Historical & Political Biographies

Arrian's account of Alexander's life and campaigns, published as the Anabasis and its companion piece the Indica, is our prime source for the history of Alexander, told with great narrative skill. This edition features a new translation of both texts, introduction, notes, guide to military systems and terminology, maps and a full index.

He is best remembered as the astute and powerful orator who inspired a battered Britain to victory against Nazi Germany during World War 2 and led the post-war, shattered nation to recovery. Richard Langworth, co-chairman and editor of The Churchill Centre, has spent over 20 years researching Churchill's written and spoken words.

The decade that followed James Stockdale's seven and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison saw his life take a number of different turns, from a stay in a navy hospital to president of a civilian college to his appointment as a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In these essays he offers his thoughts on his imprisonment.

Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) is the most famous woman from classical antiquity. Yet her modern reputation is based largely on her post-antique representation in drama, art, and other media. The current study is the first to examine the queen solely from the source material from the Greco-Roman period: literary sources, Egyptian documents including those of the queen herself, her own writings, and her representations in art.

A New York Review Books Original Victor Serge is one of the great men of the 20th century -and one of its great writers too. He was an anarchist, an agitator, a revolutionary, an exile, a historian of his times, as well as a brilliant novelist, and in Memoirs of a Revolutionary he devotes all his passion and genius to describing this extraordinary-and exemplary-career. Serge tells of his upbringing among exiles and conspirators, of his involvement with the notorious Bonnot Gang and his years in prison, of his role in the Russian Revolution, and of the Revolution's collapse into despotism and terror. Expelled from the Soviet Union, Serge went to Paris, where he evaded the KGB and the Nazis before fleeing to Mexico. Memoirs of a Revolutionary recounts a thrilling life on the front lines of history and includes vivid portraits not only of Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin but of countless other figures who struggled to remake the world. Peter Sedgwick's fine translation of Memoirs of a Revolutionary was abridged when first published in 1963. This is the first edition in English to present the entirety of Serge's book.

Benjamin Franklin's account of his rise from poverty and obscurity to affluence and fame is a self-portrait of a quintessential American which has charmed every generation of readers since it first appeared in 1791.

One of America's leading biographers offers a compact, insightful biography of John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his inauguration.

6 April 1994: In the skies above Rwanda the president's plane is shot down in flames. Near Kigali, Jean-Pierre holds his family close, fearing for their lives as the violence escalates. This book sheds light on this incident.

The epic story of one of the most famous love affairs in history, by the bestselling author of CAESAR.

Mahatma Gandhi became a legend in his own time. A tireless fighter for human rights and for Indian independence, his strategy of satyagraha, or passive resistance, earned him the admiration of millions. This biography offers a definitive account of Gandhi's life. It tells the story of one man who changed the world forever.

'The remarkable story of one woman's triumph over years of appalling violence and abuse' DAILY EXPRESS

On 2 May, 1536, in an act unprecedented in English history, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Did Cromwell, for reasons of his own, construct a case against Anne and her faction, and then present compelling evidence before the King?

Here is one of the great biographies of Alexander, in its original form, brought fully up to date with findings of modern research and criticism.

The first major biography of 18th century France's most mysterious woman, the daughter of Marie Antoinette, who vanished from public view during the tumultuous last days of the ancien regime

Henri Matisse was one of the most important and beloved artists of the twentieth century, rivalled only by his friend - and competitor - Pablo Picasso. This title reveals the origins of Matisse's astonishing talent and provides an insight into his life and work.

The Romans regarded Cleopatra as 'fatale monstrum', a tyrant to be crushed. Pascal said the shape of her nose changed the history of the world. Shakespeare and Tiepolo (and Elizabeth Taylor) portrayed her as an icon of tragic beauty. But who was Cleopatra, really? This biography discusses about Cleopatra.

In 1980, at the age of ten, Loung Ung escaped a devastated Cambodia and flew to the US as a refugee. She and her eldest brother, with whom she escaped, left behind their three surviving siblings. This book follows the parallel lives of Loung and her closest sister, Chou, during the 15 years it took for them to be reunited.

Written from the perspective of an ordinary 'Tommy' and told with dignity, candour and surprising wit, Somme Mud is a testament to the human spirit: for out of the mud that threatened to suck out a man's soul rises a compelling story of humanity and friendship.

She lived to be 82, but it was only in old age that she triumphed over the adversities and tragedies of her earlier years and became virtual ruler of England. Eleanor has exerted a fascination over writers and biographers for 800 years, but the prevailing myths and legends that attach to her name still tend to obscure the truth.

This priceless historical document features firsthand accounts from top levels of leadership in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, chronicling the struggle to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.

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.

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

The classic biography of Debs, one of the most important thinkers and activists in US.

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.

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.

Winston and Clementine Churchill wrote to each other constantly throughout the 57 years of their life together. Written solely for each others eyes, their letters serve as a revealing portrait of their characters and their relationship, and as a unique political and social history, as international affairs were rarely absent from their thoughts.

"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.