roger Welsch did what many Americans only dream of doing. While still in his professional prime, the folklorist and humorist quit a tenured professorship and headed toward the hinterland. Resettled in the open heart of Nebraska with his wife, Welsch proceeded to learn how...

This first biography of General George A. Custer was published late in 1876, only months after the disaster at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. A Complete Life was the beginning of a legend, and Frderick Whittaker did more than anyone else except...

In the election year of 1876 the Battle of the Little Big Horn was horrifyingly fresh to opinion makers, who divided along political lines in assigning blame. The late General George A. Custer, who had been a Democrat with aspirations to high office, was...

Davy Crockett has been America's best-known folk hero for at least 160 years. This informed biography by James Atkins Shackford first appeared in 1956, at the height of the television-inspired Crockett craze. As Michael Lofaro notes in his introduction, "Shackford faced the monumental task...

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Enigma of Max Gluckman examines one of the most influential British anthropologists of the twentieth century. South African-born Max Gluckman was the founder of what became known as the Manchester School of social anthropology, a key figure in...

The many sides of Abraham Lincoln--war leader, humorist, commander in chief, politician, and emancipator--are vividly depicted in this concise and fresh look at his presidential years. Pivotal events, decisions, and issues in Lincoln's private and public life are scrutinized and explained clearly by noted...

Louis Tikas was a union organizer killed in the battle between striking coal miners and state militia in Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914. In Buried Unsung he stands for a whole generation of immigrant workers who, in the years before World War I, found themselves...

When C駘este Mogador's memoirs were first published in 1854 and again in 1858, they were immediately seized and condemned as immoral and unsuitable for public consumption. For a reader in our more forgiving times, this extraordinary document offers not only a portrait of the...

When Vince Mendoza began to write his life story, he turned to his memory of visiting the deathbed of his great-grandmother, a Creek Indian who embodied the history and dauntless will of her people. The memory inspired both sorrow and boundless pride. Son of...

Called "Her Majesty" because of her resemblance to Queen Victoria and known as "the measuring woman" among the Indians whose land allotments she administered, Alice Fletcher (1838-1923) commanded respect from both friend and foe. She was the foremost woman anthropologist in the United States...

"I wonder if the new year is to bring us new miseries and sufferings," seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Her later entries portray the city of Columbia, South Carolina, like...

During separations enforced by the military, Lieutenant General George A. Custer and his wife, Elizabeth, corresponded about the Civil War, the perils of frontier life, and the chain of events that would lead to his tragic death at the Little Big Horn in Montana...

The young daughter of an English-born U. S. infantry officer on the post-Civil War frontier, Mary Leefe Laurence had the childhood of an army nomad, accompanying the regiment from south Texas to the Canadian border. In faithfully recording her travels, she offers extensive and...

She was called "The Florence Nightingale of America." From the fighting at Gettysburg to the capture of Richmond, this young Quaker nurse worked tirelessly to relieve the suffering of soldiers. She was one of the great heroines of the Union. Cornelia Hancock served in...

Soon after the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865, newspaper editor Josiah Gilbert Holland traveled to Illinois to talk with people who had known Abraham Lincoln "back when." In 1866 Holland published the earliest full-scale life of the fallen leader. A great popular...

"I'm frightened, Mother. Last year, I was seven years old. This year, I'm eight and so many years separate these two ages. I have learned that I am Jewish, that I am a monster, and that I must hide myself. I'm frightened all the...

Violence dictated the daily rhythms of Cole Younger's life. During the Civil War he was selected to join Quantrill's Raiders because he owned his own revolver. His participation in the brutal 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas, drove him and other guerrillas into hiding as...

For more than a century, Americans have been captivated by the legend of General George Armstrong Custer. But the various truths of Custer's life and last stand prove elusive. Why are we so taken with the myth and the so-called mystery behind the man?...

Emil Adolph Bode, a German immigrant down on his luck, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1877 and served for five years. More literate than most of his fellow soldiers, Bode described western flora and fauna, commenting on the American Indians he encountered as...

With the publication of The Splendid Wayfaring in 1920, John G. Neihardt sought to restore the reputation of a mountain man who went far in opening up the American West. The exciting narrative begins in 1822, when Smith ascended the Missouri River in the...

William A. Wallace (1816-1899) went from his native Virginia to Texas in 1836, shortly after the battle of San Jacinto, "for the purpose . . . of taking pay out of the Mexicans for the murder of his brother and cousin." His experiences as...

For more than twenty years, Tim Grove has worked at the most popular history museums in the United States, helping millions of people get acquainted with the past. This book translates that experience into an insider's tour of some of the most interesting moments...

2018 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award from the Western History Association A Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri offers the first annotated scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Truteau's journal of his voyage on the Missouri River in the central and northern Plains from 1794 to...

