Biography & Autobiography - Historical

The beautiful Langhorne sisters lived at the pinnacle of society from the end of the Civil War through the Second World War. Born in Virginia to a family impoverished by the Civil War, Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora eventually made their way across...

This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books-An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth,...

Few leadership titles have been written on the lives of women. Alan Axelrod, noted historian and business management expert, reveals how Elizabeth I overcame daunting obstacles to win intense loyalty and lead England to greatness. The queen's long reign offers lessons on: developing a...

One of the most important public figures in antebellum America, Winfield Scott is known today more for his swagger than his sword. "Old Fuss-and-Feathers" was a brilliant military commander whose tactics and strategy were innovative adaptations from European military theory; yet he was often...

It is surprising that no one previous to John Prados attempted a biography of quintessential cold warrior William Colby, because his story is in many ways also the story of the CIA. From Italy to Vietnam, to the military coup in Indonesia, to Watergate,...

He has been called America's greatest ex-president, a man who lost the White House after one term but went on to become a respected spokesman for peace and human rights.Burton Kaufman's book on the Carter years was hailed as the best account of his...

Some men panic in the face of war, others embrace its horrific challenges. But none embraced war as ferociously or with as much cold calculation as William Tecumseh Sherman. It was Sherman who both articulated and practiced the relentless scorched-earth policy that broke the...

Countless World War II memoirs have been written, but few offer the German civilian perspective. Brigitte Z. Yearman's evocative survival memoir provides that fresh voice. Young Brigitte knows nothing of the politics of war. All she knows is that the conflict has separated her...

This book is a non fiction autobiographical account of an American expat's experiences with Iranians and Iran. It is a series of 12 short stories in chronological order. At age eleven he went to boarding school in Rome with the grandson of Sardar Homayoun...

From the earliest days of the American colonies, through the Gilded Age, to the late 20th century, The Lodge Women traces a line of the family's remarkable history that is at once intensely personal, political and wholly universal. Based on archival research, interviews and...

"The Period of Consolidation, 1871-1880, Volume II" opens at a time when Bismarck had become the dominant figure in German and European politics and the new German Reich the most formidable power on the continent. Questions arose. What new goals would the man of...

The Period of Fortification, 1880-1898The burst of capitalistic expansion that accompanied German unification came to an abrupt end with the crash of 1873, which opened a period of economic depression. Volume III describes the continuation of Bismarck's efforts to cope with the resulting economic...

The definitive biography of the legendary "first citizen of Athens" Pericles has the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. "Periclean" Athens witnessed tumultuous...

Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives--biographies of...

Pericles has had the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. "Periclean" Athens witnessed tumultuous political and military events, and achievements of the highest...

Originally published in 1976, Clausewitz and the State presents a comprehensive analysis of one of the significant thinkers of modern Europe. Peter Paret combines social and military history and psychological interpretation with a study of Clausewitz's military theories and of his unduly neglected historical...

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as...

Leon (Judah Aryeh) Modena was a major intellectual figure of the early modern Italian Jewish community--a complex and intriguing personality who was famous among contemporary European Christians as well as Jews. Modena (1571-1648) produced an autobiography that documents in poignant detail the turbulent life...

Once Freud's most favoured student and associate, Otto Rank came to be reviled by the psychoanalytic establishment that formerly revered him. This biography exposes the hostile, at time libelious treatment of Rank in the standard histories of psychoanalysis and shows him to be a...

He inherited a sense of entitlement (and obligation) from his family, yet eventually came to see his own class as suspect. He was famously militaristic, yet brokered peace between Russia and Japan. He started out an archconservative, yet came to champion progressive causes. These...

"So marvelously improbable, so rich in exotic detail, that if often reads more like a historical thriller than the serious work of history that it is."--Los Angeles Times With the same flair for history and narrative that distinguished his bestseller, The Alienist, Caleb Carr...

By the time he was killed in the jungles of Bolivia, where his body was displayed like a deposed Christ, Ernesto "Che" Guevara had become a synonym for revolution everywhere from Cuba to the barricades of Paris. This extraordinary biography peels aside the veil...

In this outstanding, eminently readable work of literary scholarship, Holmes explores the enigmatic friendship between Samuel Johnson and the poet Richard Savage, whom Johnson memorialized in Lives of the Poets. Synthesizing a wide array of contradictory historical sources, from Johnson's Life of Savage to...

A fascinating, powerfully evocative story of four generations of Cuban women, through whose lives the author illuminates a vivid picture--both personal and historical--of Cuba in our century. "When I want to read a culture," writes Wendy Gimbel in her prologue, "I listen to stories...

In the course of his flamboyant career as an all-purpose activist, Saul Alinsky went from organizing working-class ethnics in one of Chicago's most blighted neighborhoods to mapping out strategies for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. He enlisted allies--from Catholic clergymen...

Author: Jonathan D. SpenceISBN-10: 067972074XISBN-13: 9780679720744Publisher: VintageLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/22/1988Pages: 256Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.60lbsSize: 7.99h x 5.26w x 0.84d

The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi's transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community...

Thomas Robert Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population was an immediate succ鑚 de scandale when it appeared in 1798. Arguing that nature is niggardly and that societies, both human and animal, tend to overstep the limits of natural resources in "perpetual oscillation...

