It contains reminiscences of many periods of the author's life. He associated with a number of celebrities of his times, including Jean-Martin Charcot, Louis Pasteur, Henry James, and Guy de Maupassant, all of whom figure in the book. He also associated with the very poorest of people, including Italian immigrants in Paris and plague victims in Naples, as well as rural people such as the residents of Capri, and the Nordic Lapplanders. He was an unabashed animal lover, and animals figure prominently in several stories, perhaps most notably his alcoholic pet baboon, Billy.The stories cover a wide range in terms of both how serious they are and how literal. Several discussions with animals and various supernatural beings take place, and the final chapter actually takes place after Munthe has died and includes his discussions with Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven. At no point does Munthe seem to take himself particularly seriously, but some of the things he discusses are very serious, such as his descriptions of rabies research in Paris, including euthanasia of human patients, and a suicide attempt by a man convinced he had been exposed to the disease.Several of the most prominent figures in Munthe's life are not mentioned in Story of San Michele. His wife and children do not figure in the narrative; very little of his time in England is mentioned, even though he married a British woman, his children were largely raised in England, and he himself became a British citizen during the First World War. His decades-long service as personal physician and confidante to the Queen of Sweden is mentioned only in the most oblique terms; at one point, while naming her only as "she who must be mother to a whole nation", he mentions that she regularly brings flowers for the grave of one of her dogs buried at Villa San Michele, at another point, one of his servants is out walking his dogs, and encounters the Queen, who mentions having given the dog to Munthe.Munthe published a few other reminiscences and essays during the course of his life, and some of them were incorporated into The Story of San Michele, which vastly overshadows all his other writing both in length and popularity. Notably, his accounts of working with a French ambulance corps during the First World War are not included.World wide, the book was immensely successful; by 1930, there had been twelve editions of the English version alone, and Munthe added a second preface. A third preface was written in 1936 for an illustrated edition

    Capek interviewed Masaryk over a number of years and produced a single narrative that tells Masaryk's incredible story in a voice as ordinary yet magical as the best of Capek's fictional characters. The result is a biographical work like no other, in form or in content.

    Autobiographical account by a leader of the October 1917 Russian revolution, the Soviet Red Army, and the battle initiated by Lenin against the Stalinist bureaucracy.

    He shared to the full the perilous life of a primitive community, yet possessed a shrewd and humorous detachment that enabled him to observe and describe the world. His book is a valuable description of a now vanished way of life; his sole purpose in writing it was in his own words, 'to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again'.The Blasket Islands are three miles off Irelands Dingle Peninsula. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands, and has made their literature famous throughout the world. The 7 Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs and reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished.

    . . . In a sense he is too good to be true, this man who wrought such mighty deeds within the lifetime of our fathers and grandfathers; in a sense if he had not existed we should have had to create him. --from the introduction by Henry Steele Commager

    It brilliantly refutes the notion that Grant relied only on brute force to achieve his victories, demonstrating instead the mastery of mobility, surprise, cool judgment, and strategic coordination that made Grant the premier Civil War general."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom"A classic analysis of U.S. Grant, Fuller's work makes a strong case for the general as the pre-eminent soldier of his era. It is essential reading for students of Civil War military leadership."--Gary Gallagher, editor of Fighting for the Confederacy

    Translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul. Illustrated. A full-length life of the martyred President from his obscure beginnings to his tragic end-told in the same penetrating manner as this eminent German biographer used in writing the lives of Goethe and Napoleon. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

    In fact, such a model awaits them, if only they turn their eyes to their own past . . . to America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge.  Coolidge’s masterful autobiography offers urgent lessons for our age of exploding debt, increasingly centralized power, and fierce partisan division. This expanded and annotated volume, edited by Coolidge biographer Amity Shlaes and authorized by the Coolidge family, is the definitive edition of the text that presidential historian Craig Fehrman calls “the forgotten classic of presidential writing.”  To read this volume is to understand the tragic extent to which historians underrate President Coolidge. The Coolidge who emerges in these pages is a model of character, principle, and humility—rare qualities in Washington, then as now. A man of great faith, Coolidge told Americans: “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.” Although he emphasized economics, Coolidge insisted on the importance of “things of the spirit.” At the height of his popularity, he chose not to run again when his reelection was all but assured. In this autobiography, Coolidge explains his mindset: “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” For all his modesty, Coolidge left an expansive legacy—one we would do well to study today. Shlaes and ­coeditor ­Matthew Denhart draw out the lessons from Coolidge’s life and career in an enlightening introduction and annotations to Coolidge’s text. To aid Coolidge scholars young and old, the editors have also assembled nearly three dozen photographs, several of Coolidge’s greatest speeches, a timeline of Coolidge’s life, and afterwords by former Vermont governor James H. Douglas and two of Coolidge’s great-grandchildren, Jennifer Coolidge Harville and Christopher Coolidge Jeter. This autobiography combats the myths about one of our most misunderstood presidents. It also shows us how much we still have to learn from Calvin Coolidge.

    But unlike other Southern writers who made Davis a larger-than-life hero of the Lost Cause, Tate pulls no punches in his assessment of the President's weaknesses as well as his strengths, and how they may have crippled the Confederacy from the very beginning.

    Madison, Iowa, and raised a family of seven children. Her story is told with recollections, letters, newspaper items, and provides one of the most vivid and personal accounts of life during the settlement and domestication of the Midwest.

    Used in many colleges as an introduction to the saint. Beautiful translation and story from the French edition.

    He published his account in 1929 when it attracted immediate attention and went through three printings. His epilogue on militarism presents a moving retrospect, inquiring into why and how his generation fought and concluding "We must face the fact that death is inevitable and hate lamentably common." Reprint edition: 2006: 224 pages, 8 illustrations, 2 maps. Softcover. (Scholar's Bookshelf)"Charles Edmonds" was pseudonym of Charles Carrington.

    This work is singularly complete in that part of Melville which most matters: his ideas, his feelings, his urges, his vision of life. Wherever possible, the author uses Melville's own language in describing his state of mind & experience. This is a wonderful biography of the man who is considered the greatest imaginative writer that America has produced, not to mention the author of "Moby Dick."

    In this remarkable story of survival by self-determination, courage, conviction, and hope, Duval discusses the hellish conditions endured in the penal colonies for 14 years. More than a historical document about the anarchist movement, this memoir serves as a call to action for mindful, conscious people to fight for their rights and stands as a monument to the enduring power of the human spirit.