Biography: historical, political and military Books
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Hitler's Spy Against Churchill: The Spy Who Died
Book SynopsisFrom the summer of 1940 until May 1941, nearly twenty German Abwehr agents were dropped by boat or parachute into England during what was known as Operation Lena, all in preparation for Hitler's planned invasion of England. The invasion itself would never happen and in fact, after the war, one of the Abwehr commanders declared that the operation was doomed to failure. There is no doubt that the operation did indeed become a fiasco, with almost all of the officers being arrested within a very brief period of time. Some of the men were executed, while others became double agents and spied for Britain against Germany. Only one man managed to stay at large for five months before eventually committing suicide: Jan Willem Ter Braak. Amazingly, his background and objectives had always remained unclear, and none of the other Lena spies had ever even heard of him. Even after the opening of the secret service files in England and the Netherlands over 50 years later, Jan Willem Ter Braak remained a 'mystery man', as the military historian Ladislas Farago famously described him. In this book, the author - his near-namesake - examines the short and tragic life of Jan Willem Ter Braak for the first time. Using in-depth research, he investigates the possibility that Ter Braak was sent to kill the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and discovers why his fate has remained largely unknown for so long.
£25.00
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Winston Churchill and the Art of Leadership: How
Book SynopsisMany indeed, are the biographies of Winston Churchill, one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. But what was that influence and how did he use it in the furtherance of his and his country's ambitions? For the first time, Professor William Nestor has delved into the life and actions of Churchill to examine just how skillfully he manipulated events to placed him in positions of power. His thirst for power stirred political controversy wherever he intruded. Those who had to deal directly with him either loved or hated him. His enemies condemned him for being an egoist, publicity hound, double-dealer, and Machiavellian, accusations that his friends and even he himself could not deny. He could only serve Britain as a statesman and a reformer because he was a wily politician who won sixteen of twenty-one elections that he contested between 1899 and 1955. The House of Commons was Churchill's political temple where he exalted in the speeches and harangues on the floor and the backroom horse-trading and comradery. Most of his life he was a Cassandra, warning against the threats of Communism, Nazism, and nuclear Armageddon. With his ability to think beyond mental boxes and connect far-flung dots, he clearly foretold events to which virtually everyone else was oblivious. Yet he was certainly not always right and was at times spectacularly wrong. This is the first book that explores how Churchill understood and asserted the art of power, mostly through hundreds of his own insights expressed through his speeches and writings.
£23.75
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Hitler's Henchmen: Nazi Executioners and How They
Book SynopsisHelmut Ortner reveals a staggering history of perpetrators, victims and bystanders in Hitler's Germany. He explores the shocking evidence of a merciless era - and of the shameful omissions of post-war German justice. Johann Reichhart was a state-appointed judicial executioner in Bavaria from 1924 until the end of the war in Europe. During the Nazi era, he executed numerous people who were sentenced to death for resisting National Socialism, including many of those involved in the 20 July 1944 bomb plot on Adolf Hitler. As a member of the SS-Totenkopfverb nde, the SS organisation responsible for administering the concentration and extermination camps, Arnold Strippel served at a number of locations during his rise to the rank of SS-Obersturmfuhrer. These included Natzweiler-Struthof, Buchenwald, Majdanek, Ravensbruck and Neuengamme, where he was responsible for murdering the victims of a series of tuberculosis medical experiments. Like Reichhart, Erich Schwinge was also involved in the legal sphere during the Third Reich. A German military lawyer, in 1931 he became a professor of law and, from 1936, wrote the legal commentary on German military criminal law that was decisive during the Nazi era. Aside from the part they played in Hitler's regime, these three men all had one further thing in common - they survived the war and restarted their careers in Adenauer's Federal Republic of Germany. In Hitler's Henchmen, Helmut Ortner uncovers the full stories of Reichhart, Strippel, Schwinge and others like them, Nazi perpetrators who enjoyed post-war careers as judges, university professors, doctors and politicians. Had they been gutless cogs in the machinery of the Nazi state, or ideologized persecutors? Ortner reveals that it was not only their Nazi pasts that were forgotten, but how the suffering of the victims, including resistance fighters such as Georg Elser and Maurice Becaud, and their relatives was suppressed and ignored.
