Biographies

Finally in paperback comes Mo' Meta Blues Questlove's New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed psychedelic, punch-drunk memoir

In Restaurant Babylon, Imogen Edwards-Jones and her anonymous industry insider lift the lid on all the tricks of the food trade and what really makes this GBP90 billion a year industry tick.

In this extraordinary memoir we look at Africa's wonders through the eyes of a visionary, live through hair-raising adventure and personal sorrow, and also bear witness to a natural world now largely lost from view.

From the winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. In a time of death and terror, Gbowee brought Liberia's women together--and together they led a nation to peace. In the process, she emerged as an international leader who changed history.

After his conversion, this African boy is sent by God to prepare an American university for its mission in the world.

The long-awaited memoir of Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp, whose autobiography is as unique and special as the player himself

From the time she saw the movie Fame, the author wanted to be a star. A line from the theme song stayed with her - 'I'm gonna live for ever, I'm gonna learn how to fly.' This book gives us the chance to fly alongside her on her journey from lonely teenager to international star.

The life of Karl Dane was a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong. The immigrant from Copenhagen was transformed from a machinist to a Hollywood star after his turn as the tobacco-chewing Slim in ""The Big Parade"". This biography tells the tale of a daring yet tragic man who aimed for his wildest dreams and succeeded, if only for a short time.

Presents the fascinating life of the father of the New Germany. This book tells how, in an astonishing political career that spanned six decades including fourteen years as chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) was instrumental in shaping the modern political landscape, both of his own country and of Europe.

A catalogue of history's greatest military leaders - from the Classical Age to the Napoleonic Era - and what drove them to victory.

';A superb biography, not to be missed either by armchair explorers or students of human naturereveals the famed missionary and explorer as he really was.'Cleveland Plain DealerDavid Livingstone is revered as one of history's greatest explorers and missionaries, the first European to cross Africa, and the first to find Victoria Falls and the source of the Congo River. In this exciting new edition of his biography, Tim Jeal, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Stanley, draws on fresh sources and archival discoveries to provide the most fully rounded portrait of this complicated mandogged by failure throughout his life despite his full share of success.Using Livingstone's original field notebooks, Jeal finds that the explorer's problems with his African followers were far graver than previously understood. From recently discovered letters he elaborates on the explorer's decision to send his wife, Mary, back home to England. He also uncovers fascinating information about Livingstone's importance to the British Empire and about his relationship with the journalist-adventurer Henry Morton Stanley. In addition, Jeal here evokes the full pathos of the explorer's final journey. This masterful, updated biography also features an excellent selection of new maps and illustrations.';Fascinating.'Los Angeles Times';A thrilling and in the end moving workThe Livingstone who emerges is a man of terrifying dimensions.'Irish Press

Benjamin Britten was one of the outstanding British composers of 20th century. He shot to international fame with his operas, performed by his own English Opera Group, and a series of extraordinary instrumental works. His music won a central place in the repertoire and affection of successive generations of listeners. This title tells his story.

A remarkable memoir of strength and bravery from Leon Leyson, one of the youngest children to survive the Holocaust on Oskar Schindler's list.

The author's son Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein and a photographic memory. At nine he developed an original theory in astrophysics that may earn a Nobel Prize. This book is about the power of love and what can happen when we tap the true potential that lies within every child.

Mackinnon recounts his own fascinating journey from north Wales to the Black Sea in a small Mirror dinghy. A marvelous madcap adventure, told with verve and humor by the indefatigable 'captain.'

This provocative biography tells the story of how an ambitious young Londoner became England's greatest novelist. Focused on the 1830s, it portrays a restless, uncertain Dickens who could not decide on a career path. Through twists and turns, the author traces a double transformation: in reinventing himself Dickens reinvented the form of the novel.

'She's experienced wealth, cultural alienation, homelessness, brushes with fame, prison, rehab, record deals, a million blown second chances, a dozen broken hearts and one bloody-knuckled ultimate spiritual redemption. She even died once in the process, and may very well have had sex with your wife back in the eighties...' Elizabeth GilbertWhen she was seven, Rayya Elias and her upper-class family fled the political conflict in their native Syria, settling in a suburb of Detroit. Bullied in school and caught between the world of her traditional family and her tough American classmates, she rebelled early. Rayya moved to New York City to become a musician and kept herself afloat with an uncommon talent for cutting hair. Eventually though, Elias's affairs with lovers of both sexes went awry, her (more than) occasional drug use turned to addiction and she found herself living on the streets - between visits to jail. Told with a keen sense of humour and a lack of self-pity in even the most harrowing situations, Harley Loco is a memoir about jumping in head-first, no questions asked. It's a book about living in the moment no matter what that might bring, and about pursuing, not always by choice, a life of extremes - highs and lows, pain and passion - until ultimately arriving at a place of contentment and peace.

Britain's leading cycling writer, William Fotheringham, goes back to speak to those who were there at the time and those who knew Merckx best to find out what made Eddy Merckx so invincible. 'The full unvarnished of one man's heaven, and hell, on wheels' Independent

Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust''s housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate picture of the daily life of a great writer who was also a deeply peculiar man, while Madame Albaret herself proves to be a shrewd and engaging companion.

John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (1644-1722), was one of the greatest military commanders and statesman in the history of England. His descendant, Sir Winston Churchill wrote this work as both an act of homage, and as an historical insight into the man behind the statesman.

The definitive biography, by a long way, of the most influential blues musician of them all. In a nutshell: no Muddy Waters, no Rolling Stones

Victor Bockris's much admired biography of Keith Richards has been constantly revised since its original publication, now with an additional 12,000 words for a new edition of the Omnibus Press paperback that brings the story up to the present day.

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's bestselling authors. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was seventeen in order to amuse her convalescent brother. This title tells her story.

Josef Sepp Allerberger was the second most successful sniper of the German Wehrmacht and one of the few private soldiers to be honored with the award of the Knights Cross.

Remarkable memoir of one of the last people to leave Hitler's Bunker Includes profiles of prominent members of Hitler's inner circle

This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book's 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject's life and achievement. "Praise for the earlier edition: ""Both a personal and an intellectual biography . . . It represents biography at its best."--Peter Berger, front page, "The New York Times Book Review ""A story of surprising drama . . . . At last, we can see Arendt whole."--Jim Miller, "Newsweek""Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or . . . the example of Hannah Arendt."--Mark Feeney, "Boston Globe""An adventure story that moves from pre-Nazi Germany to fame in the United States, and . . . a study of the influences that shaped a sharp political awareness."--Richmond (Va.) "Times-Dispatch"

Agatha Christie's personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels.