Then a storm exploded on the mountain, ripping the team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl for their lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying, and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred. Weathers appeared, blinded, gloveless, and caked with ice—walking down the mountain. In this powerful memoir, now featuring a new Preface, Weathers describes not only his escape from hypothermia and the murderous storm that killed eight climbers, but the journey of his life. This is the story of a man’s route to a dangerous sport and a fateful expedition, as well as the road of recovery he has traveled since; of survival in the face of certain death, the reclaiming of a family and a life; and of the most extraordinary adventure of all: finding the courage to say yes when life offers us a second chance.  Praise for Left for Dead  “Riveting . . . [a] remarkable survival story . . . Left for Dead takes a long, critical look at climbing: Weathers is particularly candid about how the demanding sport altered and strained his relationships.”—USA Today   “Ultimately, this engrossing tale depicts the difficulty of a man’s struggle to reform his life.”—Publishers Weekly

    Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this stunning new portrait is a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTHE NEW YORK TIMES - ESQUIRE - THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY "Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch."--The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would threaten many of Europe's monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public's expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger tracts of the globe. In a world where women were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand. Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother's meddling and an adviser's bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping conventional boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security--queen of a quarter of the world's population at the height of the British Empire's reach. Drawing on sources that include fresh revelations about Victoria's relationship with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to life the fascinating story of a woman who struggled with so many of the things we do today: balancing work and family, raising children, navigating marital strife, losing parents, combating anxiety and self-doubt, finding an identity, searching for meaning.

    His Victoria is not only the formidable, demanding, capricious queen of popular imagination—she is also often shy, diffident, and vulnerable, prone to giggling fits and crying jags. Often censorious when confronted with her mother's moral lapses, she herself could be passionately sensual, emotional, and deeply sentimental. Ascending to the throne at age eighteen, Victoria ruled for sixty-four years—an astounding length for any world leader. During her reign, she dealt with conflicts ranging from royal quarrels to war in Crimea and rebellion in India. She saw monarchs fall, empires crumble, new continents explored, and England grow into a dominant global and industrial power. This personal history is a compelling look at the complex woman whom, until now, we only thought we knew.

    Dr. Swift is the first to concentrate on this unusual subject with such a wealth of sympathetic detail."-Sarah Bradford, author of "America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen," and "The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, 1895--1952""A splendid addition to our understanding of an extraordinary Anglo-American partnership. Both intimate and expansive, Will Swift's vigorously researched book is timely, illuminating, and dramatic."-Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of "Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933" and "Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years, 1933-1938""The Anglo-American alliance has long been a bedrock of the global order, and Will Swift's The Roosevelts and the Royals details an important chapter in that fascinating story with warmth and verve."-Jon Meacham, author of "Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship""Those who remember only that the Roosevelts served hot dogs to the royals will be fascinated by this well-researched account of an historic and ennobling relationship-a great story!"-James MacGregor Burns, author of "The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America" and "Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom""A gripping account of four very different lives that were woven together to change the world in wartime."-Hugo Vickers, author of "Cecil Beaton and Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece""Written in fluid and lucid prose, this book is not only eminently readable but also historically illuminating. It explores the contrasting personalities of the four main protagonists with skill and insight and it is both convincing and refreshingly candid."-Brian Roberts, author of "Randolph: A Study of Churchill's Son and Cecil Rhodes and the Princess""This book brings to life my grandmother and her royal friends. Reading it, I found myself reliving the times I shared with them. A wonderful story."-Nina Roosevelt Gibson, Ph.D., psychologist and granddaughter of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt

    Blond, beautiful, immensely popular with the public, Jessica Savitch had it all. A network anchor at thirty-one, sha had made it to the top in a male-dominated world of big stars, big money, and super-egos. But behind the scenes was another story - a woman desperately chasing her dream through a private nightmare of drugs, depression, and disastrous romances and spiraling ever downward - sad victim of her own relentless ambition, and the fast and fickle industry that created her.

    After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas produced the definitive biography of the man behind the legend--the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but became the genius who produced unmatched works of animation. Complete with a rare collection of photographs, Bob Thomas' biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of Walt Disney.

    The genius of this biography is that it delves behind this image to reveal a life in which loss and heartache existed alongside rebellion and fierce ambition. Claire Harman seizes on a crucial moment in the 1840s when Charlotte worked at a girls' school in Brussels and fell hopelessly in love with the husband of the school's headmistress. Her torment spawned her first attempts at writing for publication, and the object of her obsession haunts the pages of every one of her novels--he is Rochester in Jane Eyre, Paul Emanuel in Villette. Another unrequited love--for her publisher--paved the way for Charlotte to enter a marriage that ultimately made her happier than she ever imagined. Drawing on correspondence unavailable to previous biographers, Harman establishes Brontë as the heroine of her own story, one as dramatic and triumphant as one of her own novels.