£18.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Extraordinary Life of a Georgian Courtesan:
Book SynopsisDivorced wife, infamous mistress, prisoner in France during the French Revolution and the reputed mother of the Prince of Wales child, notorious eighteenth-century courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott lived an amazing life in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London and Paris. Strikingly tall and beautiful, later lampooned as Dally the Tall in Parisian gossip columns, she left her Scottish roots and convent education behind, to re-invent herself in a marriage -la-mode, but before she was even legally an adult she was cast off and forced to survive on just her beauty and wits. The authors of this engaging and, at times, scandalous book intersperse the story of Graces tumultuous life with anecdotes of her fascinating family, from those who knew Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and who helped to abolish slavery, to those who were, like Grace, mistresses of great men. Whilst this book is the most definitive biography of Grace Dalrymple Elliott ever written, it is much more than that; it is Graces family history that traces her ancestors from their origin in the Scottish borders, to their move south to London. It follows them to France, America, India, Africa and elsewhere, offering a broad insight into the social history of the Georgian era, comprising the ups and downs, the highs and lows of life at that time. This is the remarkable and detailed story of Grace set, for the first time, in the context of her wider family and told more completely than ever before.
£999.99
Christian Focus Publications Ltd No Difficulties With God: The Life of Thomas
Book Synopsis An exciting, easy–to–read biography of a preacher, scholar and educationalist whose impact on the religious and cultural life of Wales and other nations was immense. Thomas Charles was a household name in Wales at least until the mid–twentieth century. The moving story of the young teenager Mary Jones walking twenty–six miles alone over the mountains to Bala to buy her copy of the Bible from him remains popular to this day, drawing attention to Charles’s work in obtaining copies of the Bible for people in Wales and other countries. Enjoying an intimate relationship with Christ, Charles worked tirelessly preaching the gospel, educating the poor to read the Bible, then obtaining Bibles in Welsh and other languages for people to read. His extensive contacts with Evangelical Anglican clergy in England was a key in supporting and extending his influence in and beyond Wales. There is much to learn from Charles’s commitment to Christ and His church, his love of the Bible and awareness of divine providence as well as his experience of genuine revivals. As we learn about Thomas Charles’ life and faith may we follow his example in communing intimately with our risen, exalted Lord and proclaim Him passionately to the whole world. Trade Review… charming, searching, and inspiring … Dr. Davies’ compelling narrative not only aids the recovery of Thomas Charles, it strengthens hope that we might see a like movement of God’s grace and power. -- Tim J. R. Trumper (President of From His Fullness Ministries and Senior Pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)Eryl Davies not only shines a light on an undervalued hero of the faith; he lets the reader taste Thomas Charles’s own love for Christ and the Scriptures. May the Lord use this to raise up more like him. -- Michael Reeves (President and Professor of Theology, Union School of Theology, Bridgend, Wales)May this highly readable biography encourage us to pray for the birth and growth of the Church amongst indigenous groups across the world today who are discovering that God speaks into their lives in the language of their heart too. -- Hector Morrison (Principal, Highland Theological College, Dingwall)In this heart–warming book on the life of Thomas Charles, Eryl Davies helps us get a glimpse into the providence of God that changed not only one life, but the lives of many, many others around the world. Exploring his conversion, lessons learnt at university, a romantic pursuit that lasted nearly a decade, opposition, struggles, loss, illness, and revival, this is a book that will encourage and challenge. -- Jonathan Thomas (Pastor, Cornerstone Church, Abergavenny, Wales; author, ‘Intentional Interruptions: Learning to be Interrupted the Way God Intended’)This is a brilliantly written little book about a person who deserves to be better known than he is today … The book will inform, challenge and encourage twenty–first century Christians and churches worldwide. Buy it, read it and see for yourself! -- Philip H. Eveson (Former principal of London Theological Seminary)Throughout the book, there is a commanding plea for us today to acquaint ourselves with a new appreciation of what made Thomas Charles a person ‘who found no difficulties with God’. Read and be enthralled. -- W. Bryn Williams (Academic Director, Presbyterian Church of Wales)
