Historische & politische Biographien

The inimitable Jenni Murray celebrates great women from around the world - rescuing some from obscurity and shining a new light on familiar names

A remarkable account of Nazi Germany at war and of one man's struggle against totalitarianism. Friedrich Kellner's diary unflinchingly charts the country's path to dictatorship and genocide and demonstrates just how much ordinary Germans really knew about the actions of the Nazi regime.

100 fascinating and brilliantly written stories about history's bravest, baddest but little known 'nasty' women from across the world.

A "cloak-and-dagger epic ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the liberation of Western Europe, wartime China, the Red Scare of Cold War America, and the Cuban Revolution, [this] is the ... untold story of a literary icon's dangerous secret life--including his role as a Soviet agent code-named 'Argo'--that fueled his art and his undoing"--Dust jacket flap.

Provides the rounded portrait of Hitler to date. This book sets out to correct our perception of the Fuhrer. It also includes his charming and repulsive traits, his talents and weaknesses, his deep-seated insecurities and murderous passions.

On 26 January, 2009, during the depths of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the author was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the seventy-fifth Secretary of the Treasury of the US. This book takes you behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis.

A blockbuster adventure about life, death and obsession in the Amazon

Patrick Pearse was not only leader of the 1916 Easter Rising but also one of the main ideologues of the IRA. Based on new material on his childhood and underground activities, this book places him in a European context and provides an intimate account of the development of his ideas on cultural regeneration, education, patriotism and militarism.

In Lone Star Rising, Robert Dallek offers a brilliant, definitive portrait of a great American politician. Based on seven years of research in over 450 manuscript collections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this first of a two-volume biography follows Johnson's life from his childhood to his election as vice-president under Kennedy.

Of the three revisionist works John Charmley has written about British foreign policy in the mid-twentieth century this is the centrepiece. The author argues that Churchill deserves more credit for 'their finest hour' than has been granted, but just as his virtues were built on the heroic scale, so too were his faults and failures. The statesman who had struggled to destroy Nazism and restore Europe's balance of power ended by allowing Stalin to dominate central and eastern Europe.This is no mere exercise in debunking, in many ways the complex man presented in these pages is more interesting than the more hagiographical portraits.'This is not instant history run up to cause a sensation, but a meticulously documented reappraisal of Churchill's war leadership and of the career that led up to it. Nor is its tone contemptuous or vindictive. The author accepts that Churchill was a great man. His starting point is that even great men make mistakes.' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph 'Probably the most important revisionist text to be published since the war.' Alan Clark, The Times

A colorful introduction to one of the most influential businessmen in history (The New York Times Book Review), Jacob Fuggerthe Renaissance banker who wrote the playbook for everyone who keeps score with money (Bryan Burrough, author of Days of Rage).In the days when Columbus sailed the ocean and Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, a German banker named Jacob Fugger became the richest man in history. Fugger lived in Germany at the turn of the sixteenth century, the grandson of a peasant. By the time he died, his fortune amounted to nearly two percent of European GDP. In an era when kings had unlimited power, Fugger dared to stare down heads of state and ask them to pay back their loanswith interest. It was this coolness and self-assurance, along with his inexhaustible ambition, that made him not only the richest man ever, but a force of history as well. Before Fugger came along it was illegal under church law to charge interest on loans, but he got the Pope to change that. He also helped trigger the Reformation and likely funded Magellans circumnavigation of the globe. His creation of a news service gave him an information edge over his rivals and customers and earned Fugger a footnote in the history of journalism. And he took Austrias Habsburg family from being second-tier sovereigns to rulers of the first empire where the sun never set. Enjoyablereadable and fast-paced (The Wall Street Journal), The Richest Man Who Ever Lived is more than a tale about the most influential businessman of all time. It is a story about palace intrigue, knights in battle, family tragedy and triumph, and a violent clash between the one percent and everybody else. The tale of Fuggers aspiration, ruthlessness, and greed is riveting (The Economist).

A fascinating biography of Bulgaria's tragic monarch, Boris III, based on private correspondence and extensive interviews with members of the Bulgarian royal family. The son of King Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Boris became king after the first World War. Noted for defying Hitler wishes for Bulgaria's Jews, the popular king died mysteriously in 1943 after a stormy meeting with Hitler.