Historiska & politiska biografier

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle AwardThe acid, hilarious, confessional, provocative bestselling memoirs of our greatest contrarian, and the author of god Is Not Great. 'If Hitchens didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to invent him.' Ian McEwan

From the private papers of Mark Twain and Mozart to those of Robert Browning and Nelson, Love Letters of Great Men collects together some of the most romantic letters in history. For some of these great men, love is a 'delicious poison' (William Congreve); for others, 'a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music' (Charles Darwin). Love can scorch like the heat of the sun (Henry VIII), or penetrate the depths of one's heart like a cooling rain (Flaubert). Every shade of love is here, from the exquisite eloquence of Oscar Wilde and the simple devotion of Robert Browning, to the wonderfully modern misery of the Roman Pliny the Younger, losing himself in work to forget how much he misses his beloved wife, Calpurnia. Taken together, these Love Letters of Great Men show that perhaps men haven't changed so very much over the last 2,000 years; passion, jealousy, hope and longing are all represented here - as is the simple pleasure of sending a letter to, and receiving one from, the person you love most.

The astonishing true account of John Chapman, Medal of Honor recipient and Special Ops Combat Controller, and his heroic one-man stand during the Afghan War, as he sacrificed his life to save the lives of 23 comrades-in-arms.

This memoir is the extraordinary story of how one Iranian woman overcame enormous adversity to fight for what she truly believed and founded a major movement for women around the world with the simple removal of her hijab.

'It doesn't get better' - that was the unofficial motto of Red Platoon, stuck at Command Post Keating, one of the most isolated and dangerous US army bases in Afghanistan, in the middle of a free-fire zone.

Based on explosive new evidence, bestselling author David Talbot tells America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA.

From the acclaimed author of Former People, a definitive biography of Rasputin, published to coincide with the centenary of his murder.

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and the source for Clint Eastwood's blockbuster movie which was nominated for six academy awards, including best picture. From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history.

ANNE LISTER IS THE INSPIRATION FOR GENTLEMAN JACK, A NEW BBC/HBO SERIES BY SALLY WAINWRIGHT, STARRING SURANNE JONES.'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read for anyone interested in the history of gender, sexuality, and the intimate lives of women' SARAH WATERS'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUEWhen this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told. Anne Lister defied the role of nineteenth-century womanhood: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller and lesbian - a woman who lived her life on her own terms.'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSONThese diaries include the years 1816-1824. The second volume, NO PRIEST BUT LOVE, is available in ebook.

From the admiralty to the miner's strike, from the Battle of Britain to eventual victory over Nazi Germany, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the world has ever seen. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his personal writing and cautioning against a powerful Soviet Russia in his later years in office, his larger-than-life and complex personality has continued to fascinate writers and historians.In this comprehensive biography, Roy Jenkins faithfully presents these events, while also managing to convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill's character. Weaving together in-depth analysis and brilliant historical research, Jenkins has succeeded in crafting this magnificent one-volume account packed with insights that only a fellow politician can convey. Bringing to life the statesman, writer, speaker and leader, Churchill is packed with insights into one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

A graphic novel version of the dramatic life and untimely death of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg

She tells of her numerous run-ins with the brutal government of Daniel arap Moi and of the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages.

The Oscar-winning film about the legendary French queen, directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on this magnificent book by bestselling historian Antonia Fraser.

The classic eye-witness account of Nazi Germany by Hitler's Armaments Minister and right-hand man.

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was a notorious lover of the Western world. This title contains the highlights of Casanova's life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; his dabbling in the occult; his imprisonment and escape; and his amorous conquests.

"Authoritative, personal, and vividly written, Romney: A Reckoning is a revealing account of Mitt Romney's life. Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals, this book offers a rare, portrait of a politician who in recent years has been at the center of our nation's most defining political dramas." --Amazon.

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The amazing tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-19th-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan.In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great.Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King', but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region.Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan's long-lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan's footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game. If you enjoyed William Dalrymple's 'Return of a King', 'Josiah the Great' should be on your reading list.

A new interpretation of Tycho Brahe's pivotal role in the emergence of empirical science.