Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

    But the journey that led him there was neither inevitable nor smooth.  This authoritative biography focuses on the evolution of Napoleon as a leader and debunks many of the myths that are often repeated about him—sensational myths often propagated by Napoleon himself. Here, Philip Dwyer sheds new light on Napoleon’s inner life—especially his darker side and his passions—to reveal a ruthless, manipulative, driven man whose character has been disguised by the public image he carefully fashioned to suit the purposes of his ambition. Dwyer focuses acutely on Napoleon’s formative years, from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his flirtation with radicals of the French Revolution, from his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt to the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799. One of the first truly modern politicians, Napoleon was a master of “spin,” using the media to project an idealized image of himself. Dwyer’s biography of the young Napoleon provides a fascinating new perspective on one of the great figures of modern history.

    To some he was a monster and a criminal and nothing more; to others, a literary genius; to still others, an apostle of freedom who dared to expose society's hypocrisies in sexual matters. But who was the real Marquis de Sade?In this definitive biography, the first to have complete access to the Sade family archives, Maurice Lever brilliantly reconstructs the life and times of the author of Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom. Bringing the eighteenth century to life as vividly as Simon Schama does in Citizens, Lever paints a minutely detailed portrait of the aristocratic milieu that produced the "divine marquis." The exquisite subtleties of this hierarchy, where Sade was not alone in thinking that his inferiors existed for his pleasure, emerge from hundreds of letters in which the men and women of the past speak in their own voices. In Sade we learn how a count went about seeking a suitable wife for his son; how a libertine courted an opera singer; how a police spy described the debauches of dukes and bishops for the delectation of the king at Versailles.Above all, we find a society headed for ruin. Sade gets caught up in great events. He is imprisoned in the Bastille just before it is stormed. Years later he is incarcerated in a revolutionary prison, sentenced to die on the very day that Robespierre is deposed. He escapes the Reign of Terror only to run afoul of that other tyrant, Napoleon, who is persuaded that this by now elderly, corpulent man of letters poses a mortal danger to the greatest empire the world has ever seen.This was a life, then, of washbuckling adventure, narrow escapes, wild abandon, and bloody crime. Yet the marquis was not unloved. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is Maurice Lever's analysis of the relation between the marquis and his wife, a demure, religious woman who tried to rescue from persecution the man who betrayed her with her own sister. Freud would have found it fascinating, and so will any reader curious about "dangerous liaisons" and the extremes of human behavior. Irresistibly readable, Sade is a monumental work that offers an extraordinary portrait of a life, a time, and a love—in all its splendor and perversity.To some the Marquis de Sade was a monster, to others an apostle of sexual freedom and a literary genius. Lever reconstructs the life of the "divine marquis" in all its splendor and perversity. Named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

    Christopher Herold vigorously tells the story of the fierce Madame de Stael, revealing her courageous opposition to Napoleon, her whirlwind affairs with the great intellectuals of her day, and her idealistic rebellion against all that was cynical, tyrannical, and passionless. Germaine de Stael's father was Jacques Necker, the finance minister to Louis XVI, and her mother ran an influential literary-political salon in Paris. Always precocious, at nineteen Germaine married the Swedish ambassador to France, Eric Magnus Baron de Stael-Holstein, and in 1785 took over her mother's salon with great success. Germaine and de Stael lived most of their married life apart. She had many brilliant lovers. Talleyrand was the first, Narbonne, the minister of war, another; Benjamin Constant was her most significant and long-lasting one. She published several political and literary essays, including "A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations," which became one of the most important documents of European Romanticism. Her bold philosophical ideas, particularly those in "On Literature," caused feverish commotion in France and were quickly noticed by Napoleon, who saw her salon as a rallying point for the opposition. He eventually exiled her from France. This winner of the 1959 National Book Award is "excellent ... detailed, full of color, movement, great names, and lively incident" -- The New York Times "Mr. Herold's full-bodied biography is clear-eyed, intelligent, and written with abundant wit and zest." -- The Atlantic Monthly

    In Everybody Was So Young--one of the best reviewed books of 1998--Amanda Vaill brilliantly portrays both the times in which the Murphys lived and the fascinating friends who flocked around them. Whether summering with Picasso on the French Riviera or watching bullfights with Hemingway in Pamplona, Gerald and Sara inspired kindred creative spirits like Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Nicole and Dick Diver in Tender is the Night were modeled after the Murphys). Their story is both glittering and tragic, and in this sweeping and richly anecdotal portrait of a marriage and an era, Amanda Vaill "has brought them to life as never before" (Chicago Tribune).

     Liliane Bettencourt is the world s richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she s embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? Thanks to an artist and photographer named Francois-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane s daughter, Francoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It s all become Europe s biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more. Written by Tom Sancton, aVanity Faircontributor and formerTimecorrespondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affairis part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart."

    Kennedy's centennial, celebrate the life and legacy of the 35th President of the United States. A selection of more than 300 images--including family letters, personal ephemera, and captivating photographs--collected by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, many never seen before, featuring the beloved and revered Kennedy family: This remarkable history dates from 1878 through 1946--up to the aftermath of WWII and the beginning of JFK's political career--and covers everything from the family's first home to beach vacations, from children's birthdays to first Communions. The images capture the formative years of a uniquely American dynasty, imparting a glowing nostalgia to the period and detailing the family's progress as it grows from a pair of turn-of-the-century newlyweds into a populous, vibrant clan of hopeful young men and women on the brink of their brilliant destinies. This is a piece of Americana that readers will treasure.

