Historical Memoirs

Robert Morgan's Gap Creek was an Oprah's Book Club selection and a phenomenal New York Times best-seller. Here he turns his talent to chronicling the life of American frontier legend Daniel Boone.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another....

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken.

General Stonewall Jackson was like no one anyone had ever seen. In April of 1862 he was merely another Confederate general with only a single battle credential in an army fighting in what seemed to be a losing cause. By middle June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western World. He had given the Confederate cause what it had recently lacked: hope.

When Ernest Hemingway died in 1961 he had nearly completed A Moveable Feast, which eventually was published posthumously in 1964 and edited by his widow Mary Hemingway. This new special edition of Hemingway's classic memoir of his early years in Paris in the 1920's presents the original manuscript as the author intended it to be published at the time of his death.

Based on previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and dramatic interviews with Hitler's colleagues and associates, this is the definitive biography of one of the most despised yet fascinating figures of the 20th century. Painstakingly documented, it is a work that will not soon be forgotten.

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night.

In John Adams: A Life, Ferling offers a compelling portrait of one of the giants of the Revolutionary era. Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary, a leader who was deeply troubled by the warfare that he helped to make, and a fiercely independent statesman. Bringing to life an exciting time, an age in which Adams played an important political and intellectual role. this book is a singular biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73. Through the lens of personality - Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them - the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old.

How the monarchs of England and Scotland met their deaths has been a wonderful mixture of violence, infections, overindulgence and occasional regicide. In Mortal Monarchs, medical historian Dr Suzie Edge examines 1,000 years of royal deaths to uncover the plots, accusations, rivalries and ever-present threat of poison that the kings and queens of old faced.

For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.

The Scottish-born son of a failed weaver and a mother who supported the family by binding shoes, Andrew Carnegie was the embodiment of the American dream. In his rise from a job as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to being the richest man in the world, he was single-minded, relentless and a major player in some of the most violent and notorious labor strikes of the time. The prototype of today's billionaire, he was a visionary in the way he earned his money and in the way he gave it away.

Legacies of Famous Newfoundlanders explores the lives and contributions of notable individuals from Newfoundland who have left a significant mark on history, culture, and society. The book highlights a diverse array of figures, each recognized for their unique achievements and enduring influence.

The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.

In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities (cloves, pepper, and nutmeg) flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying 18 emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.

Whatever we may think of Alexander - whether Great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopath - most people do not regard him as a religious leader. And yet religion permeated all aspects of his career. When he used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. In Egypt, he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh, and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king. When Alexander disregarded religion, he and his army suffered. In Iran, for instance, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted.

The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, brought the promise of integration to Little Rock, Arkansas, but it was hard-won for the nine Black teenagers chosen to integrate Central High School in 1957. They ran a gauntlet flanked by a rampaging mob and a heavily armed Arkansas National Guard-opposition so intense that soldiers from the elite 101st Airborne Division were called in to restore order.

Up until now, the curious tactic employed by biographers of the Queen has been to ignore what is interesting and to concentrate on what is not. Craig Brown, the author of 150 Glimpses of the Beatles and Hello Goodbye Hello, rejects this formula, bringing his kaleidoscopic approach to the most famous—and most guarded—woman on earth, examining the Queen through a succession of interlocking prisms. With Q, this fantastically funny, marvelously insightful journalist gives us an unforgettable portrait of the omnipresent, elusive Queen Elizabeth II.

Plongez dans des histoires criminelles captivantes qui mettent en lumière certains des tueurs en série les plus sinistres et notoires de notre histoire collective. De HH Holmes, l'homme aux 200 meurtres, à Landru, le tueur en série français, en passant par le monstre de Montmartre Thierry Paulin et le mystérieux Monstre de Florence, chaque récit vous entraînera dans un univers sombre et terrifiant. Explorez les motivations complexes, les méthodes macabres et les enquêtes palpitantes liées à ces crimes épouvantables.

From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 comes a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures.