The astonishing true story of a young woman's adventures, and misadventures, in the dangerous world of Nazi-occupied France.'A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer's unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person's frailty in the face of terrible odds.' John le Carré When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his late aunt he was completely...
In this remarkably gripping memoir, one of the most dynamic and controversial leaders of modern times gives us a firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here, for the first time, Tony Blair recounts his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death to the war on terror. With rare honesty and courage, he recounts the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decision to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially o...
One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men.The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, fi...
One small East African country embodies the battered history of the continent: patronised by colonialists, riven by civil war, confused by Cold War manoeuvring, proud, colorful, with Africa's best espresso and worst rail service. Michela Wrong brilliantly reveals the contradictions and comedy, past and present, of Eritrea. Just as the beat of a butterfly's wings is said to cause hurricanes on the other side of the world, so the affairs of tiny Eritrea have reached onto the agenda of superpower...
The Lifeline: Salomon Grumbach and the Quest for Safety (Brill's Jewish Studies)
by Meredith L Scott
During the first months of World War II, nearly one thousand refugees and asylum seekers held in French internment camps sought the help of one man: Salomon Grumbach. Meredith Scott's The Lifeline is a ground-breaking study of Grumbach, an Alsatian Jew, journalist, and socialist politician who became one of Europe's most important interwar refugee advocates. Focusing on his remarkable life in Germany and France, it uncovers the identities that drove his international crusades for democracy and h...
The Diary of Samuel Pepys .. (Dover Books on Literature & Drama) (Modern Library)
by Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Samuel Pepys, and Mynors Bright
Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period. In spite of its significance, all previous editions were inadequately edited and suffered from a number of omissions--until Robert Latham and William Matthews went back to the 300-year-old original manuscript and deciphered each passage and phrase, no matter how obscure or indiscreet. The Diary deals with some of the most dramatic ev...
John F. Kennedy carried on a lifelong love affair with England and the English. From his speaking style to his tastes in art, architecture, theatre, music and clothes, his personality reflected his deep affinity for a certain kind of idealised Englishness. Setting his work against a backdrop of some of the twentieth century’s most profound events – the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War and its arms race – noted biographer Christopher Sandford tracks Kennedy’s exploits in Great...
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 8 (Papers of Thomas Jefferson, #71)
by Thomas Jefferson
The description for this book, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 8: February 1785 to October 1785, will be forthcoming.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Within decades after his death, his followers would call h...
The Education of Henry Adams (Modern Library) (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books)
by Henry Adams
Adams was a historian, an intellectual born into the fourth generation of a family of distinguished politicians, diplomats and statesmen that included two presidents of the United States. His "Education" is thus steeped in history, that of his family and of the American politics, culture and identity they helped to shape. At the same time he elaborates his own 'dynamic theory of history' as the product of what he calls the conflict between the Virgin and the Dynamo: 'All the steam in the world c...
A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, and a politician whose tenure bridged numerous governments, as both a general and a politician Ariel Sharon championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But in his later years, as prime minister, he took a dramatic turn, and became the driving force behind Israel’s unilateral disengagement. In this first truly comprehensive biography, David Landau, the former editor-in-chief of Haaretz, paints a vivid pi...
Michael Wolff, author of the bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury, once again takes us inside the Trump presidency to reveal a White House under siege. Just one year into Donald Trump's term as president, Michael Wolff told the electrifying story of a White House consumed by controversy, chaos and intense rivalries. Fire and Fury, an instant sensation, defined the first phase of the Trump administration; now, in Siege, Wolff has written an equally essential and explosive book about a presidency t...
1966. The year of change. The year of division. The middle of the 1960s, the great dividing line between what America had been, and what it became. All of it, in all its color, glory, and ugliness, came symbolically together on a hot, humid weekend in Austin, Texas. The protagonist? None other John "Duke" Wayne, the larger-than-life movie hero of countless Westerns and war dramas; a swashbuckling, ruggedly macho idol of America; the very embodiment of what the United States had become-the new...
Salman Abu Sitta, who has single-handedly made available crucial mapping work on Palestine, was just ten years old when he left his home near Beersheba in 1948, but as for many Palestinians of his generation, the profound effects of that traumatic loss would form the defining feature of his life from that moment on. In this rich and moving memoir, Abu Sitta draws on oral histories and personal recollections to vividly evoke the vanished world of his family and home from the late nineteenth centu...
The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Volume 1 - Primary Source Edition
by Hazard Stevens
Tommy Douglas was a Scottish-born prairie politician who believed in the enormous potential of co-operative action for the common good. Award-winning novelist and medical doctor Vincent Lam brings special insight to his portrait of Douglas, who grew up to become a champion boxer and a Baptist minister and then later exchanged the pulpit for a political platform. A powerful orator and tireless activist, he served for seventeen years as premier of Saskatchewan, where he introduced the universal he...
The 'ideal type' is Max Weber's hypothetical leading democratic politician, whom the author finds realized in Tony Blair. He is a politician emerging from no obvious mould, treading no well-beaten path to high office, and having few affinities of tone, character or style with his predecessors. He is the Outsider or Intruder, not belonging to the 'given' of British politics and dedicated to its transformation. Here is a timely critique of Blair's political persona as he presents himself to the Br...
The present-day Irish Republic was created by a revolutionary elite which developed between 1858 and 1900. This book analyses the social origins of the revolutionaries who became rulers of Ireland after 1921, and examines their political ideologies and prejudices. The author argues that they were heavily influenced not only by ancient agrarian grievances and memories of the Famine, but also by contemporary Catholic abhorrence of the Protestant and secular world represented by England and America...