Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 645 items
A Strange Life: Selected Essays of Louisa May Alcott
By Louisa May Alcott. 2023
Collected together for the very first time, witty and wide-ranging essays from the celebrated author of Little Women.Louisa May Alcott…
(1832–1888) is, of course, best known as the author of Little Women (1868). But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father&’s failed utopian commune, the benefits of an unmarried life, and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family&’s poverty. Her first literary success was a contemporary close-up account of the American Civil War, brilliantly depicted in Hospital Sketches, which was drawn from her own experience of serving as an army nurse near the nation&’s capital. As with her famous novel, Alcott writes these essays with clear observation, unforgettable scenes, and one of the sharpest wits in American literature.Blending gentle satire with reportage and emotive autobiography, Alcott&’s exquisite essays are as exceptional as the novels she is known for. Published together for the first time, this delightful selection shows us another side to one of our most celebrated writers.Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond
By William Stadiem, Essie Mae Washington-Williams. 2005
In this historically momentous memoir, the segregationist senator&’s mixed-race daughter speaks out about her life in the shadows. Breaking nearly…
eight decades of silence, Essie Mae Washington–Williams comes forward with the dramatic story of her life. Her father, the late Strom Thurmond, had been the nation&’s leading proponent of racial segregation. He famously undertook a twenty-four–hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a desperate attempt to save the South from &“mongrelization&”. Her mother, however, was a black teenager named Carrie Butler who worked as a maid on the Thurmond family&’s South Carolina plantation. Set against the explosive civil rights era, this poignant memoir recalls how Essie Mae struggled with the discrepancy between the generous and even affectionate father she knew privately, and the Old Southern politician, railing against greater racial equality, who refused to acknowledge her publicly. From her richly told narrative, as well as the letters she and Thurmond wrote to each other over the years, emerges a fascinating portrait of a father who counseled and supported his daughter, yet would not break with the values of his Dixiecrat constituents.Escape Artist: The Incredible Second World War of Johnny Peck
By Peter Monteath. 2018
The never-before-told story of World War II escape artist extraordinaire, Johnny Peck.In August 1941, an eighteen-year-old Australian soldier made his…
first prison break an audacious night-time escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp in Crete. Astoundingly, this was only the first of many escapes.An infantryman in the 2/7 Battalion, Johnny Peck was first thrown into battle against Italian forces in the Western Desert. Campaigns against Hitlers Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in Greece and Crete followed. When Crete fell to the Germans at the end of May 1941, Peck was trapped on the island with hundreds of other men. On the run, they depended on their wits, the kindness of strangers, and sheer good luck.When Pecks luck ran out, he was taken captive by the Germans, then the Italians. Later, after his release from a Piedmontese jail following the Italian Armistice of 1943, and at immense risk to his own life, Peck devoted himself to helping POWs cross the Alps to safety. Captured once more, Peck was sentenced to death and detained in Milans notorious, Gestapo-run San Vittore prison until escaping again, this time into Switzerland.Historian Peter Monteath reveals the action-packed tale of one young Australian soldier and his remarkable war.Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker
By Yelena Rzhevskaya. 2018
"By the will of fate I came to play a part in not letting Hitler achieve his final goal of…
disappearing and turning into a myth I managed to prevent Stalins dark and murky ambition from taking root his desire to hide from the world that we had found Hitlers corpse" - Elena Rzhevskaya"A telling reminder of the jealousy and rivalries that split the Allies even in their hour of victory, and foreshadowed the Cold War"- Tom Parfitt, The GuardianOn May 2,1945, Red Army soldiers broke into Hitlers bunker. Rzhevskaya, a young military interpreter, was with them. Almost accidentally the Soviet military found the charred remains of Hitler and Eva Braun. They also found key documents: Bormann's notes, the diaries of Goebbels and letters of Magda Goebbels.Rzhevskaya was entrusted with the proof of the Hitlers death: his teeth wrenched from his corpse by a pathologist hours earlier. The teeth were given to Rzhevskaya because they believed male agents were more likely to get drunk on Victory Day, blurt out the secret and lose the evidence. She interrogated Hitler's dentist's assistant who confirmed the teeth were his.Elenas role as an interpreter allowed her to forge a link between the Soviet troops and the Germans. She also witnessed the civilian tragedy perpetrated by the Soviets. The book includes her diary material and later additions, including conversations with Zhukov, letters of pathologist Shkaravsky, who led the autopsy, and a new Preface written by Rzhevskaya for the English language edition.Rzhevskaya writes about the key historical events and everyday life in her own inimitable style. She talks in depth of human suffering, of bittersweet victory, of an author's responsibility, of strange laws of memory and unresolved feeling of guilt.The Children of Willesden Lane: A True Story of Hope and Survival During World War II (Young Readers Edition)
