Western Biography

A brutal siege. A forgotten heroine. A war-torn romance. And a historian determined to uncover the truth. Untold millions who saw Band of Brothers can finally know the whole story of what happened to American soldiers and civilians in Bastogne during that arduous Winter of 1944/45. In the television version of Band of Brothers, a passing reference is made to an African nurse assisting in an aid station in Bastogne. When military historian Martin King watched the episode, he had to know who that woman was; thus began a multi-year odyssey.

Encounters in Avalanche Country tells the story of mountain communities' responses to disaster over a century of social change and rapid industrialization. As mining and railway companies triggered new kinds of disasters, ideas about environmental risk and responsibility were increasingly negotiated by mountain laborers, at the elite levels among corporations, and in socially charged civil suits.

In de jaren zestig groeit Harm Edens op in een gezin met Groningse roots waarin hij vaak het gevoel heeft dat hij er niet bij hoort. Hij lacht om dingen waar niemand de humor van inziet, ziet dingen die niemand ziet en zegt dingen die niemand begrijpt. Totdat hij kennismaakt met Groot-Brittannië en zijn inwoners. Aan de hand van een twintigtal bijzondere ontmoetingen probeert Harm te achterhalen waarom hij zich zo thuis voelt op de Britse eilanden. Harm neemt de lezer mee op reis van het zuidelijkste puntje van Ierland tot de meest westelijke eilanden van Schotland naar Sint Kilda.

With the coming of the railroads, the American cowboy's job changed drastically, as the great trail herds became a thing of the past. Many cowboys faded into history, but there was a place in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah that still prized their skills. Val FitzPatrick's family homesteaded in this region, and Val became a rider for the Two-Bar at the age of 14. In later years, Val wrote many accounts of his life, and The Arbuckle Cafe is a collection of the best of his stories, all classic and authentic insights of what life on the range was really like.

A powerful meditation on identity and belonging, Sejal Shah explores the tension of being both invisible and hyper-visible in a country that struggles with race. The daughter of immigrants from India and Kenya, Shah wrestles with her experiences growing up in—and returning to—western New York, an area of stark racial and socioeconomic segregation. Her work illuminates how we are all marked by family and place; by the limits of our bodies; by our losses and regrets; by who and what we love; by our ambivalences and our silences.

The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. His, like ours, was a world of moral uncertainty and political violence, all of which made not only for the agony of exile but for an ever deeper meditation on the nature of human happiness. In Why Dante Matters, John Took offers - by way of three of Dante’s works in particular - an account, not merely of Dante’s development as a poet and philosopher, but of his continuing presence to us as a guide to man’s wellbeing as man.

Edward Zane Carroll Judson aka Ned Buntline (1821-1886) was responsible for creating a highly romantic and often misleading image of the American West, albeit one that the masses found irresistible in the mid-to-late 19th century. Some scholars estimate that he wrote at least 400 dime novels over his lifetime and perhaps as many as 600. The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline is an open-eyed look at the man who sparked an American legend but whose own scandalous life somehow escaped history's limelight.

From the early 1800s to the end of his life in 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody was as famous as anyone could be. Annie Oakley was his most celebrated protegee, the "slip of a girl" from Ohio who could (and did) outshoot anybody to become the most celebrated star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

The abolitionist legacies of Orville Brown and his son, Spencer, live on in this historic and daring 19th-century account. Journeying apart from each other, but with similar passion, Orville and Spencer's stories span virtually every major abolitionist event: from the battles of Bleeding Kansas and the establishment of the free-soil movement to the river wars of Memphis, Vicksburg, and Shiloh. Listeners will follow Orville west as he strikes out for Kansas Territory to help ensure its entry as a free state.

The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco. The Gold Rush has ended; the Civil War threatens to tear apart the country. The bards of the moment are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft and seeking adventure; literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule.

Zwei Männer auf einem epischem Roadtrip durch Schottland. Die beiden "Outlander"-Stars und langjährigen Freunde Sam Heughan und Graham McTavish begeben sich auf eine abenteuerliche Reise, um ihre Heimat Schottland neu zu entdecken. Clanlands erzählt davon, wie die beiden Schauspieler mit dem Wohnmobil, dem Kajak, Fahrrad und Motorrad von der Küste bis zu den Seen und von den Gipfeln bis zu den Tälern reisen und dabei tief in die Geschichte und Kultur des Landes eintauchen.

Embark on a journey unlike any other—a journey of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and the search for true freedom. Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Elsen, also known as Brother Sun, begins his story with a childhood steeped in curiosity and wonder, guided by enlightened parents who planted the seeds of a life filled with purpose.

Galileo's oldest child was 13 when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose 17th-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.

I feared for their lives and their ears. Our local weekly newspaper showed pictures of them dangling from ropes hanging in woven baskets off the embankment of a mountain in order to tap sticks of dynamite into the holes they drilled in the granite cliff faces they blasted away. One could hear that awful, loud dynamite blasting all the way in town. But the booming had been even worse for the ears of the railroad workers who detonated the charges for the grading and tunneling, especially the Chinese who were given these most dangerous jobs.

Only two years after Pope Pius IX’s election in 1846 had triggered great popular enthusiasm across Italy, the pope found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The revolutions that swept through Europe and shook Rome threatened to end the popes’ thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not the papacy itself. The resulting drama was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics. David Kertzer, one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, brings this pivotal moment vividly to life.

The story of the love affair between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, and his abdication in order to marry the divorcée, has provoked fascination and discussion for decades. However, the full story of the couple's links with the German aristocracy and Hitler has until now remained untold. Meticulously researched, 17 Carnations chronicles this entanglement, starting with Hitler's early attempts to matchmake between Edward and a German noblewoman.

In this classic of social history, the author describes the lives of six obscure men and women of the Middle Ages. She draws on account books, records, letters, diaries, and wills to make the life of those times as concrete and comprehensible as our own.

The dream of capturing and organizing knowledge is as old as history. From the archives of ancient Sumeria and the Library of Alexandria to the Library of Congress and Wikipedia, humanity has wrestled with the problem of harnessing its intellectual output. The timeless quest for wisdom has been as much about information storage and retrieval as creative genius. In Cataloging the World, Alex Wright introduces us to a figure who stands out in the long line of thinkers and idealists who devoted themselves to the task.