In what remains the only full-length biography of Owen Wister (1860-1938), Darwin Payne details the life of the man who created the popular image of the cowboy that dominated American culture from the early 1900s to the 1960s. Payne follows Wister from his privileged...

Tamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill-fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846-47. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at...

The first Japanese American jockey, Kokomo Joe burst like a comet on the American horse-racing scene in the summer of 1941. As war with Japan loomed, Yoshio "Kokomo Joe" Kobuki won race after race, stirring passions far beyond merely the envy and antagonism of...

Devoted, eccentric, and compelling, Gertrude and Leo Stein were constant companions, from childhood to adulthood, until, finally, they spoke no more. Americans, expatriates, and virtually orphans, they lived together for almost forty years, collaborating in one of the great artistic and literary adventures of...

This intellectual biography of Lev Shternberg (1861-1927) illuminates the development of professional anthropology in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. Shortly after the formation of the Soviet Union the government initiated a detailed ethnographic survey of the country's peoples. Lev Shternberg, who as a...

Now in paperback, Madame Chiang Kai-shek is the first biography of one of history's most intriguing and controversial political figures. Beautiful, brilliant, and captivating, Madame Chiang Kai-shek seized unprecedented power during China's long and violent civil war. She passionately argued against Chinese Communism in...

In Paris and London, the crowds hailed him as the man who had conquered Napoleon, as the liberator of Europe, and as a benevolent, enlightened monarch. At home he came to be feared as a reactionary, oppressive autocrat in a country where millions of...

Paul Bowles's seductive, terrifying, exquisitely detached fictions have inspired writers and iconoclasts from the Beats to the present day. In this brilliant and definitive biography, the result of exhaustive research as well as in-depth interviews with Bowles himself and with those who knew him...

Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence is a comprehensive introduction to Erasmus's life, works, and thoughts.Author: Cornelis AugustijnISBN-10: 0802071775ISBN-13: 9780802071774Publisher: University of Toronto PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/01/1995Pages: 268Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.88lbsSize: 9.00h x 5.84w x 0.79d

In a crucial period between the World Wars, Woodsworth helped define the character of the modern Canadian, non-Marxist Left and of many of Canada's important economic and social institutions.Author: Allen MillsISBN-10: 0802068421ISBN-13: 9780802068422Publisher: University of Toronto PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/15/1991Pages: 324Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.05lbsSize: 9.00h x...

Planner and originator of the Appalachian Trail and a cofounder of the Wilderness Society, Benton MacKaye (1879-1975) was a pioneer in linking the concepts of preservation and recreation. Spanning three-quarters of a century, his long and productive career had a major impact on emerging...

"A fascinating book. Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman is instructive and a delight to read all at the same time."--Quentin CrispBorn in 1728, French aristocrat Charles d'Eon de Beaumont had served his country as a diplomat, soldier, and spy for fifteen years when rumors...

One of the most influential novelists, Henry James led a life that was as rich as his writing. Born into an eccentric and difficult family, he left the United States for Europe, where he quickly became a fixture of the expatriate writing community. Fred...

Awarded the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of TechnologyA major Amercan inventor who obtained more than 350 patents during his lifetime, Elmer Sperry contributed greatly to the momentous technological changes that occured between 1880 and 1930. Best known for the Sperry...

The leading American botanist of the nineteenth century, Asa Gray helped organize the main generalizations of the science of plant geography. The manual of botany that carries his name is still in use today. Friend and confidant of Charles Darwin, Gray became the most...

Big Bill Otter was one member of the early American working class not preoccupied with republican principles or the heritage of the Revolution. Big Bill Otter--apprentice, journeyman, master plasterer--was a thug.Otter's autobiography, first published in 1835, provides a rare and fascinating counterpoint to romantic...

"No other author has delved so deeply into the life and work of this complex, influential, and tragic figure of the fourth century and produced such a far-ranging but precise, solidly researched, and eminently readable account.... Chrysostom emerges as a sympathetic and tragic figure...

This text provides an account of Madison's development and the trajectory of his career, focusing on the founding of the Federal Republic.Author: Lance BanningISBN-10: 080148524XISBN-13: 9780801485244Publisher: Cornell University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/17/1998Pages: 560Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.74lbsSize: 9.07h x 6.06w x 1.33d

Russia's attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky's book tells the story of a single man with multiple allegiances and provides a concise and compelling history of the...

Although born to a life of privilege and married to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt was a staunch and lifelong advocate for workers and, for more than twenty-five years, a proud member of the AFL-CIO's Newspaper Guild. She Was One of...

In August 1858, William James Stillman, a painter and founding editor of the acclaimed but short-lived art journal The Crayon, organized a camping expedition for some of America's preeminent intellectuals to Follensby Pond in the Adirondacks. Dubbed the "Philosophers' Camp," the trip included the...

"Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life....