Showing titles in Historical

Après sa libération des camps de concentration, le psychiatre Viktor E. Frankl nous partage sa philosophie de vie. Onze mois après sa libération des camps nazis où il a perdu toute sa famille, le psychiatre Viktor E. Frankl tient une série de conférences publiques à Vienne. Celui qui va bientôt devenir mondialement connu y présente ses réflexions sur le sens de l'existence, la résilience et l'importance de vivre pleinement sa vie, même quand les pires obstacles surviennent.

Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.

When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters.

From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered - and continue to alter - the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

Hatshepsut - the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne and a mother with ties to the previous dynasty - was born into a privileged position in the royal household, and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father's family. Her failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of fate that paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king.

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson penned groundbreaking works as outrageous—and provocative—as the author himself. His memoir Kingdom of Fear provides compelling insight into his life and literary output.

In its final decades, the Roman Republic was engulfed by a crime wave. An epidemic of extortions, murders, and acts of insurrection tested the court system's capacity to maintain order. As case after case filled the docket, an ambitious young lawyer named Cicero seized every opportunity to litigate, forging a reputation as a master debater with a bright future in politics. In Lawless Republic, historian Josiah Osgood recounts the legendary orator's ascent and fall, and his pivotal role in the republic's lurch toward autocracy.

What did the Founding Fathers think about religion? And why did a group of practicing Protestants create a republic with widespread religious liberty? The 12 lectures included in this fascinating course provide multi-layered insights into the vision, philosophies, politics, and deep-seated faith of these brilliant leaders - in their own time, in their own words.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became a social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. One of the most prominent figures in the anti-slavery movement, Douglass emerged as a national leader of the abolitionist movement, speaking and writing widely on behalf of the cause. In this classic work, Douglass gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims". The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths - their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter.

J. B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - and coordinated its daily life - at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings, funerals, gardens, playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home.

From the creator of the critically acclaimed Irish History Podcast comes a ground-breaking exploration of the past, casting its gaze beyond the chambers of power and carnage of battle, and into the lives of the everyday people that lived through those violent centuries. From the desperate retributions of the Land War of the nineteenth century, through the unprecedented tumult of the revolutionary years, to the causes that helped to shape contemporary Ireland, these previously overlooked cases of human tragedy offer a fresh perspective on a history we think we know.

Few families can boast of not one but two saints among their ancestors, a great-aunt who was the last tsarina of Russia, a father who was Grace Kelly's pinup, and a grandmother who was not only a princess but could also argue the finer points of naval law. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born at the very end of the Roaring Twenties.

From Colonial America's founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the clans progress, prosper, and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge.

It is the last decade of the 19th century. The Wild West has been tamed and its fierce, independent and often violent larger-than-life figures – gun-toting wanderers, trappers, prospectors, Indian fighters, cowboys, and lawmen –are now victims of their own success. They are heroes who’ve outlived their usefulness.

As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.

Hunting the Falcon is the story of how Henry VIII’s obsessive desire for Anne Boleyn changed him and his country forever. John Guy and Julia Fox, two of the most acclaimed and distinguished historians of this period, have joined forces to present Anne and Henry in startlingly new ways.

Including letters, speeches, articles, and essays written before 1935, this collection offers a complete portrait of Einstein as a humanitarian and as a human being trying to make sense of the world changing around him.

Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.

In December 1919, Ambrose Small, the mercurial owner of the Grand Opera House in Toronto, closed a deal to sell his network of Ontario theatres, deposited a million-dollar cheque in his bank account, and was never seen again. As weeks turned to years, the disappearance became the most "extraordinary unsolved mystery" of its time.