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Dancing for Stalin: A Dancer's Story of Courage and Survival in Soviet Russia by Christina Ezrahi
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The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz
Jack Fairweather - 2019
The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz.It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp’s fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.
The Hamilton Affair
Elizabeth Cobbs - 2016
Croix. He went to America to pursue his education. Along the way he became one of the American Revolution’s most dashing—and unlikely—heroes. Adored by Washington, hated by Jefferson, Hamilton was a lightning rod: the most controversial leader of the American Revolution.She was the well-to-do daughter of one of New York’s most exalted families—feisty, adventurous, and loyal to a fault. When she met Alexander, she fell head over heels. She pursued him despite his illegitimacy, and loved him despite his infidelity. In 1816 (two centuries ago), she shamed Congress into supporting his seven orphaned children. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton started New York’s first orphanage. The only “founding mother” to truly embrace public service, she raised 160 children in addition to her own.With its flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and epic scope, The Hamilton Affair will take its place among the greatest novels of American history.
Sophie - A Most Unlikely Empress
Jacqueline Hines - 2011
Pius and idealistic, the young Sophie shed her cloak of innocence to become Catherine The Great. At the urging of her ambitious mother, Johanna, Sophie married Peter III, the only grandson of Russian legend, Peter I. After scandalous love affairs and the mysterious sudden death of her husband, Peter III, Catherine ascended the Russian throne. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the fact that Catherine had no moral or legal right to the Russian throne. During that era, the laws of succession were rigidly enforced. In Russia, there were three living heirs, each with a legitimate right to the throne; one of those heirs was her husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter I, a giant in Russian history, known affectionately as The Father of Russia. Catherine was cautioned repeatedly that she would not be able to sidestep her husband, Peter III and Ivan VI (who was living but in prison), while at the same time ignoring the rights of her own son, Paul I. Highly placed members of the Russian aristocracy warned Catherine that the Russian people would take up arms against her solely for the fact that she was German, not Russian. The fact that Catherine was able to overcome so many obstacles to ascend the throne of Russia is a monument to her brilliance, strength and determination. Not only was she crowned Empress, her rule would last thirty years. Catherine's extraordinary success as a ruler has made her a legend in her own right.
How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution
Lee Alan Dugatkin - 2016
But, despite appearances, these are not dogs—they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken—imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. This is the extraordinary, untold story of this remarkable undertaking. Most accounts of the natural evolution of wolves place it over a span of about 15,000 years, but within a decade, Belyaev and Trut’s fox breeding experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well. The foxes were bred using selection criteria for tameness, and with each generation, they became increasingly interested in human companionship. Trut has been there the whole time, and has been the lead scientist on this work since Belyaev’s death in 1985, and with Lee Dugatkin, biologist and science writer, she tells the story of the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all. In How to Tame a Fox, Dugatkin and Trut take us inside this path-breaking experiment in the midst of the brutal winters of Siberia to reveal how scientific history is made and continues to be made today. To date, fifty-six generations of foxes have been domesticated, and we continue to learn significant lessons from them about the genetic and behavioral evolution of domesticated animals. How to Tame a Fox offers an incredible tale of scientists at work, while also celebrating the deep attachments that have brought humans and animals together throughout time.
Rival Sisters: Mary & Elizabeth Tudor
Sylvia Barbara Soberton - 2019
It is the relationship between Elizabeth and her Scottish cousin Mary Stuart that is often discussed and pondered over while the relationship between Elizabeth and her own half sister is largely forgotten. Yet it is the relationship with Mary Tudor that forged Elizabeth’s personality and set her on the path to queenship. Mary’s reign was the darkest period in Elizabeth’s life. “I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me,” Elizabeth reminded her councillors when they pressed her to name a successor.It is time to tell the whole story of the fierce rivalry between the Tudor half sisters who became their father’s successors.
