SAS Operation Storm: Nine men against four hundred


Roger Cole - 2011
    The tipping point, Mirbat, South Oman, 19 July 1972 is one of the least-known yet most crucial battles of modern times. If the SAS had been defeated at Mirbat, the Russian and Chinese plan for a communist foothold in the Middle East would have succeeded, with catastrophic consequences for the oil-hungry West. OPERATION STORM is a page-turning account of courage and resilience. Mirbat was a battle fought and won by nine SAS soldiers and a similar number of brave local people - some as young as ten years old - outnumbered by at least twenty-five to one. Roger Cole, one of the SAS soldiers who took part, and writer Richard Belfield have interviewed every SAS survivor who fought in the battle from the beginning to the end - the first time every single one of them has revealed their experience. OPERATION STORM is a classic story of bravery against impossible odds, minute by minute, bullet by bullet.

Forever Young : The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend ; The Authorized Biography of Loretta Young


Joan Wester Anderson - 2000
    The real life and faith journey of Loretta Young -- her strong devotion to her Catholic faith and her passion for helping others in need.

The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers


Mick Minas - 2016
    Author Mick Minas goes behind the scenes-- interviewing players, coaches, and front office personnel--to create the first in-depth look at the history of the Clippers.The Curse is filled with drama: the unauthorized relocation of the franchise that led to the NBA filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Clippers, the disruption of the team's first playoff appearance by the Los Angeles riots, the bold but unsuccessful attempt to sign Kobe Bryant at the peak of his career, and the scandal that ultimately resulted in owner Donald Sterling being banned from the NBA for life. Featuring some of basketball's biggest names, including World B. Free, Elgin Baylor, Danny Manning, Doc Rivers, Larry Brown, Dominique Wilkins, Elton Brand, Baron Davis, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul, The Curse delves into the disasters of the past and the complications of the present. This is the definitive history of the NBA's most dysfunctional franchise.

Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England


Lita-Rose Betcherman - 2005
    Lucy, the Countess of Carlisle, dominated the royal scene. Her beauty was immortalized in magnificent Van Dyck portraits, her political skills attracted many famous lovers, and her talent as a gossip ensured her inclusion in the queen's inner circle—until civil war and its machinations led to her imprisonment in the Tower of London.Her sister, Dorothy, Countess of Leicester—wife of a diplomat and an ancestor of Princess Diana—managed the family estates and raised twelve surviving children. Though brilliant, with a keen eye and special purview of European politics, she had a reputation as a shrewish wife and, when her husband rebelled after thirty-five years of marriage, it caused a public scandal.Viewing a tempestuous era through the exceptional lives of Lucy and Dorothy Percy, Lita-Rose Betcherman's Court Lady and Country Wife offers a perfect window into a remarkable world.

The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice


M.G. Lord - 2012
    In her breakout film, "National Velvet" (1944), Taylor's character challenges gender discrimination,: Forbidden as a girl to ride her beloved horse in an important race, she poses as a male jockey. Her next milestone, "A Place in the Sun" (1951), can be seen as an abortion rights movie--a cautionary tale from a time before women had ready access to birth control. In "Butterfield 8" (1960), for which she won an Oscar, Taylor isn't censured because she's a prostitute, but because she chooses the men: she controls her sexuality, a core tenet of the third-wave feminism that emerged in the 1990s. Even "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) depicts the anguish that befalls a woman when the only way she can express herself is through her husband's stalled career and children. The legendary actress has lived her life defiantly in public--undermining post-war reactionary sex roles, helping directors thwart the Hollywood Production Code, which censored film content between 1934 and 1967. Defying death threats she spearheaded fundraising for AIDS research in the first years of the epidemic, and has championed the rights of people to love whom they love, regardless of gender. Yet her powerful feminist impact has been hidden in plain sight. Drawing on unpublished letters and scripts as well as interviews with Kate Burton, Gore Vidal, Austin Pendleton, Kevin McCarthy, Liz Smith, and others, The Accidental Feminist will surprise Taylor and film fans with its originality and will add a startling dimension to the star's enduring mystique.

George VI


Denis Judd - 1973
    His marriage to the self-assured and supportive Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons and his unexpected accession to the throne in 1936 changed the direction of the young prince’s life for good. Once on the throne, it was he who bore the weighty responsibility for restoring the nation’s confidence in their monarchy following his elder brother’s abdication and for maintaining morale during the darkest days of World War II, when, together with Winston Churchill, his dignified presence functioned as a beacon of reassurance to civilians and military alike. Denis Judd provides a fascinating, if sometimes controversial, reassessment of the man who, quite unexpectedly, came to occupy an extraordinary position in a time of unprecedented change.

Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education


Jane Robinson - 2009
    Using the words of the women themselves, 'Bluestockings' charts the fight for and expansion of higher education for women from 1869 through to the 1930s.

Women: The National Geographic Image Collection


Susan Goldberg - 2019
    #GirlBoss. Time's Up. From Silicon Valley to politics and beyond, women are reshaping our world. Now, in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, this bold and inspiring book from National Geographic mines 130 years of photography to showcase their past, their present, and their future. With 400+ stunning images from more than 50 countries, each page of this glorious book offers compelling testimony about what it means to be female, from historic suffragettes to the haunting, green-eyed "Afghan girl." Organized around chapter themes like grit, love, and joy, the book features brand-new commentary from a wide swath of luminaries including Laura Bush, Gloria Allred, Roxane Gay, Melinda Gates, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, and the founders of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. Each is accompanied by a bold new portrait, shot by acclaimed NG photographer Erika Larsen. The ultimate coffee table book, this iconic collection provides definitive proof that the future is female.

