Showing titles in Historical

More than 400 years after her death, Mary Queen of Scots remains one of the most romantic and controversial figures in British history. Antonia Fraser's classic biography of her won the James Tait Prize when it was first published in 1969. It became an international best-seller and was translated into nine languages.

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling, and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience, and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.

George III, Britain's longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as 'the cruellest tyrant of this age' (Thomas Paine, 18th century), 'a sovereign who inflicted more profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king' (WEH Lecky, 19th century), 'one of England's most disastrous kings' (JH Plumb, 20th century) and as the pompous, camp and sinister monarch of the musical Hamilton (21st century). Andrew Roberts' magnificent new biography takes entirely the opposite view.

From invasion to liberation, September 1939 to April 1945, as Renee was marched from ghetto to camp, there was one constant. One hand that clutched hers—her mother's. Every day for nearly six years, mother and daughter were bound together in hell. From Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen, they were a powerful source of solace and hope for one another. A Mother's Promise is a love letter to a mother eighty years in the making.

A genuinely new Second World War story, The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram is a riveting account of the wartime exploits of Alastair Cram, brilliantly told by the American author David Guss. Cram was taken prisoner in North Africa in November 1941, which began a long odyssey through 10 different POW camps and three Gestapo prisons. He became a serial escapee - fleeing his captors no fewer than 21 times, including his final, and finally successful, escape from a POW column in April 1945.

The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is one of the most remarkable in history: a long courtship followed by a shotgun wedding and then a coronation, ending just short of three years later when a husband’s passion turned to such hatred that he simply wanted his wife gone. Missing from most accounts is how the turbulent nature of Anne and Henry’s relationship was tied almost completely to the major events of international politics at one of the great turning points of British and European history. This was a marriage that convulsed not just a nation, but a whole continent.

This is the first major biography for a generation of a truly formidable king. Edward I is familiar to millions as 'Longshanks', conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace ('Braveheart'). Edward was born to rule England, but believed that it was his right to rule all of Britain. His reign was one of the most dramatic of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale and leaving a legacy of division that has lasted from his day to our own.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

From 1934 until 1944, Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally. Goeschel, a scholar of 20th-century Germany and Italy, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler's key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public.

Gandhi's nonviolent struggles against racism, violence and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety and adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. He feared the enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding of his quest for truth rooted in devotion to God.

In 1781, the new United States was nearly bankrupt. As the American and French armies under Generals Washington and Rochambeau surrounded General Cornwallis and the British at Yorktown, James Lovell, Congressman, examined a captured, soiled letter. The numbers in General Cornwallis’s ciphered message might hold the key to the defeat of the British. Expert in encryption, James Lovell knew the answer to British loss could lie in his hands.

Eine liebevolle, oft auch ironische Zeichnung der ostjüdischen Kultur, vor allem aber auch des Elends, das so viele in die Welt hinaustrieb, und eine fesselnde Beschreibung der neuen Heimatorte, der Judenviertel in Wien, Berlin, Paris und New York. Inhalt: Ostjuden im Westen Das jüdische Städtchen Die westlichen Gettos: Wien, Berlin, Paris Die Schilderung: Ein Jude geht nach Amerika Die Lage der Juden in Sowjetrussland Nachwort Vorrede zu einer geplanten neuen Auflage

Die Ostjuden haben nicht leicht den Weg nach Paris gefunden. Sie kamen viel leichter nach Brüssel und Amsterdam. Der direkte Weg des jüdischen Juwelenhandels führt nach Amsterdam. Einige arm gewordene und einige reich werdende jüdische Juwelenhändler bleiben aus Zwang im französischen Sprachgebiet.

Kein Ostjude geht freiwillig nach Berlin. Berlin ist eine Durchgangsstation, in der man aus zwingenden Gründen länger verweilt. Die Ostjuden haben nicht leicht den Weg nach Paris gefunden. Sie kamen viel leichter nach Brüssel und Amsterdam.

В марте 1944 года Жинетт Колинка в возрасте 19 лет вместе со своим отцом, младшим братом и племянником была депортирована в лагерь смерти Освенцим-Биркенау. Спустя долгое время после окончания Второй мировой войны и несмотря на столь травмирующий, порой непостижимый обычному человеку опыт, Жинетт нашла в себе силы правдиво и без прикрас рассказать о том, что она видела и пережила. О нечеловеческих условиях, в которых ей приходилось существовать, голоде и жестокости.

Династия Сефевидов появилась еще задолго до своего восхождения, а ее истоки до сих пор вызывают споры. Однако, несмотря на свое загадочное происхождение, она превратила Иран в могущественное и многогранное государство, оставив неизгладимый след на этой земле. Эпоха Сефевидов ознаменована сочетанием традиционных элементов с новыми культурными влияниями. За время их правления, страна достигла пика своего могущества и процветания, став центром искусства, литературы и архитектуры.

Обширный калейдоскоп парадоксальных явлений советской жизни от повседневности до высших эшелонов — в первой книге новой серии известного историка. Искренний порыв первого субботника был доведён до абсурда, когда по мемуарам в итоге оказалось, что знаменитое ленинское бревно на субботнике в Кремле вместе с вождём тащили 800 человек. Школы и институты в СССР вовсе не были бесплатными. От Олимпиады с трогательным Мишкой-талисманом советские руководители вообще хотели отказаться, но не успели.

A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.

Dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive firsthand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them.