£13.06
Christian Focus Publications Ltd Thomas Cranmer: The King’s Ambassador
Book SynopsisSometimes we want our heroes to have no faults. We want them to do the right thing, standing tall, with no stain on their life or character. But everyone makes mistakes. The life of Thomas Cranmer shows that God uses failures in his church for his own glory. He moved amongst Kings and Queens, influencing the throne of England and the centre of national power. But he lived at a time when the power of the monarch was absolute and sometimes the decisions you made were a matter of life and death. Thomas Cranmer’s life is perhaps best known for a decision he made that he later regretted and deeply repented of. But his final legacy is the truth that he held on to the last.
£11.24
iUniverse Rounders
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£9.95
Rowman & Littlefield The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins: The Life and Legacy
Book SynopsisJohns Hopkins destroyed his private papers so thoroughly that no credible biography exists of the Baltimore Quaker titan. One of America’s richest men and the largest single shareholder of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Hopkins was also one of the city’s defining developers. In The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins, Antero Pietila weaves together a biography of the man with a portrait of how the institutions he founded have shaped the racial legacy of an industrial city from its heyday to its decline and revitalization. From the destruction of neighborhoods to make way for the mercantile buildings that dominated Baltimore’s downtown through much of the 19th century to the role that the president of Johns Hopkins University played in government sponsored “Negro Removal” that unleashed the migration patterns that created Baltimore’s existing racial patchwork, Pietila tells the story of how one man’s wealth shaped and reshaped the life of a city long after his lifetime.Trade Review“In The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins, veteran Baltimore Sun journalist Antero Pietila has not merely chronicled the history and reach of one of the world's greatest medical institutions and its enigmatic founder. He has done something more insightful. This is a careful, textbook study of how power and money are routed through American cities-- or not. Pietila knows the origins and outcomes in Baltimore as few ever will, but more than that, he understands our permanent national pathologies of race, class and greed." -- David Simon, Baltimore-based author; journalist; and writer and producer of HBO's "The Wire"“Antero Pietila has insightfully and carefully woven a story of wealth, pain, prejudice and the unrealized potential of an American city, through the dimly lit lens of one of its most famous and enigmatic benefactors. The story within the story chronicles and explains the less than accidental idiosyncrasies and complexities of influence and pretense, on over a century of urban development. Less than a stone's throw from Washington, DC, and long after Hopkins' death, Pietila accurately details the Baltimore epitaph; a coexistence of excellence and mediocrity forged on an anvil of premeditated policy and racial practice. It is a welcome treatise on a not so incidental slice of American history.” -- Hon. Kweisi Mfume, former congressman and president of the NAACP"Antero Pietila has woven a rich tapestry of Baltimore history that vividly interweaves the legacy of the elusive Johns Hopkins with the warp and woof of twentieth century politics, the torturous aftereffects of slavery, and gritty personal reporting that never shies away from the disturbing questions posed by long-ingrained racism and poverty." -- Fergus M. Bordewich, author of "The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government""Hard-hitting and occasionally outrageous, this book gives us Baltimore by way of its most influential citizen and the institutions he created. Pietila also offers up plenty of digressions— from guano to grave robbers, mobsters to medical experiments—that are as revealing as his central subject. Picking up where his groundbreaking Not in My Neighborhood left off, he again powerfully demonstrates how racism has shaped Baltimore, even down to the legacy of the abolitionist Hopkins. Once again Pietila has written a book that should stimulate much discussion among those who care about Baltimore and its history." -- Deborah R. Weiner, co-author of On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore"Post-industrial Baltimore is fertile ground for coming to terms with the nation’s history of innovation and invention but also of forced labor, segregation, lynchings, eugenics