|
Books > Biography > Historical, political & military
Find out who lived and who died in the incredible story of the
founding father who made America modern and became the toast of
Broadway. This richly illustrated biography portrays Alexander
Hamilton's fascinating life alongside his key contributions to
American history, including his unsung role as an early
abolitionist. An immigrant from the West Indies, he played a
crucial part in the political, legal and economic development of
the new nation: He served as Washington's right-hand man during the
Revolutionary War; he helped establish the Constitution; he wrote
most of 'The Federalist Papers'; and he modernized America's
fledgling finances, among other notable achievements. Noted
Hamilton scholar and chairman of the Museum of American Finance,
Richard Sylla, brings the flesh-and-blood man - the student,
soldier, lawyer, political scientist, finance minister and
politician - to life and reveals captivating details of his private
life, as well as his infamous demise at the hands of Vice President
Aaron Burr.
An updated edition of this classic World War II memoir, chosen as
one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century, with
a new photo insert and restored passages from the original French
edition
When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he
was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to
participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was
seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a
resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses
to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to
the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand
resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport
to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and
insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or
indeed any challenge, ever published.
Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden -- just
steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat -- Irmgard Hunt had a
seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating,
and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under
an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality
of war -- and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime --
aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the
Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
In May 1945, an eleven-year-old Hunt watched American troops
occupy Hitler's mountain retreat, signaling the end of the Nazi
dictatorship and World War II. As the Nazi crimes began to be
accounted for, many Germans tried to deny the truth of what had
occurred; Hunt, in contrast, was determined to know and face the
facts of her country's criminal past.
On Hitler's Mountain is more than a memoir -- it is a portrait
of a nation that lost its moral compass. It is a provocative story
of a family and a community in a period and location in history
that, though it is fast becoming remote to us, has important
resonance for our own time.
'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life
and times' Margaret Atwood 'Expansive and thought-provoking'
Independent Outside my work the thing I care most about is
gardening - George Orwell Inspired by her encounter with the
surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage
in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with
plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as
a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature
and power. Following his journey from the coal mines of England to
taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient
critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies
and authoritarianism, Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell, whose
love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her
dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into
colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina
Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in
impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in
Colombia. A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century
which finds solace and solutions for the political and
environmental challenges we face today, Orwell's Roses is a
remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of
resistance. 'Luminous...It is efflorescent, a study that seeds and
blooms, propagates thoughts, and tends to historical associations'
New Statesman 'A genuinely extraordinary mind, whose curiosity,
intelligence and willingness to learn seem unbounded' Irish Times
|
You may like...
Cellulose
Alejandro Rodriguez Pascual, Maria E. Eugenio Martin
Hardcover
R3,485
Discovery Miles 34 850
Hydrogels
Sajjad Haider, Adnan Haider
Hardcover
R3,518
Discovery Miles 35 180
|