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David Dellinger: The Life and Times of a Nonviolent Revolutionary
Par Andrew Hunt. 2006
The year was 1969. In a Chicago courthouse, David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Eight, stood trial for conspiring to…
disrupt the National Democratic Convention. Dellinger, a long-time but relatively unknown activist, was suddenly, at fifty-three, catapulted into the limelight for his part in this intense courtroom drama. From obscurity to leader of the antiwar movement, David Dellinger is the first full biography of a man who bridged the gap between the Old Left and the New Left. Born in 1915 in the upscale Boston suburb of Wakefield to privilege, Dellinger attended Yale during the Depression, where he became an ardent pacifist and antiwar activist. Rejecting his parents’ affluent lifestyle, he endured lengthy prison sentences as a conscientious objector to World War II and created a commune in northern New Jersey in the 1940s, a prototype for those to follow twenty years later.His instrumental role in the creation of Liberation magazine in 1956 launched him onto the national stage. Writing regular essays for the influential radical monthly on the arms race and the Civil Rights movement, he earned an audience among the New Left radicals. As anti-Vietnam sentiment grew, he became, in Abbie Hoffman’s words, the father of the antiwar movement and the architect of the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago. He remained active in anti-war causes until his death on May 25, 2004 at age 88.Vilified by critics and glorified by supporters, Dellinger was a man of contradictions: a rigid Ghandian who nonetheless supported violent revolutionary movements; a radical thinker and gifted writer forced to work as a baker to feed his large family; and a charismatic leader who taught his followers to distrust all leaders. Along the way, he encountered Eleanor Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panthers and all the other major figures of the American Left.The remarkable story of a stubborn visionary torn between revolution and compromise, David Dellinger reveals the perils of dissent in America through the struggles of one of our most important dissenters.From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
Par Jeffrey Garten. 2016
"A tale of globalization and leadership that is both sweeping and personal. It’s a guide to the future as well…
as to the past.” --Walter IsaacsonThe story of globalization, the most powerful force in history, as told through the life and times of ten people who changed the world by their singular, spectacular accomplishments.This is the first book to look at the history of globalization through the lens of individuals who did something transformative, as opposed to describing globalization through trends, policies, or particular industries. From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it and how their achievements continue to shape our world today. They include:• Genghis Khan, who united east and west by conquest and by opening new trade routes built on groundbreaking transportation, communications, and management innovations.• Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who arose from an oppressive Jewish ghetto to establish the most powerful bank the world has seen, and ushered in an era of global finance.• Cyrus Field, who became the father of global communications by leading the effort to build the transatlantic telegraph, the forerunner to global radio, TV, and the worldwide Internet.• Margaret Thatcher, whose controversial policies opened the gusher of substantially free markets that linked economies across borders.• Andy Grove, a Hungarian refugee from the Nazis who built the company—Intel—that figured out how to manufacture complex computer chips on a mass, commercial scale and laid the foundation for Silicon Valley’s computer revolution.Through these stories Jeffrey E. Garten finds the common links between these figure and probes critical questions including: How much influence can any one person have in fundamentally changing the world? And how have past trends in globalization affected the present and how will they shape the future? From Silk to Silicon is an essential book to understanding the past—and the future—of the most powerful force of our times.The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider
Par Louis Decaro Jr.. 2020
Explores the life of Shields Green, one of the Black men who followed John Brown to Harper’s Ferry in 1859When…
John Brown decided to raid the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry as the starting point of his intended liberation effort in the South, some closest to him thought it was unnecessary and dangerous. Frederick Douglass, a pioneering abolitionist, refused Brown’s invitation to join him in Virginia, believing that the raid on the armory was a suicide mission. Yet in front of Douglass, “Emperor” Shields Green, a fugitive from South Carolina, accepted John Brown’s invitation. When the raid failed, Emperor was captured with the rest of Brown’s surviving men and hanged on December 16, 1859. “Emperor” Shields Green was a critical member of John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raiders but has long been overlooked. Louis DeCaro, Jr., a veteran scholar of John Brown, presents the first effort to tell Emperor’s story based upon extensive research, restoring him to his rightful place in this fateful raid at the origin of the American Civil War. Starting from his birth in Charleston, South Carolina, Green’s life as an abolitionist freedom-fighter, whose passion for the liberation of his people outweighed self-preservation, is extensively detailed in this compact history. In The Untold Story of Shields Green, Emperor pushes back against racism and injustice and stands in his rightful place as an antislavery figure alongside Frederick Douglass and John Brown.Gallatin: America’s Swiss Founding Father
