Taha Hussein (1889-1973) is one of Egypt's most iconic figures. A graduate of al-Azhar, Egypt's oldest university, a civil servant and public intellectual, and ultimately Egyptian Minister of Public Instruction, Hussein was central to key social and political developments in Egypt during the parliamentary period between 1922 and 1952. Influential in the introduction of a new secular university and a burgeoning press in Egypt-and prominent in public debates over nationalism and the roles of religion, women, and education in making a modern independent nation-Hussein remains a subject of continued admiration and controversy to this day. The Last Nahdawi offers the first biography of Hussein in which his intellectual outlook and public career are taken equally seriously. Examining Hussein's actions against the backdrop of his complex relationship with the Egyptian state, the religious establishment, and the French government, Hussam R. Ahmed reveals modern Egypt's cultural influence in the Arab and Islamic world within the various structural changes and political processes of the parliamentary period. Ahmed offers both a history of modern state formation, revealing how the Egyptian state came to hold such a strong grip over culture and education-and a compelling examination of the life of the country's most renowned intellectual.

The daughter of a successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite, Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among Chicago's black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege came expectation. Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments - the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of post-racial America - Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions.

History sees Augustus Caesar as the first emperor of Rome, whose system of ordered government provided a firm and stable basis for the expansion and prosperity of the Roman Empire. Hailed as 'restorer of the Republic' and regarded by some as a deity in his own lifetime, Augustus was emulated by many of his successors. David Shotter reviews the evidence in order to place Augustus firmly in the context of his own times. Key topics discussed include:

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• the background to Augustus Caesar's spectacular rise to power
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• his political and imperial reforms
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• the creation of the Republica of Augustus
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• the legacy Augustus Caesar left to his successors.

Revised throughout, the second edition of this successful book takes the most recent research in the field into account. David Shotter also includes more coverage of the social and cultural aspects of this complex character's reign together with an expanded guide to further reading.

From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and humorist Mo Rocca, a rigorously researched, "funny and smart" (Jon Stewart) book that celebrates the dead people who have long fascinated him. Mo Rocca has always loved obituaries--reading about the remarkable lives of global leaders, Hollywood heavyweights, and innovators who changed the world. But not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. His quest to right that wrong inspired Mobituaries, his #1 hit podcast. But here, in this "delightful, hilarious romp through history" (Booklist) he has gone much further, with all-new essays on artists, entertainers, sports stars, political pioneers, founding fathers, and more. Even if you know the names, you've never understood why they matter...until now. Take Herbert Hoover: before he was president, he was the "Great Humanitarian," the man who saved tens of millions from starvation. But after less than a year in the White House, the stock market crashed, and all the good he had done seemed to be forgotten. Then there's Marlene Dietrich, well remembered as a screen goddess, less remembered as a great patriot. Alongside servicemen on the front lines during World War II, she risked her life to help defeat the Nazis of her native Germany. And what about Billy Carter and history's unruly presidential brothers? Were they ne'er-do-well liabilities...or secret weapons? Plus, Mobits for dead sports teams, dead countries, the dearly departed station wagon, and dragons. Yes, dragons. Rocca is an expert researcher and storyteller who offers "joy for curious minds" (Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci), and with his dogged reporting and trademark wit, he brings these men and women back to life like no one else can. "In our fact-challenged times, Rocca's joyful tour through the didja know's of history is an unexpected antidote" (The New Yorker).

A groundbreaking biography of Milton's formative years that provides a new account of the poet's political radicalization John Milton (1608-1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest narrative poem in English, and prose defences of the execution of Charles I that influenced the French and American revolutions. Tracing Milton's literary, intellectual, and political development with unprecedented depth and understanding, Poet of Revolution is an unmatched biographical account of the formation of the mind that would go on to create Paradise Lost-but would first justify the killing of a king. Biographers of Milton have always struggled to explain how the young poet became a notorious defender of regicide and other radical ideas such as freedom of the press, religious toleration, and republicanism. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography of Milton's formative years, Nicholas McDowell draws on recent archival discoveries to reconcile at last the poet and polemicist. He charts Milton's development from his earliest days as a London schoolboy, through his university life and travels in Italy, to his emergence as a public writer during the English Civil War. At the same time, McDowell presents fresh, richly contextual readings of Milton's best-known works from this period, including the "Nativity Ode," "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," Comus, and "Lycidas." Challenging biographers who claim that Milton was always a secret radical, Poet of Revolution shows how the events that provoked civil war in England combined with Milton's astonishing programme of self-education to instil the beliefs that would shape not only his political prose but also his later epic masterpiece.

