Biographies

The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall StreetAt the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm than Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him as part of the city's working homeless and with a toddler son. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving among shelters, "e;HO-tels,"e; soup lines, and even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station. Never giving in to despair, Gardner made an astonishing transformation from being part of the city's invisible poor to being a powerful player in its financial district. More than a memoir of Gardner's financial success, this is the story of a man who breaks his own family's cycle of men abandoning their children. Mythic, triumphant, and unstintingly honest, The Pursuit of Happyness conjures heroes like Horatio Alger and Antwone Fisher, and appeals to the very essence of the American Dream.

The story of one man's evolution from naive and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon.

William Wallace set an example of constancy and perseverance and became the Guardian of Scotland. Even his terrible death in London in 1305 can be seen as a victory as it provided inspiration for continuance of struggle against English domination. This book investigates various aspects of Wallace's life and character.

The Diaries chart the author's swings of fortune, the loneliness of the emigre, his encounters with a luminous range of personalities from music, theatre, art and literature, and the search for love and friendship, all cast in the burnished prose of a born master, not just of music, but of words.

Includes 100 people who range from former slaves such as Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley to more contemporary individuals such as Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison. This book summarizes the person's life, work, and importance. It is accompanied by a black-and-white photograph or illustration.

Provides an account of Ferenc Puskas: his growing up in Soviet-occupied Hungary, travelling the world with the national side and army team Honved, and his different achievements in the game of football.

Now the subject of a major film. Once or twice a generation, an athlete transcends his sport - at last, here's Seve Ballesteros in his own wordsThere are golfers, and there are golfers.

Quite apart from his all too public struggle with alcoholism, the story runs through the surreal highs and calamitous lows of a life lived habitually on the edge of chaos. It is not just a football story.

* Heroic attempt by US President Teddy Roosevelt to chart one of the largest and most dangerous tributaries of the Amazon - The River of Doubt.

Offers an insight into the lesbian society of 1980s America. This book discusses about a counterculture movement that slowly is embraced by the mainstream.

Open, honest and upbeat, this book gives personal insight into both the ups and downs of an Asperger relationship. Seeking to challenge the bad press that people with Asperger Syndrome (AS) get as partners, Sarah and Keith tell their story of how they are making it work - and also how they got it wrong - with disarming frankness and humour.

Presents hypotheses about the life of the farmer's daughter who married Shakespeare. This book asks questions, opens fields of investigation and research, and rights the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.

Gripping account by Richard Hammond of life before and after his terrifying high-speed car crash.

A sexual sadist, the Zodiac's pleasure was torture and murder. He taunted the authorities with mocking notes telling where he would strike next. The official tally of his victims was six. He claimed 37 dead. He was never caught. This book tells the inside story of the hunt for the hooded killer, and finally reveals his possible true identity.

In Azar Nafisi's personal story of growing up in Iran, she shares her memories of a life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.

The full, definitive life stories of ice-skating legends Torvill & Dean

Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B B King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Capturing the extraordinary life and times of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century, this work offers a portrait of this great guitarist.

In Britannia's Daughters, bestselling novelist Joanna Trollope examines the contribution of women in building and sustaining the British Empire. They people this book as they peopled the Empire - their astonishing courage and endurance, their remarkable personal stories vividly and enthrallingly recaptured.

Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. This is a biography of Andrew Carnegie who is one of the America's famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists.

Who was Monte Melkonian? Europe denounced him as a terrorist. His adopted homeland of Armenia decorated him as a national hero who led a force of 4000 men to victory in the Armenian enclave of Mountainous Karabagh in Azerbaijan. This book tells the story of what happens when one man decides that terrible actions speak louder than words.

Harvey Cushing was the leading figure in the creation of modern neurosurgery. This biography traces his medical school education; his hospital-based surgical career; and his career as a battlefield surgeon during World War I. He has an enduring place in the field of medicine and his name has become part of medical lexicography.

Michael Powell lived intimately, and abundantly, with the movies - entering the business at the end of the silent era, growing up in the industry, becoming one of Britain's most respected and influential directors.

In this life of the master diplomat, David Lawday follows Talleyrand's remarkable career through the most turbulent age Europe has known and explores - for the first time - in intimate detail his extraordinarily perverse relationship with Napoleon.

A passionate, critically incisive biography of one of the most influential rappers of all time, Tupac Shakur, and how he came to dominate hip-hop in the 1990s

The SUNDAY TIMES number 1 bestseller -- the extraordinary life story of the greatest footballer ever to play the game.

"e;The day will come when not only my writings, but precisely my life--the intriguing secret of all the machinery--will be studied and studied."e; Soren Kierkegaard's remarkable combination of genius and peculiarity made this a fair if arrogant prediction. But Kierkegaard's life has been notoriously hard to study, so complex was the web of fact and fiction in his work. Joakim Garff's biography of Kierkegaard is thus a landmark achievement. A seamless blend of history, philosophy, and psychological insight, all conveyed with novelistic verve, this is the most comprehensive and penetrating account yet written of the life and works of the enigmatic Dane who changed the course of intellectual history. Garff portrays Kierkegaard not as the all-controlling impresario behind some of the most important works of modern philosophy and religious thought--books credited with founding existentialism and prefiguring postmodernism--but rather as a man whose writings came to control him. Kierkegaard saw himself as a vessel for his writings, a tool in the hand of God, and eventually as a martyr singled out to call for the end of "e;Christendom."e; Garff explores the events and relationships that formed Kierkegaard, including his guilt-ridden relationship with his father, his rivalry with his brother, and his famously tortured relationship with his fiancee Regine Olsen. He recreates the squalor and splendor of Golden Age Copenhagen and the intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard found himself increasingly embattled and mercilessly caricatured. Acclaimed as a major cultural event on its publication in Denmark in 2000, this book, here presented in an exceptionally crisp and elegant translation, will be the definitive account of Kierkegaard's life for years to come.

In the Shadow of the Bomb narrates how two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists--J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe--came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create. In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how Oppenheimer and Bethe--two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters--struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War. Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values. Yet, their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona--the scientist who creates knowledge and technology affecting all humanity and boldly addresses their impact--and then could not carry its burden. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other insiders. Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history--in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved--to tell a tale of two men that will enthrall readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers.

Soon to be a major film, co-written and directed by Angelina Jolie PittUntil the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official.

The fascinating recollections of one of the most controversial scientists of the nuclear age

In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York.