History: World Biography Books

8 MEN AND A DUCK: An Improbable Voyage in a Reed Boat to Easter Island
by Nick Thorpe. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 2002 Free Press hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Content: When British travel writer and all-around thrill seeker Thorpe was traveling the wilds of Bolivia by bus, he passed the time by eavesdropping on a Frenchman talking to an Australian about a boat made of reeds. The conversation seemed more interesting than your average cross-cultural traveler exchange, so Thorpe listened intently as the Frenchman talked about legendary voyager Thor Heyerdahl and about continuing his legacy, about building this reed boat in Huatajata and sailing to Easter Island in it just eight men and a duck. Thorpe's enthusiasm for this insanity was such that he had to get involved. And not just as a documentarian: an original crew member dropped out, Thorpe dropped in and soon the journalist found himself making sails. The resulting narrative is witty, sad and as brave and daft as those who sail. Thorpe's British self-deprecation and eye for detail legitimize his passing comments on his fellow crew members, providing comic relief in an often claustrophobic text. A master of tension, Thorpe mingles storms, bruised egos, paranoia, food shortages, botched launchings, lamented loved ones and utterly inept seamanship into a tale of triumph against the odds. In Thorpe's hands, a travelogue becomes a comedy of errors, a farce, a Latinate epic and a picaresque tale. It's a warm, wonderful book, a story of enthusiasm superseding expertise in which Fate smiles favorably. [1 copy available]
$ 6.25 + $ 3.09 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.

ABU NIDAL: A Gun For Hire, The Secret Life of the World's Most Notorious Arab Terrorist
by Patrick Seale. Condition: UNREAD 1992 Random House hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Although the book is new/unread, there is a very very slight bow to the front board - poor shelving, I assume (before I got hold of it). Interior clean & tight. The cover photo of Nidal is the only known photo take by the Mossad. Content: Abu Nidal was killed (or killed himself?) in Baghdad in 2002. This book chronicles his real and supposed terrorist activities up to and including 1992. It is a fascinating look into the dark world of terrorism and the men (and now women) who carry out terrorist acts. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 5.89 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

ALIVE: The Story of the Andes Survivors
by Piers Paul Read. B&W photo section. Maps. Condition: Very good 1975 Avon MMPB first printing. Spine crease with small edgewear. Interior clean with light tanning to page edges. Content: Time has not diminished the drama of the tale of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Of the forty five people on the plane at the time of the crash, sixteen came down from the mountain about seventy days later with a saga of survival not easily forgotten. True story of courage, determination to survive, and cannibalism during their long ordeal. Read the book; see the movie. It's a story that will be with you forever.
$ 3.79 + $ 2.89 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.

AMERIGO: The Man Who Gave His Name to America
by Felipe Fernandex-Armesto. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 2006 Orion hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: The author has done an excellent job of writing a concise and beautifully articulate account on Amerigo, the man who gave his name to America. However, I think the subtitle should perhaps be- The man who finagled getting his name stamped upon America. This biography offers a wealth of information about Renaissance Florence, Seville and the famous characters of history that many know; yet, few seldom realize how much they overlapped each other. Due to a limited amount of factual documentation on Amerigo, Felipe needed to fill a book with additional facts, yet it was not done to simply fill out a volume, but rather to fill out the times, the mindset, and the world of Amerigo and his famous contemporaries. This includes Columbus, the Medici family, Toscanelli, Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as important men like Gianotto Berardi, the banker who along invested his life and financial resources for Columbus, but met financial disaster instead. Amerigo happened to work for Berardi, and after this financial debacle, he was forced to make an occupational shift in direction. That journey took him westward, in the footsteps of Columbus and eventually led to worldwide fame, as his name supplanted the New World's rightful hero to indelibly mark two huge continents. [1 copy available]
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ARIEL'S GIFT: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters
by Erica Wagner. B&W photo section. Condition: UNREAD, but perused on shelf, I believe, 2000 Faber & Faber (UK) hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: A study of Ted Hughes's poetry collection, "Birthday Letters". Divided into ten sections, the book discusses groups of poems as well as giving a biographical framework to the whole sequence. It also offers an explanation of the connections between Hughes's work and that of Sylvia Plath. This erudite critical study, together with the Unabridged Diaries of Sylvia Plath released last year, breathes new life into Plath scholarship, ironically in this case through the study of her husband's poetry, particularly Birthday Letters (published in 1998 shortly before his death), which, Wagner, literary editor of the London Times, asserts, "demonstrates the extent to which the poets influenced each other," and then goes on to offer ample evidence, grounding particular poetic images and phrases in specific events of Plath's and Hughes's lives. Hughes's love poetry in Birthday Letters overtly refers to his first meeting of Sylvia at Oxford: "Maybe I noticed you./ .../ Your exaggerated American/ Grin f or the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners." Another poem, about their honeymoon to Spain, notes that "Spain/ was the land of your dreams: the dust-red cadaver/ You dared not wake with...." To understand the complexities of Hughes and Plath's relationship, however, Wagner has had to touch upon one of the literary world's most controversial, and often ugly, disputes: to what degree if any did Hughes contribute to his wife's depression and subsequent suicide at age 30? Fortunately, Wagner is not interested in either launching crude attacks on or apologizing for Hughes. Her clear and careful scholarship allows readers to come to their own conclusions. She encourages readers to stop playing the blame game with these two gifted poets, whose work and lives were undoubtedly influenced by their marriage to each other. In Wagner's own no-nonsense phrasing, her superb study "is an attempt to open up this dialogue between two people both now dead and make [it]... more accessible to the general reader." 8 pages of photos. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 5.50 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