    Based on the sira, the eighth- and ninth-century Arabic biographies that recount numerous events in the prophet’s life, it contains original English translations of many important passages that reveal the words of men and women who heard Muhammad speak and witnessed the events of his life.Scrupulous and exhaustive in its fidelity to its sources, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources is presented in a narrative style that is easily comprehensible, yet authentic and inspiring in its use of language, reflecting both the simplicity and grandeur of the story it tells. This revised edition includes new sections detailing the prophet’s expanding influence and his spreading of the message of Islam into Syria and its neighboring states. It represents the final updates made to the text before the author’s death in 2005. The book has been published in 12 languages and has received numerous awards, including acknowledgment as best biography of the prophet in English at the National Seerate Conference in Islamabad.

    At the height of his fame, he was thought to be no less than a demonic figure, possessed of supernatural powers, a dissolute agent of the forces of evil with an iron-clad, perhaps sexual, hold on the throne of Imperial Russia. His disciples swooned in his presence; his enemies plotted his murder. Rasputin is the story of an illiterate Siberian peasant who penetrated the very highest circles of the Romanov dynasty, a srarets (holy man) whose pilgrimages and struggles of conscience warred with sexual rapacity and a predilection for drink, a monk whose fame as a faith healer and visionary was eclipsed by scandalous orgies and notorious palace intrigue until his very name became a synonym for vice and corruption. Here are the people in his life: his jealous (or admiring) fellow holy man, the political ministers who curried his favor, the female disciples who gave him sex to save their souls and the Tsarina Alexandra, who child he saved and whose heart eh never lost, even as scandal succeeded scandal. And here is the turbulent Imperial Russia of which he was so dramatic a part, an explosive mixture of religious fervor, political brutality, sexual promiscuity, and social decadence. From his humble beginnings to the bloody murder that marked his end, Rasputin was never less than a figure of controversy and mystery. Was he an ambitious fraud, a man divinely inspired, or a simple peasant thrust by circumstances into a position he never fully understood?

    Indeed, he may have lived centuries ago, but his name is still thrown around in the world today whenever a disaster or global event occurs. From his work as a doctor fighting against the plague with mixed success to becoming the physician of the French royal family, this is a tale of an individual who was not afraid to reveal his true self at a time when this was certainly frowned upon. Inside you will read about... - Early Years as a Doctor - Altercation with the Inquisition - The Start of the Occult - The Prophet of Satan - Nostradamus' Predictions - Sharlatan or Visionary And much more! The story of Nostradamus is tougher to determine than one would have ever imagined. Considering the books that have been written about his predictions, his own story is often shrouded in mystery. That is a mystery which we are going to attempt to undo as far as the historical sources will allow us. How exactly did this man go from a small village in the south of France to becoming one of the most famous people alive at the time? How has he managed to stay relevant in the world today? Was he as good at predicting the future as some believed him to be? These are all pertinent questions, and by the end of this book, you will have hopefully been able to piece together some of the answers to the questions that you have about the individual known simply as, Nostradamus.

    Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest. Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.

    Kaplan The New Tsar is the book to read if you want to understand how Vladimir Putin sees the world and why he has become one of the gravest threats to American security.The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English – that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief. In a gripping narrative of Putin’s rise to power as Russia’s president, Steven Lee Myers recounts Putin’s origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad, to his ascension through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule. Along the way, world events familiar to readers, such as September 11th and Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, as well as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, are presented from never-before-seen perspectives.  This book is a grand, staggering achievement and a breathtaking look at one man’s rule. On one hand, Putin’s many reforms—from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights—have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism, unyielding in his brutal repression of revolts and squashing of dissent. Still, he retains widespread support from the Russian public. The New Tsar is a narrative tour de force, deeply researched, and utterly necessary for anyone fascinated by the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin, but also for those interested in the world and what a newly assertive Russia might mean for the future.

    Following Napoleon from the barren island of Corsica to his early training in Paris, from his meteoric victories and military dictatorship to his exile and death, Johnson examines the origins of his ferocious ambition. In Napoleon's quest for power, Johnson sees a realist unfettered by patriotism or ideology. And he recognizes Bonaparte’s violent legacy in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Napoleon is a magnificent work that bears witness to one individual's ability to work his will on history.

    Now he has at last found a biographer who himself once produced "the finest French novel written in English" ("The Nation"). From the author of the award-winning biography of Jean Genet comes this passionate biography of the brilliant writer, famous recluse, and tormented lover. Abridged.

    Iggy may have been the godfather of punk, but The Ramones defined, lived it and breathed in its noxious fumes. Now we see what life was like on the road (where they arguably gave their finest performances) and the memories of the man who took charge of every adventure they had - Monte Melnick. days in the 1970s to their farewell gigs in 1996. He was often cited as the fifth Ramone and acted as, in his own words, their babysitter to psychiatrist, booking agent to travel agent, paymaster to van driver.