Whatever the outcome for Saddam Hussein of his foray into Kuwait, the world will continue to wonder just who he is, or was, and exactly how he ruled. In this biography, two specialists in Middle East history and politics have avoided the tendency to demonize Saddam. They debunk the perception of an irrational and unpredictable leader who would stop at nothing in pursuit of his incoherent goals, and instead portray a calculating and cautious man who, although ruthless and brutal, weighs his options carefully. While accounts of Iraqi policy tend to show Saddam as an expansionist motivated by the unbridled ambition of dominating the Middle East, this book describes his modus operandi in terms of a ceaseless struggle for political - and physical - survival; a pattern of aggressive behaviour based on distrust and insecurity.

Tracing the growth of ancient biography from the fifth century to the first century B.C., Arnaldo Momigliano asks fruitful questions about the origins and development of Greek biography. By clarifying the social and intellectual implications of the fact that the Greeks kept biography and autobiography distinct from historiography, he contributes to an understanding of a basic dichotomy in the Western tradition of historical writing. The Development of Greek Biography is fully annotated, and includes a bibliography designed to serve as an introduction to the study of biography in general. This classic study is now reissued with the addition of Momigliano's essay "Second Thoughts on Greek Biography" (1971).

Has any sport executive had as many words written about him as Branch Rickey? A one-time catcher, Rickey managed the St. Louis Browns and Cardinals at the end of the dead-ball era before serving as vice president of the Dodgers and general manager of the Pirates. Possessed of one of the most creative minds in the game's long history, Rickey made early use of statistical analysis, pioneered the farm system, and pressed for the expansion of major league baseball. But he is best known for integrating organized baseball, signing Jackie Robinson to a contract at a time when the U.S. armed forces were still segregated and the Civil Rights movement was years away. A courageous move, the signing also stands as proof of Rickey's foresight; by tapping the Negro Leagues, he enlarged the pool of exploitable talent. Soon after, major league ties to the talent-rich Caribbean were cinched up, and years later scouts sign players from Asia and all over the globe. Based on nearly one hundred of interviews and vast amounts of research, including exclusive access to Rickey's own papers.

On a remote edge of the North York moors, where a grassy hillside overlooks the Vale of York, there is a secluded acre of land, edged by woods, called Scotch Corner. A mysterious war memorial chapel stands there, a simple stone building, decorated with bold carvings. Madeleine Bunting's father erected the chapel in his youth.

Text: English, German (translation)

Reading crease on edge of cover by spine. Small corner of cover is missing. Bookstore stamped on first page. Rest of pages are clean with no writing or marks. Minor sticker residue on cover.

Robert Maxwell was driven by an obsession to be remembered by posterity, to create and re-create his own life in order to become part of the Establishment. Tom Bower's compelling portrait, the subject of numerous libel suits brought by Maxwell in Britain before his death, is now published for the first time--in a thoroughly updated edition--in the United States. It provides a fascinating look at the man who was relentless in his attempts to obtain media power and respectability, attempts that would eventually destroy him. Born into a life of poverty, an outsider forever trying to get in, Robert Maxwell was plagued by a deep sense of alienation. His career as publisher, printer, politician, financier, industrialist, and tycoon extraordinary was charged with both magnificent coups and controversial setbacks. He built his fortune on a mixture of engineered leaks and secrecy at the expense of long-term stability. Accused of everything from creative bookkeeping to outright fraud, Maxwell withstood each debacle until the end, surviving troubles that would have felled a less determined personality. Bower describes the many suspect strategies of Maxwell's business dealings while he was alive and the disintegration of his empire after his death, focusing along the way on Maxwell's often nebulous business dealings and his immense skills at bullying and deception. Beginning with Maxwell's early years, Bower describes in depth the period after World War II during which Maxwell made a fortune out of barter deals and the export of scientific journals from Germany, which became the basis for his Pergamon Press flagship; the Pergamon-Leasco affair in the late 1960s (involving two millionaires, Maxwelland Saul Steinberg), an ill-fated takeover deal that fell apart with Maxwell declared unfit to hold office in a public company; and his revival of the loss-making British Printing Corporation. The author explains Maxwell's numerous acquisitions and his competitive obsession with Rupert Murdoch. We learn of the mysteries surrounding Maxwell's private banking in Liechtenstein, his strange links with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the notorious "Mirrorgate" affair and Maxwell's close relationship with Israel. Going beyond recent media coverage, the author provides up-to-the-minute facts on missing corporate assets and pension funds as well as the nefarious share-support schemes. In this powerful biography, Tom Bower comes as close as anyone ever will to understanding Robert Maxwell and his demons.

The guiding metaphor in Coyote's new spiritual biography is drawn from a line in an early Bob Dylan song, and has become the tale of a young man caught between apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads to wealth and power. Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him, as what begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission-- acknowledgment from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher.

The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber. An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. Organized around several key moments-such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three-Mendes-Flohr shows how this foundational trauma left an enduring mark on Buber's inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a "dialogical attentiveness." Buber's philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber's life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century

"A biography of Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor."--

"This new critical biography provides a complete picture of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of all the major works, including novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Elective Affinities, plays such as Egmont and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe's greatest work, Faust. Alongside these works the incidents of his life are analysed, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Jeremy Adler shows how Goethe's encyclopedic interest in numerous fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag. Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man. He was in fact the first of the moderns - a maker of modernity."--Page 4 of cover.

Harry Golden greatly admired and loved Carl Sandburg, and the feeling was indeed mutual. Toward the end of his life, Sandburg shared his papers, letters, photographs, and memories with Golden. Combining these materials with his own recollections, Golden reconstructs the life of his closest friend. His anecdotal account is both an engaging portrait of Sandburg and a tribute to their friendship. Generations of Sandburg's devoted readers will want to own this very personal biography.

Junior Biography

Erica Jong, the author of Fear of Flying, was a correspondent and friend of Henry Miller for the last decade of his life. In this blend of biography, autobiography, scholarship and polemic, she sets out to re-evaluate Miller's work and to rescue him from charges of misogyny and titillation. The book contains Jong's own correspondence with Miller, and also examines the background to the diaries of Anais Nin.

This biography looks at the man, the period and its significance in Scottish history by brushing away the dust of legend that blurs the image of the young pretender. The author makes clear how Charles Edward became the Bonnie Prince Charlie of legend and folk memory. As the biography is based almost entirely on contemporary sources, Charles emerges directly from 18th century Europe with all its political and dynastic intrigue and the insights into familiar and unfamiliar events which emerge explain the unwavering appeal that the prince has exerted for so long.

The Cambridge Biographical Dictionary is the outstanding paperback reference guide to the world's noted personalities, living and dead. From Aeschylus and Alexander the Great to Franco Zeffirelli and Louis Zukovsky, from Chinua Achebe and Larry Adler to Zhuangzi and Zoroasta, this alphabetical book provides the essential details on more than 14,000 people from the past and present - some generally famous, others recognised within specialised fields throughout the arts, sciences and sport. By offering year of birth and (where appropriate) death, place of birth, profession, a succinct description of achievement, and in many cases pronunciations and cross-references to other personalities, the entries in this book amount to the most accurate and up-to-date compendium of world biography available in paperback.

A biography of Gertrude van Tijn (1891-1974), born as Gertrud Franzisca Cohn in Braunschweig, Germany. From 1911-15 she lived in London, but was forced to immigrate because of her status as an enemy alien. She then went to Holland, where she became a fervent Zionist. In 1920 she married Jacques van Tijn, a Dutch Jew, and gave birth to two children. As he was a mining engineer, they lived in different countries until 1932 when they returned to Holland; in 1937 they were divorced. Focuses on her life and activities during 1933-45, when she worked for organizations dealing with the resettlement of Jewish refugees from Germany who fled to Holland, as well as with emigration of Dutch Jews, in particular for the Committee for Jewish Refugees. In April-May 1941 van Tijn, with Nazi approval, traveled to Portugal to coordinate, together with Portuguese authorities and the Joint Distribution Committee, the transit of Jewish refugees through Portugal and across the Atlantic. Her task proved to be very difficult, but some Jews got through, including her daughter. Her son served in the Allied army in France and Belgium. Van Tijn became head of the emigration department of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam; however, her achievements in this capacity were modest. In September 1943 she was deported to Westerbork, and in March 1944 to Bergen-Belsen. In the summer of 1944 she was freed with a group of prisoners in exchange for Germans arrested in Palestine. She stayed in Palestine for a few months, traveled back to Europe in 1945, and eventually settled in the USA, living close to her daughter. While in Palestine she wrote a report of what she had witnessed, which is found in the Leo Baeck Archives in New York, but was never published. Soon after the war van Tijn was criticized and censured as a dupe of the Nazis, guilty at the least of false credulity and at the most of collaboration, but she was later exonerated.