Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who – with her young lover Percy Shelley – read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death – a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.

    Who knew that he also was a pivotal figure in the development of the airplane, the hydrofoil, genetic engineering, and more? Charlotte Gray does, and she tells us how and why she brought to life the passionate mind and heart of the man behind so many amazing ideas and innovations. --Lauren Nemroff Some Questions for Charlotte Gray [image] 1. Most people picture Alexander Graham Bell as that grandfatherly looking man with a long white beard who invented the telephone. What's wrong with that image? The image of Alexander Graham Bell as a kindly Santa Claus figure is the one we all know: It is as familiar as the one of Einstein with his hair in a frizzy grey mass. But when Alexander Graham Bell was struggling to invent the telephone, he was a skinny, clean-shaven, neurotically intense young man and a hypochondriac, with obsessive work habits and a very volatile nature. Reading his letters and journals, I was shocked to discover how often he would ricochet between euphoria and depression. Invention was Alexander Graham Bell's passion, but I frequently wondered whether, if he had not had an early success and the right wife, his difficult personality would have prevented him achieving anything. I think it is important to revise the grandfatherly stereotype of Bell in order to show that invention is difficult, and inventors are not easy, placid people to live with. 2. In what way does Bell's genius different from other inventors of his age, such as Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers? The wonderful thing about the inventions of such nineteenth century giants as Bell, Edison and the Wright brothers is that, with a little bit of effort, even those of us who never did Grade 12 physics can actually understand how their inventions worked. One could never say that about today's microelectronic technology. Intuition and imagination were all crucial for the breakthroughs made by Edison, the Wright brothers and Bell. However, what sets Bell apart from Edison and the Wright brothers was that he didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in his body. He was more like a holdover from the eighteenth century Enlightenment, while the others were go-getting twentieth-century hustlers. Edison was always looking for financial backers; he announced his breakthroughs before he had even built working prototypes; he was one of the first inventors to put together a real R and D team at a purpose-built laboratory, at Menlo Park. He understood that invention is, in his own words, "One percent inspiration, ninety percent perspiration." Similarly the Wright Brothers were eager to make money out of their flying machines. They refused to share their technological breakthroughs, guarded their patents fiercely, and wouldn't give any demonstrations to the public of their biplanes. Bell was the opposite--totally absorbed in extending the frontiers of knowledge, and completely careless about commercial exploitation of his ideas. 3. Is it true that "necessity is the mother of invention" or is it something else? Invention has many mothers - the right materials, a widespread understanding that this will improve the world in some way, the right individual to pursue the elusive dream. In the case of the telephone, one can argue that there was no overwhelming necessity for a new form of communication: the telegraph had been working well for 30 years, and only a few people realized that a device that could carry the human voice, rather than the Morse code, would pull people together in a revolutionary way. As soon as telephones appeared in the market, their advantages were obvious. But there was still incredible resistance. In Britain, the upper classes were slow to acquire telephones because they posed a class issue: who should answer them? Everybody knew that, in a house with servants, the servant answered the door when the telegraph boy rang the bell. But should master or servant speak on the phone? The democratic nature of the telephone--anybody could use it, not just qualified operators--also shackled its spread. In Russia after the revolution, Stalin is said to have vetoed the idea of a modern telephone system. "It will unmake our work," the dictator decreed. "No greater instrument for counter-revolution and conspiracy can be imagined." So did necessity drive the invention of the telephone? No--when Bell first started speculating on its impact, people thought he was mad. But it quickly became a total necessity…imagine life without electronic communication today! 