Par Nicholas Dungan. 2010
You won’t find his portrait on our currency anymore and his signature isn’t penned on the Constitution, but former statesman…
Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) contributed immeasurably to the formation of America. Gallatin was the first president of the council of New York University and his name lives on at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, so it is with pride that New York University Press and the Swiss Confederation publish this new biography of Gallatin.Gallatin’s story is the opposite of the classic American immigrant tale. Born in Geneva, the product of an old and noble family and highly educated in the European tradition, Gallatin made contributions to America throughout his career that far outweighed any benefit he procured for himself. He got his first taste of politics as a Pennsylvania state representative and went on to serve in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Gallatin became the Secretary of Treasury in Jefferson’s administration and, despite being of the opposite political party to Alexander Hamilton, Gallatin fully respected his predecessor’s fiscal politics. Gallatin undertook a special diplomatic mission for President Madison, which ended the War of 1812 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and gave the United States its genuine independence. Gallatin continued in diplomacy as minister to France and to Great Britain, where he skillfully combined his American experience and European background. In the early 1830s, at the age of seventy, he retired from politics and commenced a new career in New York City as a banker, public figure, and intellectual. He helped establish New York University and the American Ethnological Society, became an expert in Native American ethnology and linguistics, and served as president of the New-York Historical Society. Gallatin died at age 88 and is buried in Trinity churchyard at Broadway and Wall Street.In our own day, as we look at reforming our financial system and seek to enhance America’s global image, it is well worth resurrecting Albert Gallatin’s timeless contributions to the United States, at home and abroad. Nicholas Dungan’s compelling biography reinserts this forgotten Founding Father into the historical canon and reveals the transatlantic dimensions of early American history.Co-published with the Swiss Confederation, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom
Par Robert Williams. 2006
From his arrival in New York City in 1831 as a young printer from New Hampshire to his death in…
1872 after losing the presidential election to General Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley (b. 1811) was a quintessential New Yorker. He thrived on the city’s ceaseless energy, with his New York Tribune at the forefront of a national revolution in reporting and transmitting news. Greeley devoured ideas, books, fads, and current events as quickly as he developed his own interests and causes, all of which revolved around the concept of freedom. While he adored his work as a New York editor, Greeley’s lifelong quest for universal freedom took him to the edge of the American frontier and beyond to Europe. A major figure in nineteenth-century American politics and reform movements, Greeley was also a key actor in a worldwide debate about the meaning of freedom that involved progressive thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Karl Marx.Greeley was first and foremost an ardent nationalist who devoted his life to ensuring that America live up to its promises of liberty and freedom for all of its members. Robert C. Williams places Greeley’s relentless political ambitions, bold reform agenda, and complex personal life into the broader context of freedom. Horace Greeley is as rigorous and vast as Greeley himself, and as America itself in the long nineteenth century.In the first comprehensive biography of Greeley to be published in nearly half a century, Williams captures Greeley from all sides: editor, reformer, political candidate, eccentric, and trans-Atlantic public intellectual; examining headlining news issues of the day, including slavery, westward expansion, European revolutions, the Civil War, the demise of the Whig and the birth of the Republican parties, transcendentalism, and other intellectual currents of the era.Eudora Welty: A Biography (Southern Literary Studies)
Par Suzanne Marrs. 2006
Eudora Welty's works are treasures of American literature. When her first short-story collection was published in 1941, it heralded the…
arrival of a genuinely original writer who over the decades wrote hugely popular novels, novellas, essays, and a memoir, One Writer's Beginnings, that became a national bestseller. By the end of her life, Welty (who died in 2001) had been given nearly every literary award there was and was all but shrouded in admiration. In this definitive and authoritative account, Suzanne Marrs restores Welty's story to human proportions, tracing Welty's life from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature. Making generous use of Welty's correspondence-particularly with contemporaries and admirers, including Katherine Anne Porter, E. M. Forster, and Elizabeth Bowen-Marrs has provided a fitting and fascinating tribute to one of the finest writers of the twentieth century.Love in the Blitz: The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front
Par Eileen Alexander. 1939
On July 17th 1939, Eileen Alexander, a bright young woman recently graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, begins a brilliant correspondence…
with fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen that lasts five years and spans many hundreds of letters. But as Eileen and Gershon’s relationship flourishes from friendship and admiration into passion and love, the tensions between Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe reach a crescendo. When war is declared, Gershon heads for Cairo and Eileen forgoes her studies to work in the Air Ministry.As cinematic as Atonement, written with the intimacy of the Neapolitan quartet, Love in the Blitz is an extraordinary glimpse of life in London during World War II and an illuminating portrait of an ordinary young woman trying to carve a place for herself in a time of uncertainty. As the Luftwaffe begins its bombardment of England, Eileen, like her fellow Britons, carries on while her loved ones are called up to fight, some never to return home.Written over the course of the conflict, Eileen’s letters provide a vivid and personal glimpse of this historic era. Yet throughout the turmoil and bloodshed, one thing remains constant: her beloved Gershon, who remains a source of strength and support, even after he, too, joins the fighting. Though his letters have been lost to time, the bolstering force of his love for Eileen is illuminated in her responses to him.Equal parts heartrending and heartwarming, Love in the Blitz is a timeless romance and a deeply personal story of life and resilience amid the violence and terror of war.The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption
Par Rodney King, Lawrence Spagnola. 2012
On a dark street, what began as a private moment between a citizen and the police became a national outrage.Rodney…
Glen King grew up in the Altadena Pasadena section of Los Angeles with four siblings, a loving mother, and an alcoholic father. Soon young Rodney followed in Dad's stumbling steps, beginning a lifetime of alcohol abuse.King had been drinking the night of March 3, 1991, when he engaged in a high-speed chase with the LAPD, who finally pulled him over. What happened next shocked the nation. A group of officers brutally beat King with their metal batons, Tasered and kicked him into submission—all caught on videotape by a nearby resident. The infamous Rodney King Incident was born when this first instance of citizen surveillance revealed a shocking moment of police brutality, a horrific scene that stunned and riveted the nation via the evening news. Racial tensions long smoldering in L.A. ignited into a firestorm thirteen months later when four white officers were acquitted by a mostly white jury. Los Angeles was engulfed in flames as people rioted in the streets. More than fifty people were dead, hundreds were hospitalized, and countless homes and businesses were destroyed.King's plaintive question, "Can we all just get along?" became a sincere but haunting plea for reconciliation that reflected the heartbreak and despair caused by America's racial discord in the early 1990s.While Rodney King is now an icon, he is by no means an angel. King has had run-ins with the law and continues a lifelong struggle with alcohol addiction. But King refuses to be bitter about the crippling emotional and physical damage that was inflicted upon him that night in 1991. While this nation has made strides during those twenty years to heal, so has Rodney King, and his inspiring story can teach us all lessons about forgiveness, redemption, and renewal, both as individuals and as a nation.The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal
Par Lily Koppel. 2008
“A world straight from the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. . . . An extraordinary story about coming…
of age, following your dreams and discovering (or rediscovering) who you are, were and want to be.” — ParadeRescued from a Dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young womanOpening the tarnished brass lock of a red leather diary found in the basement of a New York City apartment building, New York Times writer Lily Koppel embarked on a journey into the past. Compelled by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel set out to find the diary’s owner, a 90-year old woman named Florence. Eventually reunited with her diary, Florence ventured back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that burned with artistic fervor. Joining intimate interviews with original diary entries, The Red Leather Diary is an evocative and entrancing work that recreates the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York, bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams.Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800
Par Jeff Sypeck. 2006
On Christmas morning in the year 800, Pope Leo III placed the crown of imperial Rome on the brow of…
a Germanic king named Karl. With one gesture, the man later hailed as Charlemagne claimed his empire and forever shaped the destiny of Europe. Becoming Charlemagne tells the story of the international power struggle that led to this world-changing event.Illuminating an era that has long been overshadowed by legend, this far-ranging book shows how the Frankish king and his wise counselors built an empire not only through warfare but also by careful diplomacy. With consummate political skill, Charlemagne partnered with a scandal-ridden pope, fended off a ruthless Byzantine empress, nurtured Jewish communities in his empire, and fostered ties with a famous Islamic caliph. For 1,200 years, the deeds of Charlemagne captured the imagination of his descendants, inspiring kings and crusaders, the conquests of Napoléon and Hitler, and the optimistic architects of the European Union.In this engaging narrative, Jeff Sypeck crafts a vivid portrait of Karl, the ruler who became a legend, while transporting readers far beyond Europe to the glittering palaces of Constantinople and the streets of medieval Baghdad. Evoking a long-ago world of kings, caliphs, merchants, and monks, Becoming Charlemagne brings alive an age of empire building that continues to resonate today.Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Par Bertrand Patenaude. 2009
In Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final…
years in exile in Mexico. Shedding new light on Trotsky’s tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera, his affair with Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, and his torment as his family and comrades become victims of the Great Terror, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history’s most famous yet elusive figures.Tolstoy: A Russian Life (Leo Tolstoy, Diaries And Letters Ser. #2)
Par Rosamund Bartlett. 2011
This biography of the brilliant author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina &“should become the first resort for everyone…
drawn to its titanic subject&” (Booklist, starred review). In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian railway station. At the time of his death, he was the most famous man in Russia, more revered than the tsar, with a growing international following. Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy spent his existence rebelling against not only conventional ideas about literature and art but also traditional education, family life, organized religion, and the state. In &“an epic biography that does justice to an epic figure,&” Rosamund Bartlett draws extensively on key Russian sources, including fascinating material that has only become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Library Journal, starred review). She sheds light on Tolstoy&’s remarkable journey from callow youth to writer to prophet; discusses his troubled relationship with his wife, Sonya; and vividly evokes the Russian landscapes Tolstoy so loved and the turbulent times in which he lived.Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors
Par R. Rosen. 2014
Edgar Award–winning mystery novelist R. D. Rosen tells the story of the hidden children who survived the Holocaust through the…
lives of three girls hidden in three different countries—among the less than 10 percent of Jewish children in Europe to survive World War II—who went on to lead remarkable lives in New York CityOnly one in ten Jewish children in Europe survived the Holocaust, many in hiding. In Such Good Girls, R. D. Rosen tells the story of these survivors through the true experiences of three girls.Sophie Turner-Zaretsky, who spent the war years believing she was an anti-Semitic Catholic schoolgirl, eventually became an esteemed radiation oncologist. Flora Hogman, protected by a succession of Christians, emerged from the war a lonely, lost orphan, but became a psychologist who pioneered the study of hidden child survivors. Unlike Anne Frank, Carla Lessing made it through the war concealed with her family in the home of Dutch strangers before becoming a psychotherapist and key player in the creation of an international organization of hidden child survivors.In braiding the stories of three women who defied death by learning to be “such good girls,” Rosen examines a silent and silenced generation—the last living cohort of Holocaust survivors. He provides rich, memorable portraits of a handful of hunted children who, as adults, were determined to deny Hitler any more victories, and he recreates the extraordinary event that lured so many hidden child survivors out of their grown-up “hiding places” and finally brought them together.A Canadian woman shares her story of traveling to South Africa to teach Boer children in concentration camps following the…
South African War.As the South African War reached its grueling end in 1902, colonial interests at the highest levels of the British Empire hand-picked teachers from across the Commonwealth to teach the thousands of Boer children living in concentration camps. Highly educated, hard working, and often opinionated, E. Maud Graham joined the Canadian contingent of forty teachers. Her eyewitness account reveals the complexity of relations and tensions at a controversial period in the histories of both Britain and South Africa. Graham presents a lively historical travel memoir, and the editors have provided rich political and historical context to her narrative in the Introduction and generous annotations. This is a rare primary source for experts in Colonial Studies, Women’s Studies, and Canadian, South African, and British Imperial History. Readers with an interest in the South African War will be intrigued by Graham’s observations on South African society at the end of the Victorian era.“A fascinating perspective on the country. . . . Graham’s account will help others understand how the British and English-speaking Canadians in South Africa perceived Boers and native southern Africans at the turn of the twentieth century, and her descriptions reveal details about everyday life in South Africa at an important moment of transition.... Graham’s book represents the perspective of a well-embedded outsider reporting to far-removed readers, rather than that of a female teacher involved in international or imperial education.” —Benjamin Bryce, Historical Studies in Education“Recommended for those who wish to learn more about South African history and early race relations or tensions. Graham’s opinionated writing will amuse and interest those researching women’s studies.” —Amy L. Crofford, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 16Alexander Hamilton: A Life
Par Willard Randall. 2003
“Hamilton’s turbulent life, the dramatic birth of a nation, all against the richly evoked gritty background of the 18th century--Randall’s…
