Biography & Autobiography - Historical

This is the story of a Holocaust rescuer, Pierre Toureille, a French Protestant pastor whose efforts resulted in the rescue of hundreds of refugees, most of them Jewish. Inspired by his Huguenot heritage, Pastor Toureille participated in international Protestant church efforts to combat Nazism...

Hailed in the mid-nineteenth century as the most important American poet of the period, Fitz-Greene Halleck was a close friend of William C. Bryant, an associate of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving, and a celebrity sought out by John Jacob Astor and American presidents....

Called "the best English prose writer of this century" by Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood is best known for Goodbye to Berlin--the inspiration for the musical Cabaret--but is also the author of plays, novels, and diaries. The Isherwood Century gathers twenty-four essays and interviews offering...

Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of 19th-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the...

With its desperate acts and dire consequences, Nell Peters's tale of a woman's life in northern Wisconsin is a remarkable story, full of the sense and sound and flavor of a time and place rarely visited in books. Nell's tomboy childhood, her businesslike initiation...

Written just five years after the end of World War II, this is Margaret Sams's moving testimony of life in a Japanese internment camp--the can of Spam hoarded for Christmas dinner, the clandestine radio hidden in her sewing kit, the beheading of other prisoners...

The reign of Emperor Yongle, or "Perpetual Happiness," was one of the most dramatic and significant in Chinese history. It began with civil war and a bloody coup, saw the construction of the Forbidden City, the completion of the Grand Canal, consolidation of the...

Last of the Spanish Renaissance men, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504-1575) was a master of the humanist disciplines as well as an active diplomat whose correspondence provides insight into the workings of power politics in the first post-Machiavellian decades. This account of Mendoza's diplomatic...

Between 1867 and 1875, George Armstrong Custer contributed fifteen letters under the apt pseudonym Nomad to the New York-based sportsman's journal Turf, Field and Farm. Previously available only in a collector's typescript edition, the Nomad letters offer valuable insight into the character of the...

Garcilaso de la Vega, the great chronicler of the Incas and the conquistadors, was born in Cuzco in 1539. At the age of twenty, he sailed to Spain to acquire an education, and he remained there until his death at Cdoba in 1616. As...

Samuel Bell Maxey was an important political figure in nineteenth-century Texas, but no previous book-length study of his life and career has been published. Louise Horton has utilized his private papers as well as numerous other sources in preparing this biography, which includes many...

Admiral Jean Fran輟is Darlan's Western legacy is that of an opportunist, a fascist collaborator, or, at worst, a traitor during France's struggle for survival in the early years of World War II. This study, however, based upon new research from French, English, and German...

A biography of Frederic C. Howe, a reformer and political activist in Cleveland, New York, and Washington, D.C., in the Progressive and New Deal eras (1890s to 1930s).Author: Kenneth E. MillerISBN-10: 0271037431ISBN-13: 9780271037431Publisher: Penn State University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/15/2014Pages: 504Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.61lbsSize: 9.00h x...

Examines the life and poetry of Magda Portal, a major figure in Latin American revolutionary politics. Includes a selection of poems available for the first time in English translation. Author: Kathleen WeaverISBN-10: 0271035501ISBN-13: 9780271035505Publisher: Penn State University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 01/15/2011Pages: 328Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.00lbsSize: 8.90h...

'Sheer delight ... A story as good as one of Defoe's own novels, full of immediacy, action and good sense ... We can look the great biographers Macaulay and Trevelyan in the face.' The Daily Telegraph Daniel Defoe bestrode the age like a colossus....

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was Polish, Jewish, and a woman in an international socialist movement dominated by Germans, gentiles, and men. For Luxemburg, there was no real socialism without democracy and no real democracy without socialism. In this biography Stephen Eric Bronner establishes Luxemburg's legacy...

Otto III (980-1002) was one of the most powerful rulers in Europe in the late tenth century. He is also one of the most enigmatic. The son of the German emperor Otto II and the Greek princess Theophanu, he came to the throne at...

Rarely are we privileged to see the making of a saint, but it is just what this book gives us for John of Kronstadt (1829-1908), a major figure in the religious life of Late Imperial Russia. So popular was Father John during his years...

In this fascinating memoir of his early life, Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn F駟n, describes the development of the modern "Troubles'' in the North of Ireland, his experiences during that period, including secret talks with the British government and imprisonment, his leadership role...

As the only daughter of Blanche of Castile, one of France's most powerful queens, and as the sister of the Capetian saint Louis IX, Isabelle of France (1225-1270) was situated at the nexus of sanctity and power during a significant era of French culture...

Ambitious and outspoken, John Pope was one of the most controversial figures to hold high command during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and in the American West. General John Pope: A Life for the Nation is the first full biography of this much maligned figure...

This gripping and highly acclaimed account of a young woman's experience in concentration camps now includes a final chapter, "A Time to Forgive?" detailing the author's trips back to her former forced labor camp in Germany.Author: Judith Magyar IsaacsonISBN-10: 0252062191ISBN-13: 9780252062193Publisher: University of Illinois...

