Historical Memoirs

Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives. In the space of just 20 years, from October 1795, when as a young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of insurrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged) battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and Europe. After seizing power in a coup d'état, he ended the corruption and incompetence into which the revolution had descended.

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world.

This novel allows the unscrupulous and proud Queen of the Nile to recount her own tale. A masterful recreation of history.

One day in 1872, self-taught Assyriologist George Smith was sifting through a pile of clay tablets when he realized he was reading about "a flood, storm, a ship caught on a mountain, and a bird sent out in search of dry land". This is the riveting story of the discovery of the world's first literary epic, the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

Here, National Book Award winner Richard Winston explores life in the Middle Ages - from the fifth to the 15th centuries - beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire and ending with the dawn of the Renaissance. In both countryside and cities, from the peasants to the bourgeoisie to the nobility, no aspect of life in this era is left unexplored.

A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley....

Like Anne Frank, Flory Van Beek was a young girl caught in the ruthless Nazi occupation of Holland. But Flory survived to recount her extraordinary story of persecution and survival. Flory and her husband, Felix, endured the sinking of a ship bound for safety in the New World, the increasing danger of the occupation, and finally a life in hiding. This inspiring account vividly captures the terror of the Holocaust while telling a poignant story of love and courage.

Twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has brains, friends, and a bright future. Then Mao Zedong launches China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. Soon school is suspended and students are getting caught up in the fervor of Mao’s extreme politics. When Ji-li’s family is accused of capitalist crimes, all of her beautiful dreams burst like soap bubbles. Because Ji-li’s grandfather was a landlord, her family is harassed and humiliated. Their home is searched, and they live in constant fear. Nonetheless, Ji-li remains loyal to her beloved Chairman Mao....

What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.

On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d’Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing for war. From different worlds, their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill’s secret army, the Special Operations Executive. As the world’s deadliest conflict to date unfolds, Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, and eventually . . . how to love each other.

John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce suffered lifelong opposition and endured for the causes of gospel truth, missionary zeal, and political justice. They found, in solid doctrine and humble joy, the tough roots for habitual tenderness in response to their adversaries - without doctrinal or moral flinching. They are examples of remarkable grace. In the third book of the Swans Are Not Silent series, best-selling author John Piper looks at the lives of these three great men and how they not only endured great opposition but did so with joy and without bitterness.

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate 16th-century villagers.

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the first major biography of Bonhoeffer in 40 years, New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer's life - the theologian and the spy - to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil.

A biography of William T. Sherman by the military theorist and author of Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon.

In 1914 collisions between motor cars and horse-drawn carriages are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. But when an out-of-control driver smashes into a buggy driven by Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp, their lives change forever. Constance, the oldest, demands payment for the damages but quickly realizes that she is dealing with a madman.

When Lisa Najeeb Halaby was 26, her father introduced her to King Hussein of Jordan. Within a year, she became his fourth wife. Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. King Hussein was not only the head of state in Jordan but also considered the spiritual leader of all Muslims. This memoir provides a vital perspective on 30 years of turbulent world history from the Arab point of view.

The 38 letters written by Rockefeller to his son imparting his perspectives, ideology, and wisdom to his son.

On the night of March 24, 1944, Bram Vanderstok was number 18 of 76 men who crawled beyond the barbed wire fence of Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland. His memoir sets down his wartime adventures before being incarcerated in Stalag Luft III and then, in extraordinary detail, describes various escape attempts which culminated with the famous March breakout.

Author of The Kennedys at War and The Lion’s Pride, Edward J. Renehan, Jr. presents a fascinating biography of one of the most hated and most admired American entrepreneurs of all time. Here, he sheds light on Wall Street magnate Jay Gould and his frequently overshadowed creativity. Gould was the quintessential robber baron and the original modern businessman whose financial examples persist even today.