    Sophisticated beyond her years, Kate has charmed William's louche circle of friends as well as the House of Windsor. Yet behind her polished veneer lies the extraordinary tale of an impoverished working-class family that overcame deprivation and adversity to rise to the upper echelons of society.Claudia Joseph has spoken to members of Kate's family and friends, who have provided an intriguing insight into the extraordinary journey her family has made from the mining villages of Durham to the gates of Buckingham Palace.Drawing on exclusive interviews and containing previously unpublished photographs, this is the authoritative account of Kate Middleton's life so far.

    With an eye on the past, present and future, this book takes a look at how the family really operates and reveals how they behave behind closed doors.This ebook is made from the 2009 edition.With showbiz stars and sporting celebrities now attracting the adulation once afforded to royalty, The Firm questions what monarchy is for.Is it a hangover from the past, an expensive anachronism, a relic of a bygone age of deference and hierarchy, or is it an important and relevant part of Britain in the 21st century – something that gives stability and continuity to the country, and richness and glamour to our national life in ways that a republic never could? If so, do the media mock, hound and criticize the Royal Family at their peril? Has Prince Charles sacrificed the throne for love? Could Prince William decide that the long lenses and the scrutiny of his private life is too high a price to pay?Penny will also look at how the dynamics of the royal household have changed over the last year and what repercussions these changes will have. Whilst in the hardback edition Penny Junor was able to discuss the implications of Charles and Camilla's marriage only two months after it was announced, the paperback promises to offer a host of new surprises and implication for the future of the House of Windsor, as well as an inside view of how The Firm have taken in their newest member.Whatever happens over the next year, we can be sure that Penny will update this paperback edition to make it an essential buy for anyone who has even a passing interest in Britain's most dysfunctional and fascinating family.

    Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in a Jewish firm in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

    It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man?; it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse. Szpilman's family were deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated; he survived only because a music-loving policeman recognised him. This was only the first in a series of fatefully lucky escapes that littered his life as he hid among the rubble and corpses of the Warsaw Ghetto, growing thinner and hungrier, yet condemned to live. Ironically it was a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who saved Szpilman's life by bringing food and an eiderdown to the derelict ruin where he discovered him. Hosenfeld died seven years later in a Stalingrad labour camp, but portions of his diary, reprinted here, tell of his outraged incomprehension of the madness and evil he witnessed, thereby establishing an effective counterpoint to ground the nightmarish vision of the pianist in a desperate reality. Szpilman originally published his account in Poland in 1946, but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin's Polish minions as it unashamedly described collaborations by Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews with the Nazis. In 1997 it was published in Germany after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase. This admirably robust translation by Anthea Bell is the first in the English language. There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were 240,000. Wladyslaw Szpilman's extraordinary account of his own miraculous survival offers a voice across the years for the faceless millions who lost their lives. --David Vincent

    From ancient Rome to Edwardian England, from the lavish rooms of Versailles to the dankest corners of the Bastille, the great royals of Europe have excelled at savage parenting, deadly rivalry, pathological lust, and meeting death with the utmost indignity-or just very bad luck.

    Until Charles Higham's 1.3 million-copy bestseller, much of her life was a glamorous mystery. Now, fifteen years later, major new documentary evidence, classified at the time, makes for a book far more sensational than the original bestseller. Drawing from long-suppressed archives in France, England, and the United States, Higham has uncovered the duchess's passionate affair with a top-ranking political figure, the duke's romantic involvement with a male equerry, the secret radio broadcasts the couple made to Hitler, and the blackmail plot in Paris that almost brought them-and the British royal family-to ruin. This updated new edition of The Duchess of Windsor is essential reading.

    Hemingway married four times, each time to a fascinating person: Hadley Richardson, who shared the Paris years and one son; Pauline Pfeiffer, the mother of two more sons, who created a haven in Key West; Martha Gellhorn, a writer and acclaimed journalist; and Mary Welsh, a Time correspondent. Drawing on letters and interviews with the living women, Bernice Kert sheds new light on the Hemingway heroines and their real-life prototypes.

    Written at the onset of the First World War, My Own Story brings attention to Pankhurst's cause while defending her decision to cease activism until the end of the war. Notable for its descriptions of the British prison system, My Own Story is an invaluable document of a life dedicated to others, of a historical moment in which an oppressed group rose up to advocate for the simplest of demands: equality.Born in a politically active household, Emmeline Pankhurst was introduced to the women's suffrage movement at a young age. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to the suffragette movement. As their speeches, rallies, and petitions failed to make headway, they turned to militant protest, and in 1908 Emmeline was arrested for attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a document to Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Imprisoned for six weeks, she observed the horrifying conditions of prison life, including solitary confinement. This experience changed her outlook on the struggle for women's suffrage, and she increasingly saw imprisonment as a means of radical publicity. Over the next several years, she would be arrested seven times for rioting, destroying property, and assaulting police officers, and while in prison staged hunger strikes in order to gain the attention of the press and political establishment. My Own Story is a record of one woman's tireless advocacy for the sake of countless others.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.