Biography & Autobiography - Historical

Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In his new book Michel Chauveau brings us a picture of her firmly based in reality. Cleopatra VII reigned in...

Vasilii Fedorovich Malinovskii (1765-1814) is a name which has hitherto lacked true resonance in the history of Russian culture. Tt is of course a name known to all students of Alexander Pushkin's biography, for Malinovskii was the first Director of the new Tsarskoe Selo...

Alicia Nitecki is Associate Professor of English at Bentley College. She is the author of Recovered Land and the translator of several works, including We Were in Auschwitz by Janusz Nel Siedlecki, Krystyn Olszewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Jack Terry is a psychoanalyst living in...

This memoir evokes a girl's coming of age in a postwar New York City planned, "utopian" community.Author: Corinne DemasISBN-10: 0791446301ISBN-13: 9780791446300Publisher: State University of New York PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 07/11/2002Pages: 206Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.71lbsSize: 8.68h x 5.80w x 0.52dReview Citation(s): Library Journal 07/01/2000 pg. 107Publishers Weekly...

As the third century of American history develops, it is essential to renew our knowledge of and respect for the beliefs upon which this country was founded and the great men who propounded them. The most significant Founding Fathers of our country include: George...

It has been nearly fifty years since Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Appraisals of King's contributions began almost immediately and continue to this day. The author explores a great many of King's chief ideas and socio-ethical...

Many of America's first European settlers felt they were traveling to a sort of promised land, but James Oglethorpe viewed America--specifically, what is today the state of Georgia--as his own personal utopia. Convincing his king to grant him a land parcel, Oglethorpe threw his...

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book of the YearNearly 140 years ago, in frontier California, photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured time with his camera and played it back on a flickering screen, inventing the breakthrough technology of moving pictures. Yet the visionary inventor Muybridge was also...

Newly discovered and declassified documents make for a surprising and revealing portrait of the president we thought we knew.America's thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter-in-chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb...

"I think German Boy has all the qualities of greatness. I love the book." -- from the Foreword by Stephen Ambrose As the Third Reich crumbled in 1945, scores of Germans scrambled to flee the advancing Russian troops. Among them was a little boy...

In this New York Times-bestselling inspirational memoir, Camryn Manheim, Emmy Award-winning costar of The Practice, chronicles her journey from a self-hating, "overweight" teenager, who desperately wanted to fit in, to a self-loving, fat activist who is proud to be a misfit. Wake Up, I'm...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our...

From the Western frontier to the battlefields of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Franklin, Petersburg, and Richmond, Grant saw the war from the front lines and made the decisions that affected lives on a day-to-day basis. His writings provide a revealing look into the life of the...

The life of Luftwaffe fighter pilot Walter Nowotny - in photographs, documents, and commentary. Nowotny was highly decorated for his 258 aerial victories, but was well known, above all, for his deployment and command of the Messerschmitt Me 262 Erprobungskommando. Later his "Kommando Nowotny"...

In the mid-nineteenth centrury, Martha Maupin left home at a young age and defied her parents to marry the dashing Garrett Maupin. After years of hardship and difficult marriage, Garrett Maupin died in 1866, leaving Martha alone on the frontier with her young children....

This is an enthralling personal account of the secret Nazi project, Operation Bernhard, devised to destabilize the British and, later, American economies by creating and putting into circulation millions of counterfeit banknotes. A team of typographers and printers was pulled out of the rows...

Each volume in this series features fifteen to twenty short biographies of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary if misunderstood thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes from the history of a given city, state, or region of the U.S. The villainous, the misguided, and...

The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary-if misunderstood-thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from history all get their due in the short essays featured in these enlightening, informative, books. Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in New England...

The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary--if misunderstood--thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from history all get their due in the short essays featured in these enlightening, informative books. Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Chicago History...

After the War of 1812, Thorndike concluded his career as the leading venture capitalist financing the early Industrial Revolution. Sadly, his story is little known. Federalist Tycoon pulls Thorndike's life and career from the shadows and fully examines his impact on American economic development....

This detailed biography gives a portrait of the life of Daniel Alexander Payne, a free person of color in nineteenth century Charleston, South Carolina. This work highlights his life as educator, pastor, abolitionist, poet, historiographer, hymn writer, ecumenist, and bishop of the African Methodist...

This book chronicles a family of diplomats who experienced the world in transition. Subjects of capricious fate, they forged a destiny as a family that overcame some of the most cataclysmic events of the twentieth century.Author: Mari A. FirkatianISBN-10: 0761840699ISBN-13: 9780761840695Publisher: University Press of...

Catholic Makers of America chronicles a number of important, largely unknown, figures in the history of American Catholicism and America. This book shares their story and their contributions to American political life and thought.Author: Stephen M. KrasonISBN-10: 0761834125ISBN-13: 9780761834120Publisher: University Press of AmericaLanguage: EnglishPublished:...

"Born Into Hell "is the correct title for this true story. The author wishes he could wake up some beautiful morning and say, "Oh heck, that was just a bad dream. Be happy that nightmare was just my imagination, and that the blood on...

A heart warming and compelling memoir of a German boy growing up during W.W.II and the post-war era. Live vicariously through the horrors of war and experience the daily life of a German family trying to survive. Thought provoking, emotional, and funny.Author: Bruno W....