THE BLOODY WHITE BARON: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia
by James Palmer. B&W maps by Andras Bereznay. Condition: NEW 2009 Basic Books hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: Ancient and modern savageries unite in the colorful antihero of this scintillating historical study. Baron Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921) was a czarist officer who became a leader of anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia during the Russian civil war. He was a staunch monarchist and anti-Semite, whose sadism heightened the brutality of an already vicious conflict. He was pushed by the Red Army into Mongolia, where his reactionary impulses, accentuated by an attraction to esoteric Eastern religions, grew downright medieval. Hailed as a reincarnated god by locals who perhaps mistook him for a prophesied Buddhist messiah, Ungern-Sternberg dreamed of leading an Asian empire against the decadent West and instituted a fleeting dictatorship under which resisters were flogged to death, torn apart or burned alive. Journalist Palmer pens a vivid and slightly wry profile of this larger-than-life figure who rode into battle bare-chested and necklaced with bones, and lucidly dissects Ungern-Sternberg's protofascist worldview, with its motifs of racism, feudal hierarchy, regenerative bloodshed and mystic communion with primitive virility. The result is a fascinating portrait of an appalling man—and of the zeitgeist that shaped him. Maps. [1 copy available]
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BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze
by M.G. Sheftall. B&W era photo section. Condition: NEW 2006 NAL Trade Paperback, second printing. Content: Independent scholar Sheftall, American by birth and education but a longtime resident in Japan, adds a well-written study of the Japanese suicide warriors to the World War II literature. In the autumn of 1944, Japan was running out of soldiers, supplies, and occupied territory and was facing the conquest of Japan itself. In a last effort to discourage attack and invasion, the high command sent out the kamikaze. These suicide warriors were to be human incarnations of the Divine Wind that legendarily had saved the home islands from invasion in centuries past. Sheftall's outstanding account of this policy's design, training, and execution includes interviews with the families of dead pilots and, harder to reach, pilots who survived the missions. Since 9/11, interest in the mindset of suicide pilots has increased exponentially. Sheftall and those he interviewed want it known that the Japanese kamikaze were the product of a particular time, place, and culture, and that erroneous analogies to contemporary terrorists will only confuse anyone seeking to understand either type of suicidal flier. [1 copy available]
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CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD BURTON: The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra, and Brought the Arabian Knights to the West
by Edward Rice. Richard Burton photo cover. Condition: UNREAD 1992 Da Capo Press large Trade Paperback (664 pages), 4th printing. Pale tanning to page edges with very pale diagonal "near-crease" bottom front cover corner. Interior clean & tight. Content: "This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real-life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale...The last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." -Wall Street Journal. A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself. Couple this book with Mountains of the Moon (a suggestion of mine only). Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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CAGE ELEVEN: Writings from Prison
by Gerry Adams. Condition: NEW 1997 Roberts Rinehart Trade paperback, first printing. Tiny edge wear. Content: Adams, a Sinn Fein activist [& President of Sinn Fein] who led sit-ins, marches, and protests in Northern Ireland, was imprisoned without benefit of a trial. He suffered interrogations and torture during his four years at Long Kesh Prison, most of it in cell block "Cage Eleven." This collection of his essays about prison life was smuggled out of Long Kesh and published by the Irish Republican underground press. Reviewer: "This is an important work if one understands that guerrilla movements are often strengthened through incarceration of their members and the subsequent political mismanagement by prison authorities. It is in prison where a movement shares hardship and forms lifelong bonds, where new members are indoctrinated into the undergound war, where up and coming guerrillas earn street cred, and where its leadership has the time and motivation to hone their strategy. Taken in this light, Cage Eleven is an interesting window into the life behind bars for members of the outlawed IRA. At the time that Adams wrote these series of articles, they were smuggled to the outside and openly published. Thus, the purpose of these writings was to give the movement hope and strength and while engendering public sympathy. Adams was an astute writer, filling his articles with Irish humor and references to Irish culture. However, this book is more of a specialty work for someone interested in learning more about Adams, the IRA, or the effect of prison on outlawed movements. If none of these areas draw your interest, this is most likely not the work for you. Questions welcome." Thought provoking for today's climate as well. [1 copy available]
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CATHERINE THE GREAT
by Henri Troyat. Translated by Joan Pinkham. Condition: UNREAD 1981 Berkley paperback edition, 12th printing. Light edge wear with light tanning to pge edges. Content: The biography of the German princess who became the most powerful woman in the world. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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CHOURA: The Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova
by Alexandra Danilova. 3 B&W photo sections. Condition: Gently pre-read, if at all, 1986 Borzoi hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, no printing given. Problem: Weak binding spot at page 35 - otherwise, interior is perfect. Content: Danilova, ballerina and teacher with a long, distinguished career, never achieved the status of Pavlova or Fonteyn; her lifededicated to her artis all the more inspiring because of that. Orphaned at an early age, Danilova received her training at the Maryinsky School in St. Petersburg. Her commitment to dance led her to Europe and the United Statesan itinerant and at times insecure lifestyle. She was a popular favorite when she performed with the Ballets Russes and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Danilova has a critical eye and excellent memory; her comments on her personal and working relationships with Diaghilev, Balanchine, Massine, et al. are analytical, informative, and rarely gossipy. In the final chapter she discusses the teaching methods she uses at the School of American Ballet. An enjoyable remembrance. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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CHARLES DARWIN: The Naturalist Who Started a Scientific Revolution
by Cyril Aydon. Two B&W photo sections and B&W maps. Condition: NEW 2002 Carroll & Graff hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), assumed first printing. Content: While there are weighty biographies of Charles Darwin for the specialist and brief introductions for beginners, Cyril Aydon’s work presents Darwin for the general reader, in a winning combination of historical accuracy and exemplary, lucid science. Aydon begins with one of the overlooked factors in the great man’s success—he was rich. Thanks to his family’s wealth and position, Darwin could turn down careers in medicine and the clergy to devote his life to science, an undoubted factor in his becoming one of the undisputed giants of the field. Pursuing his studies on his own terms, he made major contributions to geology and virtually invented ecology. And he wrote two books, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, that changed forever our view of life on earth and man’s place in the natural order. Charles Darwin places Darwin the devoted father and husband in the context of his scientific career, as well as elucidating his intellectual principles. It not only explains what The Origin of Species was about, but also portrays how the epochal controversy of its publication affected him and his family personally. And it immerses the reader in both the physical and the intellectual excitement of the Beagle voyage. To round out this captivating biography, Aydon supplies an extended postscript analyzing the secret of Darwin’s success, following the changing fortunes of his theories according to fashions in intellectual thought, and explaining his significance to two centuries of evolutionary speculation and discovery. 16 pages of full-color and black-and-white photographs are included in this portrait of the father of evolutionary theory. [1 copy available]
$ 4.49 + $ 3.29 media shipping.

THE DINOSAURS OF WATERHOUSE HAWKINS
by Barbara Kerley. Great color illustrations & dinosaur drawings by Brian Selznick. Condition: NEW 2002 Scholastic hardcover (pictorial boards) 7 DJ (in mylar jacket), 5th printing. Content: "Can you fathom a time when almost no one in the world knew what a dinosaur looked like?" Barbara Kerley and Brian Selznick can--and it was a time when people used words like "fathom" a lot, about 150 years ago. This author-illustrator team became experts on the subject, delving deeply into the life of Victorian artist Waterhouse Hawkins, the first person to ever summon up, sketch, mold, and fabricate these ancient giants into full-size models. One look at this amazing-but-true picture book introducing the little-known artist Hawkins and his dreams of dinosaurs, and kids may well forget about Jurassic Park. As a child growing up in 19th-century London, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins discovered his passion: drawing and sculpting animal figures, especially prehistoric dinosaurs. His artistic talent and his goal--to build life-size models of dinosaurs envisioned from scientific fossils--led him to work with noted anatomist Richard Owen and complete a special commission from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, an installation of dinosaur statues, much of which still stands in contemporary Sydenham, England. During the project, Hawkins courted the scientific community by hosting a lavish New Year's Eve dinner party inside his life-size model of an iguanodon (the bill of fare is reproduced on the final page). Selznick (The Houdini Box, see p. 94) builds to the dramatic moment by showing readers a peek at giant reptilian toes through a parted curtain. Kerley leads readers into further exploration of Hawkins by presenting copious but never dull details of the stages of his life and works, including efforts in the U.S., thwarted by Boss Tweed. Throughout, she suffuses her text with a contagious sense of wonder and amazement. Selznick enthusiastically joins the excitement with his intricate compositions, capturing Hawkins's devotion to his art and depicting the dapper man with wild white hair as a spirited visionary and showman. The elegant design on tall pages gives the dinosaur models their due from various perspectives, and scenery of the period additionally grounds the work in historic context. Extensive author and illustrator notes denote the extensive (and fun) research both undertook for this extraordinary volume. Ages 6-up. [1 copy available]
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THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S: A Tale of the Rise of Genghis Khan (Historical Fiction)
by Taylor Caldwell. Cover art by Justin iTodd. Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1976 Fontana (UK) paperback, no printing given. Light tanning to white cover edges with moderate tanning to page edges. Several small rubbings cover spine. Content: Exactly as the title states: the story of Genghis Khan. No one writes historical fiction like Taylor Caldwell. Quetions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 4.89 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
by Alison Weir. B&W maps B&W photo section. Condition: UNREAD 2001 Ballantine Trade Paperback, first American Trade Paperback edition, third printing. Tiny edge wear. Content: As delicately textured as a 12th-century tapestry, royal biographer Weir's newest book is exhilarating in its color, ambition and human warmth. The author exhibits a breathtaking grasp of the physical and cultural context of Queen Eleanor's life, presenting a fuller, more holistic appreciation of a dazzling world whose charms can easily be anesthetized by dull narrative. And from the start, her auburn-haired subject, a live wire in a restrictive society, muse of poets and crusaders, seduces the reader. Weir conveys a deep empathy for the relaxed south of France where Eleanor was raised, a natural home for the gospel of courtly love. She paints a Brueghelesque picture of England, where wolves roamed the forests and people made skates in winter out of animal bones. In approaching as complex a subject as feudalism, Weir wears her learning lightly and has a pleasant habit of anticipating all the questions of a curious reader. Her account parades a sequence of extraordinary characters: the saintly abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who as an adolescent leapt into a freezing pond until his erection subsided; Eleanor's first husband, Louis VII of France, haunted by the screams of burning victims after his assault on a village in Champagne; her lover, Raymond of Poitiers, who could bend an iron bar with his bare hands; and her second husband, Henry II of England, her princely mirror in energy, intelligence and sexuality. Above all, there is the heroine, viewed clear-sightedly in all her intoxicating and imperious irresistibility. Quetions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 4.89 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

FALLS MEMORIES: A Belfast Life
by Gerry Adams. B&W drawings by Michael McKernon. Condition: NEW 1994 Roberts Rinehart Trade Paperback, no printing given. Originally published in Ireland. Content: Adams's memoir of growing up in the Falls Road region of Belfast, spiritual center of Northern Irish republicanism, is both a nostalgic recollection of the author's early life and a fond history of the city's Catholic working class. Adams asserts that "people in this part of the world have a benign and protective attitude towards militant republicanism," and presents a detailed colloquial history of Falls Road that considers Northern Irish sectarianism within economic and class contexts. Although his subject matter and themes are steeped in the Republican vernacular, Adams writes in an informal, conversational style, largely free of overt political tones, and even manages to inject a wry sense of humor into the most touching of histories. Relatively innocent episodes from Adams's Belfast boyhood contrast with his growing awareness of religious factionalism, which, "like all sectarianism, had nothing to do with religion and was merely, as always, a profitable ruse." Although Adams's analysis of the cultural background of the Northern Ireland conflict is lucid, this memoir reveals little of Adams himself, and less of Adams the politician. Using lyrics of children's songs, details of esoteric street games, reminiscences of local characters and illustrations of landmarks from his youth, Adams instead sketches a deeply felt and gentle portrait of a people whose "courage, self-reliance, hospitality, generosity and good humour . . . is as strong now as it ever was," despite a quarter-century of warfare. Quetions welcome. [1 copy available]
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FAMOUS IRISH LIVES
by Martin Wallace. Condition: NEW 2000 Barnes & Noble small hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: Beginning with Saint Patrick, the famed cleric who drove the snakes from the Emerald Isle, and featuring such present-day Irish figures as U2's Bono, this collection of one-page biographies celebrates the diversity of Irish genius and its contribution to life and politics throughout the world. Among those featured are Brian Boru, Thomas Moore, Lady Gregory, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Michael Collins, Mary Robinson, Richard Harris, and James Joyce. [1 copy available]
$ 3.49 + $ 2.94 media shipping. Priority shipping available.