By Mona Golabek, Lee Cohen. 2017
A young readers' edition of an important and inspiring true story of hope and survival during World War II.Fourteen-year-old Lisa…
Jura was a musical prodigy who hoped to become a concert pianist. But when Hitler's armies advanced on pre-war Vienna, Lisa's parents were forced to make a difficult decision. Able to secure passage for only one of their three daughters through the Kindertransport, they chose to send gifted Lisa to London for safety. As she yearned to be reunited with her family while she lived in a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane, Lisa's music became a beacon of hope. A memoir of courage and the power of music to uplift the human spirit, this compelling tribute to one special young woman and the lives she touched will both educate and inspire young readers.The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens
By Helena Kelly. 1840
A radical reassessment of the famed Victorian author, revealing the true story behind the creator of some of literature's best-known…
novels.This dynamic new study of Charles Dickens will make readers re-examine his life and work in a completely different light. First, partly due to the massive digitalization of papers and letters in recent years, Helena Kelly has unearthed new material about Dickens that simply wasn't available to his earlier biographers. Second, in an astonishing piece of archival detective work, she has traced and then joined the dots on revelatory new details about his mental and physical health that, as the reader will discover, had a strong bearing on both his writing and his life and eventual death. Together these have allowed her to come up with a striking hypothesis that the version of his life that Dickens chose to share with his public—both during his lifetime and from beyond the grave in the authorized biography published shortly after his death—was an elaborate exercise in reputation management. Many of the supposed formative events in his life—such as the twelve-year-old Dickens going to work in a blacking factory—may not have been quite as honestly-related as we have been led to believe. And, in many respects, who can blame him? Dickens's celebrity was on a scale almost unimaginable to any author writing today, with the possible exception of J. K. Rowling, and, like many people who become suddenly famous, he soon realized what a mixed blessing it was.A British Achilles: The Story of George, 2nd Earl Jellicoe KBE DSO MC FRS
By Lorna Almonds Windmill. 2008
&“Intriguing . . . describes a modest but exceptional man from whom the contemporary soldier, politician, and citizen can learn how to enjoy…
life (and how not to).&” —The Spectator Son of the victor of Jutland, George Jellicoe has enjoyed power and privilege but never shirked his duty. His war exploits are legendary and, as a founder member of Stirling&’s SAS and first commander of the Special Boat Service, he saw action a-plenty. A brigadier at twenty-six with a DSO and MC, he liberated Athens as the Germans withdrew and saved Greece from a Communist revolution. After the war, Jellicoe joined the Foreign Office and worked with spies Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, and Donald Maclean in Washington and on the Soviet Desk. His political life saw him in the Cabinet of the Heath Government and he is frank with his biographer over the issues and characters of his fellow ministers. Jellicoe&’s Achilles heel is his weakness for, and attraction to, women. His resignation over an involvement with a prostitute was a national scandal, but he is refreshingly honest and devoid of self-justification. He remained an active member of the Lords pursuing a top-level business career. A British Achilles is a superb biography of a major public figure and exemplary wartime soldier.The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
By Susan Ronald. 2007
“A highly colorful, swashbuckling read, one that will give you new respect for Britain’s first Elizabeth.” —Seattle TimesAn illuminating revisionist…
biography about Queen Elizabeth I and her merchant-adventurers who terrorized the seas, extended the Empire, and amassed great wealth for the throne.Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power, both feared and admired by her enemies. Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, she employed a network of daring merchants, brazen adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council to anchor her throne—and in doing so, planted the seedlings of an empire that would ultimately cover two-fifths of the world.In The Pirate Queen, historian Susan Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, relying on a wealth of historical sources and thousands of the queen's personal letters to tell the thrilling story of a visionary monarch and the swashbuckling mariners who terrorized the seas to amass great wealth for themselves and the Crown.Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Winston S. Churchill Biography #8)
