Historiske og politiske biografier

"Through illustrating the life of Mayor George Moscone, author Lincoln A. Mitchell explores how today's San Francisco came into being. Moscone-through his work in the State Senate, victory in the very divisive 1975 mayor's race, and brief tenure as mayor-was a key figure in the city's evolution. The politics surrounding Moscone's election as mayor, governance of the city, and tragic death are still relevant issues. Moscone was a groundbreaking politician whose life was cut short, but his influence on San Francisco can still be felt today"--

A dynamic history of life in turn-of-the-century Warsaw through the eyes of a young woman and her Jewish family who converted to Catholicism

At the start of 1967, Jim Wagner shipped out to Vietnam. As a UH-1D Huey crew chief and door gunner, Wagner was part of the 9th Aviation Battalion that would ferry infantry of the 9th Infantry Division into and out of combat in III Corps Tactical Zone in the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam. Interdicting the movements of Viet Cong kept Wagner and his unit in near constant combat with the author accumulating over 1800 air hours on combat operations. Day to day, Wagner flew direct support, combat assault, medical Evac, or low level aerial recon missions for platoon or company sized elements of the 9th Division. Wagner experienced it all, from the surreal of flying over Nancy Sinatra at a USO concert to secret missions flying special forces across the border into Cambodia to the Tet Offensive.

How Africa’s most notorious tyrant made his oppressive regime seem both necessary and patriotic

The gripping story of Indira Gandhi’s premiership—and the profound influence she had on India

A richly drawn biography of Jane Austen, from a beloved 20th-century English novelist Elizabeth Jenkins

The American battalion was trapped, under siege and under fire, and one man was their best, last hope.Delivery Man: The Enemy-Alien Nisei Translator Who Saved His Battalion in World War II is the suspenseful, tragic and true story of a combat translator in a pioneering American special operations force, sent into the heart of a forgotten jungle war in which he fought soldiers of his own ancestry and put his life on the line to save hundreds of his brothers. U.S. Army Sgt. Roy Matsumoto was born in Los Angeles and lived for seven years in Hiroshima. His family remained in Japan in 1929, when he returned to Southern California alone and took a job delivering groceries. Like all Japanese-Americans, Roy’s life was upended by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by his internment by his own country – first at the Los Angeles horse-racing track on which Sea Biscuit had triumphed two years before, and then at another concentration camp in Arkansas. In exchange for his freedom, Roy volunteered to join the U.S. Army, which trained him and sent him into northern Burma. That’s where the American commando force known as Merrill’s Marauders braved a malarial jungle to engage a tenacious enemy force on a winning streak.  Though contact with his family in Japan would be impossible for the duration of the war, Roy took comfort that their home city of Hiroshima, sheltered by an inland sea, was considered relatively safe from attack.

'My name is Renee Salt. I am 94 years old, I am a witness to history. I am a survivor.This is my attempt to make sense of a story which I can scarcely believe happened to me. Some of these pages are drenched in horror, but every so often a little light of hope and humanity shines through.There is love, too - so much love.'Renee and her mother Sala never left each other's sides. From invasion to liberation, September 1939 to April 1945, as Renee was marched, herded and shoved from ghetto to camp, there was one constant. One hand which clutched hers - her mother's. Every day for six years, mother and daughter were tangled together in hell. From ghettos to slave labour, from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, they were a powerful source of solace and hope to one another. Renee knows that she is only alive today because of her mother, that it was the sheer force and power of her love that gave them both something fragile but beautiful to cling to in an ugly, depraved world. It was her mother who hid her, lied to the SS, went right when she was directed left - whose small actions had lifesaving consequences. Now, for Renee, the need to share has finally overcome the desire to forget. This is a love letter to a mother eighty years in the making.