4. It was amazing to learn that Bell's mother and his wife were both deaf, and that from an early age he was immersed in research on the nature of sound and oral communication. How important were these personal relationships in shaping his outlook and inventions? One of my greatest surprises when I started research for Reluctant Genius was the discovery that Bell's first ambition was to be a teacher of the deaf, and that he remained committed to the cause of improved education for the hearing impaired throughout his life. I had no idea of this side of him, or of his long relationship with Helen Keller. The fact that the two most important women in his life, his mother and his wife, were deaf was of crucial importance both to his own work, and to his attitude to others. His respect for their intelligences and personalities meant that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he never assumed that deafness was linked to intellectual disability. Moreover, his scientific interest in their condition informed his telephone research. Because he knew why their ears didn't work, he understood how sound should reach the brain in a hearing person's ear, through the ear drum. None of his competitors made that intuitive leap. Their early attempts to build working telephones were foiled because they didn't include the diaphragm that mimicked the action of the ear drum, and which was the key feature of Bell's first phone. Lastly, Bell was also fascinated by the intergenerational transmission of deafness. This led to his research on genetics in general - and the program he initiated at his summer home, in Cape Breton, to breed a flock of "super sheep" that would always have twin births. 5. Bell's wife, Mabel Hubbard Bell, was a remarkable person in her own right. Why was it so important to tell her story? Too often, biographies of "Great Men" suggest they achieved everything by their own efforts. A few did, of course, but most depended on the support and encouragement of others--parents, partners, associates--to provide the right environment in which they could achieve their goals. Behind every great man….This was the case with Alexander Graham Bell. He would always have had his "Eureka Moment", in the summer of 1874, when he realized how a "talking telegraph" might work. But without Mabel, we probably would never have heard of him. He would not have patented the invention or found the business partners who helped him moved his invention from the laboratory to the market place. Mabel's father, Gardiner Hubbard, was his patent lawyer: Mabel herself ensured that he went to the Philadelphia Exposition, in 1876, to demonstrate his new apparatus. In later years, Mabel provided all kinds of other practical help, in ensuring that her exasperating husband could focus on his inventions. She handled the financial side of their marriage: she found qualified young men who could help him work on his flying machines: she was always cheering him up and stroking his ego when he got depressed. And she created, along with their two daughters, a warm family environment which gave balance to Bell's life - and which so many of his contemporaries, including Thomas Edison, never enjoyed. I was determined to give Mabel her due in the story of Bell. I found her such an attractive and intriguing figure. She was stone deaf, ten years younger than her husband, and their relationship began as a teacher-student one. It would be easy to assume that this brilliant, world famous man would be the dominant figure in the relationship. In fact, the reverse is true. 6. What do you think Bell would think of cell phones, the internet and other wireless means of communication? Bell himself anticipated "electric communication": he was very frustrated by how long it took for a letter from Nova Scotia to reach Europe. I'm sure he would be delighted by the internet. However, he would be appalled by the constant buzz of other technological advances, and the way we've allowed them to trump all other forms of human intercourse. This is a man who wouldn't have a telephone in his own study, because its ring would disturb his train of thought. He was a gracious, well-mannered man who would have been horrified by the way many of us let our cell phones to interrupt our face-to-face conversations. And if somebody pulled out a Blackberry and started punching into it while Bell was speaking of him--well, Alec would have muttered, "Shee-e-esh" (the nearest he ever got to swearing) and stomped out of the room. 7. What was the most exciting research discovery that you made? As a biographer, I have to say that my most exciting discovery was the wealth of material I had to work with. Because Alexander Graham Bell could never speak to his wife on the telephone, he and Mabel exchanged long, intimate, colourful letters whenever they were apart--and that was often. I was thrilled to discover, at the Alexander Graham Bell Historic Site in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 180 three-ring binders of family correspondence (another set is housed at the Library of Congress, Washington.) These letters let me explore the inner-workings of the mind of a genius, and of a remarkable marriage, in a way that I had hardly dared hope for. I was also amazed at the range of Bell's activities. The telephone, the photophone (which sent sounds down beams of light), an early iron lung, a desalination process for salt water, flying machines, hydrofoils, genetic experiments…his scientific interests were enormously varied. And at the same time, he was doing so much else, for example with the Smithsonian Institute, and the National Geographic Society. And throughout his career, there was his long-running commitment to deaf education. It was hard not to be overwhelmed! 8. What are you working on right now? Yes, I'm already launched on my next biography. (In fact, I find it very hard not to start my next book before the previous one is even in the stores--I have a psychological need to live both my own life and someone else's!) My next project is a short biography of Nellie McClung, the Canadian author and political activist.

    Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles is one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. The subject of several biographies, now Miles speaks out himself about his extraordinary life.Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. For the first time Miles talks about his five-year silence. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he overcame it. He condemns the racism he has encountered in the music business and in American society generally. And he discusses the women in his life. But above all, Miles talks about music and musicians, including the legends he has played with over the years: Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Trane, Mingus, and many others.The man who has given us some of the most exciting music of the past few decades has now given us a compelling and fascinating autobiography, featuring a concise discography and thirty-two pages of photographs.

    During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-and enjoy every moment of it. In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff. You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth-especially your own.

    Swift and Defoe used his experiences as inspiration in writing Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Captain Cook relied on his observations while voyaging around the world. Coleridge called him a genius and "a man of exquisite mind." In the history of exploration, nobody has ventured further than Englishman William Dampier. Yet while the exploits of Cook, Shackleton, and a host of legendary explorers have been widely chronicled, those of perhaps the greatest are virtually invisible today—an omission that Diana and Michael Preston have redressed in this vivid, compelling biography.As a young man Dampier spent several years in the swashbuckling company of buccaneers in the Caribbean. At a time when surviving one voyage across the Pacific was cause for celebration, Dampier ultimately journeyed three times around the world; his bestselling books about his experiences were a sensation, influencing generations of scientists, explorers, and writers. He was the first to deduce that winds cause currents and the first to produce wind maps across the world, surpassing even the work of Edmund Halley. He introduced the concept of the "sub-species" that Darwin later built into his theory of evolution, and his description of the breadfruit was the impetus for Captain Bligh's voyage on the Bounty. Dampier reached Australia 80 years before Cook, and he later led the first formal expedition of science and discovery there.A Pirate of Exquisite Mind restores William Dampier to his rightful place in history—one of the pioneers on whose insights our understanding of the natural world was built.

    As much as any person in the Confederate pantheon, even Robert E. Lee, he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. Jackson is also considered, without argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures. His brilliance at the art of war tied Abraham Lincoln and the Union high command in knots and threatened the ultimate success of the Union armies. Jackson’s strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of how war was waged; he was so far ahead of his time that his techniques would be studied generations into the future. In April 1862 Jackson was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. By June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western world. He had, moreover, given the Confederate cause what it had recently lacked—hope—and struck fear into the hearts of the Union. Rebel Yell is written with the swiftly vivid narrative that is Gwynne’s hallmark and is rich with battle lore, biographical detail, and intense conflict between historical figures. Gwynne delves deep into Jackson’s private life, including the loss of his young beloved first wife and his regimented personal habits. It traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the Civil War, the period that encompasses his rise from obscurity to fame and legend; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero.

    His is one of the great voices of our time."--Andrew SolomonHailed as "an eloquent and seemingly unsilenceable voice of freedom" by The New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last hundred years while also illuminating his artistic process.Once an intimate of Mao Zedong and the nation's most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei's father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist--and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime.Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his life story and that of his father, whose creativity was stifled.At once ambitious and intimate, Ai Weiwei's 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

    From the eighties through today, from Rio to All You Need is Now, John writes about the music, the parties, and the MTV videos that made millions swoon.With Duran Duran, John Taylor has created some of the greatest music of our time. From the disco dazzle of debut single ‘Planet Earth’ right up to their latest number one album, All You Need is Now, Duran Duran has always had the power to sweep the world onto its feet. It’s been a ride – and for John in particular, the ride has been wild, thrilling... and dangerous. Now, for the first time, he tells his incredible story. A tale of dreams fulfilled, lessons learned and demons conquered. A shy only child, Nigel John Taylor wasn’t an obvious candidate for pop stardom and frenzied girl panic. But when he ditched his first name and picked up a bass guitar, everything changed. John Formed Duran Duran with his friend Nick Rhodes in the summer of 1978, and they were soon joined by Roger Taylor, then Andy Taylor and finally Simon Le Bon. Together they were an immediate, massive global success story, their pictures on millions of walls, every single a worldwide hit. In his frank, compelling autobiography, John recounts the highs –hanging out with icons like Bowie, Warhol and even James Bond; dating Vogue models and driving fast cars – all the while playing hard with the band he loved. But there were tough battles ahead – troubles that brought him to the brink of self-destruction – before turning his life around. Told with humor, honesty and hard-won wisdom, and packed with exclusive pictures, In the Pleasure Groove is a fascinating, irresistible portrait of a man who danced into the fire... and came through the other side.