By Martin Gilbert. 1988
The final volume of the acclaimed official biography: &“A meticulously detailed and annotated account of Churchill&’s declining years . . . A contemporary…
classic&” (Foreign Affairs). The eighth and final volume of Winston S. Churchill&’s official biography begins with the defeat of Germany in 1945 and chronicles the period up to his death nearly twenty years later. It sees him first at the pinnacle of his power, leader of a victorious Britain. In July 1945 at Potsdam, Churchill, Stalin, and Truman aimed to shape postwar Europe. But upon returning home, was thrown out of office in the general election. Though out of office, Churchill worked to restore the fortunes of Britain&’s Conservative Party while warning the world of Communist ambitions, urging the reconciliation of France and Germany, pioneering the concept of a united Europe, and seeking to maintain the close link between Britain and the United States. In October 1951, Churchill became prime minister for the second time. The Great Powers were navigating a precarious peace at the dawn of the nuclear age. With the election of Eisenhower and the death of Stalin, he worked for a new summit conference to improve East-West relations; but in April of 1955, ill health and pressure from colleagues forced him to resign. In retirement Churchill completed his acclaimed four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples and watched as world conflicts continued, still convinced they could be resolved by statesmanship. &“Never despair&” remained his watchword, and his faith, until the end. &“A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.&” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War &“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.&” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York TimesBarbra: The Way She Is
By Christopher Andersen. 2006
"Funny, I don't feel like a legend." -- Barbra StreisandShe is a one-name legend, a global icon, the ultimate diva.…
Yet most of what we know about Barbra Joan Streisand is the stuff of caricature: the Brooklyn girl made good, the ugly duckling who blossomed into a modern-day Nefertiti, the political dilettante driving to the barricades in her Rolls-Royce, the Oscar-winning actress and bona fide movie mogul, the greatest female singer who ever lived, a skinflint, a philanthropist, a connoisseur and a barbarian, the woman whose physical characteristics are instantly identifiable around the planet -- the tapered nails, those slightly crossed eyes, that nose, the voice.Even to the multitudes around the world who idolize her, Streisand remains aloof, unknowable, tantalizingly beyond reach. Until now. In the manner of his #l New York Times bestsellers The Day Diana Died and The Day John Died as well as Jack and Jackie, Jackie After Jack, An Affair to Remember, and Sweet Caroline, Christopher Andersen taps into important sources -- eyewitnesses to Streisand's remarkable life and career -- to paint a startling portrait of the artist . . . and the woman. Among the revelations:Surprising new details about her wedding and marriage to James Brolin.New information about her many failed love affairs, including her never-before-revealed relationships with Prince Charles and Princess Diana's doomed lover Dodi Fayed -- as well as Warren Beatty, Ryan O'Neal, former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Steve McQueen, Richard Gere, Kris Kristofferson, Don Johnson, Jon Voight, Andre Agassi, newsman Peter Jennings, and more . . .A provocative inside account of what really went on between Streisand and Bill Clinton in the White House, what their relationship is like today, and how Hillary feels about Barbra.From Funny Girl and The Way We Were to Yentl and The Prince of Tides -- and in the recording sessions that produced some of the biggest hits in music history -- new behind-the-scenes details of the brilliance, the obsessive drive for perfection, and the Callas-sized ego.New insights into Barbra's relationship with her only child, Jason.Whether you love her, hate her, or are simply spellbound by her titanic talent, Barbra is one thing above all others: a true American original.Task Force Hogan: The World War II Tank Battalion That Spearheaded the Liberation of Europe
By William R. Hogan. 2023
A fourth-generation soldier tells the story of his father’s tank battalion, the “Spearhead,” that selflessly led the charge on the…