The remarkable story of Sol Lurie, a child survivor of six concentration camps during the Holocaust, who continues to be a beacon of hope.After a bucolic childhood in Kovno, Lithuania, Sol was just eleven when the Nazis invaded and he and his family were forced to move into the Kovno Ghetto. The Kovno Ghetto was one of the only ghettos to later become a concentration camp, and Sol was among just a few Jewish survivors from Kovno. In this inspiring story of tenacity, character, faith, love, and forgiveness, we follow young Sol through heartbreak and fear, torment and tortue. Through Sol's eyes, we learn the history of the communities in Eastern Europe, especially Lithuania, which has long been a gap in the wider history of the Holocaust. Along the way, we meet the righteous few who helped save young Sol's life. After being imprisoned in six other concentration camps for a total of four years, Sol was liberated from Buchenwald on his 15th birthday. To this day, he still joyfully celebrates every year the day he was born and liberated. Miraculously, Sol’s three brothers and his father also survived the Holocaust. Despite the horrors of youth, Sol never lost his determination to live life to the fullest. He embarked on a new life in the United States and would thrive as a husband, father, grandfather, business owner, and an inspiration for the thousands of schoolchildren and adults who have heard Sol share his incredible tales of survival and the positive lessons he has learned from the most horrific of experiences We can all learn from Sol at a time when divisiveness reigns. Despite all that he suffered and the death of his mother and nearly all his very large extended family, Sol’s courage and positive attitude continues to inspire as he actively seeks out and see the good in others. He wholeheartedly believes in bashert, a Yiddish word that means destiny, which gave him his “mission to educate others to love, not to hate.” Life Must Go On! is a moving and vital new addition to the history of the Holocaust and chorus of surivor stories that resonate throughout the generations.

Embark on a riveting journey through the life of Lydia Komape, an unsung hero in South African history.

This is the first book about a significant South African figure, Joe Modise, who worked in the shadows for much of his life. His journey took him from an impoverished childhood to being chief of a guerrilla army and then Minister of Defence in a liberated country.

Written in 1889 (CW 5)Steiner met Nietzsche's work in 1889. At once fascinated by Nietszche's style and repelled by certain pathological aspects of his consciousness, Steiner recognized Nietzsche's spiritual preeminence as a "fighter for freedom."Six years later, as a result of meeting Nietzsche's sister, Steiner encountered the dying philosopher himself. Thereafter, he spent several weeks in the Nietzsche archives. The result was this book, an essential stepping stone toward an understanding of anthroposophy.This book is a translation from German of Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit (GA 5).

Euphemia Lamb was painted and sculpted by many renowned artists during the period before the First World War, such as Augustus John, Henry Lamb, Ambrose McEvoy, Jacob Epstein and James Dickson Innes. She was at the vanguard of modern British art. She was also a literary muse for many leading writers of the period, including Virginia Woolf, Henri Pierre Roche and Aleister Crowley. Euphemia was the embodiment of the modern woman: sexually liberated, hard-working and ambitious. She used her connections in bohemian London and Paris to educate herself and advance the notion of what a woman could be in early twentieth-century British society. Euphemia was a pioneer who broke down barriers and her legacy survives in art and literature.

The Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), or the Compulsory Work Service, program remains one of the most unsettling features of France's history in World War II. Established by the Vichy government in 1943, this initiative saw young men provide forced labor, primarily within France or Germany, in support of the Third Reich's war effort. In this illuminating translation of the journal of Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers, a former teacher and forced laborer from Paris, Passing Misery documents Pasquiers' life within war-torn Europe, in unwilling service to the Nazi regime. By exploring Pasquiers' personal story, this book offers an unrivalled insight into the complexities of war-time collaboration, resistance, and moral culpability, shedding light on one of the darkest chapters in European history.

In the annals of legendary Wild West desperados, Belle Starr is remembered to this day as the Bandit Queen. Shortly after her murder in 1889, a highly romanticized, sensational book titled Bella Starr . . . The Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James was published-the first of scores of high-profile portraits to brand Starr as a villain. Now, celebrated historian Michael Wallis parses over a century of mythmaking to reveal the woman behind the "Wanted" poster. From war-torn Carthage, Missouri, to rollicking Scyene, Texas, Starr indeed ran in the same circles as notorious outlaws Cole Younger and Jesse James, but Wallis shows that the crimes ascribed to her were embellished. The result is a breathtaking portrait of a woman demonized for refusing to accept the genteel Victorian ideals expected of her. Instead, she chose to live her life outside the law, riding sidesaddle with a pearl-handled Colt .45 strapped to her hip.

Pre-order now and discover a story 400 years in the making - the definitive biography of the man who dominated England in the first half of the sixteenth century__________Born into the English Wars of the Roses, educated in the European Renaissance, enthralled by the Age of Exploration and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history.Is he a saintly scholar, the visionary author of Utopia and an inspiration for statesmen, socialists and intellectuals even today?Or is he the stubborn zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?Thomas More: A Life is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many received interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe. Based on new archival discoveries and drawing on more than a decade's research into More's life and work, this is a richly-told story of family, faith and politics, and a compelling portrait of a man who, more than four hundred years after his death, remains the most brilliant mind of the Renaissance.__________