This portrayal of one of antiquity's most enigmatic figures offers a vivid and compact assessment of the Apostate's life and reign. Proceeding directly from an evaluation of the ancient sources--the testimony of friends and enemies of Julian as well as the writings of the...

Only a few of us seek immortality, and fewer still by writing. But Arthur Inman challenged the odds. He calculated that if he kept a diary and spared no thoughts or actions, was entirely honest and open, and did not care about damage or...

There has never been any doubt that the Adams family was America's first family in our politics and memory. This research-based and insightful book is a multigenerational biography of that family from the founder father John through the mordant writer Brooks.Author: Paul C. NagelISBN-10:...

From the Sino-Japanese War to the Communist Revolution, the onrushing narrative of modern China can drown out the stories of the people who lived it. Yet a remarkable cache of letters from one of China's most prominent and influential families, the Lius of Shanghai,...

Mark Peterson makes an extraordinary claim in this fascinating book focused around the life and thought of Galileo: it was the mathematics of Renaissance arts, not Renaissance sciences, that became modern science. Galileo's Muse argues that painters, poets, musicians, and architects brought about a...

A vivid, revelatory book about New England life during the years of America's foundation, Earthbound and Heavenbent is the compelling true story of Elizabeth Porter Phelps and the extraordinary times in which she lived. Elizabeth Porter Phelps's life began in 1747 and spanned three...

The highly acclaimed biography of one of the most important and controversial Secretaries of State of the twentieth century, this is an intimate portrait of the quintessential man of action who was vilified by the McCarthyites for being soft on communism, yet set in...

Richard Reeves's acclaimed account of a presidency solves the puzzle of Ronald Reagan -- a man of limited breadth and knowledge who was perhaps the most effective superpower president. Using the techniques he employed in his bestselling books on Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, Reeves...

Author: Krista Perry DunnISBN-10: 141348641XISBN-13: 9781413486414Publisher: XlibrisLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/08/2006Pages: 368Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.03lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.82d

From his childhood in Rhode Island to his living his final years with his daughter in New Jersey, George Sears Greene had contributed a vital role in the health and welfare of America. He applied his West Point education to building railroads and reservoirs...

Author: Fred a. SimonISBN-10: 1413441211ISBN-13: 9781413441215Publisher: XlibrisLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/28/2009Pages: 152Format: HardcoverWeight: 0.73lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.50d

Thomas Francis Meagher Irish Rebel, American Yankee, Montana PioneerAuthor: Gary R. ForneyISBN-10: 1413421091ISBN-13: 9781413421095Publisher: XlibrisLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/25/2004Pages: 312Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.88lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.70d

It is a perverse but almost inescapable phenomenon in the history of violent revolutions that after the first heroic days a colorless bureaucrat will inherit the mantle of leadership. In the Russian Revolution, Lenin was followed by a plodding Stalin rather than a dazzling...

A page-turning tale of a boy-to-man navigator in WWII in the Far East.Author: W. A. CoswayISBN-10: 1412085489ISBN-13: 9781412085489Publisher: Trafford PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/14/2006Pages: 152Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.79lbsSize: 11.00h x 8.25w x 0.33d

This is the story of a life full of "derailments." The author might have grown up under secure circumstances, yet, even his young years were full of confusion, caused by the divorce of his parents in his very young years and full of apprehension...

An autobiographical account of growing up and working in the iron trade in British Columbia during the early and mid 1900s.Author: Joe IrvingISBN-10: 1412081858ISBN-13: 9781412081856Publisher: Trafford PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/10/2006Pages: 308Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.00lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d

A tale of loyalty, sacrifice and freedom.Author: Domingo PereraISBN-10: 141207908XISBN-13: 9781412079082Publisher: Trafford PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/01/2006Pages: 204Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.58lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.47d

Wild Oats is a boy's honest recollection, observations and impressions of his Avenal and the colorful folks he knew before, during and after WW2 and how they change with time.Author: Perry Leon HuffmanISBN-10: 1412058910ISBN-13: 9781412058919Publisher: Trafford PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/22/2005Pages: 124Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.42lbsSize: 9.00h x...

Author: Bennie Babers LampkinsISBN-10: 1410796353ISBN-13: 9781410796356Publisher: 1st Book LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 01/02/2004Pages: 220Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.54lbsSize: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.50d

The two representative Frenchmen of the eighteenth century are Voltaire and Mirabeau. Voltaire was the last great influence of the old order, and Mirabeau the first of the new. Voltaire, more than any other one man, undammed the torrent of Revolution. Mirabeau used all...

This is the story of Artemas Ward, the first commander-in-chief of the American Revolution. It is the story of the high elevation of an eighteenth-century Massachusetts country-township leader. In Artemas Ward it presents a type as clear-cut and distinct as that of the Samuel...

A well-documented account of one of the principal figures of 15th century Renaissance Florence. This title is cited and recommended by Books for College Libraries and the Catalogue of the Lamont Library, Harvard College.Author: Pasquale VillariISBN-10: 1410212459ISBN-13: 9781410212450Publisher: University Press of the PacificLanguage: EnglishPublished:...