front lines from Normandy into Germany—against impossible odds, technologically superior weaponry, and a fanatical enemy on its home turf—and the heroes whose sacrifice won World War II.At twenty-eight, Sam Hogan is one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the US Army. The West Point graduate from Texas stands in the commander’s hatch of his Sherman tank, behind him a steel wedge of seventeen other Shermans of his tank battalion. Two weeks after the now-infamous D-Day landings, Sam is preparing to give the order to advance into the German defenses that enclose the Normandy beachheads. Ahead of Sam lies seemingly impossible odds for survival: technologically superior Nazi tanks, camouflaged anti-tank guns, and infantry armed with new anti-tank rockets. But Sam has prepared for this moment for the past seven years. With a guttural call to move out accompanied by diesel fumes and the squeak of tank treads, Sam and his men begin their long journey to liberate Europe—a journey from which many of them would not return.So begins the story of Sam Hogan and his colorful band of tanker heroes of the Third Armored Division—the “Spearhead”—as they battle on the front lines of some of the war’s toughest fights, from Normandy to the Elbe to the Battle of the Bulge. The soldiers of Task Force Hogan come from all walks of life. There are cooks, tankers, infantrymen, salty old sergeants, and wet-behind-the-ears lieutenants. In common, they have a sense of duty to each other and their country, and the struggle against the most sinister enemy modern history has ever produced.In Task Force Hogan, the story of Sam and his band of heroes comes to life through the writing of his son, Will Hogan—aided by never-before-seen letters, military dispatches, journal entries, and interviews with surviving family of the Task Force. These were the soldiers at the tip of the spear, brave enough to lead the charge and fight against insurmountable odds, and often paying the ultimate price, while liberating French villages and concentration camps as they rolled towards Germany to ultimately win the war. In the pages of this book, Will Hogan finally gives these unsung soldiers the voice and memorial that they all deserve.Jacqueline Kahanoff: A Levantine Woman (Perspectives on Israel Studies)
By David Ohana. 2023
Jacqueline Kahanoff: A Levantine Woman is the first intellectual biography of this remarkable Egyptian-Jewish intellectual, whose work has secured her…
place in literary pantheon as a herald of Levantine, Mediterranean, and transnational culture. Growing up Jewish in cosmopolitan Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, Jacqueline Kahanoff experienced a bustling Middle East enriched by diverse languages, religions, and peoples who nonetheless were deeply connected to each other through history, business, daily practices, and shared landscape. At the age of twenty-four, Kahanoff immigrated to the United States. Her stories, essays, and short autobiographical novel attest to her penchant to cross boundaries, generations, social classes, sexes, and Western and Eastern constructs. After immigrating to Israel in the early 1950s, she critically addressed the country's "provinciality" and "ethnic nationalism" as seen through her conception of a transnational Levantine culture. Through many writings, Kahanoff set forth her distinctive vision of Israel as a Mediterranean country with a broad, multicultural Levantine identity. Drawing on an extensive array of sources, ranging from interviews with Jacqueline Kahanoff's acquaintances and contemporaries to unpublished writings, David Ohana explores her fascinating life and intellectual journey from Cairo to Tel Aviv. The encompassing vision of a Levantine Israel made Kahanoff the initiator of a different cultural possibility, more extensive than that offered in her time, and also, perhaps, than is offered today.The Real Guy Fawkes
By Nick Holland. 2017
This biography looks behind the mask of the seventeenth-century rebel who became a controversial folk hero for his role in…
the infamous Gunpowder Plot.Today, Guy Fawkes is an instantly recognizable symbol of violent rebellion across the globe. Some proudly dress in his image while others burn his effigy. But few people know the story of the man behind the legend. In The Real Guy Fawkes, biographer Nick Holland explores his eventful life and the complicated, dangerous era in which he lived.Born in York in 1570, Fawkes was raised Protestant, yet went on to plan mass murder for the Catholic cause. Prepared to risk everything and endanger countless lives, was he a freedom fighter, a treasonous fanatic, or merely a fool? Holland offers a fresh take on Fawkes’s early life, showing how he was radicalized into a Catholic mercenary and a key member of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Featuring beautiful illustrations, this accessible and engaging biography combines contemporary accounts with modern analysis to reveal new motivations behind his actions.The Late Lord: The Life of John Pitt–2nd Earl of Chatham
By Jacqueline Reiter. 2017
This biography of the second Earl of Chatham looks beyond his famous military failure to reveal one of the early…
