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Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
By Volker Ullrich. 2021
From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939-a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he…
wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. In the summer of 1939 Hitler was at the zenith of his power. The Nazis had consolidated political control in Germany and a series of foreign-policy coups had restored Germany to the status of a major world power. He now embarked on realizing his lifelong ambition: to provide the German people with the resources they needed to flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide for good. Now, Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures; and, ultimately, when he realized the war was not winnable, to embark on the annihilation of Germany itself in order to punish the people who he believed had failed to hand him victory. This is a masterful account of a spectacular downfall, and an essential addition to our understanding of Hitler and the Second World WarElizabeth I (Famous People, Great Events #3)
By Harriet Castor. 2012
When Elizabeth I becomes queen, she is determined to be a great Tudor queen - and do it on her…
own! She rules for almost 45 years, beats the Spanish Armada and wins the love of her people. Find out all about the life of Elizabeth I with this story that is packed with all the facts and colourful pictures.This book is part of a series of picture books, Famous People, Great Events, which are suitable for ages 6-12. They tell the stories of famous men and women and great events in history and can be used to study the primary history curriculum. Written by successful authors, they are enjoyable reads which are packed with facts and colourful illustrations.George Washington: Gentleman Warrior
By Stephen Brumwell. 2012
WINNER OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BOOK PRIZE 2013.'I am a warrior'. These were the uncompromising words that George Washington chose…
to describe himself in May 1779, at the height of the Revolutionary War against Britain. It's an image very different to the one that he's been assigned by posterity - the patriotic plantation owner who would become the dignified political leader of his country. Stephen Brumwell's new book focuses on a side of Washington that is often overlooked: the feisty young frontier officer and the tough forty-something commander of the revolutionaries' Continental Army. It examines Washington's long and chequered military career, tracing his evolution as a soldier, and his changing attitude to the waging of war. Brumwell shows how, ironically, Washington's reliance upon English models of 'gentlemanly' behaviour, and on British military organisation, was crucial in establishing his leadership of the fledgling Continental Army, and in forging it into the weapon that won American independence. George Washington is a vivid recounting of the formative years and military career of 'The Father of his Country', following his journey from brutal border skirmishes with the French and their Indian allies to his remarkable victory over the British Empire, an achievement that underpinned his selection as the first president of the United States of America. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including original archival research, Stephen Brumwell paints a compelling and challenging portrait of an extraordinary individual whose fusion of gentleman and warrior left an indelible imprint upon history.Biography: A Brief History
By Nigel Hamilton. 2010
For thousands of years we have recorded real lives--the lives of others, and of ourselves. For what purpose and for…
whom has this universal and timeless pursuit endured? What obstacles have lain in the path of biographers in the past, and what continues to confound biographers today? Above all, how is it that biographies and autobiographies play such a contested, popular role in contemporary Western culture, from biopics to blogs, from memoir to docudrama? Award-winning biographer and teacher Nigel Hamilton addresses these questions in an incisive and vivid narrative that will appeal to students of human nature and self-representation across the arts and sciences. Tracing the remarkable and often ignored historical evolution of biography from the ancient world to the present, this brief and fascinating tour of the genre conveys the passionate quest to capture the lives of individuals and the many difficulties it has entailed through the centuries. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to American Splendor, from cuneiform to the Internet, from commemoration to deconstruction, from fiction to fact--by way of famous biographical artists such as Plutarch, Saint Augustine, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Sigmund Freud, Lytton Strachey, Abel Gance, Virginia Woolf, Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Julian Barnes, Ted Hughes, Frank McCourt, and many others--Nigel Hamilton's Biography: A Brief History will change the way you think about biography and real lives.The windsor diaries: My childhood with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret
By Alathea Fitzalan Howard. 2021
The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard—who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park…
with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom—provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British Royal Family. Like so many others in Great Britain, young Alathea Fitzalan Howard's life was turned upside down by the start of the Second World War. Sent to stay with her grandfather at the historic Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Alathea found the affection she so craved through her close friendship with the two princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and their parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, her neighbors at nearby Windsor Castle. Together, the girls enjoyed parties, cinema evenings, picnics, and more, all recorded in honest and captivating detail in Alathea's diary, which she kept as a constant source of comfort. Day by day, from ages sixteen to twenty-two, she recorded the intimate details of her life with the Royal Family and the anxieties of wartime Britain. Now, published for the first time, these unique diaries unveil a candid and vivid portrait of the British Royal Family and of Princess Elizabeth in particular, the warm, quiet young girl who was already on her journey to her ultimate destiny: the CrownOne hundred years of exile: A romanov's search for her father's russia