    From there he moved to documentary series for LWT and over the years worked on a variety of quiz shows (Win, Lose or Draw, Pets Win Prizes, TV Heroes), as well two television commercials which made him a household name—Daz and Mars Bars. With a number of guest appearences on comedy shows such as Have I Got News For You, Shooting Stars, and Room 101, Danny has also presented on BBC Radio since 1989. Most recently he presents a weekday show on BBC London 94.9 and a weekly show on BBC Radio 5 Live. This book charts Danny's showbiz career, the highs and lows, and everything in between, including the accusation that he killed Bob Marley.

    Richards had an extraordinary girlhood in ultra-conservative Texas, where her hell-raising parents—her civil rights attorney father and political activist mother—taught their kids to be troublemakers. In the Richards household, the “dinner table was never for eating—it was for sorting precinct lists.”She watched her mother, Ann, transform herself from a housewife to a force in American politics who made a name for herself as the straight-talking, truth-telling governor of Texas. But Richards also witnessed the pitfalls of public life that are unique to women, and the constant struggle to protect and expand equal rights—both exemplified by her marathon congressional testimony, where she held her own against hostile questions for five hours.As a young woman, Richards worked as a labor organizer alongside women earning a minimum wage, and learned that those in power don’t give it up without a fight. Now, after years of advocacy, resistance, and progressive leadership, she shares her story for the first time—from the joy and heartbreak of activism to the challenges of raising kids, having a life, and making change, all at the same time. She shines a light on the people and lessons that have gotten her through good times and bad, and encourages readers to take risks, make mistakes, and make trouble along the way. Richards has dedicated her life to taking on injustice, and her memoir will inspire readers to hope and action.

    Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?“October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. “December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested [they] not tell Howard anything about it.”Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

    Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela's personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the postapartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency--a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice.While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with Myself allows, for the first time, unhindered insight into the human side of the icon.

    Her royal birth gave her claim to the thrones of two nations; her marriage to the young French dauphin promised to place a third glorious crown on her noble head. Instead, Mary Stuart became the victim of her own impulsive heart, scandalizing her world with a foolish passion that would lead to abduction, rape, and even murder. Betrayed by those she most trusted, she would be lured into a deadly game of power, only to lose to her envious and unforgiving cousin, Elizabeth I. Here is her story, a queen who lost a throne for love, a monarch pampered and adored even as she was led to her beheading, the unforgettable woman who became a legend for all time.

    "I am a woman. I am a fisherman. . . I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown." Greenlaw also happens to be one of the most successful fishermen in the Grand Banks commercial fleet, though until the publication of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, "nobody cared." Greenlaw's boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the doomed Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the mother of all storms in 1991 and became the focus of Junger's book.The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right -- proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster. There is the weather, the constant danger of mechanical failure, the perils of controlling five sleep-, women-, and booze-deprived young fishermen in close quarters, not to mention the threat of a bad fishing run: "If we don't catch fish, we don't get paid, period. In short, there is no labor union." Greenlaw's straightforward, uncluttered prose underscores the qualities that make her a good captain, regardless of gender: fairness, physical and mental endurance, obsessive attention to detail. But, ultimately, Greenlaw proves that the love of fishing -- in all of its grueling, isolating, suspenseful glory -- is a matter of the heart and blood, not the mind. "I knew that the ocean had stories to tell me, all I needed to do was listen." -- Svenja Soldovieri

    Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.