Written as a character study, Young Hamilton, explores the first twenty-six years of Alexander Hamilton's life and is designed to reveal how Hamilton's early years shaped him into the statesman he became.

This book shows the transformation of an intelligent, high-strung girl into the first great advocate of female liberation, whose advanced ideas about woman's rights and education were more than a hundred years ahead of their time.

In-depth interviews with family, friends, and associates underlie a biographical portrait of the superstar singer and actress

This book provides a concise, accurate, and lively portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte's character and career, situating him firmly in historical context. David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility--for both good and ill--that Napoleon represented. By his late twenties, Napoleon was already one of the greatest generals in European history. At thirty, he had become absolute master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early forties, he ruled a European empire more powerful than any since Rome, fighting wars that changed the shape of the continent and brought death to millions. Then everything collapsed, leading him to spend his last years in miserable exile in the South Atlantic. Bell emphasizes the importance of the French Revolution in understanding Napoleon's career. The revolution made possible the unprecedented concentration of political authority that Napoleon accrued, and his success in mobilizing human and material resources. Without the political changes brought about by the revolution, Napoleon could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have seized and held onto power. Though his virtual dictatorship betrayed the ideals of liberty and equality, his life and career were revolutionary.

Gaining access to personal letters, albums and scrapbooks, plus spending hours with family members among some 300 interviews, has allowed the authors to craft the definitive biography of one of the most remarkable basketball stories in history. They reveal new facts and provide startling insight into Pistol Pete Maravich, who lived a life of triumph and tragedy before finding happiness in religion in the years before his death at age 40.

What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Andrei Sakharov, and James Michener have in common? They were all published by Bob Bernstein during his twenty-five-year run as president of Random House, before he brought the dissidents Liu Binyan, Jacobo Timerman, Natan Sharansky, and Václav Havel to worldwide attention in his role as the father of modern human rights. Starting as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, Bernstein moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Bennett Cerf as president ten years later. The rest is publishing and human rights history. In a charming and self-effacing work, Bernstein reflects for the first time on his fairy tale publishing career, hobnobbing with Truman Capote and E.L. Doctorow; conspiring with Kay Thompson on the Eloise series; attending a rally for Random House author George McGovern with film star Claudette Colbert; and working with publishing luminaries including Dick Simon, Alfred Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, André Schiffrin, Peter Osnos, Susan Peterson, and Jason Epstein as Bernstein grew Random House from a $40 million to an $800 million-plus "money making juggernaut," as Thomas Maier called it in his biography of Random House owner Si Newhouse. In a book sure to be savored by anyone who has worked in the publishing industry, fought for human rights, or wondered how Theodor Geisel became Dr. Seuss, Speaking Freely beautifully captures a bygone era in the book industry and the first crucial years of a worldwide movement to protect free speech and challenge tyranny around the globe.

"Amos Oz (1939-2018) was one of Israel's most prolific and prominent writers, as well as a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas written between 1965 and shortly before his death. In this first published biography of Oz, the celebrated translator, literary critic, and biblical scholar Robert Alter explores Oz's relationship with his family, beginning with the suicide of his mother, Fania Klausner, when he was twelve years old, and goes on to review his time in Kibbutz Hulda, which he entered at fourteen following his separation from his father, Arieh Klausner; his family's right-wing Zionism; his writing career; his activism in support of a pluralistic Israel; and his work as an international lecturer. In examining Oz's life and work, Alter brings together testimony from Oz and his circle, as well as close readings of his central works, to present the inner world and public persona of Amos Oz.--Dust jacket.

A biography of the little-known antihero, Samuel Zemurray (1877-1961), the disgraced mogul of the much hated United Fruit Company who aided the creation of Israel, funded many of Tulane University's buildings, and had a hand in the rise of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.