By Tania Romanov. 2020
One Hundred Years of Exile: In Search of My Father's Russia is the story of one woman's journey through 100…
years of history to find peace with her father. Tania Romanov Amochaev and her father were both exiled from their homelands as infants; both knew life in refugee camps. Their shared fate does not lead to mutual understanding. The family's immigration to San Francisco heralded a promising new future—but while Tania just wanted to be an American, her father could not trust that this was his final asylum. His fears and his resistance to assimilation leave Tania with deep resentment toward him and her Russian heritage. Decades later, his unexpected death exposes Tania's open wounds and a host of unanswered questions about her father and his story. A serendipitous meeting with a last surviving member of the Russian royal family, followed by a baffling error that miraculously connects her with unknown relatives, catapults Tania on a quest for answers in her father's homeland. Tania's story proves inseparable from Russia's, featuring Cossacks who fled revolution, a family who survived Stalin, and a family of royal exiles, culminating in a meeting between princess and peasant. One Hundred Years of Exile is a moving story of how revisiting the past can bring not only forgiveness and redemption, but something far more powerful as wellThe barbizon: The hotel that set women free
By Paulina Bren. 2021
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice From award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the first history of New…
York's most famous residential hotel—The Barbizon—and the remarkable women who lived there. WELCOME TO NEW YORK'S LEGENDARY HOTEL FOR WOMEN Liberated from home and hearth by World War I, politically enfranchised and ready to work, women arrived to take their place in the dazzling new skyscrapers of Manhattan. But they did not want to stay in uncomfortable boarding houses. They wanted what men already had—exclusive residential hotels with daily maid service, cultural programs, workout rooms, and private dining. Built in 1927 at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Barbizon Hotel was intended as a safe haven for the "Modern Woman" seeking a career in the arts. It became the place to stay for any ambitious young woman hoping for fame and fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar , and, over the years, its almost 700 tiny rooms with matching floral curtains and bedspreads housed Titanic survivor Molly Brown; actresses Grace Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Ali MacGraw, Jaclyn Smith, Phylicia Rashad, and Cybill Shepherd; writers Joan Didion, Diane Johnson, Gael Greene, and Meg Wolitzer; and many more. Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, as did Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School its students and the Ford Modeling Agency its young models. Before the hotel's residents were household names, they were young women arriving at the Barbizon with a suitcase and a dream. Not everyone who passed through the Barbizon's doors was destined for success—for some it was a story of dashed hopes—but until 1981, when men were finally let in, the Barbizon offered its residents a room of their own and a life without family obligations or expectations. It gave women a chance to remake themselves however they pleased; it was the hotel that set them free. No place had existed like it before or has since. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, The Barbizon weaves together a tale that has, until now, never been told. It is both a vivid portrait of the lives of these young women who came to New York looking for something more, and an epic history of women's ambitionThe light of days: The untold story of women resistance fighters in hitler's ghettos
By Judy Batalion. 2021
One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture:…
a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these "ghetto girls" paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town's water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown. As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, Band of Brothers, and A Train in Winter, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond. Powerful and inspiring, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering oddsBlood and treasure: Daniel boone and the fight for america's first frontier
By Bob Drury. 2021
The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling…
authors at the height of their writing power—Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America's "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world. This is the setting of Blood and Treasure, and the guide to this epic narrative is America's first and arguably greatest pathfinder, Daniel Boone—not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women, white and red, who witnessed it. This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America's "First Frontier" that places the listener at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press "Bob Drury and Tom Clavin together have given us a half-dozen elegantly written narratives of exhilarating episodes in American history. [Blood and Treasure] may be the authors' finest work to date. Redolent of time and place, a raw and rugged tale." — Wall Street JournalWarrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism
By Rosalind Miles, Robin Cross. 2011
From earliest times, women gained access to leadership in times of conflict and proved themselves equal to the challenge of…