Henry V of England, the princely hero of Shakespeare s play, who successfully defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt and came close to becoming crowned King of France, is one of the best known and most compelling monarchs in English history. This new biography takes a fresh look at his entire life and nine year reign, and gives a balanced view of Henry, who is traditionally seen as a great hero but has been more recently depicted as an obsessive egotist or, worse, a ruthless warlord. The book locates Henry s style of kingship in the context of the time, and looks at often neglected other figures who influenced and helped him, such as his father and his uncles, Henry and Thomas Beaufort. John Matusiak shows that the situation confronting Henry at the outset of his reign was far more favourable than is often supposed but that he was nonetheless a man of prodigious gifts whose extraordinary achievements in battle left the deepest possible impression upon his contemporaries.

This volume examines the life and career of L. Munatius Plancus, and through him, explores the tumultuous final years of the Roman Republic. Plancus had very active and lengthy political career, from his initial appearance on the staff of Julius Caesar in Gaul in 54BC at least through the censorship of 22BC. During this time, he was in close contact for over 30 years with all the major figures during a period of tremendous political and social upheaval in Rome. He maneuvered carefully and cautiously, changing affiliation from boyhood ties to Cicero, to Caesar, to Antony and Cleopatra, and finally to Octavian - it was Plancus himself who proposed the motion whereby the Senate conferred the name "Augustus" on the new ruler of Rome. More than just a biography of this fascinating figure, this volume also offers insight into the politics of this complex period.

He conquered most of the known world and thought himself a god. However, he also died a paranoid, alcoholic wreck at the age of 33...after which his entire empire collapsed. So, just how great was Alexander?

• New material in the paperback on the army and Alexander's treatment of exiles
• Huge interest in Alexander driven by Oliver Stone/Colin Farrell motion picture
• Accessibly written for general reader, not scholar
• New portrait of the single most important figure of the ancient world ? reveals the real Alexander, warts and all
• Fascinating account of a massively colourful if ultimately destructive life
• Provides new interpretations of the question of Alexander's corruption and paranoia
• Fully illustrated - brings alive the age as well as the man

In 1836, Charles Henry Harrod found himself in a prison hulk awaiting transportation to Tasmania for seven years' hard labour. He had been convicted at the Old Bailey of receiving stolen goods, and this should have been the beginning of the end for his fledgling business and his family. And yet, in miraculously escaping his fate and vowing to turn his back on crime, he would become the much esteemed founder of the now legendary Harrods in London's fashionable Knightsbridge district. Some years later Charles was succeeded by his son, who brought with him the necessary energy and drive to take the shop from a successful local grocer's to a remarkable and complex department store, patronised by the wealthy and famous. Robin Harrod's fascinating family story reveals the previously unknown origins of the store, and follows its remarkable fortunes through family scandal, the devastating fire of 1883 and its subsequent rise from the ashes, to the end of the nineteenth century when its shares were floated on the stock exchange, thus completing one of the most extraordinary comeback stories in the history of commerce.

'An epic tale of exploration, daring and tragedy told by a fine historian - and a wonderful writer' Peter Frankopan, author of the bestselling The Silk Roads. 'The name of William Barents isn't that familiar to us these days...but this enthralling, elemental and literally spine-chilling epic of courage and endurance should change all that' Roger Alton, Daily Mail A dramatic and compelling account of survival against the odds from the golden Age of Exploration. The human story has always been one of perseverance - often against remarkable odds. The most astonishing survival tale of all might be that of sixteenth-century Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew, who ventured further North than any Europeans before and, on their third polar expedition, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing hunger and endless winter. In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer masterfully combines a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great age of Exploration - a time of hope, adventure and seemingly unlimited geographic frontiers.