FINDING ATLANTIS: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World
by David King B&W photos, maps, diagrams illustrate. Condition: NEW 2005 Harmony Books hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Content: Center stage in this history of a history book is the rollicking, fantastical figure of Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702). After reading Rudbeck's monumental Atlantica (1679), historian King unpacks its plausible but reckless chains of reasoning and reassembles the mass into a marvelous account of the Swedish scholar's obsessions. Rudbeck was a professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and his restless mind seems to have seldom been idle. Rudbeck switched from physiology, in which he made his name as discoverer of the lymphatic system, to the study of the Viking sagas, just then coming to scholarly light. Connecting the sagas with the gods of Norse and Greek mythology, and with Plato's lost continent of Atlantis, Rudbeck proposed an astounding theory: Atlantis was located in Sweden! Odd though the idea was, King explains that Rudbeck's protomodern research methods in archaeology and etymology gained acceptance for his theory. Restoring this colorful eccentric to life, King reveals his talent for narrative flow and portraiture in a biography that will thoroughly inveigle history readers. [1 copy available]
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THE FORBIDDEN EXPERIMENT: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
by Roger Shattuck. B&W portraits, photos illustrate - including the one portrait of the "Wild Boy." Condition: PLEASE READ / UNREAD, but not perfect, 1981 Washington Square paperback, first printing. PROBLEMS: 2 pale diagonal creases top & bottom corners front cover; shelf wear near-crease back cover; light edge wear with moderate tanning to page edges and dark tanning to inside covers. Better than it sounds. Content: Reviewer: "Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature crept out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France. He was animal in behaviour, human in form, mute, and naked except for the tatters of a shirt. Eight months later, the wild boy of Aveyron was the wonder of Paris. This book is Shattuck's moving account of an untamed boy and the young French doctor who tried to civilize him-a case that has fascinated intellectual and scientific circles for centures. Captivating such diverse thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Bruno /Bettelheim, and inspiring Francois Truffaut's celebrated film "The Wild Child", the compelling notion of the Noble Savage still haunts our imaginations today. "A touching story, told with insight and compassion...evokes the theme and myth, the fantasy of the flight from society, not only to the woods but deeper into self" - Los Angeles Times Quote. "No one has ever addressed the issues of - freedom, humanity, culture, doubt and wonder- with more intelligence and grace" Amazing story. [1 copy available]
$ 7.89 + $ 3.09 media shipping. International shipping available.

GANDHI: Messian of Peace (Pocket Arts)
by Lustre Press/Roli Books. B&W photos. Condition: NEW 2003 Roli Books oft cover, no edition given. Content: The life of Indian great, Gandhi, in text and B&W photos which are suitable for either postcards or teaching aids for history teachers. [1 copy available]
$ 2.00 + $ 2.89 media shipping. Priority shipping available.

THE GOLDEN DRAGON: Alfred the Great and His Times
by Alf J. Mapp, Jr. B&W woodcuts by Bruce Carter and detailed B&W maps. Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1991 Madison Trade Paperback, fourth printing. Name inside front cover. Tiny edge wear. Content: Mapp conjures up a powerful feeling of Alfred's England. He makes the great issue, civilization versus barbarism, emotionally important, and makes the king's exemplary virtues - courage, intelligence, compassion, faith - more than empty words, so that the book really is, in the noblest sense, an exemplary biography. It is one of history's most exciting tales. Alfred is the only king in English history to be tagged "the Great." Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 5.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority shipping available.

HITLER: The Path to Power
by Charls Bracelen Flood. Two B&W photo sections. Condition: UNREAD 1989 Houghton Mifflin large hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), Book Club Edition. Light edge ear to DJ bottom edge. Content: A highly readable account of a period many consider the most interesting of Hitler's tumultuous life, Flood's ( Lee: The Last Years ) book covers the years of political apprenticeship through the abortive Munich putsch , the months in prison and the first few days after his release in 1924. The pathetic vagrant years in Vienna are movingly described, along with Hitler's service in the army during World War I, where he found a home and his first recognition as an individual, followed by his initial political commitment to the small group from which the Nazi Party eventually arose. Most of the attention, however, is devoted to the development of the extraordinary gifts that enabled Hitler later to put his grandiose schemes into action, and his influence over such men as Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Goring, Julius Streicher, Ernst Rohm and others who played key roles in his assumption of power in 1933. The events leading up to and including the 1923 putsch form the climax to this engrossing narrative, followed by an account of Hitler's trial for treason, his comparatively comfortable period in Landsberg Prison (where he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf ); it concludes with Hitler confidently preparing to rebuild his political fortunes. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 6.49 + $ 3.49 media shipping.

JOAN OF ARC: Her Story (Movie Tie-In)
by Regine Pernoud & Marie-Veronique Clin (translation by Jeremy Adams). B&W illustrations section. Condition: Very Good+, 1999 Palgrave-McMillan Trade Paperback, 1st thus, 1st printing. Rrevised & translated by Jeremy Adams. Appears unread, but is not "crisp." Beautiful cover art of "Joan" by Jean Dominique, 1854. Content: The peasant girl who led an army against the English and placed Charles VII on the French throne has inspired countless books since her death at age 19. While others have claimed Joan the Maid (as she called herself) for every cause from feminism to working-class radicalism, this meticulous volume by two French scholars sticks close to the known facts. The authors make extensive use of contemporary documents that bring to life the turbulent political scene in which Joan operated as well as her forceful personality. Joan followed the directives of voices she believed were sent to her by God; her deep piety, self-assurance, decisiveness, and shrewd intelligence radiate from her letters and from her responses to hostile questioning at the rigged trial that resulted in her being burned alive as a heretic in 1431. Basis for the movie by Luc Besson. [1 copy available]
$ 8.95 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority shipping available.

