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Catherine the Great (Profiles In Power Ser.)
By Simon Dixon. 2002
“[A] superb biography….Scholarly, refreshing, commonsensical, and compelling, vividly portraying the charismatic Empress and her times.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of SashenkaSimon…
Dixon’s Catherine the Great is a complete and revealing portrait of an extraordinary leader, chronicling her rise to power and her remarkable reign as empress of Russia. Catherine Merridale, author of Ivan’s War, calls this definitive history, “attractive, engaging, and very intelligent….Established fans of the Russian empress will find plenty of new material and those who are meeting her for the first time will be dazzled.”Focuses on what's "now" in the world of food, drink, and entertaining, while still giving readers valuable cooking tools, tips,…
and most of all, recipes. Looks at life through the lens of food & cooking in, dining out, travel, entertainment, shopping and design.Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle
By Myrna Kostash. 2022
In Ghosts in a Photograph, award-winning nonfiction writer Myrna Kostash delves into the lives of her grandparents, all of whom…
moved from Galicia, now present-day Ukraine, to Alberta at the turn of the twentieth century. Discovering a packet of family mementos, Kostash begins questioning what she knows about her extended families’ pasts and whose narrative is allowed to prevail in Canada.This memoir, however, is not just a personal story, but a public one of immigration, partisan allegiance, and the stark differences in how two sets of families survive in a new country: one as homesteaders, the other as working-class Edmontonians. Working within the gaps in history—including the unsolved murder in Ukraine of her great uncle—Kostash uses her remarkable acumen as a writer and researcher to craft a probable narrative to interrogate the idea of straightforward and singular-voiced pasts and the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from.Rich in detail and propelled by vital curiosity, Ghosts in a Photograph is a determined, compelling, and multifaceted family chronicle.Tending Grief: Embodied Rituals for Holding Our Sorrow and Growing Cultures of Care in Community
By Camille Sapara Barton. 2024
&“Camille Sapara Barton is a gift to all of us. ... This is what emergent strategy looks like at the…
precipice.&” —adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure ActivismAn embodied guide to being with grief individually and in community—practical exercises, decolonized rituals, and Earth-based medicines for healing and processing lossWe live in a culture that suppresses our ability to truly feel our grief—deeply, safely, and on our own terms. But each person&’s experience is as unique as the grief itself. Here, Camille Sapara Barton&’s take on grief speaks directly to the ways that BIPOC and queer readers disproportionately experience unique constellations of loss. Deeply practical and easy to use in times of confusion, trauma, and pain, Tending Grief includes rituals, reflection prompts, and exercises that help us process and metabolize our grief—without bypassing or pushing aside what comes to the fore. Sapara Barton includes exercises that can be done both alone and in community, including:Altar practices to honor and connect with ancestors known and unknownLocating, holding, and dancing your griefSharing circles for processing communal lossWater, fire, and nature-based ritualsHonoring the survival utility of numbness—and knowing when it&’s time to release itPeer support and integrationHerbal medicines and plant-based healingSapara Barton honors each and every experience: The loss of displacement from homelands, from severed lineages and ancestral ways of knowing. The grief of colonization and theft. The deep heaviness that burrows into our bodies when society tells us our bodies are wrong. Practical tools and rituals help readers feel into their grief, honor what comes up, and move forward in healing.Written specifically to center and hold the grief of BIPOC readers, Tending Grief is an invitation to reconnect to what we&’ve lost, to find community in our grief, and to tend to our own suffering for our individual and collective wellbeing.The memoirs of a brilliant and beloved Founding Father Printer, author, scientist, inventor, statesman, revolutionary—arguably no American life has been more…
remarkable than Benjamin Franklin&’s.Penned between 1771 and 1790 and published after his death, the unfinished Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is one of the most acclaimed and widely read personal histories ever written. From his youth as a printer&’s assistant working for his brother&’s Boston newspaper through his own publishing, writing, and military careers, his scientific experiments and worldwide travels, his grand triumphs and heartbreaking tragedies, Franklin tells his story with aplomb, bringing to life the flesh-and-blood man behind the American icon.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.All Aboard!: Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine (Great Idea Series #2)
By Monica Kulling. 2010
In the second of Tundra's Great Idea series, biographies for children who are just starting to read, Monica Kulling presents…
