Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end.

Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a dramatic account of the guillotine's most famous victim, from the time when as a fourteen-year-old she took Versailles by storm, to her frustrations with her aloof husband, her passionate love affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, and ultimately to the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror.

An impassioned narrative, Zweig's biography focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.

Prozac Nation is Elizabeth Wurtzel's New York Times best-selling memoir, with a new afterword. The book provides a powerful portrait of one girl's journey through the purgatory of depression and back. The author writes with her finger on the faint pulse of an overdiagnosed generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. This witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era is a must-read for fans of Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Tesla: Man Out of Time is a captivating biography by Margaret Cheney that delves into the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors, Nikola Tesla. Described as a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Tesla was a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices without theoretical precedent.

Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most alternating-current machinery—but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, flamboyant, and neurotic, Tesla was troubled by an array of compulsions and phobias yet fond of extravagant and visionary experimentations.

Admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties, Tesla was a popular man-about-town. From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered—and continue to alter—the world in which we live.

This book provides an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and offers a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of late-eighteenth-century British aristocracy. This wonderfully readable biography tells the intimate story of Lady Georgiana Spencer, a woman who, for a time, was the undisputed leader of her society.

Georgiana, a great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, achieved immediate celebrity in 1774 by marrying the Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. Thrust into a world of wealth and power, she became the queen of fashionable society, admired by the Prince of Wales and a dear friend of Marie-Antoinette.

Not content with merely being a society hostess, Georgiana used her connections to enter politics, becoming more influential than many men holding office. Her public success hid a personal life filled with challenges, including a complicated relationship with her husband and her closest friend, leading to an uneasy ménage à trois.

Georgiana's life was marked by uncontrollable gambling, all-night drinking, drug taking, and love affairs with leading politicians. These aspects of her life provide a captivating insight into the era of the madness of King George III, the American and French revolutions, and the defeat of Napoleon.

A gifted historian, Amanda Foreman draws on extensive research to write colorfully and insightfully about Georgiana, whose beauty, flamboyance, and determination make her an astonishingly contemporary figure.

Using Stanford University's voluminous collection of archival material, including previously unpublished writings, interviews, recordings, and correspondence, King scholar Clayborne Carson has constructed a remarkable first-person account of Dr. King's extraordinary life.

Beginning with his boyhood, the book portrays King's education as a minister, his ascendancy as a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, his pivotal role in the civil rights demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and his complex relationship with the Kennedy brothers, LBJ, Malcolm X, and numerous other leading figures of the day.

Emily Hahn was a woman ahead of her time, graced with a sense of adventure and a gift for living. Born in St. Louis in 1905, she crashed the all-male precincts of the University of Wisconsin geology department as an undergraduate. She traveled alone to the Belgian Congo at age 25, was the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai, and bore the child of the head of the British Secret Service before World War II. She finally returned to New York to live and write in Greenwich Village.

In this memoir, first published as essays in The New Yorker, Hahn writes vividly and amusingly about the people and places she came to know and love — with an eye for the curious and a heart for the exotic.

This fascinating memoir includes twenty-three of her articles from The New Yorker, published between 1937 and 1970. Hahn's wanderlust led her to explore nearly every corner of the world, making her a trend-setter among women.

Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.

Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics--indeed of modern science altogether."

Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me."

The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest.

Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then.

Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope.

With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.

Catch Me If You Can is the incredible true story of Frank W. Abagnale, one of the most daring con men, forgers, impostors, and escape artists in history. Abagnale, who assumed multiple aliases including Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Ringo Monjo, lived a life full of adventure and deception.

Before he turned twenty-one, Abagnale had:

• Donned a pilot's uniform and co-piloted a Pan Am jet
• Masqueraded as a hospital management member
• Practised law without a license
• Passed himself off as a college sociology professor
• Cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks

Known as 'The Skywayman', Abagnale's escapades took him across the globe, allowing him to live a lavish lifestyle on the run until the law finally caught up with him. His story is a hilarious and thrilling account of deceit and ingenuity that reads like fiction.

It is such an all-American story. A lanky kid from Plano, Texas, is raised by a feisty, single parent who sacrifices for her son, who becomes one of our country's greatest athletes. Given that background, it is understandable why Armstrong was able to channel his boundless energy toward athletic endeavors.

By his senior year in high school, he was already a professional triathlete and was training with the U.S. Olympic cycling developmental team. In 1993, Armstrong secured a position in the ranks of world-class cyclists by winning the World Championship and a Tour de France stage, but in 1996, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Armstrong entered an unknown battlefield and challenged it as if climbing through the Alps: aggressive yet tactical. He beat the cancer and proceeded to stun all the pundits by winning the 1999 Tour de France.

In this memoir, Armstrong covers his early years swiftly with a blunt matter-of-factness, but the main focus is on his battle with cancer. Readers will respond to the inspirational recovery story, and they will appreciate the behind-the-scenes cycling information. After he won the Tour, his mother was quoted as saying that her son's whole life has been a fight against the odds; we see here that she was not exaggerating.

Arthur Rimbaud is remembered as much for his volatile personality and tumultuous life as he is for his writings, most of which he produced before the age of eighteen. This book brings together his poetry, prose, and letters, including "The Drunken Boat," "The Orphans' New Year," "After the Flood," and "A Season in Hell," considered by many to be his finest works.

Complete Works is divided into eight "seasons": Childhood, The Open Road, War, The Tormented Heart, The Visionary, The Damned Soul, A Few Belated Cowardices, and The Man with the Wind at His Heels - that reflect the facets of Rimbaud's life.

Insightful commentary by translator and editor Paul Schmidt reveals the courage, vision, and imagination of Rimbaud's poetry and sheds light on one of the most enigmatic figures in letters.

Bearing the Cross: A monumental account of the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., this book offers an in-depth look into the evolution of a young pastor into an iconic leader of America’s civil rights movement.

Based on extensive research and over 700 interviews, including conversations with Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and Coretta Scott King, this biography paints a multidimensional portrait of a charismatic figure driven by his strong moral obligation to lead.

The book details King’s spiritual development and his crucial role at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose protest campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, led to the enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This comprehensive yet intimate study reveals the deep sense of mission King felt to serve as an unrelenting crusader against prejudice, inequality, and violence, and his willingness to sacrifice his own life on behalf of his beliefs.

This is the story of England's most famous, and notorious, king. Henry was a charismatic, ardent - and brash - young lover who married six times; a scholar with a deep love of poetry and music; an energetic hunter who loved the outdoors; a monarch whose lack of a male heir haunted him incessantly; and a ruthless leader who would stop at nothing to achieve his desires.

His monumental decision to split from Rome and the Catholic Church was one that would forever shape the religious and political landscape of Britain.

Combining magnificent storytelling with an extraordinary grasp of the pleasures and perils of power, Margaret George delivers a vivid portrait of Henry VIII and Tudor England and the powerhouse of players on its stage: Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, and Anne Boleyn.

It is also a narrative told from an original perspective: Margaret George writes from the King's point of view, injecting irreverent comments from Will Somers - Henry's jester and confidant.

In what is arguably his greatest work, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who became notorious for two reasons: first, for robbing two men in 1976, then killing them in cold blood; and, second, after being tried and convicted, for insisting on dying for his crime. To do so, he had to fight a system that seemed paradoxically intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.

Norman Mailer tells Gilmore's story--and those of the men and women caught up in his procession toward the firing squad--with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a trip down the wrong side of the tracks to the deepest sources of American loneliness and violence. It is a towering achievement--impossible to put down, impossible to forget.

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe.

I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation.

He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo Africanus.

A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.

Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's, and this selection, spanning his artistic career, sheds light on every facet of the life and work of this complex and tortured man. Engaging candidly and movingly with his religious struggles, his ill-fated search for love, his attacks of mental illness and his relation with his brother Theo, the letters contradict the popular myth of van Gogh as an anti-social madman and a martyr to art, showing instead a man of great emotional and spiritual depths. Above all, they stand as an intense personal narrative of artistic development and a unique account of the process of creation.

The letters are linked by explanatory biographical passages, revealing van Gogh's inner journey as well as the outer facts of his life. This edition also includes the drawings that originally illustrated the letters.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Holland. In 1885 he painted his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, a haunting scene of domestic poverty. A year later he began studying in Paris, where he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, who became very important influences on his work. In 1888 he left Paris for the Provencal landscape at Arles, the subject of many of his best works, including Sunflowers.

Ted Hughes, formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has a mythic scope and power. Few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.

The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her tragic suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work—animal, vegetable, mythological—as well as on Plath's famous verse.

This volume offers us Hughes's own account of their intense relationship. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.

In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. After donating $25,000 in savings to charity, he abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest akin to those of his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert, he left his car, removed its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and, without money and belongings, he set off to experience nature in its purest form. Disregarding maps, McCandless sought a blank spot on the map to truly vanish into the wild.

Author Jon Krakauer constructs a narrative that examines the stirring facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, Krakauer searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless into the wilderness. Krakauer reveals the allure of the American wilderness, the thrill of high-risk activities to certain young men, and the complex relationships between fathers and sons. When McCandless's innocent mistakes prove fatal, he becomes the center of media scrutiny. Krakauer brings McCandless's intense journey out of the shadows with deep understanding, devoid of sentimentality, and illuminates the provocative questions McCandless's story raises about nature, adventure, and the human spirit.

The Complete Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, is a profound narrative that recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe. This volume includes both Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II, presenting the complete story.

Through the unique medium of cartoons—with Nazis depicted as cats and Jews as mice—Spiegelman captures the everyday reality of fear and survival during the Holocaust. This artistic choice not only shocks readers out of any sense of familiarity but also draws them closer to the harrowing heart of the Holocaust.

More than just a tale of survival, Maus is also an exploration of the author's complex relationship with his father. The narrative weaves together Vladek's harrowing story with the author's own struggles, framing a life of small arguments and unhappy visits against the backdrop of a larger historical atrocity. It is a story that extends beyond Vladek to all the children who bear the legacy of their parents' traumas.

Maus is not only a personal account of survival but also a broader examination of the impact of history on subsequent generations. It is an essential work that studies the traces of history and its enduring significance.

Here, in his own words, are the fascinating first thirty years in the life of one of the most provocative and compelling leaders of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill.

As a visionary, statesman, and historian, and the most eloquent spokesman against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill was one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century. In this autobiography, Churchill recalls his childhood, his schooling, his years as a war correspondent in South Africa during the Boer War, and his first forays into politics as a member of Parliament.

My Early Life not only gives readers insights into the shaping of a great leader but, as Churchill himself wrote, "a picture of a vanished age." To fully understand Winston Churchill and his times, My Early Life is essential reading.

Paula es el libro más conmovedor, más personal y más íntimo de Isabel Allende. Junto al lecho en que agonizaba su hija Paula, la gran narradora chilena escribió la historia de su familia y de sí misma con el propósito de regalársela a Paula cuando ésta superara el dramático trance. El resultado se convirtió en un autorretrato de insólita emotividad y en una exquisita recreación de la sensibilidad de las mujeres de nuestra época.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in a Jewish firm in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

No Ordinary Time is an extraordinary chronicle of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in US history. With an astonishing collection of details, Doris Kearns Goodwin weaves together a number of storylines — the Roosevelts' marriage and partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war.

Goodwin masterfully melds these into an intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born. This work provides a detailed and personal look at the lives of two pivotal figures in American history and how their relationship shaped the nation during the Great Depression and World War II.

A Child Called "It" is a memoir by Dave Pelzer that recounts the harrowing details of his childhood, marked by extreme abuse at the hands of his alcoholic mother. The story is a testament to one child's resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. Dave's mother subjected him to a series of tortuous and unpredictable games that almost cost him his life. Stripped of his identity, he was regarded not as her son, but as a slave, and he was referred to as an "it" rather than a boy.

With his bed being an old army cot in the basement and his clothes nothing but tattered rags, Dave's existence was a living nightmare. Food was a luxury, often just spoiled scraps that even dogs would refuse. Isolated and alone, Dave's dreams and determination to find a loving family kept him alive. This memoir is not just a tale of suffering, but also a story about the power of hope and the will to survive.

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly — or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers — Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann — stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.

Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers.

Working with the actual testimony of Schindler's Jews, Thomas Keneally artfully depicts the courage and shrewdness of an unlikely savior, a man who is a flawed mixture of hedonism and decency and who, in the presence of unutterable evil, transcends the limits of his own humanity.

Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.

In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's attitude of experimenting, of testing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances, in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities.

All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.

Charles Darwin's Autobiography was first published in 1887, five years after his death. It was a bowdlerized edition: Darwin's family, attempting to protect his posthumous reputation, had deleted all the passages they considered too personal or controversial. The present complete edition did not appear until 1959, one hundred years after the publication of The Origin of Species.

The daring and restless mind, the integrity and simplicity of Darwin's character are revealed in this direct and personal account of his life—his family, his education, his explorations of the natural world, his religion, and philosophy. The editor has provided page and line references to the more important restored passages, and previously unpublished notes and letters on family matters and on the controversy between Samuel Butler appear in an appendix.

In the spring of 1983, Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by.

One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.

Dreadnought is a riveting chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century's first great arms race. Authored by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert K. Massie, this book is a richly textured and gripping narrative that brings to life a host of historical figures.

Experience the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz, the young and ambitious Winston Churchill, and the ruthless Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, among others. Their stories, along with the story of the era, filled with misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfold like a Greek tragedy.

Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most compelling, capturing the essence of extraordinary lives and the complexities of a transformative era.

Big Sur is a poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance.

In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion."

In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child.

Now the true story of this courageous woman and her breathtaking odyssey bursts upon the screen in the Pathe Entertainment production starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field Not Without My Daughter is a Literary Guild Alternate Selection.

Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.

Moonwalk is the only book about his life that Michael Jackson ever wrote. It chronicles his humble beginnings in the Midwest, his early days with the Jackson 5, and his unprecedented solo success. Giving absolutely unrivalled insight into the King of Pop's life, it details his songwriting process for hits like Beat It, Rock With You, Billie Jean, and We Are the World; describes how he developed his signature dance style, including the Moon Walk; and opens the door to his very private personal relationships with his family, including sister Janet, and stars like Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Marlon Brando, Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney, and Brooke Shields.

At the time of its original publication in 1988, MOONWALK broke the fiercely guarded barrier of silence that surrounded Michael Jackson. Candidly and courageously, Jackson talks openly about his wholly exceptional career and the crushing isolation of his fame.

MOONWALK is illustrated with rare photographs from Jackson family albums and Michael's personal photographic archives, as well as a drawing done by Michael exclusively for the book. It reveals and celebrates, as no other book can, the life of this exceptional and beloved musician.

Trump: The Art of the Deal reveals the business secrets that have made Donald J. Trump America’s foremost deal maker. “I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” —Donald J. Trump

Here is Trump in action—how he runs his business and how he runs his life—as he meets the people he needs to meet, chats with family and friends, clashes with enemies, and changes the face of the New York City skyline.

But even a maverick plays by rules, and Trump has formulated eleven guidelines for success. He isolates the common elements in his greatest deals; he shatters myths; he names names, spells out the zeros, and fully reveals the deal-maker’s art. Throughout, Trump talks—really talks—about how he does it.

Trump: The Art of the Deal is an unguarded look at the mind of a brilliant entrepreneur and an unprecedented education in the practice of deal-making. It’s the ultimate read for anyone interested in achieving money and success, and knowing the man behind the spotlight.

The Agony and the Ecstasy is a compelling portrait of Michelangelo that brings both the artist and the man to life with exquisite detail and narrative skill. This biographical novel explores Michelangelo's dangerous, impassioned loves, and the divine fury from which he created some of the world's most extraordinary art.

Irving Stone masterfully captures the essence of Michelangelo's life, delving into his struggles, his triumphs, and the relentless pursuit of perfection that drove him to craft works such as the David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Through Stone's vivid storytelling, we are transported into the heart of the Renaissance, experiencing the fervor and the genius that defined an era.

John Merrick had lived for more than twenty years imprisoned in a body that condemned him to a miserable life in the workhouse and to humiliation as a circus sideshow freak. But beneath that tragic exterior, within that enormous and deformed head, thrived the soul of a poet, the heart of a dreamer, the longings of a man.

Merrick was doomed to suffer forever—until the kind Dr. Treves gave him the first real home in the London Hospital, and the town's most beautiful and esteemed actress made possible Merrick's cherished dream of human contact—and love.

Tisha is the beloved real-life story of a woman in the Alaskan wilderness, the children she taught, and the man she loved.

“From the time I’d been a girl, I’d been thrilled with the idea of living on a frontier. So when I was offered the job of teaching school in a gold-mining settlement called Chicken, I accepted right away.”

Anne Hobbs was only nineteen in 1927 when she came to the harsh and beautiful Alaska. Running a ramshackle schoolhouse would expose her to more than just the elements. After she allowed Native American children into her class and fell in love with a half-Inuit man, she would learn the meanings of prejudice and perseverance, irrational hatred and unconditional love.

“People get as mean as the weather,” she discovered, but they were also capable of great good. As told to Robert Specht, Anne Hobbs’s true story has captivated generations of readers.

The Conquest of Gaul is a captivating account of Julius Caesar's military campaigns between 58 and 50 BC. During this period, Caesar conquered most of the regions now known as France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and ventured twice into Britain.

This narrative provides deep insights into Caesar's military strategy and paints a vivid picture of his encounters with the inhabitants of Gaul and Britain. It offers lively portraits of key characters, such as the rebel leaders and Gallic chieftains.

Moreover, this work can be read as a piece of political propaganda, as Caesar presents his version of events to the Roman public, aware of the impending civil war he would face upon his return to Rome.

A Man is a pseudo-biography about Alexandros Panagoulis written in the form of a novel. The story is penned by the renowned author Oriana Fallaci, who had an intense romantic relationship with Panagoulis.

The novel delves into Fallaci's view that Panagoulis was assassinated by a vast conspiracy, a perspective widely shared by many Greeks. Through this narrative, Fallaci explores themes of suffering, struggle, and the essence of truly living beyond mere survival.

Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo tells the harrowing story of Christiane F., a young girl who, at the age of twelve, was introduced to hashish in a youth home and by thirteen had fallen into heroin addiction. She and her heroin-addicted friends resorted to prostitution in the area around Bahnhof Zoo to fund their addiction. For nearly two years, her mother was unaware of her daughter's double life.

Christiane F. recounts her experiences with precise memory and unreserved openness, sharing the fates of children who are only acknowledged by the public in their deaths due to drugs. This story, repeating itself in Berlin, small towns, and villages, reflects the lives of thousands of children caught in the grip of substance abuse.

The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York, both city and state. For almost half a century, Robert Moses was the single most powerful man in New York, influencing not only the city's politics but also its physical structure. This book reveals how Moses developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government.

By mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, and even the press and the Church, Moses created an irresistible economic force. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars, making him the greatest builder America—and probably the world—has ever known. Without ever being elected to office, he dominated the men who were, including his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, until he encountered Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power equaled his own.

This book by Robert A. Caro reveals how power works in cities across the United States, making it a vital read for anyone interested in urban studies and the dynamics of power.

Corrie ten Boom, an unassuming old-maid watchmaker, led a life that would have been considered unremarkable for the first fifty years. Living with her sister and their father in a tiny Dutch house above their shop, their lives were as precise and regular as the timepieces they crafted. But as the Nazi occupation of Holland turned their world upside down, Corrie and her family were thrust into a story of extraordinary courage and faith.

Transformed into leaders within the Dutch Underground, they risked everything to hide Jewish individuals from the Nazi regime, ingeniously concealing a secret room for this purpose in their home. Despite their valiant efforts, they were eventually betrayed, and all but Corrie faced a grim fate in a concentration camp.

The Hiding Place is more than just a recounting of historical events; it's a testament to the indomitable human spirit and the power of love and faith to overcome the darkest of times.

Lust for Life is the classic fictional re-telling of the incredible life of Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world... He was a colossus... a great painter... a great philosopher... a martyr to his love of art.

Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn't feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it. Until the day he picked up a paintbrush.

Written with raw insight and emotion, follow the artist through his tormented life, struggling against critical discouragement and mental turmoil and bare witness to his creative journey from a struggling artist to one of the world's most celebrated artists.

Henri Charrière, called Papillon, for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped... until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.

Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished.

Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

Sarmiento, proscrito por la tiranía rosista y exiliado por dos veces en Chile, fue periodista brillante, político y polemista literario. "Facundo" es una biografía concebida como historia, historia de las guerras civiles de su patria centradas en la figura de Juan Facundo Quiroga, el más famoso, cruel, violento y despiadado caudillo de las guerras civiles argentinas. El desarrollo de los acontecimientos impulsó a Sarmiento a unir el tema biográfico a la realidad presente, denunciando a su enemigo Rosas.

Based on the biography of Lucio Agustine Rosenkreutz Crăciunescu and Thérèse Joselynn Aubrière.

Development period from 02-2002 to 04-20-2004.

On a summer morning in Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage assassin named Gavrilo Princip fired not just the opening shots of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history, when he killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yet the events Princip triggered were so monumental that his own story has been largely overlooked, his role garbled and motivations misrepresented.

The Trigger puts this right, filling out as never before a figure who changed our world and whose legacy still has an impact on all of us today. Born a penniless backwoodsman, Princip's life changed when he trekked through Bosnia and Serbia to attend school. As he ventured across fault lines of faith, nationalism and empire, so tightly clustered in the Balkans, radicalisation slowly transformed him from a frail farm boy into history's most influential assassin.

By retracing Princip's journey from his highland birthplace, through the mythical valleys of Bosnia to the fortress city of Belgrade and ultimately Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding both of Princip and the places that shaped him. Tim uncovers details about Princip that have eluded historians for a century and draws on his own experience, as a war reporter in the Balkans in the 1990s, to face down ghosts of conflicts past and present.