JOAN OF ARC: A Military Leader
by Kelly Devries. Color photo section as well as B&W photos throughout and maps. Condition: UNREAD 1999 Sutton Publishing hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), no printing given. Light shelfwear "browsing." Content: In 1428, a young girl from a small French village approached the royal castle of Vaucouleurs with a now famous tale. Heavenly voices, she said, had told her to seek out the Dauphin of France, so that he might giver her an army with which to deliver France. What distinguishes this text from others is its pointed depiction of Joan as a military leader rather than a proto-feminist or saint. A well-known medieval and military historian, DeVries (history, Loyola) argues how curious it is that Joan's career as warrior, soldier, and general has been overlooked. He painstakingly analyzes her impact during the Hundred Years War: her combat strategies and how she overcame the psychology of defeat in the French armies, the influence of her victories in the peace process, and how she destabilized the English military and political leadership. [1 copy available]
$ 8.49 + $ 3.49 media shipping.

THE KEYS OF EGYPT: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs
by .Lesley and Roy Adkins. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 2000 HarperCollins hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: Jean-François Champollion's biography is neatly interwoven with Napoleonic history and the functions of Egyptian hieroglyphs in The Keys of Egypt. A gifted bookseller's son born in Revolutionary France, Champollion was to become "gripped by energetic enthusiasm" for Egypt. By the age of 12, he was studying several ancient languages, and, amid a "wave of Egyptomania," he would beat rivals to discover the key to deciphering hieroglyphs. If this was a race, it was a marathon. The breakthrough came after "20 years of obsessive hard work," not through the quick-fix solution often thought to have been provided by the Rosetta stone. The Keys of Egypt details Champollion's life and work, which were hampered by politics, poverty, and an almost hypochondriacal series of health problems. Its sources include letters and journals, the authors having undertaken researches in major libraries and museums. Chapters on Champollion's travels in Italy and Egypt include a good smattering of excerpts from his writings. Although no bibliography is given, there is a helpful passage on various levels of further reading. Highly instructive and fast-paced, The Keys of Egypt is perhaps less dramatic than it might be in portraying troubled times and groundbreaking discovery. It is, however, a clearly expressed and wide-ranging book explaining the complexity of hieroglyphic interpretation and revealing the man whose achievements "meant the discovery of a whole new civilization." [2 copies available]
$ 6.49 + $ 3.29 media shipping.

