A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.She vividly evokes her friendships, love interests, mentors, and the early days of the most important relationship of her life, with fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre, against the backdrop of a turbulent political time.

First modern biography of Thomas William Coke, first earl of Leicester, who revolutionised agricultural practices and became an outspoken critic of Britain's war against America over independence. Thomas William Coke ("Coke of Norfolk") (1754-1842) is best known as one of the main promoters of the improved farming of the "Agricultural Revolution". He was also a county MP for over forty years between 1776 and 1832; and the owner of one of the finest palladian mansions in Britain, and by far, the largest estate in Norfolk at Holkham Hall. A friend of Charles James Fox, he moved in the highest Whig social circles and lavishly entertained distinguishedfriends from both political and academic fields who came to Holkham for its splendid library, works of art and antiquities as well as the game coverts. A charismatic figure, he was an outspoken critic of Britain's war against theAmericans in their fight for independence which made him friends who visited and corresponded across the Atlantic. Despite his importance, both locally and nationally, there has been no full scale biography of him for a hundred years - a gap which this book sets out to address. It sets his agricultural achievements in a wider context, and places Coke himself in his milieu, as one of a small circle of landed grandees who were of major influence duringa period of political turbulence and agricultural change. The author also examines Coke's reputation as a "patriot". Dr SUSANNA WADE MARTINS is Honorary Research Fellow, School of History, University of East Anglia.

This is a fascinating and insightful biography of one of the world's longest reigning and most revered monarchs. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand is the world's longest reigning living monarch - an achievement few would have predicted when the Thai king acceded the throne after the mysterious death of his brother in 1946. How did King Bhumibol revive the sinking fortunes of the Thai monarchy? Why has he become arguably the most revered king in Thai history? This illustrated biography tells that remarkable story. Beginning with an introduction explaining the unique history and traditions of the Thai monarchy, King Bhumibol Adulyadej offers a fresh and insightful account of his life, from his birth in America and education in Europe to his unexpected accession to the throne. Following him through the Cold War and Indochina War periods, the book shows how the king has used his position to help develop the country and its people while at the same time securing the status of the monarchy itself.

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham--the brilliant Cambridge scientist, freethinking intellectual, and practicing nudist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, once the world's most technologically advanced country.

As a very young boy in the Second World War the seeds were sown to fly in the blue sky. Terry made up his young mind with great determination to reach for that sky in a 'Spitfire'. He joined the RAF as a pilot but twists of fate caused him to become a nuclear bomber pilot. It was RAF policy not to change from that complicated role to another and yet he pushed for change; became an instructor and as a display pilot he made his final move to the single seat air defence Lightning. He instructed on the Lightning and commanded two squadrons. Terry's original dream came true and he reached the pinnacle of his ambition but it was complicated in a way that he had not envisaged. There were dangerous incidents, the loss of friends, the 31 moves of his family and the politics associated with senior rank. At the outset he had not understood the demands of a Cold War or the need for him to sail the major oceans of the world with a sea-going admiral and become his intelligence officer. The eventual compensation was a promotion and a two year tour on a tropical island with his family.

Though all but three of Robert Sidney's 332 extant letters to his wife Barbara Gamage Sidney have been in the Sidney family archive, they have never previously been fully transcribed or edited. This edition of the surviving letters, which Sidney wrote to his wife when they were separated for long periods by his official duties at various continental locations, provides a wealth of information about the Sidneys' family life. They touch on matters such as family illnesses, the children's education, court gossip, finances, and the construction of additions to Penshurst Place, the seat of the Sidney family. The letters also offer an extraordinary record of an early-modern English household in which the wife was entrusted with the overall responsibility for the well-being of her family, and for managing a large estate in the absence of her husband. Sidney's letters show that, although his union with the wealthy Welsh heiress Barbara Gamage may have been engineered primarily for political and financial ends, clearly the couple enjoyed a happy and loving marriage. Their correspondence is full of endearments, and Robert frequently tells his wife how much he misses her and their beloved children, including his 'Malkin,' later Lady Mary Wroth. The volume includes an introduction and notes by the editors. It also includes contextual materials such as relevant sections on family matters from letters to Robert from his trusted agent, Rowland Whyte; and from Robert Sidney's own business correspondence. The introduction specifically addresses the issue of Barbara's literacy, within the broader context of late-Elizabethan women's literacy.

It is January, 1978. Groups of nervous, dutiful white conscripts begin their National Service with Rhodesia's security forces. Ian Smith's minority regime is in its dying days and negotiations towards majority rule are already under way. For these inexperienced eighteen-year-olds, there is nothing to do but go on fighting, and hold the line while the transition happens around them. Dead Leaves is a richly textured memoir in which an ordinary troopie grapples with the unique dilemmas presented by an extraordinary period in history - the specters of inner violence and death; the pressurized arrival of manhood; and the place of conscience, friendship and beauty in the pervasive atmosphere of futile warfare.

In Service is the tale of one person's journey into manhood, ultimately finding himself in the theatre of war. It is a journey littered with colourful anecdotes and diverse experience: from military training in the Guards Depot to Trooping the Colour; from academic failure to intelligence work in Northern Ireland; from helping Rudolf Hess out of an ambulance to being tasked with taking the Queen's portrait. Tim Rees colours every experience with profound and often idiosyncratic observations that offer the reader a taste of the sometimes humorous, often arduous and, on too many occasions, brutal reality of service. But, as Tim says, 'The positive effect is the bond of common experience I share with men with whom I served in the army' - a type of bond that, in his opinion, is in danger of being lost in the modern age.

On December 22, 1550 an old bricklayer named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. Unusually for a bricklayer, he had been able to read Latin and, when pressed, he had claimed to be a natural son of King Richard III and to have met him the day before the Battle of Bosworth. Yet had he simply been Richard III's bastard he would have been styled "of Gloucester" or given the name of his birthplace. Richard III openly acknowledged and provided for his other bastards. Why did he not do the same for Richard Plantagenet? Most tellingly, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? In an original and intriguing scenario, David Baldwin argues that while some elements of Richard Plantagenet's story may be authentic, it is possible that he dared not reveal his real identity: Richard, Duke of York, the rightful king. David Baldwin has searched contemporary documents to unearth the clues that underpin his theory and has visited all the places associated with Richard Plantagenet. In doing so, he has opened up an entirely new line of investigation and exonerated Richard III of the greatest of the crimes imputed to him. Dead princes were a potential embarrassment, but a living prince would have been a real danger and a closely guarded secret, not only in Richard's reign but in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Samuel Bentham influenced both the technology and the administrative ideas employed in the management of the British navy. His influence stemmed from his passion for science, from his desire to achieve improvements based on a belief in the principle of Utility, and from experience gained over eleven years in Russia, a large part in the service of Catherine the Great and Prince Potemkin. Having travelled extensively throughout the north and south of Russia, Poland and Siberia, he managed Potemkin's industries at Krichev, built fast river galleys, armed the Russian flotilla of small craft at Kherson and served with the flotilla that defeated the Turks in the Black Sea. His main ambition was to open river communication in Siberia and develop trade into the Pacific. However he returned to England and in 1796 became Inspector General of Naval Works, a post in which he fought for innovations in the technology and management of the British royal dockyards. Regarded then by the Navy Board as a dangerous maverick, this book reveals the experiences, creativity and thinking that made him a major figure in British naval development.

This book is concerned with the eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist and Enlightenment figure, John Baskerville (1707-75). Baskerville was a Birmingham inventor, entrepreneur and artist with a worldwide reputation who made eighteenth-century Birmingham a city without typographic equal, by changing the course of type design. Baskerville not only designed one of the world's most historically important typefaces, he also experimented with casting and setting type, improved the construction of the printing-press, developed a new kind of paper and refined the quality of printing inks. His typographic experiments put him ahead of his time, had an international impact and did much to enhance the printing and publishing industries of his day. Yet despite his importance, fame and influence many aspects of Baskerville's work and life remain unexplored and his contribution to the arts, industry, culture and society of the Enlightenment are largely unrecognized. Moreover, recent scholarly research in archaeology, art and design, history, literary studies and typography, is leading to a fundamental reassessment of many aspects of Baskerville's life and impact, including his birthplace, his work as an industrialist, the networks which sustained him and the reception of his printing in Britain and overseas. The last major, but inadequate publication of Baskerville dates from 1975. Now, forty years on, the time is ripe for a new book. This interdisciplinary approach provides an original contribution to printing history, eighteenth-century studies and the dissemination of ideas.

The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Ree, told in his own words "A beautiful collection of writings by schoolmaster-turned-secret agent Harry Ree. . . . Memoirs, postwar broadcasts and letters from French comrades combine to paint a picture of everyday heroism, treachery and tragedy."-Robert Gildea, author of Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance "In a book devoted to heroism in its true, self-effacing form, that modesty seems entirely appropriate, and is a tribute both to Ree and to the son who put it together."-Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times A pacifist school teacher at the start of the war, Harry Ree changed his mind with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943. He soon won the confidence of local resisters and directed a series of dramatic sabotage operations. Ree's memoirs, superbly edited by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Ree, offer unique insights into life in the French Resistance, and into the anxiety, folly and pity of war.

From the author of "First in His Class," the definitive biography of Bill Clinton, this "New York Times" bestseller was hailed by critics as a groundbreaking multigenerational biography, a richly textured account of President Obama and the forces that shaped him and sustain him.
In "Barack Obama: The Story," David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing information, a masterly narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama in the Oval Office, and a trove of letters, journals, diaries, and other documents.
The book unfolds in the small towns of Kansas and the remote villages of western Kenya, following the personal struggles of Obama's white and black ancestors through the swirl of the twentieth century. It is a roots story on a global scale, a saga of constant movement, frustration and accomplishment, strong women and weak men, hopes lost and deferred, people leaving and being left. Disparate family threads converge in the climactic chapters as Obama reaches adulthood and travels from Honolulu to Los Angeles to New York to Chicago, trying to make sense of his past, establish his own identity, and prepare for his political future.
"Barack Obama: The Story" chronicles as never before the forces that shaped the first black president of the United States and explains why he thinks and acts as he does. Much like the author's classic study of Bill Clinton, "First in His Class," this promises to become a seminal book that will redefine a president.