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
Maureen Corrigan - 2014
It's a book that has remained current for over half a century, fighting off critics and changing tastes in fiction. But do even its biggest fans know all there is to appreciate about The Great Gatsby?Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for "Fresh Air" and a Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out that while Gatsby may be the novel most Americans have read, it's also the ones most of us read too soon -- when we were "too young, too defensive emotionally, too ignorant about the life-deforming powers of regret" to really understand all that Fitzgerald was saying ("it's not the green light, stupid, it's Gatsby's reaching for it," as she puts it). No matter when or how recently you've read the novel, Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader, lecturer, and critic, her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements, but also its path to "classic" (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades), its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its commentaries on race, class, and gender.With rigor, wit, and an evangelistic persuasiveness, Corrigan will leave readers inspired to grab their old paperback copies of Gatsby and re-experience this great novel in an entirely new light.
Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family: The Inside Story of an American Dynasty
Roger Stone - 2016
In his usual “go for the jugular” style, Stone collaborates with Saint John Hunt—author, musician, and son of legendary CIA operative E. Howard Hunt—to make this a “no-holds-barred” history of the Bush family.The authors reveal Jeb to be a smug, entitled autocrat who both uses and hides behind his famous name as he mingles with international drug peddlers. They show how Jeb: Received a $4 million taxpayer bailout when his daddy was Vice President Used his insider status to make millions from Obamacare Avoided criminal prosecution on a fraudulent Federal loan Hypocritically supports the War on Drugs, despite his own shocking drug historyAfter detailing the vast litany of Jeb’s misdeeds, Stone travels back to Samuel, Prescott, George H. W., and George W. Bush to weave an epic story of privilege, greed, corruption, drug profiteering, assassination, and lies.
Jeb and the Bush Crime Family
will have you asking, “Why aren't these people in prison?”
This Book is Broken
Stuart Berman - 2008
The alternative music scene had all but died, and pre-packaged pop stars had filled the vacuum. But in a basement apartment in the heart of downtown Toronto, two musicians were forming a creative partnership that would revive the mass appeal of indie music and forever change how we think of a band.In this biography of the ever-evolving indie-rock collective, Broken Social Scene, music columnist Stuart Berman tracks the group's inception by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning; groundbreaking performances at Ted's Wrecking Yard that raised the band's local status to mythical proportions; Broken Social Scene's meteoric rise upon the release of breakout album You Forgot It In People; the creation of Arts & Crafts records with music-biz maverick Jeffrey Remedios; and life on the road with revolving bandmates, including members of Stars, Metric, The Dears, and international pop sensation Feist.Stuart Berman has drawn from hours of interviews with members and affiliates of Broken Social Scene, and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs, gig posters, and artwork to create a spectacular oral and visual history of this ever-evolving indie-rock collective.
The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
Isaiah Berlin - 1953
The masterly essay on Tolstoy's view of history, in which Sir Isaiah underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.
Rough Justice: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
Peter Elkind - 2010
By his late forties, he'd gone from Princeton to Harvard Law to dramatic success as a prosecutor and attorney general to the governorship of New York. Many thought he would become the first Jewish president of the United States. Then came the prostitution scandal that shocked and mystified the nation. Peter Elkind's definitive account gets at all sides of this complex man: the well-intentioned do-gooder, the aggressive lawyer, the hardball politician, the dutiful son, the loving husband and father, and the secretive "Client 9" of the Emperor's Club escort service. Elkind interviewed dozens of key sources ranging from Spitzer's family, friends, and closest aides, to targets of his high-profile investigations, to central players in the prostitution ring. He reveals many groundbreaking new details about Spitzer's rise, his short time as governor, and the way his enemies plotted against him. The result is a gripping, almost Shakespearean narrative-a tragedy of one man's noble intentions and fatal flaws and the powerful forces (both internal and external) that destroyed him.
Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From a Life
Michael Katakis - 2018
But the actual life underneath these various legends remains elusive; what did he look like as a laughing child or young soldier? What did he say in his most personal letters? How did the train tickets he held on his way from France to Spain or across the American Midwest transform him, and what kind of notes, for future stories or otherwise, did he take on these journeys? Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life answers these questions, and many others. Edited and with an introduction by the manager of the Hemingway estate, featuring a foreword by Hemingway’s son Patrick and an afterword by his grandson Seán, this rich and illuminating book tells the story of a major American icon through the objects he touched, the moments he saw, the thoughts he had every day. Featuring over four hundred dazzling images from every stage and facet of Hemingway’s life, many of them never previously published, this volume is a portrait unlike any other. From photos of Hemingway running with the bulls in Spain to candid letters he wrote to his wives and his publishers, it is a one-of-a-kind, stunning tribute to one of the most titanic figures in literature.
Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle
Clare Hunter - 2019
In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.
Year of the Flu: A World War I Medical Thriller
Millys Altman - 2017
He was eager to begin his first practice, but it turned out to be more than he bargained for. In just two years, in September, 1918, the entire village was sickened in rapid succession in the flu pandemic that killed quickly and indiscriminately throughout the world. It was wartime, and Nixon was unable to find help., This story is an up close and personal account of what it was like to be sick with the HINI type virus in 1918. It is a tale of a dedicated doctor whose selflessness, compassion and courage helped the villagers survive in the pandemic that killed more people in a year than the Black Death killed in a century...
Anne Frank: Life and Legacy
Jemma J. Saunders - 2015
In 1945, at the age of fifteen she died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, becoming one of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime. But through her writing her memory lives on. Her ‘Diary of a Young Girl’ remains one of the most widely read non-fiction books in the world and was described as ‘one of the greatest books of the last century’. Anne started keeping a diary shortly before she went into hiding with her family in 1942, and over the course of two years she honed her craft as a writer, documenting the details of their daily lives alongside her personal reflections, fears, and aspirations. By chance, the majority of her writings were saved after the family was arrested and in 1947, after much deliberation, her father, Otto, oversaw the publication of the first edition of her diary in the Netherlands. Within a decade, it had become an international bestseller. First adapted for both stage and screen in the 1950s, awareness and readership of Anne’s diary continued to grow and its author became a household name, gradually acquiring something of a symbolic status. 70 years on ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ still resonates just as powerfully with young and old readers alike. Jemma Saunders goes beyond Anne’s diary to fill in the gaps about her family history, her life before she went into hiding, and her final months at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A sobering tale, Anne Frank’s story is one that will continue to inspire generations of readers for decades to come. Jemma J Saunders works at the University of Birmingham. She is also the author of ‘The Holocaust: History in an Hour’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
Murder, Lies, and Cover-Ups: Who Killed Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Princess Diana?
David Gardner - 2018
We all famously recall where we were and what we were doing when JFK was assassinated, as well as the moments Elvis, Princess Diana, and Michael Jackson died. As for Marilyn Monroe, the candle flickered out long ago, but only now can the truth be told about how—and why—she died. After combing through thousands of recently declassified FBI files and interviewing key witnesses, crime analysts, and forensic experts during years of research, investigative writer David Gardner has unearthed new information that will transform the way we look at these iconic tragedies that have long fascinated and intrigued the general public. Legends: Murder, Lies, and Cover-Ups reveals that Elvis Presley died not as a self-obsessed caricature but as a genuine hero who may have signed his death warrant going undercover for the FBI; how Marilyn Monroe's secret affairs with JFK and his brother, Robert, left her in the crosshairs of a lethal conspiracy; why Princess Diana's death was no accident; who ordered President John F. Kennedy's assassination; and how on three occasions Michael Jackson “died” of painkiller drug overdoses in the months before his death. In the wake of new evidence and testimonies, Legends: Murder, Lies, and Cover-Ups provides many of the answers that have been elusive for so long, while explaining what it was about these enduring legends that made their legacies burn so bright.