THE LAST OF THE CHIEFS: Alasdair Randaldson Macdonell of Glengarry 1773 - 1828
by Brian D Osborne. Cover art portrait of Macdonell by Sir Henry Raeburn. Condition: NEW 2001 Argyll (Scotland) Trade Paperback with tiny, tiny edgewear. Content: Landowner, sportsman and soldier, Macdonnell epitomised the image of the Highland clan chieftain. In this first full biography, Brian Osborne has researched the man's character and examines hi life against the background of major change in post-Culloden Scottish society. Contradictory, confused and controversial, Macdonell had a high public profile and an aggressive, extravagant nature. He embraced the new (the conversion of the clan chiefs from paternalistic leaders to rent collectors, the coming of the sheep, the clearances and the transport revolution) yet he clung fondly to the ways of an old Scotland. [1 copy available]
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THE LOST MESSIAH
by John Freely. B&W photos and drawings illustrate. Condition:NEW 2001 Viking Press (London) hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. [The US Edition is a first thus.] Content: The idea of a messiah who will come to offer salvation and heal the world remains one of Judaism's most enduring yearnings. Freely focuses on one who assumed the mantle of Messiah. In the mid-seventeenth century a messiah appeared, a rabbi named Sabbatai Sevi. As Freely describes him, Sabbatai would be described in modern terms as manic-depressive. In his own time, his "illuminations" (which alternated with moods of deep despair) and his knowledge of the Torah and kabbalah allowed Sabbatai to attract followers. When the respected Nathan of Gaza, serving as Sabbatai's John the Baptist, proclaimed him the Messiah, his fame grew throughout the Jewish world. Freely, quoting extensively from primary sources, follows Sabbatai's movements up to his shocking conversion to Islam [after he was threatened with beheading], which, perhaps even more shockingly, did not dissolve all of his support. Freely paints a portrait of the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire that brings time and place alive. He is less successful in describing Sabbatai the man. Although Freely makes us understand the circumstances that made the masses long for a messiah, he fails to show how Sabbatai, a not particularly appealing figure, could have successively assumed that role. Still, this volume gathers the threads of many sources into one fabric, providing a valuable interweaving of history and biography. [I love this book!!!] [1 copy available]
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GEORGE MALLORY
by David Robertson. 3 B&W photo sections. Foreword by Joe Simpson. Condition: NEW 1999 Faber & Faber Trade Paperback, first printing. Content: On 1 May 1999 an American expedition, searching on Everest for the bodies of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, found Mallory's body on a ledge at approximately 27,000 feet. The climbers carefully buried it, with appropriate ceremony, under large rocks at an undisclosed spot. They continued, without success, their search for Irvine's body and for the vest-pocket Kodak camera that might have yielded evidence that Mallory and Irvine attained the summit. George Mallory's disappearance on Everest in 1924 secured a place for him as one of the accepted heroes of the 20th century: it tended, at the same time, to overshadow the course of his life as a whole and to obscure the shape and complexity of his personality. In this first full biography, David Robertson - who has had access to all the family papers - follows Mallory's life from boyhood in Cheshire and at Winchester, through the years from 1905 to 1909 at Cambridge and the years of school mastering at Charterhouse. Then on to a happy marriage, service in the First World War, and participation in the Everest Expeditions of the Twenties. Two deep devotions - to the spirit of adventure and to his family and personal friends - were the mainsprings of his life. This book, first published in 1969, shows him not only as a mountaineer of extraordinary skill and action. It portraits a man who developed lively interests in the fields of literature, the arts and the main social and political controversies of his day, and one whose circle of friends included some of his most brilliant contemporaries. Above all, it succeeds in conveying Mallory's immense but unselfconscious charm, enhanced by transparent determination to find out what was right - a charm captivating to so many, and so very different people. [1 copy available]
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MINOTAUR: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth
by Joseph Alexander MacGillivray. B&W drawings and two B&W era photo sections. Condition: NEW 2000 Hill & Wang hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), no printing given. DJ shows light edge wear top edge. Content: On the most obvious level, this splendid, multilayered book is a biography of Sir Arthur Evans, the archeologist most responsible for the excavation of the palace at Knossos on Crete, the center of Minoan civilization in the second millennium B.C. Evans's life and work provide a fascinating example of the private and professional lives of those Victorians whose superb education, nonconformist brilliance, determination and diligence resulted in major discoveries that continue, even today, to define dialogue concerning the origins of civilization in Western Europe. But this book by MacGillivray (an archeologist who has worked on Crete) is much more than a biography of the right man at the right place at the right time. It was in the late 19th century that archeology moved from being essentially an international treasure hunt financed by wealthy individuals (as was the case with Schliemann and Troy) to a scholarly discipline with well-defined expectations for the conduct of an excavation, preservation of finds and publication about ancient sites. Evans was among a number of prominent archeologists who recognized the need for change and helped to make it possibleDbut only, it seems, grudgingly. The book's appeal, however, should reach far beyond readers interested specifically in Minoan civilization or in the process of archeological discovery. This richly detailed and engrossing account also illuminates the social, intellectual and military/political history of the give-and-take among the great European powers and the Ottoman Empire. It will also appeal to readers of travel literature as Evans and those around him were always on the move and insatiable sightseers. . [1 copy available]
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THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY
by Miranda Twiss. B&W era photos and illustrations. Condition: Pre-read 2002 Michael O'Mara Books (London)/Barnes & Noble hardcvoer & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: A catalogue of horrific evil, from the first century AD to the present day Evil is a fact of life. We can see it, not only in the reigns of Stalin and Hitler, but also in everyday crimes like murder, rape and assault - quite apart from the millions of lives brutalized by political or religious oppression, poverty, disease and starvation. One factor unites the sixteen men and women featured in this book and the evil acts they committed - they all had unlimited power over the people whose lives they controlled. Their reigns a terror cover a time-span of nearly two thousand years, from the rule of Caligula over the Roman Empire starting in 37AD, to the genocide of educated Cambodians under Pol Pot during the 1980's. Motivated by power, religion, political belief, or by sadism and lust, and sometimes by insanity, they have become bywords for terror throughout the world. Evil monsters presented: Caligula, Nero, Attila the Hun, King JOhn, Torquemada, Prince Vlad Dracula, Francisco Pizarro, Bloody Mary 1, Ivan IV The Terrible, Elizabeth - Countess Bathory, Rasputin, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Ilse Koch, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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ON A GRANDER SCALE: The Outstanding Life of Sir Christopher Wren
by Lisa Jardine. Wonderful color photo section with B&W art repros and drawings throughout. Condition: NEW 2003 HarperCollins hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: Renaissance scholar Jardine takes the cultural historical tack that has brought her scholarly renown, providing not only a nearly day-by-day account of the polymathic British architect's most important moments but minutely detailed background on institutions like the Royal Society and the Royal Observatory (along with the Order of the Garter), on developing science (blood transfusion, longitude) and on people: the royal families, Robert Hooke, John Evelyn. Wren was appointed to the Rebuilding Commission established after the devastating Great Fire of London in 1666, becoming in time responsible for the design and rebuilding of all 51 churches destroyed by the fire, and for the reconstruction of St. Paul's. By the time Wren came to that work by which he is best known, he had already achieved enormous distinction as a scientist, inventor and mathematician-and he was 34 years old. By 1689, he was at work renovating Hampton Court Palace for William and Mary, the third royal family he had served; in their reign, he was appointed surveyor of Westminster Abbey in 1698, a post he held until his death. To stick with Jardine requires a serious interest in Wren and period history. The rich documentation-the full text of private and public papers (e.g., letters of patent, royal warrants, correspondence, receipts, marginalia, excerpts from diaries) and 80 b&w illustrations and a 16-page color insert-may dizzy the reader who is not intimate with 17th century prose style, but will astonish those who are. And Jardine's discovery of an underground chamber in the Monument to the Great Fire is something any amateur sleuth will enjoy. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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THE ROAD TO KHARTOUM: A Life of General Charles Gordon
by Charles Chenevix Trench. B&W era photos and maps. Condition: PLEASE READ / UNREAD, BUT NOT PERFECT, 1979 Norton hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. DJ shows light edge wear plus it has been price-clipped. This was a gift to me and I never got around to reading it. Content: Of all the British Empire's peculiar champions, Gordon most exactly fulfilled the expectations and the heroic imaginings of the great public. He was brave; he was holy; he adventured in distant lands; he had marvelous eyes; and he died a martyr's death at Khartoum in the Sudan in 1884 when the English garrison was overrun by the Moslem fanatics of the Mahdi. But if Gordon was flawless as a legend, those closer to him knew a different side of her personality. He was a chainsmoker, a heavy drinker, and ever since the Lytton Strachey's shocking, debunking portrait, the hint of homosexuality has been attached to Gordon's name. His unflinching courage might today be called neurosis, and even his simple, fundamentalist Christianity now seems to have its darker side. Trench confronts the central fact of Gordon's career and personality: the unaccountable fascination which he exercised over others. Time and again in these pages we meet men who were willing to uproot their lives and endure appalling hardships just to follow Gordon: to China, to South Africa, to Khartoum. It was an extraordinary power, and simply by exerting it, Gordon, like T.E. Lawrence, influenced the course of world history. For the enjoyment of it, see the 1966 movie "Khartoum" with Charlton Heston (Gordon) and Laurence Olivier the Mahdi), and Richard Johnson. Great adventure movie. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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THE RISE AND FALL OF ANNE BOLEYN: Family politics at the court of Henry VIII
by Retha M. Warnicke. B&W illustrations throughout. Condition: NEW 2000 Canto Trade Paperback, reprint. Content: Thanks to the events surrounding her courtship with and ultimate marriage to Henry VIII, the tempestuous nature of that union, and the sordid yet mysterious circumstances of her excution, Anne Boleyn has always been a fascinating figure. Both popular and scholarly biographies of her have come along with some regularity. Quite simply though, this one transcends all previous efforts. Thanks to painstaking research and shrewd analytical skills, Warnicke (history, Arizona State Univ.) gives us substantial new insight on both the woman and her times. Her central thesis, that the execution derived in large measure from Henry's concern with perpetuating his dynasty, is a convincing one, and she shows clearly that previous biographers have been all too ready to accept distorted evidence at face value. "this book is more than original--it challenges close to every other work written about Anne since her execution...This book is a wonderful piece of feminist scholarship...it offers great insights into Anne Boleyn and into the way history has treated all women who dared to wield power and influence." Questions welcome [2 copies available]
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ROBERT THE BRUCE: King of Scots
by Ronald McNair Scott. B&W maps. Condition: UNREAD 1989 Peter Bedrick Trade Paperback, Book Club Edition. Light edge wear. Content: Robert the Bruce is one of the great heroic figures of history. When, after years of struggle, Scotland was reduced to a vassal state by Edward I of England it was Bruce who, supported by the Scottish Church and a group of devoted followers, had himself crowned at Scone as King of Scots and renewed the fight for freedom. The author of this book uses the accounts of contemporary chronicles, particularly those of John Barbour, to reconstruct the story of one of the most remarkable of medieval kings. It is a story with episodes quite as romantic as those of King Arthur, but one which belongs to the authentic history of the Scottish nation. Questions welcome [1 copy available]
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SANDINO
by Gregorio Selser. Condition: UNREAD 1980 Monthly Press Review Trade Paperback, first printing. Lilght edge wear front cover fore edge. Light tanning to white cover edges. Content: In 1927 a guerrilla war was unleashed in the jungles and mountains of Nicaragua by a rqagged and hungry group of compatriots who grew in number from 26 to 3,000 - against 6,000 well-fed, well-trained and well-equipped U.S. Marines. For seven years the invaders were held at bay. The leader of this remarkable guerrilla band was Augusto Cesar Sandino. A mechanic and miner of peasant and Indian stock, he never lost sight of his prime objective: to rid Nicaragua of the U.S. army of occupation and the bueiness interess it was protecting. This is his story. [1 copy available]
$ 4.89 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.

SIDNEY REILLY: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy
by Michael Kettle. B&W photos and document repros. Condition: UNREAD 1986 St. Martin's paperback, no printing given. Moderate tanning to page edges. Content: He was - among other things - Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum, born to a wealthy Jewish-Polish family . . . to become the most successful British spy in history. He lived on the knife-edge of danger on two continents. He loved many women - some of whom went to their deaths rather than betray him. He spoke many languages and could lie well in all of them. He was a master of disguise and duplicity who still lran a world-wide spy network on his own - a year after the British Secret Service turned him out in the cold. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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SOUTH: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage
by Ernest Shackleton. B&W maps and era photos throughout. Condition: NEW 2001 Carroll & Graf large Trade Paperback, 10th printing. Tiny edge wear plus a shelf-wear "wrinkle" to 7 pages fore edges (working on that). Content: Soon after the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, his Anglo-Irish rival, Sir Ernest Shackleton, sought to top the feat by making his way from one end of Antarctica to the other on sledge. He set off with a crew of 28, including scientists and a movie cameraman, but the voyage turned disastrous when Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, became hopelessly stuck in pack ice, throwing the men (and the dogs brought to pull the sledges) into a desperate battle for survival. South is Shackleton's own account--one of the critical sources for Alfred Lansing's bestseller Endurance--of what it was like to be "helpless intruders in a strange world," a vivid narrative in which tales of Edwardian pluck are counterpointed with lyrical accounts of whales, penguins, and bizarre mirages. This story of a group of men who beat nearly impossible odds to escape death and make their way home is one of the all-time great survival stories. The 2002 TV movie Shackleton was, of course, based on this book, and was directed by Charles Sturridge and starred the fabulous Kenneth Branagh as Shackleton, John Grillo, Phoebe Nicholls, Eve Best, and a host of wonderful British actors. Excellent movie and true to the real story. [1 copy available]
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LYTTON STRACHEY: The New Biography
by Michael Holroyd. Move Cover. Four B&W photo sections. Condition: NEW 1995 Farrar Straus HUGE soft cover, second printing. This is a revised, expanded new edition. Content: Holroyd's big, gossipy life of English historian Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), first published in 1968 and now in a revised, expanded edition, offers a vibrant, intimate portrait of the Bloomsbury circle, their love affairs, jealousies and creative ferment. In Eminent Victorians, Strachey stripped away the pious camouflage of Victorian society, targeting hypocrisy, imperialism, militarism and religion. Holroyd credits Strachey with revolutionizing historical biography by emphasizing character and hidden sexuality and subverting traditional forms through caricature and psychological innuendo. Drawing on thousands of letters by Strachey and his Bloomsbury coterie, Holroyd unearths details of Strachey's adolescent self-loathing and sexual guilt; his proposing marriage to Virginia Woolf in an effort to renounce his homosexuality; his pacifism during WWI; and his relationship with his adoring live-in companion, painter Dora Carrington, who tolerated his gay affairs. This panoramic account of Strachey's trajectory from hypersensitive, shy Cambridge undergraduate to social and literary lion is peopled with the likes of D.H. Lawrence, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, T.S. Eliot, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Augustus John and Bertrand Russell. The 1995 about Carrington and Strachey is titled "Carrington" and was directed by Christopher Hampton and starred Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Rufus Sewell, Janet McTeer, and Jeremy Northam. [1 copy available]
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TIMES GONE BY: Memoirs of a Man of Action (Library of Latin America)
by Vincente Perez Rosales. B&W photos. Condition: NEW 2003 Oxford University Press Trade Paperback, first printing. Content: What a life this man led - to end up a civil servant in his native Chile. These memoirs trace the wild and adventurous life of Perez Rosales from his childhood up to the 1860s. During that approximately half-century he saw and did more than a dozen ordinary men. At age eleven in Argentina he witnessed the executions of Luis and Juan Jose Carrera. From there, his activities and adventures took him on several journeys on sailing vessels around Cape Horn; to Paris, where he witnessed the July revolution of 1830; to various commercial endeavors including a distillery, the practice of medicine, and cattle smuggling; into service as an advisor to an Argentine warlord; as a miner for precious metals in the north of Chile; as participant in the California Gold Rush in 1849; as director of the government's project for German immigration and settlement in the wild south of Chile; and also as Chilean consul and immigration agent in Hamburg. Around the world, Rosales lived through many of his era's watershed moments. His exciting memoirs offer a chance to relive the rush and chaos of these times--from a much safer vantage. [1 copy available]
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THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE: The Scandalous Affair That Nearly Ended a Monarchy
by Jane Robins. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 2006 Free Press hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first printing. Content: The prize for the worst-behaved British royal couple goes not to Charles and Di but to George IV and Caroline, whose escapades heated up the early 19th-century scandal sheets and incited riots not long after the French monarchs were beheaded. When he married his first cousin Caroline, George was already vilified in the press for his unlawful marriage to a Catholic, his womanizing, financial extravagance, obesity and egotism. Caroline—poorly educated, magnanimous and reckless—became the darling of the people and the press, an advantage she exploited when her hubby cut her out of his will days after their daughter Charlotte's birth. The couple separated in 1797, barely two years after their wedding, but the escalating discord turned political after George restricted Caroline's access to Charlotte and she retaliated by championing the opposition Whigs. In 1820, George had Caroline tried for adultery to strip her of her title and gain a divorce. As this well-researched, competently written but uninspired account by a London journalist relates, the brouhaha spurred political reforms, and the queen triumphed at court but was still barred from George's coronation a few months later and died shortly thereafter. [1 copy available]
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TROTSKY: Memoir & Critique
by Albert Glotzer. Trotsky photo front DJ panel. Condition: UNREAD 1990 Prometheus Books hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), no edition given. Content: As a youthful member of the American Communist League (a Trotskyite group) Glotzer made several trips to visit Trotsky during his exile from the Soviet Union. In 1937 he served as court stenographer for the American commission investigating Stalin's conspiracy charges against Trotsky. Although the outline of Trotsky's career and philosophy are assumed, the detailed accounts of Stalin's show trials (1936-38) and of the Trotsky hearings are the most valuable feature of the book. The long discourses on factional differences among Communist groups become tiresome for the uninitiated. Explanations of how and why Trotsky lost out on control of the Russian party to Stalin are based on intimate knowledge of both events and personalities. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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WARRIOR CHIEFS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA: Shaka of the Zulu. Moshoeshoe of the Basotho, Mzilikazi of the Matabele, Maqoma of the Xhosa (Heroes & Warriors)
by Ian J. Knight. Wonderful B&W era photos, drawings, and maps. Condition: NEW 1995 Firebird hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), assumed first printing. Content: The lives and actions of four selected warriors of Southern Africa are examined in a portrait which examines tribal power struggles; from the legendary Shaka of the Zulu to Moshoeshoe of the Basotho, remembered as much for his diplomacy as for his military might. Photos and drawings enhance this excellent portrait of early African leaders and states. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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WILLIAM WALLACE: Man and Myth
by Graeme Morton. Two B&W photo sections. Condition: Gently pre-read 2001 Sutton (UK) hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), reprint. No major problems, just pre-read. Content: "The Wallace story is part of Scotland's imagined community.... We can't break the story because there is no story." In this densely written scholarly study, the author, a professor at Edinburgh University, examines the legends that have surrounded the exploits of William Wallace (1274-1305). Wallace is credited with liberating Scotland by defeating the English at Stirling Bridge (1297); his stature as the savior of Scotland has been reinforced by the recent film Braveheart. Later Wallace was vanquished by Edward I of England at Falkirk (1298). He lived as an outlaw and guerilla fighter until he was betrayed to the English, tried and bloodily executed in 1305. The author researched the very slim historical sources available and found problems with corroborating evidence. Much of Wallace's early reputation, for example, rested on the verse of "blind Harry," who wrote in the late 15th century. According to Morton, Harry's poetry has been romanticized and is almost certainly filled with errors. Ballads, songs and biographies of later centuries extolling Wallace's heroism are based on patriotism rather than truth. Morton also investigates how the myth of Wallace served both Scottish nationalism and socialism. In recent years the Wallace cult has grown, due to video games and Web sites. Although the author does not argue for completely abandoning national myths that cannot be proven, his hope for the Wallace mystique is that it is time to "lay his ghost to rest." The author even dedicates a chapter to "wallace.com." [1 copy available]
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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: A Revolutionary Life
by Janet Todd. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 2000 Columbia University Press large hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), assumed first printing. Content: Mary Wollstonecraft may be called "the mother of feminism," but motherhood in all its various aspects represented little but trouble to her. All her life, according to Todd, she resented her own mother because she had breast-fed only her brother, leaving Mary to the wet nurse, and because she detested the model of long-suffering patience in the face of paternal tyranny that was her mother's accommodation to marriage. Later, Mary would intervene energetically following the birth of her sister's child, encouraging Eliza to run away from husband and baby to pursue an independent female existence, although Eliza proved to be woefully inadequate at it. Mary's own first-born was the result of a passionate and illicit affair with an American, Gilbert Imlay, who dumped her when the baby was less than a year old. Finally, and tragically, Mary herself died at 38, after giving birth to a second daughter, another Mary, who would grow up to write that classic of grotesque creation, Frankenstein. Despite, or perhaps because of, the burden of her gender, and despite her poverty, frequent depressions and occasional suicidal moments, Wollstonecraft's achievement was astounding: several novels; many essays, reviews and books of advice; and, notably, The Vindication of the Rights of Women, a fundamental feminist document. By Todd's account, Wollstonecraft could be prickly, sometimes needy, often arrogant and wrong-headed. Todd brings her back to life in all her splendid contradictions, without condescension, idealization or, happily, without recourse to intrusive psychologizing. [1 copy available]
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