Witness to My Life offers unique insight into their remarkable 52-year liaison.

    From the co-author of the bestselling ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’, this is a book of heroes, new and old, known and sadly forgotten, now to be glorified as they ought to be.From Captain Scott to Joe Simpson, from Douglas Bader to Ernest Shackleton, from Gertrude Bell to Emily Pankhurst, Conn Iggulden brings our great heroes from history back to life.Filled with the British sense of fair play and decency that made ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’ so popular, ‘The Dangerous Book of Heroes’ celebrates those who fought for what is right and good, those who made amazing discoveries, those who moved boundaries in their lifetimes.A book of heroes written by Conn Iggulden, a man who knows what makes a hero.

    The first volume of his selected letters, edited by renowned biographer and Beat scholar Ann Charters, was widely regarded as a vital and momentous contribution to Kerouac scholarship. In Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969, the second and final volume of his correspondence, Charters highlights letters written to his closest friends and colleagues that paint a heart-wrenching portrait of this broken American genius.The first volume of Kerouac's letters documented the writer's discovery of his "spontaneous prose" method and the inspired composition of 11 books between 1951 and 1956. "The second volume," writes Charters, "demonstrates that the publication of his books and the attendant publicity and hostile critical response literally destroyed him." The book opens with letters written prior to the publication of On The Road, an event that would make Kerouac famous overnight and permanently alter the landscape of American literature, and concludes only days before his death in St. Petersburg, Florida, at age 47.Charters provides indispensable commentary between the letters to give the biographical background of what was happening in Kerouac's life, while allowing the writer to comment on his own work as much as possible. Charters also includes some letters from his friends, such as Gary Snyder's reaction to being the fictional hero of The Dharma Bums, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's letter to Time magazine defending Kerouac from malicious attacks by critics on his books and lifestyle. Occasionally Kerouac responded to fan mail and queries from academics, and some of these replies have also been included. The few letters from his mother and from his third wife, Stella, show just how dependent the writer was on his family.Kerouac is often thought of as being very much like the rugged, wandering, Zen-loony characters that populate his books. But by the late '60s, while pals Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky were on pilgrimage in Nepal, he was living with his mother, getting rejected on credit card applications. A severe alcoholic, Kerouac suffered rapidly declining health, and he grew increasingly bitter and paranoid. Each book by Kerouac that was published in hardcover after The Dharma Bums was quickly remaindered, yet despite this, Kerouac kept writing right up to the day he died.Unfortunately, his greatest successes came too late for him to enjoy. At least eight works of Kerouac's fiction, poetry, and Buddhist writings have been published posthumously, not to mention the countless studies and biographies that fill the shelves of bookstores each year. In 1999, Jack Kerouac and the Beats are a business unto themselves.Soon after completing her own doctorate work in American literature at Columbia in 1966, Ann Charters had the crazy idea that the Beats needed a scholar like herself to secure a place for them in our nation's history. Thirty years later it is quite clear just how crucial a role she has played in the literary afterlife of Jack Kerouac.—Cary Goldstein

    Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground conspiracy to overthrow King Louis XVIII, and became an international symbol of liberty. Finally, as a revered elder statesman, he was instrumental in the overthrow of the Bourbon Dynasty in the Revolution of 1830. From enthusiastic youth to world-weary old age, from the pinnacle of glory to the depths of despair, Lafayette never stopped fighting for the rights of all mankind. His remarkable life is the story of where we come from, and an inspiration to defend the ideals he held dear.

    As America enters the war, and Don is pressured into the service by his father, the two newlyweds struggle to maintain contact. Don becomes a hero, saving the lives of his comrades, but will he make it home alive? Why Aren't You Sweet Like Me? is a novel based on the actual love letters exchanged between the author's grandparents.

    

    Once there, they've stayed to hear about the young brave with the magic moccasins, who talks with animals and uses his supernatural gifts to bring peace and enlightenment to his people. This 1855 masterpiece combines romance and idealism in an idyllic natural setting.

    Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas and against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, would at times resemble a battlefield; and as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.

    Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet.Shu Wen and her husband had been married for only a few months in the 1950s when he joined the Chinese army and was sent to Tibet for the purpose of unification of the two countries. Shortly after he left she was notified that he had been killed, although no details were given. Determined to find the truth, Shu Wen joined a militia unit going to the Tibetan north, where she soon was separated from the regiment. Without supplies and knowledge of the language, she wandered, trying to find her way until, on the brink of death, she was rescued by a family of nomads under whose protection she moved from place to place with the seasons and eventually came to discover the details of her husband's death.In the haunting Sky Burial, Xinran has recreated Shu Wen's journey, writing beautifully and simply of the silence and the emptiness in which Shu Wen was enveloped. The book is an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love, loss, loyalty, and survival.

    "Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world... He was a colossus... a great painter... a great philosopher... a martyr to his love of art. "Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn't feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it. Until the day he picked up a paintbrush.Written with raw insight and emotion, follow the artist through his tormented life, struggling against critical discouragement and mental turmoil and bare witness to his creative journey from a struggling artist to one of the world's most celebrated artists.

    Helena to begin his exile. But while Longwood-a broken-down, rat-infested farmhouse-is being readied for the captive hero and his entourage, he stays at an Englishman's country mansion, where he meets lovely young Betsy Balcome-high-spirited, outspoken, and the only French-speaking member of the family. Betsy acts as interpreter for the hero, and through this inspired rendering of their great friendship, this colorful conqueror emerges as a compelling human figure...an extraordinary man and a transcendent genius. Here is a stirring narrative of magnificent tenderness and understanding, the moving magnificent tenderness and understanding, the moving story of the great man-and THE LAST LOVE.

    They give an incomparable view of French life before World War II.

    Nagel brings the formidable Marie-Thérèse to life, along with the age of revolution and the waning days of the aristocracy, in a page-turning biography that will appeal to fans of Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette and Amanda Foreman's Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire.In December 1795, at midnight on her seventeenth birthday, Marie-Thérèse, the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, escaped from Paris's notorious Temple Prison. To this day many believe that the real Marie-Thérèse, traumatized following her family's brutal execution during the Reign of Terror, switched identities with an illegitimate half sister who was often mistaken for her twin. Was the real Marie-Thérèse spirited away to a remote castle to live her life as the woman called "the Dark Countess," while an imposter played her role on the political stage of Europe? Now, two hundred years later, using handwriting samples, DNA testing, and an undiscovered cache of Bourbon family letters, Nagel finally solves this mystery. She tells the remarkable story in full and draws a vivid portrait of an astonishing woman who both defined and shaped an era. Marie-Thérèse's deliberate choice of husbands determined the map of nineteenth-century Europe. Even Napoleon was in awe and called her "the only man in the family." Nagel's gripping narrative captures the events of her fascinating life from her very public birth in front of the rowdy crowds and her precocious childhood to her hideous time in prison and her later reincarnation in the public eye as a saint, and, above all, her fierce loyalty to France throughout.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Sixteen months later, the king’s fifth wife would follow her cousin Anne Boleyn to the scaffold, having been convicted of adultery and high treason. The broad outlines of Catherine’s career might be familiar, but her story up until now has been incomplete. Unlike previous accounts of her life, which portray her as a naïve victim of an ambitious family, this compelling and authoritative biography will shed new light on Catherine Howard’s rise and downfall by reexamining her motives and showing her in her context, a milieu that goes beyond her family and the influential men of the court to include the aristocrats and, most critically, the servants who surrounded her and who, in the end, conspired against her. By illuminating Catherine's entwined upstairs/downstairs worlds as well as societal tensions beyond the palace walls, the author offers a fascinating portrayal of court life in the sixteenth century and a fresh analysis of the forces beyond Catherine’s control that led to her execution—from diplomatic pressure and international politics to the long-festering resentments against the queen’s household at court. Including a forgotten text of Catherine’s confession in her own words, color illustrations, family tree, map, and extensive notes, Young and Damned and Fair changes our understanding of one of history’s most famous women while telling the compelling and very human story of complex individuals attempting to survive in a dangerous age.