An in-depth examination of one of the significant figures in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science: Charles Darwin. This new, condensed edition of Darwin looks at the incredible scientist who forever altered our view of life on earth--especially his theories on evolution, which, though controversial at...

This brief and fascinating biography examines every facet of Churchill's life, from his birth at Blenheim Palace, his tumultuous early political career at Westminster, his inspirational wartime leadership, to his final years as the grand old man of world politics. Renowned for guiding Britain...

When Emperor Meiji began his rule, in 1867, Japan was a splintered empire, dominated by the shogun and the daimyos, who ruled over the country's more than 250 decentralized domains and who were, in the main, cut off from the outside world, staunchly antiforeign,...

More than a biography, this is a savvy portrait of how Archie Leach, born to a poor working-class family in Bristol, England became Cary Grant, one of Hollywood's most irresistible and admired celebrities of all time.Author: Graham McCannISBN-10: 0231108850ISBN-13: 9780231108850Publisher: Columbia University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished:...

Black shows how Eleanor Roosevelt, after being freed from the constraints imposed by her role in the White House, eagerly expanded her career and unabashedly challenged both the Democratic party and American liberals to practice what they preach.Author: Allida BlackISBN-10: 0231104057ISBN-13: 9780231104050Publisher: Columbia University...

In 1939 Columbia University Press published the acclaimed first volume of The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which presented a deeply personal portrait of the real Emerson, previously unknown to the American public. Through these letters readers gained a new insight into the mind...

This brilliant and eloquent book by a distinguished scholar and critic examines the history, the limits, and the promise of the human mind and the knowledge of which it is capable. Professor Highet explores the meaning of our culture from the intellectual and moral...

Abu Sharif was one of the world's most notorious and dangerous terrorists in the 60's and 70's, acting as minister of propaganda for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and as a recruiter for terrorists like Carlos the Jackal. In 1972,...

Little integrates the latest research from younger and established scholars to provide a new evaluation and 'biography' of Cromwell. The book challenges received wisdom about Cromwell's rise to power, his political and religious beliefs, his relationship with various communities across the British Isles and...

Forgotten Lives explores the lives and work of Lenin's sisters, Anna, Ol'ga and Mariia, and the role they played in the Russian Revolution. It traces their early revolutionary careers and contributions to the underground movement, their work for the Party and the State after...

Eva Per, one of the most powerful women in the world at the time of her death in 1952, rose from humble origins to international renown as First Lady of Argentina and the force behind the throne of her husband Juan Per. Despite her...

As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, The Long Affair is Conor Cruise O'Brien's examination of Thomas Jefferson, as man and icon, through the critical lens of the French Revolution. O'Brien offers a provocative analysis of the supreme symbol of American...

The memoirs of Hortense (1646-1699) and of Marie (1639-1715) Mancini, nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin and members of the court of Louis XIV, represent the earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. Both unhappily...

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Now Citizen, Louise W. Knight's masterful biography, reveals Addams's early development as a political activist and social philosopher. In this book we observe a powerful mind grappling with the radical ideas...

Armed with only early boyhood memories, Lawrence P. Jackson begins his quest by setting out from his home in Baltimore for Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to find his late grandfather's old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs. My Father's Name tells the...

Was it an omen? Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913. As Mark Feeney relates in this unusual and unusually absorbing book, Nixon and the movies have shared a long and complex history. Some of that...

From his role as Franklin Roosevelt's "negro advisor" to his appointment under Lyndon Johnson as the first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Robert Clifton Weaver was one of the most influential domestic policy makers and civil rights advocates of the twentieth century. This...

Replete with shady merchants, scoundrels, hungry mercenaries, scheming nobles, and maneuvering cardinals, The Man Who Believed He Was King of France proves the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction--or at least as entertaining. The setting of this improbable but beguiling tale is...

For the centennial of its first publication: a new edition of a seminal work on the American immigrant experienceWeaving introspection with political commentary, biography with history, The Promised Land, first published in 1912, brings to life the transformation of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant...

With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the...

In 1917 young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into...

The latest installment in our fully revised edition of Plutarch's Lives of the great men of the ancient world, this volume focusing on early Rome The biographies collected in this volume bring together Plutarch's Lives of those great men who established the city of...

Although related to one of the ruling families of Ireland, Columba (c 521-97) became a central figure in the 'Age of Saints' by setting out from his native land and founding his famous monastery on the island of Iona. It was from here that...

Drawing on John Steinbeck's papers and photographs, and scores of interviews, Jackson J. Benson explores the influences that contributed to Steinbeck's archetypal sense of American culture and his controversial concerns. An in-depth study of the shy, private individual behind many American classics.Author: Jackson J....

Part contemporary detective story, part World War II historical narrative, No Surrender is the inspiring true story of Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville-born enlistee who risked his life during the final days of World War II to save others from murderous Nazis, and the lasting...

May, 1940. Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one Western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away.Just days after becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror--as...

In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the twentieth...

Perfect for fans of Jane Austen, this updated edition of Paula Byrne's debut book includes new material that explores the history of Austen stage adaptations, why her books work so well on screen, and what that reveals about one of the world's most beloved...