the life of an extraordinary man.There were few opportunities for the son of slaves, but Elijah McCoy's dreams led him to study mechanical engineering in Scotland. He learned everything there was to know about engines - how to design them and how to build them. But when he returned to the United States to look for work at the Michigan Central Railroad, the only job Elijah could get was shoveling coal into a train's firebox.Undaunted, he went on to invent a means of oiling the engine while the train was running, changing the face of travel around the world.With playful text and lively illustrations, All Aboard! Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine may be the first biography a child discovers, and it will whet the appetite for many more.The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson
By Anna Pasternak. 2019
Wallis Simpson is known as the woman at the center of the most scandalous love affair of the 20th century,…
but in this &“unputdownable…lively and detailed&” (The Times, London) biography, discover a woman wronged by history with new information revealed by the latest research and those who were close to the couple. The story that has been told repeatedly is this: The handsome, charismatic, and popular Prince Edward was expected to marry a well-bred virgin who would one day become Queen of England when he ascended the throne. But when the prince was nearly forty, he fell in love with a divorced American woman—Wallis Simpson. No one thought the relationship would last, and when the prince did become king, everyone assumed that was the end of the affair. But to the shock of the British establishment, the new king announced his intention to marry the American divorcée. Overnight, Wallis was accused of entrapping the prince in a seductive web in order to achieve her audacious ambition to be queen. After declaring that he could not rule without the woman he loved, the king abdicated, and his family banished him and his new wife from the country. The couple spent the rest of their days in exile, but happy in their devoted love for each other. Now, Anna Pasternak&’s The American Dutchess tells a different story: that Wallis was the victim of the abdication, not the villain. Warm, well-mannered, and witty, Wallis was flattered by Prince Edward&’s attention, but like everyone else, she never expected his infatuation to last. She never anticipated his jealous, possessive nature—and his absolute refusal to let her go. Edward&’s true dark nature, however, was no secret to the royal family, the church, or the Parliament; everyone close to Edward knew that beyond his charming façade, he was utterly unfit to rule. Caught in Edward&’s fierce obsession, she became the perfect scapegoat for those who wished to dethrone the troubled king. With profound insight and evenhanded research, Pasternak pulls back the curtain on one of the darkest fairy tales in recent memory and effortlessly reveals &“a host of intriguing insights into a misunderstood woman&” (Kirkus Reviews).The unsung and remarkable stories of the women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world…
wars. 'Inspiring tales of courage in the face of hardship' Mail on Sunday'Inspiring . . . Takes you back to a time of community and helping one another' 5***** Reader Review'It made me laugh and gasp in equal measure' 5***** Reader Review______ Meet Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan and Girl Walker . . . While the men were at war, these women ruled the streets of the East End. Struggling against poverty to survive, and fighting for their community in our country's darkest hours. But there was also joy to be found. Across the East End the streets were alive - you need only walk a few steps for a smile from a neighbour or a strong cup of tea. From taking over the London Underground, standing up to the Kray twins and crawling out of bombsites, The Stepney Doorstep Society tells the vivid and moving stories of the matriarchs who remain the backbone of the East End to this day. ______ 'Kate Thompson's study of five working-class women who lived through the blitz shows how informal collectives can provide lasting support and inspiration . . . [a] fascinating account' Guardian 'An important glimpse into a vanishing world' Sunday Express'One of the best books I have read in recent years' 5***** Reader Review 'Crammed full of fascinating stories' BBC 2 Steve Wright'Fascinating . . . It was fascinating to hear how these women kept going' 5***** Reader Review 'Astonishing' Radio 5 LiveStephen: The Reign of Anarchy (Penguin Monarchs)
By Carl Watkins. 2015
Known as 'the anarchy', the reign of Stephen (1135-1141) saw England plunged into a civil war that illuminated the fatal…
flaw in the powerful Norman monarchy, that without clear rules ordering succession, conflict between members of William the Conqueror's family were inevitable. But there was another problem, too: Stephen himself.With the nobility of England and Normandy anxious about the prospect of a world without the tough love of the old king Henry I, Stephen styled himself a political panacea, promising strength without oppression. As external threats and internal resistance to his rule accumulated, it was a promise he was unable to keep. Unable to transcend his flawed claim to the throne, and to make the transition from nobleman to king, Stephen's actions betrayed uneasiness in his role, his royal voice never quite ringing true.The resulting violence that spread throughout England was not, or not only, the work of bloodthirsty men on the make. As Watkins shows in this resonant new portrait, it arose because great men struggled to navigate a new and turbulent kind of politics that arose when the king was in eclipse.Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey
By T. G. Otte. 2008
'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.' The words…
of Sir Edward Grey, looking out from the windows of the Foreign Office at the end of August 1914, are amongst the most famous in European history, and encapsulate the impending end of the nineteenth-century world.The man who spoke them was Britain's longest-ever serving Foreign Secretary (in a single span of office) and one of the great figures of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Statesman of Europe describes the three decades before the First World War through the prism of his biography, which is based almost entirely on archival sources and presents a detailed account of the main domestic and international events, and of the main personalities of the era. In particular, it presents a fresh understanding of the approach to war in the years and months before its outbreak, and Grey's role in the unfolding of events.Yet Grey's life was not all public affairs, momentous as those were. He disliked being in London, much preferring country life at Fallodon, his family estate in Northumberland, and displayed none of the ambition of his contemporaries (or successors). He attended assiduously to his duties as director of the Great North Eastern Railway, one of the transformative enterprises in industry and communications of the period, and wanted to spend as much time as he could fishing. Apart from his memoirs, the only book he wrote was called The Charm of Birds. This hinterland gave quality to his judgements, and made his character attractive to his contemporaries.This important book is the definitive biography of one of the pivotal figures in European diplomacy, and a magnificent portrait of an age.Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death
By Ann Marie Hourihane. 2021
The Irish do death differently.Funeral attendance is a solemn duty - but it can also be a big day out,…
requiring sophisticated crowd control, creative parking solutions and a high-end sound system. Despite having the same basic end-of-life infrastructure as other Western countries, Irish culture handles death with a unique blend of dignified ritual and warm sociability.In Sorry for Your Trouble, Ann Marie Hourihane holds up a mirror to the Irish way of death: the funny bits, the sad bits, and the hard-to-explain bits that tell us so much about who we are. She follows the last weeks of a woman's life in hospice; she witnesses an embalming; she attends inquests; she talks to people working to prevent suicide; she follows the team of specialists working to locate the remains of people 'disappeared' by the IRA; and she visits some of Ireland's most contested graves. She also explores the strange and sometimes surprising histories of Irish death practices, from the traditional wake and ritual lamentations to the busy commerce between anatomists and bodysnatchers. And she goes to funerals, of ordinary and extraordinary people all over the country - including that of her own father. 'I had joined a club,' she writes, 'the club of people who have lost someone very close to them.' And then, with her family, she sets about planning a funeral in the middle of a pandemic.Sorry for Your Trouble sheds fresh, wise and witty light on a key pillar of Irish culture: a vast but strangely underexplored subject. Rich, sparkling and eye-opening, it is one of the best books ever written about Irish life.___________________________'A beautiful, insightful reflection on a very, very peculiar country's approach to the oddest experience of them all' RYAN TUBRIDY'Hugely moving and illuminating. All of life, somehow, is here' TANYA SWEENEY, IRISH INDEPENDENT'Moving, comforting and funny' BUSINESS POSTSold as a Slave (Great Journeys Ser. #No. 8)
By Olaudah Equiano. 2007
In an adventurous and extraordinary life, Equiano (c.1745-c.1797) criss-crossed the Atlantic world, from West Africa to the Caribbean to the…
USA to Britain, either as a slave or fighting with the Royal Navy. His account of his life is not only one of the great documents of the abolition movement, but also a startling, moving story of danger and betrayal.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.The Smart
By Sarah Bakewell. 2001
The Smart is a true drama of eighteenth-century life with a mercurial, mysterious heroine. Caroline is a young Irishwoman who…
runs off to marry a soldier, comes to London and slides into a glamorous life as a high-class prostitute, a great risk-taker, possessing a mesmerising appeal. In the early 1770s, she becomes involved with the intriguing Perreau twins, identical in looks but opposite in character, one a sober merchant, the other a raffish gambler. They begin forging bonds, living in increasing luxury until everything collapses like a house of cards - and forgery is a capital offence. A brilliantly researched and marvellously evocative history, The Smart is full of the life of London streets and shots through with enduring themes - sex, money, death and fame. It bridges the gap between aristocracy and underworld as eighteenth-century society is drawn into the most scandalous financial sting of the age.Sir Francis Drake