and 'socioeconomic rotation'. In his latest book Pietila uses Johns Hopkins as the lens to focus on the high and mighty who pulled the strings and shaped Baltimore. He weaves the dealings of luminaries, power brokers, hustlers, police, and even Russian hackers, into a captivating story about his adopted hometown. Covering 200 years, the book ranges wide and far until a comprehensive picture emerges in which heroes and villains are thoroughly intertwined. Many strands lead to Johns Hopkins, the person, the university and the hospital bearing his name, adding up to what is today a 'global premium brand.'" -- Klaus Philipsen, architect and author of Baltimore: Reinventing an Industrial Legacy CityNo citizen left a more profound impact on Baltimore than entrepreneur, abolitionist, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins, who, after his death, endowed to the city the great university and hospital system that bears his name. At the same time, because he thoroughly destroyed his private papers, no comprehensive biography exists of Hopkins—but this is a good place to start. Pietila, a Baltimore Sun reporter for 35 years, delves into not just Hopkins’ formative years but the formative years of the city itself . . . If readers want to learn more about Baltimore’s history, particularly that of the east side, they won’t be disappointed. * Baltimore Magazine *
£18.99
Grand Central Publishing E.R. Nurses: True Stories from America's Greatest
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£10.44
Twelve Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama,
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£14.44
Twelve House on Fire: Fighting for Democracy in the Age
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£23.20
Twelve Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of
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£23.20
Twelve Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of
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£16.14
Grand Central Publishing Sisters in Resistance: How a German Spy, a
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£16.58
Grand Central Publishing Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from
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£17.09
Grand Central Publishing The House of Kennedy
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£9.99
Basic Books Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint
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£28.00
Basic Books Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders
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£26.00
Basic Books The Habsburgs: To Rule the World
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£30.40
Basic Books The Habsburgs: To Rule the World
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£18.69
Basic Books The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of
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£999.99
Basic Books Game of Queens
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£17.99
PublicAffairs Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That
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£15.29
£18.39
Center Street Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social
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£999.99
Nimbus Publishing Ltd A Watch in the Night: The Story of Pomquet Island's Last Lightkeeping Family
£18.95
North Atlantic Books,U.S. Tenzin Gyatso: The Early Life of the Dalai Lama
Book SynopsisThis exciting and often intense biography describes the Dalai Lama''s rigorous education and his full assumption of power at the age of fifteen following the Chinese invasion in 1950. Though Tibetan tradition holds that the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of his predecessors, one still marvels at the level of responsibility, maturity, and wisdom he possessed at a very young age. Through Claude B. Levenson''s account of his youth, illuminated by photographs and many recollections of the Dalai Lama in his own words, we begin to understand how a lama from Tibet has become the worldwide spiritual leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
£12.59
North Atlantic Books,U.S. Helena Blavatsky
Book SynopsisAt the age of 17, rejecting nineteenth-century materialism, Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) left her native Russia and traveled through India, Tibet, Egypt, Europe, and the Americas seeking out the sources of ancient wisdom as a key to spiritual truth. In 1875 in New York, she co-founded the Theosophical Society for the study of occult traditions. Many popular ideas of rediscovered ancient wisdom, including reincarnation and karma, trace their origin to Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy. This anthology includes material on her life and travels, as well as excerpts from her major works.
