Biography & Autobiography : Historical

In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award—winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals–Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison–confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. more...

Price: $9.95

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"— New York Times Book Review ) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"— Time ) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country. No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China , describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever. Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is more...

Price: $19.95

In 1901, Philadelphia's celebrity female journalist stepped off a train in Blackfoot, Montana, and into a world of living legends. The miners and frontiersmen, Indians and trappers that Caroline Lockhart met there inspired this beautiful, single, strong-willed woman to live a life she had only dreamed about in what remained of the Wild West. more...

Price: $21.95

Florence in the age of Lorenzo was a city of contrasts, of unparalleled artistic brilliance and unimaginable squalor in the city's crowded tenements; of both pagan excess and the fire-and-brimstone sermons of the Dominican preacher Savonarola. Florence gave birpth to both the otherworldly perfection of Botticelli's Primavera and the gritty realism of Machiavelli's The Prince. Nowhere was this world of contrasts more perfectly embodied than in the life and character of the man who ruled this most fascinating city. more...

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In 1795, at the age of twenty-four, Mungo Park began a journey from the Gambia into the uncharted interior of the African continent. Travelling with only native guides, and later entirely alone, his goal was to become the first European to reach the River Niger and the fabled city of Timbuctoo. The journey took him through warring African kingdoms and the fringes of the Sahara Desert, leading him into great physical hardship and danger. He endured imprisonment by a Moorish chief for several months, was repeatedly robbed, and came close to death from thirst and starvation. He eventually reached the Niger and mapped part of its course, before being forced to turn back. He had long been given up for dead by the time he returned to the Gambia in 1797. Throughout the journey he kept meticulous notes, which he transcribed into Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa on his return to Britain. His simple and modest account of his journey and the conditions he encountered along the way has been an inspiration to travellers and writers ever since it was first published in 1799. More than a travel journal, it is a story of adventure and survival that offers a unique insight into conditions in West Africa before widespread European settlement. more...

Price: $6.99