Genius Biographies

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?

In 2007, agents of the New York State Petroleum, Alcohol, and Tobacco Bureau (PATB) seized over half a million dollars in untaxed alcohol, drugs, and guns. This takedown, the largest in New York history, led to 87 arrests, the recovery of an unprecedented quantity of cocaine, crack, and marijuana, and captured the attention of law enforcement agencies all around the world. Under Too Long is the story of the PATB undercover team that led this investigation, as seen through the eyes of “Billy the Liquor Guy”.

Leaving school and starting his career at Decca Records in 1958 at the age of sixteen, Tony King would soon find himself becoming close friends with Elton John, rekindling John Lennon and Yoko Ono's relationship, mediating a quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and spending time with Freddie Mercury in his final days - a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as a stalwart in London and New York's gay scenes.

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin and Tolstoy, among others - Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Wheeler follows local guides; boards with families in modest homestays; eats roe, pelmeni, and cabbage soup; invokes recipes from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking; learns the language; and observes the pattern of outcry and silence that characterizes life under Vladimir Putin.

October 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Volstead Act, which put the enforcement teeth into Prohibition. But the law didn't stop George Remus from cornering the boozy, illegal liquor marketplace and amassing a fortune that eclipsed $200 million (the equivalent of $4.75 billion today). As eminent documentarian Ken Burns proclaimed, "Remus was to bootlegging what Rockefeller was to oil." Author Bob Batchelor has unearthed a treasure trove of untapped historical archives to cover the life, times, and crimes of the man who ran the largest bootlegging operation in America.

On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. In A Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joo Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, the Via Panisperna Boys, who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable.

In 1895, two young men destined to make their mark on American life, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, discovered they shared a common interest in the remarkable way ordinary Americans demonstrated the real character of the young nation. They were convinced that the brilliance of American liberty could best be found in the lives of everyday people, rather than in accounts of the famous and powerful.

From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view.

Protagonizada pelo brasileiro Eduardo Saverin, estudante de economia, e pelo norte-americano Mark Zuckerberg, gênio da informática–amigos que sobreviviam num ambiente repleto de alunos brilhantes de famílias supertradicionais–este audiolivro mostra a trajetória da criação da rede social que se tornou uma das mais poderosas empresas do mundo e que revolucionou a maneira como milhões de pessoas se relacionam.

The model for The Great Gatsby's Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls, Arnold Rothstein was an underworld genius, racketeer, rumrunner, and mastermind who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, played "with the faith of 15 million people with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe."

Candace Pert stood at the dawn of three revolutions: the women’s movement, integrative health, and psychopharmacology. A scientific prodigy, she was 30 years ahead of her time, preaching a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to healthcare and medicine long before yoga hit the mainstream and “wellness” took root in our vernacular. Her bestselling book Molecules of Emotion made her the mother of the Mind/Body Revolution, launching a paradigm shift in medicine. Deepak Chopra credits her with creating his career, and he said as much in his eulogy at her funeral.

Michael Landon was an actor, writer, director, and producer. For over three decades, Michael Landon's creative gifts touched millions of viewers around the world on Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, and in several other productions. This is the first detailed examination of his work both in front of and behind the camera, including information about every Landon script.

Written by his former assistant and with a foreword by Broadway legend Harold Prince, this audiobook celebrates Leonard Bernstein's centenary with an intimate and detailed look at the public and private life of the maestro.

Obsessive, brilliant, and tortured, Nikola Tesla was lauded for his invention of the alternating current (AC) and other significant contributions to science. His claim that “harnessing the forces of nature was the only worthwhile scientific endeavor" both impressed and enraged the scientific community. Eventually his peers could no longer dismiss his eccentricities and began to view him as a crackpot - a potentially dangerous one.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was recognized in his lifetime as the greatest living artist, creator of a succession of masterpieces in sculpture, fresco painting, and architecture. In all his work, Michelangelo impressed his contemporaries as a forceful personality, a divine genius endowed with terribilita, or intense emotional power.

"هيوم" واحد من أشهر فلاسفة الغرب في القرن الثامن عشر وعلى مر العصور. الفيلسوف الأسكتلندي يُعد الأب الروحي للمدرسة "التجريبية العلمية" التي ينتمي إليها العديد من الفلاسفة مثل الفيلسوف الإنجليزي "جون لوك" وغيره.

جون لوك فيلسوف وطبيب بريطاني. يعد واحدًا من المفكرين الأكثر تأثيرًا في عصر التنوير، حيث يعتبر مصدر المعرفة والأفكار ليس العقل، وإنما التجربة التي نحتك بها ونكتسبها عن طريق الحواس، وهو صاحب القول المشهور «العقل صفحة بيضاء» وأراد من خلاله الاعتراض على العقلانيين القائلين بتوفر العقل على أفكار فطرية، مبيناً أن العقل لا يتوفر على شيء، وأن مصدر أفكاره ومبادئه وقواعده التجربة فقط، وبذلك أسس للفلسفة الحسية التجريبية.

ولد في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر، وقد أسره الأدب منذ طفولته المبكرة، ورث مهارة والدته الأدبية، وكتب أول أشعار له في سن الرابعة عشرة، لكن لم تبدأ موهبته الأدبية في الازدهار حتى السابعة عشر من عمره في هارفارد حيث بدأ بدراسته الجامعية، وقد حقق انطباعا جيداً من مساهمته الدائمة في المجلة الطلابية الجامعية محامي هارفارد.

يعرض الكاتب في هذا العمل العبقرية الفذة لتلك الشخصية التي أثرت الحياة الإسلامية بمناقبها المتعددة، موضحًا نشأته وإسلامه وحياته بين البادية والحرب، ونسبه القبلي ومسيرته مع الرسول ودوره في حروب الردة والفتوحات الإسلامية وعزله، محددًا عناصر عبقريته الحربية ومفتاح شخصيته ونهايته.

Brian Holland, Edward Holland, and Lamont Dozier, known as Holland-Dozier-Holland or H-D-H, were the greatest songwriting team in American pop music history. Seventy of the songs they wrote reached the Billboard Top 40, with 15 of these reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. No other songwriting team or individual has come close to equaling, let alone surpassing, this record. They’ve been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.