Author: T. F. Jr. JacksonISBN-10: 0759637180ISBN-13: 9780759637184Publisher: 1st Book LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 08/01/2001Pages: 136Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.51lbsSize: 9.10h x 6.24w x 0.36d

Author: Mary Joe ClendeninISBN-10: 0759630143ISBN-13: 9780759630147Publisher: 1st Book LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/01/2001Pages: 148Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.41lbsSize: 8.08h x 5.02w x 0.39d

From the terror of the Warsaw ghetto to the brutality and horror of concentration and labor camps, this is Eisner's remarkable personal story.Author: Jack EisnerISBN-10: 0758206208ISBN-13: 9780758206206Publisher: Kensington Publishing CorporationLanguage: EnglishPublished: 01/01/2003Pages: 308Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.01lbsSize: 9.12h x 5.98w x 0.76d

The Last Days of Richard III contains a new and uniquely detailed exploration of Richard's last 150 days. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field, we discover a new Richard: no passive victim, awaiting defeat and...

Tommy Atkins is the English soldier who joking broke the cavalry of France at Minden, who singing marched with the Great Duke to the Danube, who grumbling shattered Napoleon's dreams at Waterloo, who sweating in his red coat tramped back and forth across India,...

or nearly 700 years debate has raged over the true nature of William Wallace and his role in Scotland's turbulent history. Was he the Braveheart of Blind Harry's legendary account, the bold, but savage, hero of the Scottish wars? Or, as some contemporary chroniclers...

Over the years Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, has been slandered as a 'juvenile delinquent', 'empty-headed wanton' and 'natural born tart', who engaged in promiscuous liaisons prior to her marriage and committed adultery after. Though she was bright, charming and beautiful, her actions...

Often described as 'the most beautiful spy', Vera Eriksen could almost rival First World War spy Mata Hari and the various 'Bond girls' who followed her. Perhaps the archetypal 'femme fatale' of the Second World War, her story is less well-known than it should...

The iconic figure of Robert the Bruce has gone down through the centuries as one of the most remarkable leaders of all time. With equal parts tenacity and ruthlessness, he had himself crowned King of Scotland after murdering one of his most powerful rivals,...

A personal rather than political history examining the origins of the family and interweaving the lives of the five Tudor monarchs with lesser-known branches of the tree The Tudors ruled England for little more than a century, but no other dynasty has so impressed...

Keir Hardie was a founder and the first parliamentary leader of the Labour Party. At the turn of the 19th century he was Labour's most famous face. But despite being voted Labour's 'Greatest Hero' at the 2008 Party Conference, in recent years his extraordinary...

This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the heart of the Nazi extermination machine. Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded,...

Albert Speer remains the most mysterious character of the leadership of the Nazi regime. He was the chief architect of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler's confidant. Speer built the "Reichskanzlei" (official offices), discovered the "Lightdome" and was finally, in 1942, named as the...

In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to 'consider, with me, how such a work - and I mean Leverk?n's...

Jean-Paul Marat's role in the French Revolution has long been a matter of controversy among historians. Often he is portrayed as a violent, sociopathic demagogue. This biography challenges that interpretation and argues that without Marat's contributions as an agitator, tactician, and strategist, the pivotal...

From the moment of their births, John and Caroline Kennedy occupied a central position in what is generally regarded as the most famous family in the United States, if not the world. Even as young children growing up in the White House, their most...

- GEOFFREY CHAUCER - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE - JANE AUSTEN - ROBERT BROWNING & ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING - EDGAR ALLAN POE - CHARLES DICKENS - CHARLOTTE & EMILY BRONTﾋ - EMILY DICKINSON - MARK TWAIN - GEORGE ELIOT - THOMAS HARDY - OSCAR WILDE -...

Though of eminent birth and status in their own right, the women of Crowned in a Far Country all left the countries of their birth to marry heirs to great thrones. They all shared an inbred sense of duty and a genuine desire to...

Using the unique approach that he has employed in his previous books, author, columnist, and television commentator James Burke shows us our connections to the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Over the two hundred-plus years that separate us, these connections are...

On a frosty day in February 1862, hundreds gathered to watch the execution of Nathaniel Gordon. Two years earlier, Gordon had taken Africans in chains from the Congo -- a hanging offense for more than forty years that no one had ever enforced. But...

Before Charles and Diana, before the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and long before the slogan "the personal is political," an astonishing British royal sex scandal threatened to trigger a revolution. Its lessons for leadership, popularity, and the impact of the absurd on history are...

Award-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning draws on her deep knowledge of the twentieth century literary scene, and on her meticulous research into previously untapped sources, to write the first full biography of the extraordinary man who was the "dark star" at the center of the...

In Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan, John Taliaferro vividly recounts the remarkable life and career of the originator of Tarzan. Drawn extensively from Burroughs's own correspondence, memos, and manuscripts, Taliaferro's richly detailed narrative reveals how Burroughs, a down-on-his-luck...

New York Times bestselling author Barbara Leaming answers the question: What was it like to be Mrs. John F. Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of the Kennedy presidency? Here for the first time is the full story of the extravagant interplay of sex...

Stanley Weintraub, biographer of Queen Victoria and other major figures of her era, here unveils for the first time the largely hidden role of Prince Albert, establishing him as one of the greatest men of his days. Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Weintraub's Uncrowned...