The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution.David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. In a remarkably vivid and page-turning work of history, he transports the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledging new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter?Combining startling narrative power and bold insight, The Terror is written with verve and exceptional pace. It is a dramatic new interpretation of the French Revolution that draws troubling parallels with today's political and religious dundamentalism."A vivid and powerful narrative of the years 1789-95... The narrative is dense yet fast-moving, from the storming of the Bastille to the execution of King Louis XVI to the paranoid politics of the National Convention." --DAVID GILMOUR, THE New York Times Book Review"In such alarming times, it is important to understand what exactly terror is, how it works politically, and what, if anything, can be done to combat it. The historian David Andress has made a serious contribution to this central subject of our times with an accessible account of the way terror overtook the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century." --RUTH SCURR, The Times (London)DAVID ANDRESS, a leading historian of the French Revolution, is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

    Rousseau's concepts of the natural goodness of man, the corrupting influence of social institutions, and the right and the power of the people to overthrow their oppressors and create new and more responsive forms of government and society are as richly relevant today as they were in eighteenth-century France.Includes: The Social Contract Discourse on Inequality Discourse on the Arts and Sciences "The Creed of a Savoyard Priest" (from Emile)

    Looks at the life and ideas of the French philosopher.

    This lively historical account reveals Napoleon's often neglected private life and passionate relationships, in which he wildly worshiped certain women as often as he disdained others.Vividly evoking the political and social upheavals of post-Revolutionary France, Hibbert captures the vibrant characters who made history, not only on the battlefield but also in the bedroom, including Josephine, the charming Creole from Martinique; the plain and pliant Marie-Louise of Austria; and Marie Walewska, the sumptuous young Polish countess who, despite initial reluctance, was persuaded by her elderly husband to fall in love with Napoleon.Praised by A. N. Wilson as an "outstanding popular historian, " Hibbert dramatically brings to life the most intimate influences on Napoleon's turbulent career and character.

    The range, charm, and vitality of his talents—he was a playwright, actor, composer, librettist, lyricist, director, painter, writer, cabaret singer, wit—brought him into close encounters, and often close friendship, with the great and the gifted. He knew everybody who was anybody in the theater and in the movies, in literature and in politics, on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those at his “marvelous party”: George Bernard Shaw . . . T. E. Lawrence . . . Virginia Woolf . . . the Churchills . . . Daphne Du Maurier . . . Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her; he wrote back saying he almost accepted) . . . Ian Fleming . . . W. Somerset Maugham . . . Marlene Dietrich (he advised her, “To hell with God damned ‘L’Amour.’ It always causes far more trouble than it is worth”) . . . Tallulah Bankhead . . . Edith Sitwell . . . FDR . . . Gertrude Lawrence (in a cable about Private Lives: “Have written delightful new comedy stop good part for you stop wonderful one for me stop”), and many more. There are letters about his productions of Bitter Sweet . . . Cavalcade . . . In Which We Serve . . . Brief Encounter . . . Private Lives, etc. . . . about his activities during World War II (he was a spy for the British government along with co-conspirator Cary Grant) . . . about the move to make him a knight that was endorsed in a personal letter from King George VI and blocked by Winston Churchill. Here are letters to and from his beloved mother, Violet . . . his longtime set and costume designer, Gladys Calthrop . . . his traveling companion from the 1930s on, Lord Amherst . . . and his business manager and onetime lover, Jack Wilson, in which he reveals his “secret heart.”Profoundly savvy, witty, loving, bitchy, and often surprisingly moving, The Letters of Noël Coward gives us “Destiny’s Tot” at his crackling best. An irresistible portrait of a time, of the man himself, and of the world he lived in and enchanted.

    Seung Sahn received hundreds of letters per month, each of which he answered personally, and some of the best of which are included here. His frank and funny style, familiar to readers of Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, is seen here in a most intimate form. The beloved Zen master not only answers questions on Zen teaching and practice, but applies an enlightened approach to problems with work, relationships, suffering, and the teacher-student relationship.

    She was Lord Byron's daughter and acted as interpretress for Charles Babbage, the computer pioneer. She was one of the first people to write programmes of instruction for Babbage's analytical engines.

    Between 1915, when they first began to write to each other, and 1946, when Stieglitz died, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz exchanged over 5,000 letters (more than 25,000 pages) that describe their daily lives in profoundly rich detail. This long-awaited volume features some 650 letters, carefully selected and annotated by leading photography scholar Sarah Greenough.In O'Keeffe's sparse and vibrant style and Stieglitz's fervent and lyrical manner, the letters describe how they met and fell in love in the 1910s; how they carved out a life together in the 1920s; how their relationship nearly collapsed during the early years of the Depression; and how it was reconstructed in the late 1930s and early 1940s. At the same time, the correspondence reveals the creative evolution of their art and ideas; their friendships with many of the most influential figures in early American modernism (Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Paul Strand, to name a few); and their relationships and conversations with an exceptionally wide range of key figures in American and European art and culture (including Duncan Phillips, Diego Rivera, D. H. Lawrence, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Marcel Duchamp). Furthermore, their often poignant prose reveals insights into the impact of larger cultural forces—World Wars I and II; the booming economy of the 1920s; and the Depression of the 1930s—on two articulate, creative individuals.

