Biographies

Heard the one about the airline that has introduced 'corpse cupboards' on new planes to cope with the number of people who die in the air?

A memoir that offers a picture of the author's growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.

The definitive biography of the father of modern Turkey, a powerful figure in the still-unfolding drama of the Middle East.

Winston Churchill wrote this account of the first 25 years of his life in 1930. It reveals him struggling with Latin grammar at prep school, charging the Dervishes at Omdurman and preparing his first political speech for a Conservative fete.

Classic 1722 account of the epidemic that ravaged England nearly 60 years earlier. Defoe used his considerable talents as a journalist and novelist to reconstruct -- historically and fictionally -- the Great Plague of London in 1664-65. Written as an eyewitness report, the novel abounds in memorable and realistic details.

Don Whillans has an iconic significance for generations of climbers. His epoch-making first ascent of Annapurna's South Face, achieved with Dougal Haston in 1970, remains one of the most impressive climbs ever made - but behind this and all his other formidable achievements lies a tough, recalcitrant reality: the character of the man himself.

Written by Bill Hick's lifelong friend, producer, and co-creator, Kevin Booth offers the inside story into the man who was only along for the ride for a tragically short time, yet left an indelible mark on comedy enthusiasts and freethinkers everywhere.Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution offers a rare fly-on-the-wall insight into the life of one of Britain's most loved US comedians. Adored in the UK for his unique style of savage, hilarious comedy, the one person who knew him inside and out tells of a man whose life was just as impassioned and off-the-wall as his comedy.Even back at High School, in Houston, Texas, Kevin was Bill's co-conspirator, as they sneaked out of Bill's strict Baptist home at night, and headed for the Comedy Workshop, where at the age of fourteen, Bill was going down a storm.They virtually shared every experience - from magic mushrooms to girls, but it was their music and their vision of comedy, which bound them so closely together. Kevin produced, engineered and performed on many of Bill's recordings, and it is largely due to him, that so much of Bill's comedy is readily available on CD and video.Michael Bertin, a hugely talented author from Austin, Texas, is co-writing Kevin's fly-on-the-wall biography of Bill Hicks.

The fascinating true story of an Englishwoman who spent 12 years alone in a cave in the Himalayas and became a world-renowned spiritual leader

In its depiction of the universal trials of adolescent life and growing into adulthood - here compounded by being an outsider both abroad and at home, and by living in a state where you have no right to show your hair, wear make-up, run in public, date, or question authority - it's raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

The brilliant tale of Anais Nin's true love affair with Henry Miller, and her ambiguous, charged relationship with his wife, June. Drawn from the journals of a single momentous year in Paris, Henry and June provides a wildly lyrical account of a woman's sexual awakening and the disillusion of idealized marriage.

Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect wild nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian industrialisation. Using his surviving papers, Julia Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age.

"In the Apaches' final campaign, Geronimo led 19 warriors against 5,000 U.S. troops. No Apaches were killed, and the U.S. suffered heavy casualties. For the Apaches could travel seventy miles a day on"

When Adeline Yen Mah's mother dies giving birth to her, the family rejects Adeline. In this vivid autobiography, the author describes her, life, struggles and how she comes to be accepted by her family at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China.

A first hand account of the German U-boat battles of World War II, by one of the very few surviving commanders.

Contents 1. A A country boy 2. A Pins and string 3. A Philosophy 4. A Learning to juggle 5. A Blue and yellow make pink 6. A Saturn and statistics 7. A Cast of characters 8. A Spinning cells 9. A The beautiful equations 10. A The Laird at home 11. A The Cavendish 12. A Last days 13. A Maxwella s legacy 14.

The famous story of mass escape from a WWII German PoW camp that inspired the classic film.

Describing his collection of Essays as 'a book consubstantial with its author', Montaigne identified both the power and the charm of a work which introduces us to one of the most attractive figures in European literature.

A 'retired career anorexic' examines herself and her, and our, culture in a masterpiece of confessional literature.

The first critical biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest architects

John Coltrane was a key figure in jazz, a pioneer in world music, and an intensely emotional force. This biography presents interviews with Coltrane, photos, genealogical documents, and musical analysis that offers a fresh view of Coltrane's genius. It explores the events of Coltrane's life and offers an insightful look into his musical practices.

A story, in which the author takes us on a journey through his childhood and adolescence, along Jerusalem's war-torn streets in the 1940s and '50s, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his fussy, logical father, and his dreamy, romantic mother.

With an Introduction by Angus Calder.As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus.Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no Boys Own Paper tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and Joyce.

In 1954, in Orlando, Florida, nine-year-old Pat Conroy discovered the game of basketball.

"Eddie Condon (1905--1973) pioneered a kind of jazz popularly known as Chicago-Dixieland, though musicians refer to it simply as Condon style. Played by small ensembles with driving beat, it was and is"

* The definitive biography of Janis Joplin - rock's first female superstar, the queen of sex, drugs and rock n' roll whose music expressed the recklessness, defiance and energy of her generation

Wise, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.

This sharp and stylish biography redefines the woman George Bernard Shaw once described as 'the greatest living Irishwoman' - Augusta Gregory.

Finding her way through the labyrinthine plots that surrounded the court, she had to live by her wits, surrounded by betrayal and suspicion, not knowing who to trust with her desire to be queen, or her desire to be a lover...

A. C. Grayling's accessible introduction to Wittgenstein's work describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.