'Captivating, intimate, dazzling epic and revelatory' SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE The story of the family who rose from the Frankfurt ghetto to become synonymous with wealth and power has been much mythologized. Yet half the Rothschilds, the women, remain virtually unknown. From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the English branch of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty first. As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Determined to challenge and subvert expectations, they supported each other, building on the legacies of their mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with Rossini and Mendelssohn, Disraeli, Gladstone and Chaim Weizmann, amphetamine-dealers, temperance campaigners, Queen Victoria, and Albert Einstein. They broke code, played a pioneering role in the environmental movement, scandalised the world of women's tennis by introducing the overarm serve and drag-raced with Miles Davies in Manhattan. Absorbing and compulsive THE WOMEN OF ROTHSCHILD gives voice to the complicated, privileged and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.

The story of 25 people accused of murdering a black policeman during the civil unrest in 1980s, and of the white woman who became their lawyer.

Sulla is one of the most controversial figures of the Roman Republic. A harsh military leader devoted to the idea of Rome's destiny, he has often been portrayed as simply a tyrant or despot. Arthur Keaveney's biography, first published more than twenty years ago, overturned that view in favour of a more complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was the recipient of divine favour - Sulla Felix. Sulla rose from poverty and obscurity to become the master of the Roman world. He was not a crude forerunner of the emperors but a statesman who had long pondered the ills that beset Rome. His dictatorship was dedicated to bringing in laws for the better ordering of the Republic. Despite his achievements and his integrity, Sulla's constitution did not last and was swept away within a generation. In this second edition of Keaveney's biography, the text has been completely rewritten and the findings of two decades of scholarship have been fully integrated. Written in a lively and entertaining style, designed to satisfy scholars as well as to inform students, the book introduces this pivotal figure of the outgoing republic to a new generation of readers.

For more than five decades Walter and Albertina Sisulu were at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. As secretary-general of the ANC, Walter was sentenced to life imprisonment with Nelson Mandela in 1964 and spent 26 years in prison until his release in 1989. While her husband and his colleagues were in jail, Albertina played a crucial role in keeping the ANC alive underground, and in the 1980s was co-President of the United Democratic Front. Their story has been one of persecution, bitter struggle and painful separation. But it is also one of patience, hope and enduring love.

Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, this extraordinary work is a remarkable record - in both words and images - of Jewish life in a Polish town before World War II as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy. Mayer Kirshenblatt, who was born in 1916 and left Poland for Canada in 1934, taught himself to paint at age 73. Since then, he has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, 'lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived'. This volume presents his lively paintings woven together with a marvelous narrative created from interviews that took place over forty years between Mayer and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Together, father and daughter draw readers into a lost world - we roam the streets and courtyards of the town of Apt, witness details of daily life, and meet those who lived and worked there: the pregnant hunchback, who stood under the wedding canopy just hours before giving birth; the khayder teacher caught in bed with the drummer's wife; the cobbler's son, who was dressed in white pajamas all his life to fool the angel of death; the corpse that was shaved; and the couple who held a 'black wedding' in the cemetery during a cholera epidemic. This moving collaboration - a unique blend of memoir, oral history, and artistic interpretation - is at once a labor of love, a tribute to a distinctive imagination, and a brilliant portrait of life in one Jewish home town.

Prime Minister Marcello Caetano was the successor of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Considered the second most important figure of the Portuguese dictatorship (the Estado Novo regime, 1933-1974), Caetano has generated considerable disagreement amongst scholars with regard to his persona and politics; some consider him more authoritarian than his predecessor, others more liberal. After providing background on his childhood and entry to university, the author explains his growing activism in the Integralismo Lusitano and in the Catholic Church; his monarchist and nationalist ideology. Caetano's decision to support the Salazar Regime coincided with publications in the mainstream media on corporatism, colonialism, European politics and the relationship between Brazil and Portugal. His role in the office of General Secretary of Mocidade Portuguesa (MP), an organization of Portuguese youth similar to the fascist youth organizations in Italy or Germany, was at odds with his neutrality policy in the Second World War. The leadership of Uniao Nacional (the single party of the regime) and the presidency of the Camara Corportiva (a parliament for corporative interests) led to national recognition at a time when the Portuguese regime had to reform its colonial policy. His tensions with other notables of Salazarism resulted in his political demotion and devotion toward the University in the 1960s. As Rector of Lisbon University he supported universities' autonomy, dividing public opinion. Caetano's Presidency (beginning in September 1968) reflected the tense relationship between the government and the liberal wing on the colonial crisis. Ultimately this led to the final crisis of the New State regime; the fragmentation of the armed forces; and the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974. During his exile in Brazil between 1974 and 1980 Caetano maintained correspondence with his Portuguese friends. These correspondences, introduced and explained by Francisco Martinho, are of exceptional importance in understanding Portugal's contemporary political history.