Few lives shed more light on the complex relationship between Jews and Christians during and after the Holocaust--or provide a more moving portrait of courage--than Oswald Rufeisen's. A Jew passing as a Christian in occupied Poland, Rufeisen worked as translator for the German police--the very people who rounded up and murdered the Jews--and repeatedly risked his life to save hundreds from the Nazis. In this gripping biography, Nechama Tec, a widely acclaimed writer on the Holocaust, recounts Rufeisen's remarkable story. A youth of seventeen when World War II began, Rufeisen joined the exodus of Poles who fled the approaching German army. Tec vividly describes how Rufeisen used his ability to speak fluent German to pass as half German and half Polish in Mir, where he came to serve as translator and personal secretary to the German in charge of the gendarmerie. As he carried out his duties--reading death sentences to prisoners, swearing in new police officers before a portrait of Hitler--he earned the trust and affection of the German commander, yet lived in constant fear of discovery. He used his position to pass secret information to Jews and Christians about impending "aktions" and to sabatoge Nazi plans. Most notably, he thwarted the annihilation of the Mir ghetto by arming hundreds of doomed Jews and organizing their escape, and saved an entire Belorussian village from destruction. Denounced, Rufeisen escaped and found shelter in a convent, where he converted to Catholicism. Though a pacifist, he spent the rest of the war fighting in a Russian partisan unit. After the war, Father Daniel (as he is now known) became a priest and a Carmelite monk. Identifying himself as a Christian Jew and an ardent Zionist, he moved to Israel, where he challenged the Law of Return in a case that reached the High Court and attracted international attention. Today he continues to devote himself to bridging the gap between Christians and Jews. In the Lion's Den offers a stirring portrait of a Jewish rescuer during the Holocaust and its aftermath, illuminating the intricate connections between good and evil, cruelty and compassion, and Judaism and Christianity.

Mel Tormé is one of the world's great jazz vocalists, a veteran of radio, movies, television, recordings, night clubs, and concert halls. He is also a highly respected arranger and composer, the co-author of one of the enduring seasonal classics, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)." And were that not enough, he is also an accomplished writer, having penned, among other books, a moving biography of his close friend, drummer Buddy Rich, Traps, the Drum Wonder; and an unblinking portrait of Judy Garland late in her career, The Other Side of the Rainbow. Now, in My Singing Teachers, Tormé sums up his vast experience in a tour of American music that is spiced with insightful commentary, vivid anecdotes, and Tormé's own take on the art of the song. Here is a pantheon of popular music and jazz, a sweeping look at American song from the perspective of one of its great practitioners. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer, Ethel Waters and Nat "King" Cole, and many many more--all in one way or another helped Tormé shape his inimitable style. Tormé has drawn inspiration from virtually every corner of the entertainment world, so the book has an enormous range--covering jazz, big band singers (such as Helen Forrest or Bob Eberly), Hollywood musical singers (such as Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin), even cowboy singers (Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, among others), not to mention lyricists, composers, and arrangers. It brims with personal anecdotes and astute observations about the greats of American music, and reveals how they have influenced his craft. For instance, Tormé recounts how, at age five, he first saw Bessie Smith in a one-reeler "The St Louis Blues" and how she still influences his blues singing. He reveals how playing at the Paramount with Ella Fitzgerald converted him from bobby-sox music to jazz. And most surprisingly, he shows how listening to instrumentalists such as Ben Webster on tenor sax and Roy Eldridge on trumpet shaped his scat singing--even more than listening to the great scat singers. Tormé also pays homage to many lesser known figures, such as composer Harry Warren--whose songs include "I Only Have Eyes for You," "The More I See You," "We're in the Money," and "Down Argentine Way"--and singer Connee Boswell, who was an important model for Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Torme himself. Perhaps most important, Tormé concludes with a chapter that captures his thoughts on singing, a section that every singer will find invaluable. American popular music has been graced with many talented men and women whose wit, intellect, ingenuity, and craftsmanship have made this music immortal. My Music Teachers pays homage to these remarkable people as it celebrates the glories of the American song. All fans of pop or jazz, and especially all fans of Mel Tormé, will find this book a treasure.