Heartfelt personal accounts from transgender people fighting for the right to serve in the military "Prior to coming out as transgender I served the first several years of my career under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," hiding my sexual orientation out of the constant fear of expulsion. I then found myself in the same predicament as when I first joined, wanting nothing more than to serve my country and do my job, but at the cost of sacrificing a major part of who I am. . . . This time, however, I decided that I could no longer sacrifice my own well-being, my own authentic self."-Mak Vaden, Warrant Officer 1, U.S. Army National Guard, 2006-present "I have traveled around the world. . . . I have been on five cutters with eleven years of sea time and commanded the Coast Guard cutter Campbell. I have negotiated treaties and fostered international law enforcement cooperation. I have stopped drug smugglers and seized illegal fishing vessels on the high seas. And, I also have gender dysphoria and identify as a trans woman."-Allison Caputo, Captain, US Coast Guard, 1995-present On January 25, 2021, in one of his first acts as President, Joe Biden reversed the Trump Administration's widely condemned ban on transgender people in the military. In With Honor and Integrity, Mael Embser-Herbert and Bree Fram introduce us to the brave individuals who are on the front lines of this issue, assembling a powerful, accessible, and heartfelt collection of first-hand accounts from transgender military personnel in the United States. Featuring twenty-six essays from current service members or veterans, these eye-opening accounts show us what it is like to serve in the military as a transgender person. From a religious affairs specialist in the Army National Guard, to a petty officer first class in the Navy, to a veteran of the Marine Corps who became "the real me" at age forty-nine, these accounts are personal, engaging, and refreshingly honest. Contributors share their experiences from before and during President Trump's ban-what barriers they face at work, why they do or don't choose to serve openly, and how their colleagues have treated them. Fram, a lieutenant colonel who is serving openly as a transgender woman in the US Space Force, and has advocated for open service policies, shares her experience in the aftermath of Trump's announcement of the ban on Twitter. Ultimately, Embser-Herbert and Fram provide an inspiring look at the past, present, and future of transgender military service. At a time when LGBTQ rights are under siege, and the opportunity to serve continues to be challenged, With Honor and Integrity is a timely and necessary read.

Bestselling author Jennet Conant brings us a stunning account of Julia and Paul Child's experiences as members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the Far East during World War II and the tumultuous years when they were caught up in the McCarthy Red spy hunt in the 1950s and behaved with bravery and honor. It is the fascinating portrait of a group of idealistic men and women who were recruited by the citizen spy service, slapped into uniform, and dispatched to wage political warfare in remote outposts in Ceylon, India, and China.
The eager, inexperienced 6 foot 2 inch Julia springs to life in these pages, a gangly golf-playing California girl who had never been farther abroad than Tijuana. Single and thirty years old when she joined the staff of Colonel William Donovan, Julia volunteered to be part of the OSS's ambitious mission to develop a secret intelligence network across Southeast Asia. Her first post took her to the mountaintop idyll of Kandy, the headquarters of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander of combined operations. Julia reveled in the glamour and intrigue of her overseas assignment and lifealtering romance with the much older and more sophisticated Paul Child, who took her on trips into the jungle, introduced her to the joys of curry, and insisted on educating both her mind and palate. A painter drafted to build war rooms, Paul was a colorful, complex personality. Conant uses extracts from his letters in which his sharp eye and droll wit capture the day-to-day confusion, excitement, and improbability of being part of a cloak- and-dagger operation.
When Julia and Paul were transferred to Kunming, a rugged outpost at the foot of the Burma Road, they witnessed the chaotic end of the war in China and the beginnings of the Communist revolution that would shake the world. "A Covert Affair "chronicles their friendship with a brilliant and eccentric array of OSS agents, including Jane Foster, a wealthy, free-spirited artist, and Elizabeth MacDonald, an adventurous young reporter. In Paris after the war, Julia and Paul remained close to their intelligence colleagues as they struggled to start new lives, only to find themselves drawn into a far more terrifying spy drama. Relying on recently unclassified OSS and FBI documents, as well as previously unpublished letters and diaries, Conant vividly depicts a dangerous time in American history, when those who served their country suddenly found themselves called to account for their unpopular opinions and personal relationships.

The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students demonstrated, workers went on general strike, factories and universities were occupied. At the height of its fervour, it brought the entire national economy to a halt. The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared civil war or revolution. Fifty years later, here are the eye-opening oral testimonies of those young rebels. By listening to the voices of students and workers, as opposed to those of their leaders, May '68 appears not just as a mass event, but rather as an event driven by millions of individuals, achieving a mosaic human portrait of France at the time. This book reveals the legacy of the uprising: how those explosive experiences changed both those who took part, and the course of history. May Made Me will record these moments before history moves on yet again.

Carl Schmitt is one of the most widely read and influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. His fundamental works on friend and enemy, legality and legitimacy, dictatorship, political theology and the concept of the political are read today with great interest by everyone from conservative Catholic theologians to radical political thinkers on the left. In his private life, however, Schmitt was haunted by the demons of his wild anti-Semitism, his self-destructive and compulsive sexuality and his deep-seated resentment against the complacency of bourgeois life. As a young man from a modest background, full of social envy, he succeeded in making his way to the top of the academic world in Germany, and yet he never felt at home in the academic establishment and among those of high social standing. When the Nazis seized power, Schmitt was susceptible to their ideology. He broke with his Jewish friends, joined the Nazi Party in May 1933 and lent a helping hand to Hitler, thereby becoming deeply entangled with the regime. Schmitt was irrevocably compromised by his role as the 'crown jurist' of the Third Reich. After the war, he led a secluded life in his home town in the Sauerland and became a key background figure in the intellectual scene of postwar Germany. Reinhard Mehring's outstanding biography is the most comprehensive work available on the life and work of Carl Schmitt. Based on thorough research and using new sources that were previously unavailable, Mehring portrays Schmitt as a Shakespearean figure at the centre of the German catastrophe.

Karel Kuttelwascher may have had a German surname, but he was a Czech who became the scourge of the Luftwaffe bombers operating from France and the Low Countries in 1942. Flying with the RAF's legendary No. 1 Squadron, his destruction of fifteen aircraft in only three months earned him the DFC twice in a mere forty-two days, and made him the RAF's top night intruder ace. After his daring escape from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, he flew in the ferocious Battle of France and participated in the final weeks of the Battle of Britain as one of Churchill's 'Few'. During the early circus operations, he clocked up his first three kills before playing a part in the famous Channel Dash. However, it was in the lauded but lonely night intruder role that his individualistic skills came to the fore. Flying a long-range Hawker Hurricane IIC armed with 20-mm cannon, the man the wartime media dubbed the 'Czech Night Hawk' unleashed a reign of terror that included shooting down three Heinkel bombers in just four minutes.

Princess Emma, as she became known in colonial circles, was the eldest daughter of the Rharhabe chief Mgolombane Sandile, leader of the Ngqika tribe - western amaXhosa in the 19th Century. This book focuses on the life of Emma Sandile from her early years to her adulthood. Her story reads like a novel except that it is all true, based on archival sources, press reports and fieldwork. After the Cattle Killing in 1857 Governor Sir George Grey and Bishop Robert Gray planned to educate the children of the Xhosa elite as English gentlemen and women loyal to the Empire. This included Emma and her brother Gonya, Sandile's heir, who were sent to Cape Town in 1858. Emma attended the Anglican Zonnebloem College until 1863; her school mistress described this time in an unpublished journal. In 1859, Grey granted Emma and Gonya farms in the Eastern Cape to cover their schooling, making Emma the first black woman private landowner in Southern Africa. As the first black woman landowner in Southern Africa, as the earliest black woman writer in English, as the only woman to attend the Land Commission, Emma was one of the pioneers of black womanism in our country. Her courage in bridging her African tradition and the imposed western culture was without precedence. It is hoped that this window on Emma's world will give some understanding of the problems involved in religious and social change. Perhaps her courage in fighting for her rights as she weathered the storms of fluctuating fortunes will be an inspiration to those who are following in her footsteps today.

From modest Quaker beginnings as the child of financially insecure parents and the wife of a stolid young lawyer to the excitement and challenges of life as the nation's first First Lady--arguably the most influential role in the American government's formative years--Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849) led an extraordinary life. David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman have culled a particularly rich selection of her letters to illuminate the story of the woman widely credited with setting the standard for successive generations of Washington's political women. This collection will prove an invaluable resource in current political and historical circles, where the role founding mothers played--both as supportive family members and as crucial political negotiators--is increasingly recognized and studied.

Organized chronologically into five sections reaching from her correspondence as a young adult in late-eighteenth-century Philadelphia up to the letters of her widowhood in 1840s Washington, and with a helpful contextualizing introduction to each section, "The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison" provides a long-overdue biographical sketch of one of the early republic's most fascinating personalities.

"The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison" was made possible through a grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission

Learn why NASA astronaut Mike Collins calls this extraordinary space race story "the best book on Apollo" this inspiring and intimate ode to ingenuity celebrates one of the most daring feats in human history. When the alarm went off forty thousand feet above the moon's surface, both astronauts looked down at the computer to see 1202 flashing on the readout. Neither of them knew what it meant, and time was running out . . . On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. One of the world's greatest technological achievements -- and a triumph of the American spirit -- the Apollo 11 mission was a mammoth undertaking involving more than 410,000 men and women dedicated to winning the space race against the Soviets. Set amid the tensions and upheaval of the sixties and the Cold War, Shoot for the Moon is a gripping account of the dangers, the challenges, and the sheer determination that defined not only Apollo 11, but also the Mercury and Gemini missions that came before it. From the shock of Sputnik and the heart-stopping final minutes of John Glenn's Mercury flight to the deadly whirligig of Gemini 8, the doomed Apollo 1 mission, and that perilous landing on the Sea of Tranquility -- when the entire world held its breath while Armstrong and Aldrin battled computer alarms, low fuel, and other problems -- James Donovan tells the whole story. Both sweeping and intimate, Shoot for the Moon is "a powerfully written and irresistible celebration" of one of humankind's most extraordinary accomplishments (Booklist, starred review).

The critics of Charles George Gordon accused him of vacillation and of instability of character. His supporters refused to admit that he was inconstant; they took the position that it was the Gladstone Cabinet which manifested a spirit of indecision that was fraught with terrible consequences. General Gordon was a prolific letter-writer, and he also kept a journal. Many official notes and dispatches deal with his final mission to Khartoum. This book, first published in 1933, attempts to get at the truth of Gordon's character and his time in the Sudan through these letters, this journal, these notes and despatches.

Statesman, pre-eminent leader and founder of the free world's then largest and most formidable trade union, Ernest Bevin was one of the most rousing figures of the twentieth century. Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition during the Second World War, he was Churchill's right-hand man, masterminding the home front while the war supremo commanded the battle front. Afterwards, he was Foreign Secretary at one of the most critical moments in international history, responsible for keeping Stalin and communism out of Western Europe, and for creating West Germany, NATO and the transatlantic alliance, all of which underpin European democracy and security to this day. An orphan farm boy from Bristol, Bevin's astonishing rise to fame and power is unmatched by any leader to this day. In this discerning and wide-ranging biography, Andrew Adonis examines how 'the working-class John Bull' grew to a position of such authority, and offers a critical reassessment of his life and influence. Finally exploring Bevin's powerful legacy and lessons for our own age, Adonis restores this charismatic statesman to his rightful place among the pantheon of Britain's greatest political leaders.

“There was no definite decision on the length of the [hunger] strike – it was to go on until their demands for release were met, or until collapse. They became slow and flagging and they didn’t talk much.”

Previously banned and unavailable in South Africa, Helen Joseph writes a moving personal account of enduring the Treason Trial - one of the longest and most important trials in South African history. She shares stories of the Pony Post -the trialists' own postal service and language, the treatment of prisoners, and the ‘real heroes’ of the Trial: the wives of the accused. She writes honestly and details the trialists' perseverance, struggles, compassion and commitment to fighting oppression for all South Africans.

This edition is a vital addition to curating our South African history and to our ever-growing Pocket Series.