£15.19
University of Arkansas Press The Secret Trust of Aspasia Cruvellier Mirault:
Book SynopsisThis book presents one woman's drive to eclipse race and gender boundaries. In this fascinating biography set in nineteenth-century Savannah, Georgia, Janice L. Sumler-Edmond resurrects the life and times of Aspasia Cruvellier Mirault, a free woman of color whose story was until now lost to historical memory. It's a story that informs our understanding of the antebellum South as we watch this widowed matriarch navigate the social, economic, and political complexities to create a legacy for her family.In the spring of 1842, Aspasia entered a secret trust with a white man whose help she needed to become a landower. Sumler-Edmond's research of Aspasia's family and this trust arrangement, the outcome of which was determined by a dramatic three-party trial that went to the Georgia Supreme Court in 1878, provides new perspectives on the African American experience and on American history while telling the memorable story of a remarkable woman.Trade ReviewA valuable addition to the scholarship of the antebellum South. Through the author's research into little known historical territory, scholars can understand better how free black people operated in a southern city. "- Diane Batts Morrow, author of Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860"A study that will make a timely contribution to the scholarship of antebellum and post-bellum life in a southern city. The amplification of the struggles and successes of the free black Cruvellier and Mirault families reveals much that is new about the evolution of urban stratification in a slave society." - Billy Higgins, author of A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas
£999.99
Paragon House Publishers Ain't No Harm to Kill the Devil: The Life and
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£18.04
University of Massachusetts Press Growing Up Abolitionist: The Story of the
Book SynopsisA portrait of a close-knit family dedicated to ending slavery and social injustice; Much has been written about the life of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79), but relatively little attention has been paid to his wife, Helen Benson Garrison, and their seven children. In Growing Up Abolitionist, Garrison's public image recedes into the background and the family's private world takes center stage. The lives of the Garrison children were shaped within the context of the great nineteenth-century campaigns against slavery, racism, violence, war, imperialism, and the repression of women. As children, they became apprentices of these movements and grew up adoring their dissident parents. Collectively and individually, they carried on their parents' values in distinctive ways. Their path was not always easy. When the Civil War erupted, the entire family had to come to grips with a basic contradiction in their lives. While each member passionately yearned for the end of slavery, all but the eldest son, George, who served as an officer with the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, opposed military participation. The Civil War years also brought four marriage partners into the Garrisons' lives - Ellen Wright, Lucy McKim, and Annie Anthony (all abolitionist daughters) and Henry Villard, a German-born journalist who later became a railroad magnate and publisher of the New York Evening Post and the Nation. Raised by loving parents to be political activists, the Garrison children, as adults, assumed positions as leaders or participants in those radical causes of their day that most closely reflected their upbringing: racial justice, women's rights, anti-imperialism, and peace.Trade ReviewThis major historical and biographical study is not only highly informative but also unusually well written. It will appeal to both academics and general readers interested in history and biography. - Dee Garrison, Rutgers University, New Brunswick; ""This book will find an audience among historians of reform, the family, and political culture. Because it is a concrete and enjoyable read, it could readily be assigned in courses on any of these subjects."" - E. Anthony Rotundo, Phillips Academy, Andover
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent
Book SynopsisIlluminates the emerging culture of celebrity in early nineteenth-century America; Exploring Other Worlds tells the intertwined stories of the Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane and the spiritualist medium Margaret Fox and examines their unlikely relationship. Kane, from a prominent Philadelphia family, became one of the most renowned and honored explorers of the antebellum era. Fox grew up in rural upstate New York and, as one of the Fox Sisters, became a famed and somewhat notorious ""spirit rapper"" whose strange ""knocks"" were said to be communications from the dead. The two were rumored to have had a love affair, and they may even have been secretly married. In their separate professional lives, Kane and Fox each revealed something new and strange (though not necessarily true) to their audiences - the unknown worlds of the globe and the spirit. They brought experiences to their listeners that were exotic and delightful. The burgeoning commercial mass culture of antebellum America provided a natural venue for tales of huge icebergs, fierce polar bears, and messages from the dead. Their public careers bridged the gaps between the scientific investigations of an earlier Enlightenment age and a newer form of sensational inquiry growing up in a democratic marketplace. While Kane and Fox began by generating curiosity about geography and the nature of the human soul, in time their personal relationship became the basis for what newspaperman Horace Greeley would call an ""impertinent curiosity."" Newspapers printed letters about their supposed romance, and eventually a book purporting to be the famous explorer's love-letters to the notorious spiritualist was published. Curiosity about the Arctic and curiosity about the fate of the soul after death were transformed into curiosity about the private affairs of a new kind of media-driven public celebrity.Trade ReviewA superb piece of historical writing. Authoritative, resonant, and deftly written, it is a model for what good cultural history should be. - Jim Cullen, author of The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation; ""An intriguing piece of narrative history. Chapin's analysis of the power dynamics between the Kane and Fox families provides a fascinating glimpse into the intimate workings of class and gender in the antebellum period."" - Benjamin Reiss, author of The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press The Civil War Letters of Colonel Charles F.
