Showing titles in Historical

Churchill: A Life follows Winston Churchill from his earliest days to his moments of triumph. Here, the drama and excitement of his story are ever-present. Martin Gilbert gives us a vivid portrait, using Churchill's most personal letters and the recollections of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies, to go behind the scenes of some of the stormiest and most fascinating political events of our time.

A joint biography that investigates how, during their lifetimes, Philip and Alexander transformed Macedon from a weak kingdom into a globe-spanning empire. During his short life Alexander the Great carved out an empire stretching from the Balkans to Central India, re-drawing the map of the ancient world. Yet Alexander represents only half of the story, for his success was not just the product of his own genius, restless energy and ambition, but was built on decades of effort by his father.

A story of heartbreak and survival by the stepsister of Anne Frank. Eva was arrested by the Nazis on her 15 birthday and sent to Auschwitz. Her survival depended on endless strokes of luck, her own determination and the love and protection of her mother, Fritzi, who was deported with her. When Auschwitz was liberated, Eva and Fritzi began the long journey home. They searched desperately for Eva's father and brother, from whom they had been separated. The news came some months later. Tragically, both men had been killed.

Robert Hichens was the Quartermaster at the wheel when Titanic hit the iceberg. He received the famous order “Hard-a-Starboard” from First Officer William Murdoch. For 100 years Robert had a reputation as a coward and a bully for his behavior in Lifeboat Six where he had a stand-up row with the famous Unsinkable Molly Brown. Her interview with the New York Times after the disaster cost him his career prospects.

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. Motion Picture Artwork © Universal Studios 2014. All Rights Reserved. In 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louis Zamperini had already transformed himself from child delinquent to prodigious athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics. Now he must embark on one of the Second World War’s most extraordinary odysseys.

Kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of 10, Olaudah Equiano's memoir caused a sensation when it was first published in 1789. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is the true story of his life, from his 10 years of service as a slave in the British Navy to his experiences - after having purchased his freedom twice - as a freed Black man living in 18th-century England. Equiano would go on to be a leading figure in the anti-slavery movement, boosted by the success of his memoir, which became a best seller and went through nine editions in his lifetime.

The favorite book of William Burroughs. A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived. With an introduction by Burroughs. A BookSense 77 selection.

Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24-25, 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in Eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire - but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo.

Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America’s 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life.

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.

Much has been written about Anne Frank’s life, but the story of her friend Bep Voskuijl has remained untold – until now. As the youngest of the five Dutch people who hid the Frank family, Bep Voskuijl was Anne’s closest confidante during the 761 excruciating days she spent hidden in the Secret Annex. In those cramped quarters, through daily meals and deep conservations, Bep and Anne’s friendship bloomed.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Victorians, written and read by Jacob Rees-Mogg. They built a nation. Now it’s our turn. Many associate the Victorian era with austere social attitudes and filthy factories. But in this bold and provocative book, Jacob Rees-Mogg - leading Tory MP and prominent Brexit advocate - takes up the story of 12 landmark figures to paint a very different picture of the age: one of bright ambition, bold self-belief and determined industriousness.

Nancy Wake, nicknamed 'the white mouse' for her ability to evade capture, tells her own story. As the Gestapo's most wanted person, and one of the most highly decorated servicewomen of the war, it's a story worth telling. After living and working in Paris in the 1930's, Nancy married a wealthy Frenchman and settled in Marseilles. Her idyllic new life was ended by World War II and the invasion of France. Her life shattered, Nancy joined the French Resistance and, later, began work with an escape-route network for Allied soldiers.

Great Yarmouth, September 1900: A young woman is found dead on the beach, a bootlace tied tightly around her neck. Despite her death attracting national attention in the press, nobody claims her. Detective Inspector Robert Lingwood of the Great Yarmouth police force declares he will not rest until the mystery of the young woman's death is solved. But it's only once the case has been referred to Scotland Yard that the layers of mystery start to peel away.

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly 30-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X - including siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, FBI moles and cops and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become hundreds of hours of interviews into a portrait that would separate fact from fiction.

Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his 20s, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain.

Although it is said that he owed his poetic vision to his Sephardic Jewish roots, Siegfried Sassoon was, in many ways, a conventionally Edwardian squire. A gifted poet, who refused to become part of any literary movement, his poetry shattered the ideals of wartime heroism, and his friendships ranged from Thomas Hardy and Robert Graves to the Sitwells, Rupert Brooke and T.E. Lawrence. In this acclaimed biography, John Stuart Roberts skillfully chronicles Sassoon's life and work, including his homosexuality, his marriage and his quest for a personal religious faith.

In little more than 50 years the regard with which the Royal Family are held has changed out of all recognition. Their private lives are now the stuff of soap opera and it seems any one who comes into contact with them sells their story to the magazines or to the newspapers. The Little Princesses was published in 1950 to a furore we cannot imagine today. Crawfie was demonised by the press, and the Queen Mother, who had been a great friend and who had, Crawfie maintained, given her permission to write the account, never spoke to her again.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Karl Marlantes left University at 22 to serve in the Vietnam War. Matterhorn was the bestselling novel based on his experiences. Now Marlantes takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions ‘What is it like to face death?' and 'What is it like to kill someone?'