Private History

These letters, in the form of a frank and amusing diary, were written by a private in Wellington's army who fought throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Private Wheeler's record covers the Peninsular Campaign, keeping order during the coronation of Louis XVIII (whom he called 'an old bloated poltroon') and his later posting to Corfu.

Elizabeth II is within a few years of becoming the longest-reigning British monarch. A personally quiet, modest and dutiful person, she is far better-informed about the lives of her subjects than they often realize. She has known every Prime Minister since Winston Churchill and every American President since Eisenhower. Yet what of the woman behind the crown?

Packed auditoriums. Crowds of anxious people. Crowds of scary people. Suffocating sound studios. TV lights cooking my skull and cameras that looked like they were going to bite me in the face. Rooms full of lawyers. Celebrities. Strangers pleading with me to save them. The unbearable pressure of money. The genuine beauty of quiet democracy. If you’re not interested in listening about any of that, fine, but at least listen to chapter Googolplex.

This is the story of Mark Twain's brief career as a Confederate soldier at the beginning of the American Civil War. Mark Twain's "private history" is told from the viewpoint of "someone who set out to do something in the war, but didn't". What starts out as a kind of class reunion/camping trip quickly becomes a series of frightful near misses with a determined and deadly foe, and ends in painful, premature death for some and a lifetime of guilty regrets for others.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became First Lady of the United States over sixty years ago, she stepped into the public spotlight. Although Jackie is perhaps best known for her two highly-publicized marriages, her legacy has endured beyond twentieth-century pop culture and she remains an object of public fascination today. Drawing on a range of sources—from articles penned for the women's pages of local newspapers, to esteemed national periodicals, to fan magazines, and film—Our Jackie evaluates how media coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis changed over the course of her public life. J

Bradley Manning perpetrated the biggest breach of military security in American history. While serving as an Army intelligence analyst, he leaked an astounding amount of classified information to WikiLeaks: classified combat videos, plus hundreds of thousands of documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and from embassies around the globe. Nearly all of WikiLeaks' headline-making releases of information have come from a single source: Bradley Manning.

When reporter Rebecca Connolly is told of Roddie Drummond's return to the island of Stoirm she senses a story. Fifteen years before he was charged with the murder of his lover, Mhairi. When he was found Not Proven, Roddie left the island. Now he has returned for his mother's funeral - and it will spark an explosion of violence. Rebecca joins forces with local photographer Chaz Wymark to dig into the secrets surrounding Mhairi's death, and her mysterious last words of Thunder Bay, where, according to local lore, the souls of the dead set off into the afterlife.

Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle.

Sharing his extensive and meticulous research, Jacques Privat reveals that the Vikings were in Greenland, its neighboring islands, and the eastern shores of Canada long before Columbus. He examines in depth how Greenland and its surroundings were inhabited for nearly five centuries by two Nordic colonies, Vestribygð and Eystribygð, which disappeared mysteriously: one in 1342 and the other in the 16th century.

At the outbreak of World War 1, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He's soon caught up in enemy fire and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to the trenches to find him and bring him home....

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thévoz tells the fascinating and entertaining story of the rise, decline and resurgence of London's private members' clubs, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day. In doing so he looks at cultural and political developments beyond the clubs, revealing how while the clubs may have been products of their city and country, they also exerted significant influence on London, Britain and places far beyond.

Conspiracy theories, and particularly the belief that elements of the world are secretly controlled by individuals or groups, have been around for as long as people have lived in groups. Perhaps that’s inevitable - after all, those who are excluded from power are very likely to be inclined to see their position not as an outcome of their own choices or situation but because of the secret machinations of shadowy groups.

From Frank D. Gilroy - a prolific and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, novelist and, most recently, author of a best-selling Kindle Single (Lake) - comes this chilling memoir of a young soldier in World War II confronting the nightmare of death. This isn't the battle cry of a war hero; it's the confessions of a young man pressed into service and searching for answers. In Gilroy's spare yet muscular prose, this saga of a young private's journey becomes a universal story of manhood and military life, told from the ground level of combat.

The female private detective has been a staple of popular culture for over 150 years. But what about the real-life women behind these fictional tales? Dismissed as 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' or amateurish Miss Marples, mocked as private dicks or honey trappers, they have been investigating crime since the mid-nineteenth century - everything from theft and fraud to romance scams and murder. In Private Inquiries, Caitlin Davies traces the history of the UK's female investigators.

The name Allan Pinkerton was for decades synonymous with private detective; indeed, the work “Pinkerton” was generally used for any private detective whether or not they were associated with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The all-seeing eye that served as the symbol of his company and the slogan - “We Never Sleep” - projected an image of a detective working tirelessly to pursue a desperate criminal and bring them to justice.

Salem witchcraft will always have a magnetic pull on the American psyche. During the 1692 witch trials, more than 150 people were arrested. An estimated 25 million Americans—including author Diane Foulds—are descended from the twenty individuals executed. What happened to our ancestors? Death in Salem is the first book to take a clear-eyed look at this complex time, by examining the lives of the witch trial participants from a personal perspective.

During the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars, the author of this book travelled with Wellington's headquarters. His position as Judge-Advocate kept him busy prosecuting the wrongdoers of the army. In this narrative you'll get to hear first-hand accounts of the various battles and sieges of the campaign including Vitoria.

Warren Beatty guarded his privacy even before he became a movie star, when he burst onto the screen in 1961 as the earnestly handsome all-American boy in Splendor in the Grass. When he started acting, Beatty kept secret the fact that actress Shirley MacLaine, already a star, was his older sister. Over time, he has cultivated a mystique, giving few interviews and instructing others not to talk about him. Until now.

It's clear that we have not honored the promise we make to veterans: that we as a country will help them after they've served and sacrificed. And while there are many books by and for veterans, only a small selection of those address the transition to civilian life, and none are a truly complete reference for stepping out of service and back into normal life. Warrior to Civilian covers a range of topics, from the practical—finding a job, reintegrating into family life—to the more challenging topics, like dealing with loss, and finding new purpose in life.