We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals


Gillian Gill - 2009
    Traditional biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naïve teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and master. Now renowned chronicler Gillian Gill turns this familiar story on its head, revealing a strong, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working together to build a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, qualities neither had seen much of as children. The love affair that emerges is far more captivating, complex, and relevant than that depicted in any previous account. The epic relationship began poorly. The cousins first met as teenagers for a few brief, awkward, chaperoned weeks in 1836. At seventeen, charming rather than beautiful, Victoria already “showed signs of wanting her own way.” Albert, the boy who had been groomed for her since birth, was chubby, self-absorbed, and showed no interest in girls, let alone this princess. So when they met again in 1839 as queen and presumed prince-consort-to-be, neither had particularly high hopes. But the queen was delighted to discover a grown man, refined, accomplished, and whiskered. “Albert is beautiful!” Victoria wrote, and she proposed just three days later.As Gill reveals, Victoria and Albert entered their marriage longing for intimate companionship, yet each was determined to be the ruler. This dynamic would continue through the years–each spouse, headstrong and impassioned, eager to lead the marriage on his or her own terms. For two decades, Victoria and Albert engaged in a very public contest for dominance. Against all odds, the marriage succeeded, but it was always a work in progress. And in the end, it was Albert’s early death that set the Queen free to create the myth of her marriage as a peaceful idyll and her husband as Galahad, pure and perfect. As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was perfect but because it was passionate and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced, surprising, often acerbic–and informed by revealing excerpts from the pair’s journals and letters–We Two is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and her prince, a fascinating modern perspective on a couple who have become a legend.

The Comanche Captivity of Sarah Ann Horn


James A. Crutchfield - 2015
    After spending several months in New York City, the family signed up for a journey to the Republic of Texas where they could homestead and eventually acquire 137 free acres for their efforts. Soon growing discontented with, not only the land, but also the management of the colony in which they had settled, the Horns decided to return to England. But, it was not to be. Attacked and captured by a party of Comanche Indians, Sarah Ann was faced with challenges and realities the like of which she never could have dreamed. Over a period of fifteen months of Comanche captivity, she and her captors rode endlessly across the Texas plains until finally she was purchased out of bondage and befriended by traders in New Mexico. This is the true story of a remarkable woman who endured an unimaginable amount of suffering and pain in her short lifetime.

Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500


Henrietta Leyser - 1995
    The intellectual and spiritual worlds of women are also explored.Based on an abundance of research from the last twenty-five years, Medieval Women describes the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages.

The Tragic Empress: The Authorized Biography of Alexandra Romanov


Sophie Buxhoeveden - 2017
     Additionally, as a lady-in-waiting, Countess Buxhoeveden attended on the Empress for much of the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, only leaving her side when the Imperial Family was removed to Tobolsk after the Tsar’s abdication in 1917. Thereafter, she followed the Empress to Tobolsk, and then to Ekaterinburg, where the entire Imperial Family, some of the Court suite and some of their servants met their deaths on July 17, 1918. The portrait the Countess paints of the Empress is of a warm, shy, kind and generous woman, devoted to Russia, her husband and her children, deeply charitable in word and deed, and a committed friend and mistress, but ill-starred, physically sick, maligned, misunderstood and much plotted against. The character descriptions in this book also include those for Tsar Nicholas, each of the children – OTMA and the Tsarevitch – Grand Duchess Ella (the Empress’ sister), Ania Vyrubova (the Empress’ most intimate friend), Rasputin and Kerensky (the Head of the Provisional Government that took power after the abdication of the Tsar and before the ascendancy of the Bolsheviks). The narrative also describes in detail the daily domestic life of the Imperial Family, and each of their trips to other parts of Russia and abroad in peace and war. It is rare for the author of any authorized biography to know her subject so familiarly and for so long, and to have been a first-hand witness to almost everything that happened for much of her life, and it is this that makes ‘The Tragic Empress’ such an intriguing and compelling book.

Clara Brown: The Rags to Riches Story of a Freed Slave


Julie McDonald - 2016
    After being freed at the age of 57, she begins a tireless search for her only remaining family member, her daughter Eliza Jane. What Clara accomplishes in her 28 years of freedom will simply astound you! I first wrote about Clara Brown in my book Unbreakable Dolls, Too. This single story eBook is the expanded version, with much more information and 9 photos.

Bonifacio's Bolo


Ambeth R. Ocampo - 1995
    In Bonifacio's Bolo, Ambeth Ocampo adds even more interesting bits to another scrapbook of history.

Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot


Masha Gessen - 2014
    In neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas, they performed a “punk prayer” beseeching the “Mother of God” to “get rid of Putin.” They were quickly shut down by security, and in the weeks and months that followed, three of the women were arrested and tried, and two were sentenced to a remote prison colony. But the incident captured international headlines, and footage of it went viral. People across the globe recognized not only a fierce act of political confrontation but also an inspired work of art that, in a time and place saturated with lies, found a new way to speak the truth. Masha Gessen’s riveting account tells how such a phenomenon came about. Drawing on her exclusive, extensive access to the members of Pussy Riot and their families and associates, she reconstructs the fascinating personal journeys that transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, gave them the courage and imagination to express it unforgettably, and endowed them with the strength to endure the devastating loneliness and isolation that have been the price of their triumph.