Historical Memoirs

The vivid memoirs of Heinrich von Brandt, a young law student swept up in Napoleon's reshaping of Europe and dispatched to Spain with the Vistula Legion of the newly formed Duchy of Warsaw. Brandt becomes an officer of the voltigeurs, light infantry who were used to skirmish, patrol, screen battlefield movements, and engage the guerrilla insurgency. He fought battles at Tudela, Santa Maria, and Valencia, as well as sieges at Zaragoza and Tortosa, and participated in numerous smaller engagements, earning the French Légion d’honneur and the Polish Order of Virtuti Militari.

Crimes en Bretagne explore 10 affaires criminelles troublantes qui révèlent les côtés les plus sombres et mystérieux de la région, comme l'affaire Seznec qui a captivé l'attention du public pendant des décennies, le tragique meurtre de Caroline Dickinson, les actes malveillants de l'empoisonneuse Hélène Jégado en Basse-Bretagne, ou encore le quadruple meurtre de l'Affaire Troadec. Vous découvrirez aussi tous les détails les plus exclusifs sur la mystérieuse disparition de Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, qui continue encore aujourd'hui d'interroger la France entière.

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

Author and illustrator Martín Prechtel is internationally known for his explorations of ancient folklore and uncovering the lessons therein for modern readers. In The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, he revives a hitherto unknown Guatemalan Tzutujil Mayan tale of the beginnings of the...

The Life of Saint Macrina is a significant work of early Christian literature written by Bishop Gregory of Nyssa. In the form of a letter to the monk Olympus, Gregory describes the life and influence of his sister Macrina. Macrina – also known as "Macrina the Younger" – had helped to establish a monastery and convent in Pontus (in modern-day Turkey) in the fourth century AD. The story centres on Gregory’s final visit to Macrina and is written as testimony to her piety, sanctity, and holy influence.

Septimius Severus was Rome's black emperor. Born in the blistering heat of a North African spring in Leptis Magna AD 145, he died in the freezing cold of a northern British winter in York in AD 211. A giant of an emperor, whose career can be counted in superlatives, Severus was in power at the height of Rome's might. He led the largest army to ever campaign in Britain, comprising 50,000 men, part of a Roman military establishment which peaked at 33 legions under his rule. Born into the richest family, in the richest part of the Roman Empire, Severus monumentalised his rule across the empire.

In this Pulitzer Prize - winning biography, Barbara Tuchman explores American relations with China through the experiences of one of our men on the ground. In the cantankerous but level-headed "Vinegar Joe", Tuchman found a subject who allowed her to perform, in the words of the National Review, "one of the historian's most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story."

Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24-25, 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in Eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire - but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo.

The Blood Countess is an ambitious, sweeping investigation into the singularly fascinating case of Elizabeth Báthory, a woman who, until now, has been known as "the Western World’s most prolific female murderer.” If The Dark Queens is about the systemic erasure of powerful women, then The Blood Countess is about the culturally sanctioned, coordinated smearing of one, how it happens and why, which leads to even bigger questions: how do we construct our personal and cultural realities? How do we parse the truth?

"Both heartbreaking and life-affirming" (Edith Eger, author of The Choice), the long-awaited memoir of Holocaust survivor Hannah Pick-Goslar, who shares an intimate look into her life and friendship with Anne Frank. In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in...

Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives listeners a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture.

Partiendo de un gran abanico de fuentes, Marie Arana captura un vívido retrato de la Suramérica de inicios del siglo XIX, la que forjó a Bolívar y lo convirtió en un valeroso general, un estratega brillante, un escritor portentoso y un político sin parangón; en definitiva, uno de los personajes más admirados de Latinoamérica. Bolívar es una biografía trepidante en la que el lector hallará la imagen de una vida trágica capturada en todo su esplendor y un conmovedor manifiesto de la verdadera esencia del pueblo latinoamericano.

The Tudors are England's most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle's gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins and the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a queen's lap - and later her bed.

Malintzin was the indigenous woman who translated for Hernando Cortes in his dealings with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma in the days of 1519 to 1521. The Spanish called her doña Marina, and she has become known to posterity as La Malinche. As Malinche, she has long been regarded as a traitor to her people, a dangerously sexy, scheming woman who gave Cortes whatever he wanted out of her own self-interest. The life of the real woman, however, was much more complicated.

Una sera di settembre del 1533 Isabella d’Este, quasi sessantenne, rievoca la propria vicenda: dall’infanzia a Ferrara al matrimonio, sedicenne, con il marchese Francesco Gonzaga, e poi la vita a Mantova dove, in un periodo tra i più tumultuosi e fulgidi della storia, nei primi decenni del Cinquecento, resse con grande sapienza politica le fila del piccolo Stato costruendo attorno a sé una corte di ineguagliato splendore, tra pittori poeti musicisti astrologi condottieri papi e imperatori.

Aquí está, esta es la Enciclopedia Milei definitiva: un libro en tres actos en los que el protagonista de la aparición más fulgurante que se produjo en la política argentina en años cuenta el camino que lo llevó hasta su banca de diputado nacional, a captar y calibrar como nadie el descontento de la sociedad con la casta política.

From 1934 until 1944, Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally. Goeschel, a scholar of 20th-century Germany and Italy, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler's key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public.

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

" Je pourrais buter cet enfoiré d’ici les yeux fermés ", propose l’attaché militaire britannique à Berlin qui détaille son plan d’action à sa hiérarchie en 1939. Sur les 42 tentatives d’assassinat recensées pour tuer Hitler , une majorité est due à la résistance allemande qui, très tôt, comprend l’appétence guerrière d’Hitler. De simples citoyens, des ouvriers, des étudiants, des conjurations de généraux échafauderont des attentats et presque tous connaîtront le même sort : décapités, pendus à un croc de boucher ou fusillés.

Faye tells her unforgettable story of heroism, hardship, and resistance. Faye was an ordinary teenager when the Nazis invaded her town on the Russian-Polish border. She had a large, loving family, good friends and neighbours, most of whom were lost soon after the horrors of the Holocaust began. But Faye survived, and the photographs she took testify to her experiences and the persecution she witnessed. Decorated for heroism, Schulman uses her biography to tell an extraordinary story not just of survival, but of struggle and resistance against oppression.