Book SynopsisChronicles the untold story of disabled combat veterans who continued to serve in the Union Army; Organized in May 1863 to meet the Union Army's growing manpower needs, the Invalid Corps - later renamed the Veteran Reserve Corps - was a unique military unit. With more than twenty-four regiments of troops, nearly all of them men disabled by illness or combat wounds, it was at one point twice as large as the entire pre-war United States Army. During four years of service its troops enforced the draft, guarded prisoners and vital outposts, protected rail lines and supply depots, and served as military police in cities all across the country. Members of the Corps escorted President Lincoln's body home to Illinois, and after the war its officers formed the nucleus of the new Freedman's Bureau. This volume brings together some 150 letters written by Colonel Charles F. Johnson, an officer who served with the 18th Veteran Reserve Corps after sustaining debilitating wounds during the Seven Day's Battles in June 1862. Edited with an introduction by Fred Pelka, the letters describe the day-to-day circumstances of ""The Cripple Brigade,"" as it was derisively called, as well as guerrilla warfare in Missouri, combat in Virginia, and barracks life in Washington, D.C. Johnson was a keen observer of his nation at war, and his correspondence with his wife Mary is by turns literate and comic, objective and personal. In his introduction and annotations, Pelka provides a detailed history of the Invalid Corps and explores the experience of disability in nineteenth-century America. He looks at how the nation responded to the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of newly disabled young men, and traces how members of the Invalid Corps fought not only to restore the Union but also to retain their dignity as Americans and as human beings.Trade ReviewCivil War historians and others will value this book. It provides a fascinating and insightful introduction to the disabled soldiers of the Civil War era, and presents the first analysis of the Invalid Corps and the twists and turns of its history. Fred Pelka performs a great service by calling long-overdue attention to the experience of those who served in this unit. - John David Smith, editor of Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era; ""This collection should be of interest not only to Civil War historians, nineteenth-century Americanists, and disability historians, but also to historians of gender relations and to family and marriage historians. Readable as Johnson's letters are, the book should appeal to general readers as well."" - Paul K. Longmore, coeditor of The New Disability History: American Perspectives
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press Revolutionary Generation: Havard Men and the
Book SynopsisWhat was life like for the young men who came of age in late-eighteenth-century New England? How did the American Revolution and its aftermath shape their outlook and experiences? This book offers a collective biography of the 204 members of the Harvard College classes of 1771 through 1774, men whose lives intersected with the War for Independence and the other formative events of the founding years of the American Republic. The names of a few of these men are still familiar, including painter John Trumbull and Congressman Fisher Ames, but the principal importance of this study lies in these schoolmates' shared experiences - experiences that were also common to a much wider group of youths who reached adulthood in the 1770s. Conrad Edick Wright draws on extensive research on the classes that graduated from Harvard immediately before the start of the war to follow their members as they passed through life's common and predictable events from birth and childhood through youth to maturity, careers, marriage, the increasing civic and family responsibilities of midlife, old age, and death. He is also sensitive to his subjects' thoughts and feelings. Unusually articulate and frequently reflective, the men of the Harvard College classes of 1771 through 1774 often revealed their ambitions and concerns through their letters and diaries. Revolutionary Generation provides the most sustained application of life course and life cycle analysis to be found in any study of late-eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century America. At the same time, it shows on a personal level through the lives of its subjects many of the most important consequences of the War for Independence.
£999.99
University of Massachusetts Press A Strong-minded Woman: The Life of Mary Livermore
Book SynopsisThis is the first biography of an important nineteenth-century reformer. When Mary Livermore died in 1905, at age 84, a Boston newspaper praised her as ""America's foremost woman."" A leading figure in the struggle for woman's rights, as well as in the temperance movement, she was as widely recognized during her lifetime as Susan B. Anthony, and for a time the most popular and highly paid female orator in the country. Yet aside from Civil War historians familiar with her service as a wartime nurse, few today remember even her name. In this book, Wendy Hamand Venet reconstructs Mary Livermore's remarkable story, and explores how and why she became so renowned in her day. Born and raised in Boston, Livermore left home at age eighteen to become the private schoolteacher to a wealthy tobacco planter's children in Virginia, an experience that afforded her an intimate look at slave-based society in the 1840s. Returning to New England, she married and lived a conventional life as the wife of a minister and mother of three daughters. With the coming of the Civil War, however, Livermore's life changed dramatically when she became active with the United States Sanitary Commission, an organization that would propel her into the public limelight and cause her to challenge society's traditional view of the role of women. After the war, Livermore became deeply involved in the woman's rights movement, serving as editor of the newspaper ""Woman's Journal"", and later as president of three major suffrage organizations - the American, New England, and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Associations. She was also founder and president of the Massachusetts Women's Christian Temperance Union, and became active in the Society of Christian Socialists in Boston. Her frequent speaking appearances on behalf of these causes eventually earned her the nickname ""Queen of the Platform."" Although she may not have been as radical as some other early feminists, Livermore's ideas resonated with thousands of middle-class women, whose experiences paralleled her own. For that reason alone, Venet shows, her life and legacy are worthy of our attention.Trade ReviewMary Livermore was a very important historical figure, and one about whom we have forgotten all too much. She played absolutely essential leadership roles in post - Civil War feminism and other reforms, developed a compelling personal ideology of 'female reform,' and became a powerful figure in genteel popular culture. Wendy Hamand Venet speaks enlighteningly to all these crucial aspects of Livermore's public life, and she is equally effective in rendering her subject's private life. Only excellent biographies do this well, and this book meets that standard. - James Brewer Stewart, author of Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero
£999.99
Farcountry Press Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West
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£999.99
Signature Books Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark
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£999.99
Signature Books Thirteenth Apostle: The Diaries of Amasa M.
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£999.99
Signature Books William Bickerton: Forgotten Latter Day Prophet
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£999.99
Smithsonian Books Amelia Earhart: A Biography
Book SynopsisShe died mysteriously before she was forty. Yet in the last decade of her life Amelia Earhart soared from obscurity to fame as the best-known female aviator in the world. She set record after record—among them, the first trans-Atlantic solo flight by a woman, a flight that launched Earhart on a double career as a fighter for women's rights and a tireless crusader for commercial air travel. Doris L. Rich's exhaustively researched biography downplays the “What Happened to Amelia Earhart?” myth by disclosing who Amelia Earhart really was: a woman of three centuries, born in the nineteenth, pioneering in the twentieth, and advocating ideals and dreams relevant to the twenty-first.
£14.99
Smithsonian Books Tex Johnston: Jet-Age Test Pilot
Book SynopsisOne of America''s most daring and accomplished test pilots, Tex Johnston flew the first US jet airplanes and, in a career spanning the 1930s through the 1970s, helped create the jet age at such pioneering aersospace companies as Bell Aircraft and Boeing.
£999.99
Ivan R Dee, Inc Louis Armstrong: The Soundtrack of the American
Book SynopsisIn the twentieth century, African Americans not only helped make popular music the soundtrack of the American experience, they advanced American music as one of the preeminent shapers of the world's popular culture. Vast numbers of black American musicians deserve credit for this remarkable turn of events, but a few stand out as true giants. David Stricklin's superb new biography explores the life of one of them, Louis Armstrong. The life story of this great instrumentalist, bandleader, and entertainer illustrates much of the black entertainer's impact on American culture and illuminates how popular culture often intersects with politics and economics. Armstrong emerged from a precarious background and triumphed over almost impossible odds, becoming a transcendent public figure and an international icon. Mr. Stricklin concentrates on Armstrong's musical talent, something many observers called a thing of genius. But he also pays special attention to Armstrong's identity a black man in America and the ways in which he triumphed over the mistreatment and disrespect dealt countless people like him. The creativity and exuberance he shared with the world came from his unique vantage as an artist and as an African American with a striking and lively spirit of freedom. He might have been able to demonstrate that determination in any line of work, but his story has special urgency because he expressed his creative power through music. With 16 black-and-white photographs.Trade ReviewIn Stricklin's biography, Louis Armstrong: The Soundtrack on the American Experience, he gives us a very compelling revisit to the total majesty of Louis Armstrong. . . . His book re-illuminates the greatness that he consistently displayed on trumpet and vocals but also puts the spotlight on Louis's impact on society and culture at large from the vantage point of a pioneering African-American artist. His stances on mistreatment and injustices give us the full picture of Mr. Armstrong the human being and how we are deeply in his debt for showing us the way musically, socially, spiritually, and humanly! This book is a must have for all to remind us the toll we pay to Armstrong every time we pick up an instrument or enjoy freedoms that he, along with other ancestors, felt were entitled to his race, the human race! -- James CarterTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Chapter 1: Humble Origins Chapter 2: A Rising Talent Chapter 3: Hot Music in a Strange Time Chapter 4: An Independent Musician Chapter 5: Fully Free African American Chapter 6: Looking to a New Future Chapter 7: International Icon Chapter 8: The Soundtrack of the American Experience
£18.99
Kodansha America, Inc Last Shogun: The Life Of Tokugawa Yoshinobu
Book SynopsisIn this remarkable account of the life of Japan's last Shogun, the arrival of U.S. Commodore Perry's squadron is shown to be the spark that ignited the cataclysm that reached its climax with the fall of the Shogunate in 1868. This brought a 17 year-old boy emperor from the seclusion of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto to preside over what became a political and cultural revolution: with this, Japan's extraordinary modernisation began in earnest.
£12.34
Bold Type Books Marx and Marxism
Book Synopsis
£21.60
Lawrence Hill Books Divine Rebels: American Christian Activists for
Book Synopsis
£17.09
Editorial Jucum Huida Hacia La Libertad: La Vida de Harriet
Book Synopsis
£10.13
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Voice of Hope: Conversations with Alan Clements
Book SynopsisAung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize Laureate, mother of two, and devout Buddhist, is one of the most inspiring examples of spiritually infused politics and fearless leadership that the world has ever seen. Daughter of the martyred Burmese national hero who negotiated Burma's independence from Britain in the 1940s, Aung San Suu Kyi led the pro-democracy movement in Burma in 1988. The movement was quickly and brutally crushed by the military junta, and Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.The Voice of Hope is a rare and intimate journey to the heart of her struggle. Over a period of nine months, Alan Clements, the first American ordained as a Buddhist monk in Burma, met with Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after her release from her first house arrest in July 1995. With her trademark ability to speak directly and compellingly, she presents here her vision of engaged compassion and describes how she has managed to sustain her hope and optimism.
£16.96
Monthly Review Press,U.S. Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy
Book Synopsis
£75.91
