Historical

Have you ever wondered how the human spirit can rise above the most crushing circumstances to achieve greatness? In Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington delivers a powerful and intimate account of his ascent from a child born into slavery to becoming one of the most significant educators in American history. This is not merely a historical record; it is a profound manual on succeeding against all odds.

Bloomsbury presents Admiral Collingwood by Max Adams, read by James Lailey. Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of thirteen. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy he rose to become a fine seaman, a master of gunnery, a battle commander...

The brilliant and sometimes scandalous lives of twenty-one women who made French history. From Eleanor of Aquitaine to Edith Piaf, Colette to Coco Chanel, discover the lives of 21 women who made French history. French women have always had so much more to say than ‘let them eat cake’! Whether kicking the English out of Orléans, marching on Versailles or running messages for the French resistance, their stories of courage, creativity and genius have long defined French history.

Questa è la storia di un uomo che aveva nel sangue quella sfumatura calda dell'ambizione chiamata desiderio. Quando si nasce con un simile slancio, galleggiare nello stagno della quotidianità è impossibile a priori: e nell'esistenza di Raul Gardini non c'è stato nulla di ordinario. Spregiudicato, visionario, è partito dalle aziende soprattutto agroalimentari di Ravenna di proprietà del suocero per creare in dieci anni un impero industriale e finanziario di dimensioni mondiali, il gruppo Ferruzzi-Montedison.

Bloomsbury presents Hammer of the Gods: King Olaf's Viking Conquest by Don Holloway, read by Mark Meadows. Weaving together Norse sagas and Anglo-Saxon chronicles to vividly depict the violence and spectacle of the Viking age, Don Hollway brings the legendary Olaf Tryggvason to life. Hammer of...

Bloomsbury presents The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor by Elizabeth Norton, read by Melanie Crawley. England, late 1547. Henry VIII is dead. His 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth is living with the old king's widow Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour. Ambitious, charming and dangerous...

Discover the remarkable life of Johann Sebastian Bach... During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach was a Konzertmeister who played eloquent music for the masses at church, but his unique, free-flowing style was not always appreciated when his day job called for him to play traditional church standards. He was jailed by a duke, passed over for promotions, and told repeatedly to tone it down. Yes, for most of his life, Bach was more akin to an unsung hero than the celebrated genius we know him as today. That recognition would come, but not until long after he was gone.

Herman Webster Mudgett was born in 1861 in a small New Hampshire hill town, and he was dead before he turned 35. In the years between, operating under a name he had constructed to replace his own, he built a hotel in Chicago designed to kill its guests, committed a number of murders whose exact count remains in dispute, and earned the distinction of being among the first Americans to whom the word “serial killer”—a term that did not yet exist in his lifetime—could reasonably be applied.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel comes the enthralling hidden history of one of the world’s most successful business titans, a rival to the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, whose legacy was erased in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution...

“Now I had approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary year.”—Solomon Northup Born and raised a freeman in New...

As the daughter of a decorated general in the Imperial Russian army, Alexandra Kollontai was a member of the elite from birth. From that comfortable perch, she might easily have lived out her days in the drawing rooms and social circles of St. Petersburg's upper classes. Instead, she devoted her life to tearing that world apart.

Castro: A Biography by Consent offers the most comprehensive and in-depth life history of one of the most iconic and controversial revolutionary leaders of the modern world. Respected by some, despised by others, Fidel Castro was a force to reckon with, and Claudia Furiati spent nine years of intensive research unraveling and chronicling his story through seven decades of Cuban history.

From a preeminent King scholar, the origin story of the man, minister, and civil rights hero who would lead the nation and change the world. We know who Martin Luther King, Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Martin...

Da giovane era stato il figlio ribelle e avventuroso di un padre violento e militarista; amava la musica, suonando e componendo con estro; leggeva instancabilmente, e la conversazione con i filosofi era nella sua giornata la cosa più importante; dichiarava il re «il primo servitore dello Stato» e la «corona un cappello che lascia passare la pioggia».

The exceptional tale of an unorthodox, seventeenth–century married couple whose rags-to-riches story fundamentally rewrites our knowledge of American history at its very beginnings. A man thought to be Muslim from Morocco and a German barmaid are hardly the image we have of America's founders...

Discover the remarkable life of Boudica... Boudica was the queen of her people, a proud Celtic tribe in the east of England, and she took that responsibility seriously. In a time when the Romans sought to add the British Isles to their ever-growing empire, she stood as the last line of defense between her tribe and total subjugation. And so, with nothing left to lose, she did what few had ever dared: she led her people in open revolt against the mightiest empire on earth.

Su padre. La historia más íntima jamás contada Aquí está la historia de mi padre, Franco Macri. Tomé la decisión de emprender este proyecto unos meses antes de publicar, a comienzos de 2021, Primer tiempo. En aquel libro me había propuesto dar mi testimonio de los cuatro años de mandato...

La vida de la implacable y legendaria espía soviética África de Las Heras, un fresco de la historia social, política y cultural del siglo XX, a través de los ojos de la niña para la cual fungía de ocasional niñera que, cincuenta años después, ya consagrada escritora, descubre la verdadera identidad de su nana y emprende un viaje alucinante de reconstrucción de su biografía y de la propia.

Drawing on formerly inaccessible notebooks and manuscripts, This Dark Night constructs a portrait of Brontë, her famous writing sisters Charlotte and Anne, and the effect of their sisters’ and mother’s tragic deaths. In the first full-length biography in over twenty years, renowned scholar Deborah Lutz sketches the days of a woman crafting otherworldly fiction while running her father’s parsonage: writing interweaving with household work, daydreaming, and exploring the rough-hewn outdoors.

From Deadwood to Aberdeen, Vermillion to Belle Fourche, the frontier towns of South Dakota were populated by some of the toughest and most dangerous characters in the West. Chief Two Sticks led a starving band of rebels on a desperate path of destruction. Bud Stevens's murder of a cattle king's...

He will make you feel the awe of sitting in the cockpit, the wonder of taking flight, and the unbridled joy of achieving goals. Despite his disqualifying impairment and "the family burning flames of alcohol," he will be an airline pilot. Nothing matters more. As he grows up, the author immerses himself in the world of pilots, hangars, and cockpits.

Few women in history have inspired such contradictory reactions as Catherine de Medici. To her admirers, she was a brilliant stateswoman and a steadying force in an era of great religious conflict. To her enemies, she was something far darker: a scheming foreigner, an Italian serpent coiled at the heart of the French court. What almost everyone agreed on was that she was extraordinary.

In quiet, lovely prose, Julie Brill has delivered a powerful reminder of why our stories—personal, familial, historical—are so crucial. A moving excavation of a family story.–Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure Discover a powerful, untold chapter of Holocaust history and a daughter’s enduring quest to know the story that began a generation before her birth.

The Lynx, an autobiographical account chronicling his extraordinary life behind the Iron Curtain and the daring path that ultimately led to his escape. Raised under the weight of Soviet-era restrictions, Nickolich lived through political tension, cultural control, and the constant pressure of surveillance—experiences that shaped both his character and his storytelling voice.

Bloomsbury presents Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France by Jean-Vincent Blanchard, read by Craig Van Ness. Chief Minister to King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu was the architect of a new France in the seventeenth century and the force behind the nation's rise as a European power...