John Curless
Author
Publisher
HarperCollinsPublishers
Edition
1st ed.
Language
English
Description
He was known simply as the Blind Traveler--a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, and helped chart the Australian outback. James Holman (1786-1857) became "one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored," triumphing not only over blindness but crippling pain, poverty, and the interference of well-meaning authorities...
Author
Publisher
Random House
Edition
First U.S. edition.
Language
English
Description
John Adams said of Cicero, "All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined." Voltaire said of Cicero, "He taught us how to think." And yet Anthony Everitt’s authoritative yet accessible work is the first one-volume biography of the Roman statesman in over 25 years.
He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military...
Author
Publisher
Viking
Language
English
Description
The best-selling author of The Plantagenets traces the 15th-century civil wars that irrevocably shaped the British crown, particularly evaluating the roles of strong women including Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort in shifting power between two ruling families. Includes six maps and four genealogies.
Author
Publisher
Penguin Books
Language
English
Description
When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman." Then the nuns took her baby from her, swore her to secrecy, and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena broke her silence and decided to find him. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena's son was tying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become...
Author
Series
Penguin history of Europe volume 8
Publisher
Viking
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with ... Ian Kershaw's long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II. The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history-- an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the ... series offers comprehensive coverage...
Author
Publisher
Viking
Language
English
Description
Socrates is often called the father of philosophy. Yet he left no writings, so what we know of his life and ideas comes from the works of his contemporaries. Socrates taught--and strove to embody--that how each of us chooses to live and die has great meaning. By constantly examining one's life and actions, a philosophy of ethics is born. As Plutarch observed, "He was the first person to demonstrate that life is open to philosophy at all times, in...
Author
Publisher
Bantam Books
Language
English
Description
This work is a dual portrait of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi; it describes their fierce, forty-year struggle against each other for the future of Indian independence, from the outbreak of the Great War to the end of World War II, detailing their dramatic influence on each other, as well as their lasting legacy for the British empire and the future course of modern history. The author, a historian sheds new light on these two icons of the twentieth...
Author
Publisher
Random House
Edition
First U.S. edition.
Language
English
Description
He found Rome made of clay and left it made of marble. As Rome's first emperor, Augustus transformed the unruly Republic into the greatest empire the world had ever seen. At a time when many consider America itself an empire, this portrait of the greatest emperor who ever lived makes for enlightening reading.
Author
Publisher
W. Morrow
Language
English
Description
A chronological compilation of twentieth-century world events in one volume-from the acclaimed historian and biographer of Winston Churchill. The twentieth century has been one of the most unique in human history. It has seen the rise of some of humanity's most important advances to date, as well as many of its most violent and terrifying wars. This is a condensed version of renowned historian Martin Gilbert's masterful examination of the century's...
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Edition
First edition.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"--
C. S. Lewis is the twentieth century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read...
Author
Publisher
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company
Edition
First American edition.
Language
English
Description
Reveals how all dogs share a common ancestry with a small group of domesticated wolves and how the vast range of canine breeds were created by a few gene mutations.