commanding during war. Women leaders abounded in the ancient world from Ireland to Israel, sometimes through the accident of birth, but often rising to power through naked opportunism and raw courage in the ranks - and it is no accident that women war leaders, like men, are often famous for their strong sexual drive. Wherever there is war, there has often been a woman at the helm. Later ages frequently wrote these women out of history, but their stories have refused to die. From the legendary leader of the Amazons who fought the greatest of Greek heroes, Achilles, to the Iron Ladies of today, the women of both West and East directing military campaigns and leading their countries in war. Presenting an array of fascinating and sometimes little known women war leaders, popular author Rosalind Miles and the acclaimed military historian Robin Cross do full justice to the achievements of these women, some of whose amazing stories have so far never been told. Warrior women include: Penthesilea the Amazons queen, Deborah, Cleopatra VII, Boudicca, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Grace O'Malley, Deborah Samson, Nadezda Durova, Harriet Tubman, Anna Etheridge, Soldaderas, Flora Sandes, Lily Litvak, Women of the Warsaw Ghetto, Hanna Reitsch, Ruth Werner, Jeanne Holm, Margaret Thatcher, Women in Today's Armies, Martha McSally and more...Elizabeth I (Famous People, Famous Lives #11)
By Harriet Castor. 2012
Exciting stories about famous people, outlining their lives and the important events which made them memorable. Every page features easy-to-follow…
text and a black-and-white line drawing to help bring these events to life. Each title gives further facts about the famous person and the times in which he or she lived, plus a comprehensive time line detailing key dates. When Elizabeth I becomes queen, she is determined to be a great Tudor queen - and do it on her own! She rules for almost 45 years, beats the Spanish Armada and wins the love of her people. Find out all about the life of Elizabeth I with this story that is packed with all the facts.Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))
By Nancy Koester. 2014
"So you're the little woman who started this big war," Abraham Lincoln is said to have quipped when he met…
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin converted readers by the thousands to the anti-slavery movement and served notice that the days of slavery were numbered. Overnight Stowe became a celebrity, but to defenders of slavery she was the devil in petticoats.Most writing about Stowe treats her as a literary figure and social reformer while downplaying her Christian faith. But Nancy Koester's biography highlights Stowe’s faith as central to her life -- both her public fight against slavery and her own personal struggle through deep grief to find a gracious God. Having meticulously researched Stowe’s own writings, both published and un-published, Koester traces Stowe's faith pilgrimage from evangelical Calvinism through spiritualism to Anglican spirituality in a flowing, compelling narrative.Watch a 2014 interview with the author of this book here:The nine: The true story of a band of women who survived the worst of nazi germany
By Gwen Strauss. 2021
This program includes a bonus conversation with the author, as well as an archival recording of Martine Podliasky singing the…
Champs de Marais at her mother, Hélène Podliasky's, funeral. The Nine follows the true story of the author's great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris. The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at Ravensbrück. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative from Gwen Strauss is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press "A compelling, beautifully written story of resilience, friendship and survival. The story of Women's resistance during World War II needs to be told and The Nine accomplishes this in spades."—Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of Cilka's Journey "This haunting account provides yet more evidence not only of the power of female friendship but that the often unrecorded courage and resilience of ordinary women must be honoured and celebrated. It's a most inspiring read...Utterly gripping." —Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes "The Nine is poignant, powerful, and shattering, distilling the horror of the Holocaust through the lens of nine unforgettable women...Gwen Strauss melds a poet's pen and a decade of research into a tale of friendship, courage, and indomitable will." —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling authorBeyond the Moongate
By Elizabeth Quan. 2013
MOONGATES DOTTED THE LANDSCAPE OF OLD CHINA. Ancient Chinese architects had sculpted stone piled on sculpted stone to form round…
doorways, with the spiritual symbolism of the full moon. To step through one of these doorways was to step into a world of peace and happiness....And so it was in the 1920s that the Lee King family - father, mother, and six children, aged ten months to seven years - traveled from their home in Canada, across the Pacific Ocean, to inland China. There, they had the opportunity to step beyond the moongate into a land not yet touched by modern warfare or political unrest.The story of the moongate, tells of the two "golden" years the family spent with Grandmother in a remote village in the south, which hadn't changed for centuries. Step inside and live the long lazy days of a China forever gone. The moongate beckons....From the Hardcover edition.On the ninetieth anniversary of Booker T. Washington's death comes a passionate, provocative dialogue on his complicated legacy, including the…
complete text of his classic autobiography, Up from Slavery.Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1858, yet roughly forty years later he had established the Tuskegee Institute. Befriended by a U.S. president and corporate titans, beloved and reviled by the black community, Washington was one of the most influential voices on the postslavery scene. But Washington's message of gradual accommodation was accepted by some and rejected by others, and, almost a century after his death, he is still one of the most controversial and misunderstood characters in American history. Uncle Tom or New Negro? does much more than provide yet another critical edition of Washington's memoirs. Instead, Carroll has interviewed an outstanding array of African American luminaries including Julianne Malveaux, cultural critics Debra Dickerson and John McWhorter, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and radio talk-show host Karen Hunter, among others. In a dazzling collection bursting with invigorating and varying perspectives, (e.g. What would Booker T. think of Sean Combs or Russell Simmons? Was Washington a "tragic buffoon" or "a giver of hope to those on the margins of the margins"?) this cutting-edge book allows you to reach your own conclusions about a controversial and perhaps ultimately enigmatic figure.From the Trade Paperback edition.Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland
By Carmen Callil. 2006
This brilliant book tells the story of one of history's most despicable villains and conmen -- Louis Darquier de Pellepoix,…
Nazi collaborator and 'Commissioner for Jewish Affairs', who managed the Vichy government's dirty work, 'controlling' its Jewish population. Born into an established, politically moderate family, Louis Darquier ('de Pellepoix' was a later affectation) proceeded from modest beginnings to dissemble his way to power, continually reinventing himself in conformity with an obsession with racial purity and the latent anti-Semitism of the French Catholic Church. He was the ultimate chancer: always broke, always desperate for attention, social cachet, women and drink, he became 'one of the few men to put on weight during the Second World War', and after it was over he decamped to Spain, never to be brought to justice for having sent thousands of Jews, men, women and children, to the camps. Early on in his career he married the alcoholic Myrtle Jones from Tasmania, equally practised in the arts of fantasy and deception, and together they had a child, Anne Darquier, whom they promptly abandoned to grow up in England under an oppressive mantle of silence. Her tragic story of honourable but exhausting ambition is woven through the narrative. In Carmen Callil's masterful and harrowing account, Darquier's ascent to power during the years leading up to the Second World War comes to mirror the rise of French anti-Semitism and the role it played in the horrors that were to follow. It is a portrait of a society as fragmented and desperate as any before the war, trading miserable second-rate philosophies in search of meaning and power, and of how the people of Vichy turned a blind eye to the shameful things being done under their noses.Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
By Douglas L. Wilson. 1998
Abraham Lincoln's remarkable emergence from the rural Midwest and his rise to the presidency have been the stuff of romance…
and legend. But as Douglas L. Wilson shows us in Honor's Voice, Lincoln's transformation was not one long triumphal march, but a process that was more than once seriously derailed. There were times, in his journey from storekeeper and mill operator to lawyer and member of the Illinois state legislature, when Lincoln lost his nerve and self-confidence - on at least two occasions he became so despondent as to appear suicidal - and when his acute emotional vulnerabilities were exposed.Focusing on the crucial years between 1831 and 1842, Wilson's skillful analysis of the testimonies and writings of Lincoln's contemporaries reveals the individual behind the legends. We see Lincoln as a boy: not the dutiful son studying by firelight, but the stubborn rebel determined to make something of himself. We see him as a young man: not the ascendant statesman, but the canny local politician who was renowned for his talents in wrestling and storytelling (as well as for his extensive store of off-color jokes). Wilson also reconstructs Lincoln's frequently anguished personal life: his religious skepticism, recurrent bouts of depression, and difficult relationships with women - from Ann Rutledge to Mary Owens to Mary Todd.Meticulously researched and well written, this is a fascinating book that makes us reexamine our ideas about one of the icons of American history.From the Hardcover edition.Bartlett: The Great Explorer
By Harold Horwood. 1977
This is the story of the greatest Canadian ice captain who ever lived--the greatest, by general consent, of any nationality…
in this century. Robert Bartlett took ships to the north coast of Ellesmere Island, sledged to within 150 miles of the North Pole, made twenty-two voyages into the Canadian Arctic, and six to other parts of the Arctic, yet is almost wholly unknown in Canada.Besides piloting some of the most famous exploring voyages of all time--those of Robert E. Peary and Vilhajalmur Stefansson--Bartlett made four arctic voyages for the American Government and sixteen expeditions of his own which produced, in the period between the world wars, an immense wealth of scientific knowledge. He was the first arctic explorer to place science ahead of exploration.Harold Harwood worked from the original manuscripts and ships' logs to tell the life-story of this remarkable man. Bartlett was a colourful, often controversial character, a man whose extraordinary courage and tenacity were of heroic proportions.Regine del Rinascimento
By Laurel A. Rockefeller, Traduzione a cura di Laura Lucardini. 2017
Finalmente tre delle biografie de “Le leggendarie donne della storia mondiale” in un unico cofanetto. Iniziate il vostro viaggio nel…
tempo con Caterina de Valois, la principessa francese il cui coraggio nell’affrontare la malattia mentale del padre e la guerra di Enrico V contro la Francia cambiò per sempre il corso della storia. Leggete poi la storia di due delle dirette discendenti di Caterina, ovvero la regina Maria Stuarda e la regina Elisabetta I, le quali dovettero contrastare poteri forti determinati a mettere fine alle loro vite e ai loro regni. Politica, religione e romanticismo si fondono in queste struggenti biografie delle tre donne più leggendarie del Rinascimento.Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death and Survival in the Merchant Marine
By Robert Frump. 2001
In 1983, the freighter Marine Electric ran into a violent storm off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Despite…
Force 10 conditions and fifty feet waves the crew were unconcerned: the ship had survived worse. But something was wrong, the ship was beginning to break up under them; gradually it began to go down by the head, then to capsize. Within two hours the crew were in the water in a desperate struggle for their lives. Their plight sparked one of the most dramatic air-sea rescues in maritime history. Only three of the 34 crew survived the night. The ship had sunk due to a serious structural defect. The chief mate Bob Cusick discovered that the owners had lost several other ships in similar circumstances to the Marine Electric, but the sinkings had been covered up. He decided to go after the company and they in turn rounded on him, the sole surviving officer. What follows is an epic and epochal court case that left none of the participants unscarred.