By Dr John Sugden. 2006
How well do you know the life of one of Britain’s great maritime heroes? Discover the truth behind a man…
who remains a legendary figure of history more than four hundred years after his death.Sir Francis Drake’s career is one of the most colourful on record. The most daring of the corsairs who raided the West Indies and Spanish Main, he led the English into the Pacific, and cirumnavigated the world to bring home the Golden Hind laden with Spanish treasure. His attacks on Spanish cities and ships transformed his private war into a struggle for surivival between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, in which he became Elizabeth I's most prominent admiral and marked the emergence of England as major maritime nation.‘Excellent...It deserves to become the standard Drake life. His scholarship is impeccable’ Frank McLynn, Sunday TelegraphSilence Of The Heart: Cricket Suicides
By David Frith. 2001
Cricket has an alarming suicide rate. Among international players for England and several other countries it is far above the…
national average for all sports: and there have been numerous instances at other levels of the game. For thirty years, celebrated cricket author David Frith has collected data on this sad subject. Silence of the Heart is his compelling account of over a hundred cricketers - involving top names from the past hundred years - who have taken their own lives, with an explanation of factors that led to their premature deaths. Can the shocking rate of self-destruction among cricketers be reduced? Can those who run the game do something to save its participants from this dreadful fate? These are among the questions addressed within this catalogue of biographies. But the key question is whether cricket itself is to blame for its losses - or is that this summer game attracts people of a melancholic and over-sensitive nature? Stoddart, Shrewsbury, Gimblett, Bairstow, Trott, Iverson, Robertson-Glasgow, Barnes . . . There remains a sense of disbelief that these high-profile cricketers killed themselves. And many more cases are examined in this extraordinary book, which comes crammed with detail, is not devoid of humour, and must rank among the most intricately researched volumes in cricket's extensive library.With a foreword by former England captain Mike Brearley, now a psychotherapist, Silence of the Heart is a startling investigative narrative covering the phenomenon of cricket's unduly high level of suicide.The Shoemaker and his Daughter
By Conor O'Clery. 2018
WINNER OF THE 2020 MICHEL DÉON PRIZE'O'Clery takes us into the hidden heart of Soviet Russia... An arresting and evocative…
story' Keggie Carew, author of Dadland'A tour de force ... Love, politics, murder, wars, and the fracturing of ties, personal and ethnic. O'Clery is a gifted writer' Luke Harding, bestselling author of CollusionThe Soviet Union, 1962. Gifted shoemaker Stanislav Suvorov is imprisoned for five years. His crime? Selling his car for a profit. On his release, social shame drives him and his family into voluntary exile in Siberia, 5,000 kilometres from home. In a climate that's unfriendly both geographically and politically, it's their chance to start again. The Shoemaker and His Daughter is an epic story spanning the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, taking in eighty years of Soviet and Russian history, from Stalin to Putin. Following the footsteps of a remarkable family Conor O'Clery knows well - he is married to the shoemaker's daughter - it's both a compelling insight into life in a secretive world at a siesmic moment in time and a powerful tale of ordinary lives shaped by extraordinary times.Shackleton (The Ladybird Expert Series #6)
By Ben Saunders. 2017
Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Shackleton is a clear, simple and enlightening introduction to perhaps the most extraordinary…
survival stories of all time.Polar explorer Ben Saunders draws on his own experience of the Antarctic to bring to life the history, dangers and challenges of Shackleton's Endurance expedition. Inside, you'll discover how Shackleton, by successfully bringing all his men home in the face of near insurmountable odds, earned his reputation as one of the greatest leaders in history.Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.Other books currently available in the Ladybird Expert series include:· Climate Change· Quantum Mechanics· Evolution· Battle of BritainFor an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.Packed with bedrooms that wrap you in warmth, kitchens that start your day with sunshine, gardens that greet you with…
gladness, porches that put you at peace, and recipes that become instant family classics.FOOD & WINE® magazine now offers its delicious recipes, simple wine-buying advice, great entertaining ideas and fun trend-spotting in a…
spectacular digital format. Each issue includes each and every word and recipe from the print magazine.SOUTHERN LIVING celebrates the legendary food, gracious homes, lush gardens, and distinct places that make the South unique. In every…
edition you’ll find dozens of recipes prepared in our famous test kitchens, guides to the best travel experiences, decorating ideas and inspiration, and gardening tips tailored specifically to your climate.