    The five seasoned musicians – Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison – had gathered to write and record what was intended as a throwaway B-side track. After Harrison submitted the completed song to his record company, he was told that it was too good to be hidden away on the flip side of a European single. Instead, he was instructed to regroup with his fellow musicians and to record an entire album of songs. But for the newly formed supergroup, there was no roadmap, no detailed plan, no record company involvement and no expectation of success. Nicknamed the Billion Dollar Quintet, the five musical legends could all speak of their own individual achievements, their own musical triumphs, as well as their own extended periods of fan indifference. Some of the members had already establishment close knit relationships, while others barely knew each other. This book chronicles how the Traveling Wilburys were formed, what went into the making of their two hit albums and why they never toured. The book also examines how the careers and personal lives of these five men overlapped as well as how they influenced one another. Lastly, this book looks at the group’s musical legacy.

    She was an adventurous, independent-minded twenty-one-year-old; Kerouac was already running on empty at thirty-five. This unique book, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares the vivid and unusual perspective of what it meant to be young, Beat, and a woman in the Cold War fifties. Reflecting on those tumultuous years, Johnson seamlessly interweaves letters and commentary, bringing to life her love affair with one of American letters' most fascinating and enigmatic figures.

    He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia. Meeting only sporadic opposition and defeating it easily along the way, the huge army moved forward, advancing ineluctably on Moscow through the long hot days of summer. On September 14, Napoleon entered the Russian capital, fully anticipating the Czar’s surrender. Instead he encountered an eerily deserted city—and silence. The French army sacked the city, and by October, with Moscow in ruins and his supply lines overextended, and with the Russian winter upon him, Napoleon had no choice but to turn back. One of the greatest military debacles of all time had only just begun. In this famous memoir, Philippe-Paul de Ségur, a young aide-de-camp to Napoleon, tells the story of the unfolding disaster with the keen eye of a crack reporter and an astute grasp of human character. His book, a fundamental inspiration for Tolstoy’s War and Peace, is a masterpiece of military history that teaches an all-too-timely lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.

    Yes, I want to write about my own country till I simply exhaust my store. Not only because it is a "sacred debt" that I pay to my country because my brother and I were born there, but also because in my thoughts I range with him over all the remembered places. I am never far away from them. I long to renew them in writing.' In numerous letters and journals, Katherine Mansfield recorded her feelings, thoughts and observations about writing, about the New Zealand of her childhood, the Europe of her later years, the people she encountered, the every day and the extraordinary. This classic selection - the only one available that combines material from both her letters and journals - brings together the pieces that most illuminate her character, her life and her stories. Chosen by renowned scholar and acclaimed writer C.K. Stead, they are a lively and informative entree to one of our most gifted writers.ABOUT THE EDITOR: Well-known New Zealand novelist, poet, critic, Karl Stead was for 20 years Professor of English at the University of Auckland until he took early retirement in 1986 to write full time.He has won a number of awards, including the New Zealand Book Award for both poetry and fiction and the Mansfield/Menton Fellowship. He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to NZ Literature, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995 and Honorary Visiting Fellow at St John's College Oxford in 1996. He spends about nine months of the year at home in New Zealand writing, and travels to the UK and Europe, and sometimes to the US, during the northern hemisphere summer. His recent novel, Mansfield, is his tenth work of fiction.

      In June of 1940, Leon Werth and his wife fled Paris before the advancing Nazis Army. 33 Days is his eyewitness account of that experience, one of the largest civilian dispacements in history. Encouraged to write 33 Days by his dear friend, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, Werth finished the manuscript while in hiding in the Jura mountains.   Saint-Exupéry smuggled the manuscript out of Nazi-occupied France, wrote an introduction to the work and arranged for its publication in the United States by Brentanos. But the publication never came to pass, and Werth’s manuscript would disappear for more than fifty years until the first French edition, in 1992. It has since become required reading in French schools.   This, the first-ever English language translation of 33 Days, includes Saint-Exupéry’s original introduction for the book, long thought to be lost. It is presented it here for the first time in any language. After more than seventy years, 33 Days appears—complete and as it was fully intended.

    While Gellhorn's wartime dispatches rank among the best of the century, her personal letters are their equal: as vivid and fascinating as anything she ever published. Gellhorn's correspondence from 1930 to 1996--chronicling friendships with figures as diverse as Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, and H. G. Wells, as well as her tempestuous marriage to Ernest Hemingway--paint a vivid picture of the twentieth century as she lived it. Caroline Moorehead, who was granted exclusive access to the letters, has expertly edited this fascinating volume, providing prefatory and interstitial material that contextualizes Gellhorn's correspondence within the arc of her entire life. The letters introduce us to the woman behind the correspondent--a writer of wit, charm, and vulnerability. The result is an exhilarating, intimate portrait of one of the most accomplished women of modern times.

    Daughter of the Empress of Austria; marriage to the prince of France; the ill-fated Affair of the Necklace, tales of excess and infidelity; her flight from Paris; her execution by guillotine. Until now the reality about this strong willed, compassionate and beautiful woman has proven elusive. Madame Campan, an accomplice to many of the actions above and more, here strives to reveal the truth.