A biography of the author's great-aunt, jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter, drawing on family records to examine the traditions that shaped her youth, her marriage to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, and her role in supporting the New York jazz world.

A critical biography drawn from the author's letters, notebooks, memoirs and fiction.

The first biography of Pericles in a century, written by a renowned scholar and teacher, offers a classical model for today's political leaders. Kagan reminds readers of the fragility of democracy and uses Pericles as an example of the kind of strong political leadership so urgently needed today.

Radclyffe Hall was born in 1884 in Bournemouth in a house of horrors called 'Sunny Lawn'. It was an unhappy childhood, until her father's death when Radclyffe inherited £200,000. She was 18. She leased a London house, dressed in chappish clothes, called herself Peter then John & wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, obsessive about work, hunted with 3 packs, got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets & had her hair cropped. She thought real women were born to be wives & disliked doing any business with them. Her 1st love was Mabel Batten, known as Ladye, who reputedly had an affair with Edward VII. Radclyffe Hall is now most famous for THE WELL OF LONELINESS, written in 1928. A novel about 'congenital inverts' - lesbian love - the book was suppressed both here & the US & caused Radclyffe to be put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act. Brilliantly written, this biography is a fresh and irreverent insight into the lives of one of the most alluring and eccentric women of this century.

"In this first biography of Woody Allen in over a decade, David Evanier discusses key movies, plays and prose as well as Allen's personal life. Evanier tackles the themes that Allen has spent a lifetime sorting through in art: morality, sexuality, Judaism, the eternal struggle of head and heart. Woody will be the definitive word on a major American talent as he begins his ninth decade, and his sixth decade of making movies"--

Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America's founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness--even his grandfatherly appearance--are legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin's biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William. When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not. The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William's release, while his father, to the world's astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate. A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America's most distinguished families. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America.

A provocative, surprising, and utterly fresh portrait of Charles, Prince of Wales He is one of the world's most fascinating and least understood figures: now sixty-six, Prince Charles has spent his entire life preparing to be king while insisting on being his own man. In this brilliant portrait, he emerges as a complex character driven by a painful past, a questing intellect, and a powerful impulse not only to reshape the monarchy but to use the long wait for the throne to work toward high ideals. Based on exclusive interviews with members of Charles's inner circle and on rare access to the Prince himself, this revelatory biography takes us deep into the royal sphere—a world of its own that Catherine Mayer calls Planet Windsor—and shows us the skullduggery and unintentional comedy of court life. At the same time, it provides a clear-eyed view of Charles's struggles and his achievements as a philanthropist and activist. The book also offers a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most documented episodes in modern history—his marriage to Diana. The reality, as with many aspects of the Prince's story, is more gripping and more poignant than we knew. Now closer than ever to achieving happiness, the Prince is still far from settled. He remains committed to bringing about social and political change, but in aiming to be a king of hearts, he often creates heartache, for himself and others. Born to Be King explains how and why Charles may redefine the role of the sovereign, even as it reveals the astonishing extent to which the Prince has already left his mark on the world.

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 'Loose Women's' Andrea McLean is much loved for her bubbly, warm personality. But her life has seen its share of heartache, as well as love and happiness, and now she's finally ready to tell the full story. She takes us from a childhood spent constantly on the move, leaving her feeling like an outsider, to landing a dream job as a weathergirl on GMTV. She describes the tough lessons she had to learn to survive in TV and her hilarious - and sometimes disastrous - encounters with celebrities as a showbiz reporter. She reveals how she pushed herself to be the perfect daughter, the perfect wife and mother - so when she had an affair that ended her first marriage, the guilt and self-loathing drove her shockingly close to a breakdown.

This is a book of aspirations fulfilled, those of the author and his colleagues. It tells us what it is to be a mathematician and to do mathematics. It will be read with interest and enjoyment by those in mathematics and by those who might want to know what mathematicians and mathematical careers are like. Halmos, mathematician and expositor, has contributed much to ergodic theory, algebraic logic, operator theory, and the mathematical literature in general.