nineteenth century’s most fascinating figures.John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, is one of the most enigmatic and overlooked figures of early nineteenth century British history. The elder brother of Pitt the Younger, he has long been consigned to history as the late Lord Chatham, the lazy commander-in-chief of the 1809 Walcheren expedition, whose inactivity and incompetence turned what should have been an easy victory into a disaster. In The Late Lord, Jacqueline Reiter presents a more nuanced and revealing portrait. During a twenty-year career at the heart of government, Pitt served in several important cabinet posts such as First Lord of the Admiralty and Master-General of the Ordnance. Yet despite his closeness to the Prime Minister and friendship with the Royal Family, political rivalries and private tragedy hampered his ascendance. Paradoxically for a man of widely admired diplomatic skills, his downfall owed as much to his personal insecurities and penchant for making enemies as it did to military failure.Using a variety of manuscript sources to tease Chatham from the records, this biography peels away the myths and places him for the first time in proper familial, political, and military context. It breathes life into a much-maligned member of one of Britain’s greatest political dynasties, revealing a deeply flawed man trapped in the shadow of his illustrious relatives.Cleanse Their Souls: Peace-Keeping in Bosnia's Civil War, 1992–1993
By Monty Woolley. 2004
A memoir of the lethal conflict in the former Yugoslavia, by a British soldier who was on the front lines.…
This is a young cavalry lieutenant&’s moving and shocking account of front line service in the cauldron of war. His troop of Scimitar light-armored vehicles was attached to the 1 CHESHIRE Battle Group, under the charismatic command of Colonel Bob Stewart. Fresh from Germany, he and his men found themselves in a highly political and lethally dangerous civil war. They witnessed appalling atrocities and human tragedy on a giant scale. Yet both soldiers and civilians showed massive courage and resilience. Thanks to the author's diary, we have here an extraordinary, spontaneous, and important account of British troops performing vital military and humanitarian tasks, described by war correspondent and MP Martin Bell as &“earning its place among the impartial narratives of the Bosnian War.&”The Lion House: The Coming of a King
By Christopher De Bellaigue. 2022
“Christopher de Bellaigue has a magic talent for writing history. It is as if we are there as the era…
of Suleyman the Magnificent unfolds.” —Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those brought into orbit around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his most beloved wife.Within a decade and a half, Suleyman held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander, Barbarossa, placed more Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. And yet the real drama takes place in close-up: in small rooms and whispered conversations, behind the curtain of power, where the sultan sleeps head-to-toe with his best friend and eats from wooden spoons with his baby boy.In The Lion House, Christopher de Bellaigue tells the story not just of rival superpowers in an existential duel, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.Willie Brown: A Biography
By James Richardson. 1996
This is the first comprehensive biography of Willie Brown, one of California's most enduring and controversial politicians. Audacious, driven, talented—Brown…
has dominated California politics longer and more completely than any other public figure. James Richardson, a senior writer for The Sacramento Bee, takes us from Brown's childhood, through his years as Speaker of the State Assembly, to his election as San Francisco's mayor. Along the way we get a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of three decades of California politics.Andrew Furuseth: Emancipator of the Seamen
By Hyman Weintraub. 2023
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out…
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.Tiberius (Blackwell Ancient Lives Ser.)
By Robin Seager. 2023
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out…
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.An American in Hitler's Berlin: Abraham Plotkin's Diary, 1932-33
By Abraham Plotkin. 2007
This is the first published edition of the diary of Abraham Plotkin, an American labor leader of immigrant Jewish origin…
who lived in Berlin between November 1932 and May 1933. A firsthand account of the Weimar Republic's final months and the early rise of Nazi power in Germany, Plotkin's diary focuses on the German working class, the labor movement, and the plight of German Jews. Plotkin investigated Berlin's social conditions with the help of German Social-Democratic leaders whose analyses of the situation he records alongside his own. Compared to the writings of other American observers of the Third Reich, Plotkin's diary is unique in style, scope, themes, and time span. Most accounts of Hitler's rise to power emphasize political institutions by focusing on the Nazi party's clashes with other political forces. In contrast, Plotkin is especially attentive to socioeconomic factors, providing an alternative view from the left that stems from his access to key German labor and socialist leaders. Chronologically, the diary reports on the moment when Hitler's seizure of power was not yet inevitable and when leaders on the left still believed in a different outcome of the crisis, but it also includes Plotkin's account of the complete destruction of German labor in May 1933.