book is propelled with the page-turning intensity of an epic novel.” — Ronald Blumer, Peabody Award-winning writerA new reissue of this important biography of Alexander Hamilton—arguably one of the most brilliant and complex of our nation’s founders.From his less than auspicious start in 1755 on the Caribbean island of Nevis, to his unhappy fate in 1804 in Weehawken, New Jersey, at the hands of his enemy Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton’s short life left a huge legacy.Orphaned at eleven and apprenticed to a counting house, Hamilton learned the principles of business that helped him, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, create the American banking system and invent the modern corporation. He served in the American Revolution, primarily as aide-de-camp to General Washington, and subsequently developed a successful legal career, co-wrote The Federalist Papers, and built a life in politics. Told in a highly readable style, Alexander Hamilton presents Hamilton’s contributions to America, and what they mean today.Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, and Madness
Par Matt Birkbeck. 2008
Sammy Davis Jr. lived a storied life. Adored by millions over a six-decade-long career, he was considered an entertainment icon…
and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy. His estate was declared insolvent, and there was no possibility of itever using Sammy's name or likeness again. It was as if Sammy had never existed. Years later his wife, Altovise, a once-vivacious woman and heir to one of the greatest entertainment legacies of the twentieth century, was living in poverty, and with nowhere else to go, she turned to a former federal prosecutor, Albert "Sonny" Murray, to make one last attempt to resolve Sammy's debts, restore his estate, and revive his legacy. For seven years Sonny probed Sammy's life to understand how someone of great notoriety and wealth could have lost everything, and in the process he came to understand Sammy as a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of celebrity biography as cultural history.Matt Birkbeck's serious work of investigative journalism unveils the extraordinary story of an international celebrity at the center of a confluence of entertainment, politics, and organized crime, and shows how even Sammy's outsized talent couldn't save him from himself.The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire
Par Linda Himelstein. 2010
“A operatic tour-de-force.” —Tilar J. Mazzeo, author of The Widow Clicquot“An impressive feat of research, told swiftly and enthusiastically.” —San…
Francisco ChronicleFrom Vanderbilt and Rockefeller to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, America’s captains of industry are paragons of entrepreneurial success, and books about business history, from The First Tycoon to The Big Short, show exemplars of capitalistic cunning and tenacity…but just as American cocktail connoisseurs can mistake Absolut, Skyy, Grey Goose, or Ketel One for the quintessential clear spirit, so too has America’s vision of business history remained naïve to a truth long recognized in Eastern Europe: since the time of Tsar Nicholas, both vodka and commercial success have been synonymous in Russia with one name—Smirnoff. Linda Himelstein’s critically acclaimed biography of Russian vodka scion Pyotr Smirnov—a finalist for the James Beard Award, winner of the IACP and Saroyan Awards, and a BusinessWeek Best Business Book of 2009—is the sweeping story of entrepreneurship, empire, and epicurean triumph unlike anything the world has ever seen before.Bad Blood: A Memoir (Perennial Non-fiction Promotion Ser. #Vol. 9)
Par Lorna Sage. 2001
Bestselling author Lorna Sage delivers the tragicomic memoirof her escape from a claustrophobic childhood in post-WWII Britain—and thestory of the…
weddings and relationships that defined three generations of herfamily—in Bad Blood, an internationalbestseller and the winner of the coveted Whitbread Biography Award. Readers ofbooks like Angela’s Ashes and The Liar’s Club as well as fans ofSage’s own lucid and penetrating writing will be captivated by the book thatthe New York Times Book Review said“fills us with wonder and gratitude. . . . Few literary critics have everwritten anything so memorable.”The Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn
Par Lucette Lagnado. 2011
“[Lagnado writes] in crystalline yet melodious prose.”—New York TimesLucette Lagnado’s acclaimed, award-winning The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (“[a]…
crushing, brilliant book” —New York Times Book Review) told the powerfully moving story of her Jewish family’s exile from Egypt. In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond—the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.“Wonderfully evocative… Donald McRae captures the Great Defender in all his complexity.... A joy to read.” — Kevin Boyle, National…
Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice"Astonishingly vivid." —James Tobin, Award-winning author of Ernie Pyle’s WarThe story of the three dramatic trials that resurrected the life and career of America’s most colorful—and controversial—defense attorney: Clarence Darrow. Many books, plays, and movies have covered Darrow and the trials of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes, and Ossian Sweet before: Geoffrey Cowan’s The People v. Clarence Darrow; Simon Baatz’s For the Thrill of It; Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice; Meyer Levin’s Compulsion and the film adaptation of the same name; Inherit the Wind; but few, if any, have achieved the intimacy and immediacy of Donald McRae’s The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow.