Political Biographies

A penetrating and incisive study of the fanaticism and foibles of some of history's most illustrious names. From Assad to Nero, Gaddafi to Ivan the Terrible, Mad, Bad and Dangerous: The Eccentricity of Tyrants investigates the minds of some of the most powerful people in history. While leaving some room to describe the amusing incidents and eccentricities associated with a...

"I am sometimes identified as one of the 'success stories' of the policies of removal of Aboriginal children. But for much of my childhood, I was deeply unhappy. I feel I had been deprived of love and the ability to love in return. Like Lily, my mother, I felt totally powerless. And I think this is where the seeds of...

In September 2014, Azad Cudi became one of seventeen snipers deployed when ISIS, trying to shatter the Kurds in a decisive battle, besieged the northern city of Kobani. In Long Shot, he tells the inside story of how a group of activists and idealists withstood a ferocious assault and, street by street, house by house, took back their land in...

In this compilation from Plutarch's Greek Lives, James Romm gathers the material of greatest historical significance from fifteen biographies, ranging from Theseus in earliest times to Phocion in the late fourth century BCE. While preserving the outlines of Plutarch's character portraits, Romm focuses on the central stories of classical Greece: the rivalry between Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, the rise of...

Life on the Run is a gripping story that begins in February 2022, when the author and his family shared the fate of millions of Ukrainian refugees driven out of their cities and villages by the Russian invasion. Over a year later, the intense panic of the first weeks and months has subsided, and the author is able to convey...

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal nature, written to a wide range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother, and former President Eisenhower. Letters for the Ages concentrates on the more intimate words of Winston Churchill, seeking to show the private man behind the public figure and shine fresh light on...

Set in the author's homeland, Colombia, this is the heartbreaking story of Leonor, former child soldier of the FARC, a rural guerrilla group. Paula Delgado-Kling followed Leonor for nineteen years, from shortly after she was an active member of the FARC, forced into sexual slavery by a commander thirty-four years her senior, through her rehabilitation and struggle with alcohol and...

During the darkest days of the Holocaust, Europe's Jews faced annihilation. In faraway Melbourne, immigrants Leo and Mina Fink rallied to rescue the survivors. It was a massive task. Undaunted, they battled bureaucrats, public opinion, and at times the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell. Marshalling the might of local and international agencies, they spearheaded the urgent relief and resettlement of...

Isaac Deutscher was planning to write a biography of Lenin after he completed the Trotsky trilogy. However, he changed his mind and wrote one of Stalin instead. This was necessary, he argued, to show that Stalin is an objective fact. He won the faction fight. We lost. He can't be ignored. The tome on Stalin duly appeared and was respectfully...

Lenin (1870–1924) was the leader of the communist Bolshevik party and founder of the Soviet Union. He was a key revolutionary thinker and a man who, at one time, lived in exile for his political views and survived several assassination attempts. This concise biography of Lenin's life and outlook is based on wide-ranging new research that puts Lenin into the...

Explore the fascinating history of the real Downton Abbey as the Crawley family saga makes its way onto the big screen with Downton Abbey, the major motion picture Publisher's Weekly describes it as "an excellent depiction of English aristocratic life ... a compelling portrait." The follow-up to the international bestseller Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, this book moves...

Heroes are hard to come by - but there's one man whose legend has stood the test of two centuries, and whose name sits on Australia's highest peak. Tadeusz Kosciuszko: freedom fighter, friend of Thomas Jefferson and champion of liberty on two continents. Bestselling author Anthony Sharwood finds out why he's the hero the world needs right now. Kosciuszko -...

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR THE BESTSELLING INSIDER STORY OF WESTMINSTER'S BLOODIEST POWER BATTLES 'Myths are debunked, prime ministers exposed and secrets revealed ... essential' The Times 'Refreshingly honest' The Telegraph 'Entertaining and approachable' The Spectator David Cameron. Theresa May. Boris Johnson. Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak. Five prime ministers, one explosive memoir. Kingmaker lifts...

A definitive biography of the U.S. diplomat and prize-winning historian George F. Kennan. The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola's authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and...

Kate Kelly, the daring sister of legendary bushranger Ned Kelly, was mysteriously found dead in a lagoon outside the NSW town of Forbes in 1898. At the inquest, Kate's husband Bricky Foster claimed that she was addicted to drink and frequently spoke of suicide. However, a neighbour testified that she had only known Kate to drink since the recent birth...

WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD A Sunday Times, BBC History Magazine, and Evening Standard Book of the Year 'Majestic, sparkling' Peter Frankopan 'Superb and gripping' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Effortlessly erudite' Rory Stewart 'Masterful' Anita Anand 'Spectacularly good' Dominic Sandbrook The definitive story of the Roman Emperor who shaped modern times. This groundbreaking biography gives...

Partway through the Jerilderie Letter, Ned Kelly accused Senior Constable Anthony Strahan of threatening to shoot him ‘like a dog’. Those few fateful words have ricocheted through Australian history. Many have blamed Anthony Strahan for the turmoil and bloodshed that unfolded during the Kelly Outbreak. For, two days after Anthony reputedly made his threat, Ned and his gang shot dead...

An essential introduction to Josephus's momentous war narrative, The Jewish War is Josephus's superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin Goodman describes the life of this book, from its composition in Greek for a Roman readership to the myriad ways...

The fourth book in kate spade new york's successful series, SHE: muses, visionaries and madcap heroines invites readers back into a way of living that is singularly joyous, distinctly feminine, and wildly interesting. To the New York-based brand, the most exciting and vibrant women in America are the ones who stand out from the crowd. Paying tribute to revered activists...

Chosen as a non-fiction highlight of 2023 in The Times and the Observer After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year,...

John Bright was one of the greatest British statesmen of the nineteenth century. In a series of Punch cartoons in 1878, Bright featured alongside Disraeli and Gladstone as among the most influential politicians of the age. However, his profound contribution to British politics and society has been virtually forgotten in the modern world. Bright played a critical role in many...

Ken Inglis was one of Australia's most creative, wide-ranging and admired historians. During a scholarly career spanning nearly seven decades, his humane, questioning approach—summed up by the recurring query, I wonder...—won him a large and appreciative audience. Whether he was writing about religion, the media, nationalism, the 'civil religion' of Anzac, a subject he made his own, or collaborating on...

Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross injustice and hardship in her early life: her brother, father, and mother were murdered by the Guatemalan military. She learned Spanish and turned to catechistic work as an expression of political...

Inside The Third Reich is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production, and the inner struggle of Albert...

Hollis expertly weaves together the human tragedy and high politics behind the explosion of one of the world’s greatest cities. – Dan Snow The reclaimed history of a woman whose tragic life tells a story of madness, forced marriages, and how the super-rich came to own London. In June 1701, a young widow wakes up in a hotel room in...

In June 1701, a young widow, Mary Grosvenor, wakes up in a hotel room in Paris and finds a man in her bed. Within hours, they are married. Yet, three weeks later, Mary fled to London and swore that she had never agreed to the wedding. So begins one of the most intriguing stories of madness, tragic passions, and the...

On its first publication in the nineties, Dennis Friedman's Inheritance caused a furore as he traced the many problems of the Royal family as it was then back to Queen Victoria's nursery. The book unveils a host of psychodramas played out against a privileged background of English palaces and Scottish castles. As the royal line is followed down the generations,...

Artists from Man Ray to Augustus John painted, sculpted, and photographed her; writers, including Jean Cocteau, Ezra Pound, and Jack Kerouac, praised her strange beauty; celebrities and royalty were awed by her lavish parties and spectacles at her homes in Italy and France. Fully authorised, completely updated, and richly illustrated, this is the fantastic story of the Marchesa Luisa Casati....

Where are you from? was the question hounding Hazel Carby as a girl in post–World War II London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Carby’s place in her home, her neighbourhood, and her country of birth was always in doubt. Emerging from this setting, Carby untangles the threads...

April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over one hundred miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the...

This new biography of JFK offers a comprehensive analysis of the man, the leader, and the cultural icon. Mark White, the leading authority in Britain on JFK, draws on more than 30 years of research to provide a nuanced portrait of one of the most iconic figures in American and world history. John F. Kennedy was a president like no...

This new biography of JFK offers a comprehensive analysis of the man, the leader, and the cultural icon. Mark White, the leading authority in Britain on JFK, draws on more than 30 years of research to provide a nuanced portrait of one of the most iconic figures in American and world history. John F. Kennedy was a president like no...

The definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the Muqaddima. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world—a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in...

The definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the Muqaddima. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world—a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in...

The first time Lara Marlowe interviewed Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko in Ukraine in 2023, Marlowe realised that the 28-year-old woman army officer was one of the most extraordinary people she had encountered in 42 years of journalism. Mykytenko was born in Kyiv in July 1995. She co-founded the 'female squad' of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the 2013/14...

First published in 1960, Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels, is an account of the enclosed and eccentric childhood through which Nancy, Diana, Pam, Unity, Decca, and Debo lived. In writing of their upbringing between the wars, she also writes of her own commitment to communism and of her elopement to the Spanish Civil War with Esmond Romilly. Jessica Mitford...

Ernst Hanfstaengl was court jester, pianist, and foreign press chief for Hitler; he even claimed to have devised the chant of Sieg Heil. However, when the two men fell out, he fled to Britain, where he was interned and later transferred to America. There, he worked as the star of Roosevelt's 'S-Project,' informing on 400 leading Nazis and creating a...

Best known today as a fine composer, the twelfth-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen was also a religious leader and visionary, a poet, naturalist, and writer of medical treatises. Despite her cloistered life, she had strong, often controversial views on sex, love, and marriage too—an astonishing woman in her own age, whose book of apocalyptic visions, Scivias, would alone have...

Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national...

In a critical and little-known chapter of early American history, a fearless young Kentucky lawyer threw open the doors of Congress during the nation's formative years and prevented dissolution of the infant American republic. The only freshman congressman ever elected Speaker of the House, Henry Clay brought an arsenal of rhetorical weapons to subdue feuding members of the House of...

This gripping biography documents the life and reign of Hattusili, one of the most famous and well-documented Hittite rulers. Hattusili, the Hittite Prince Who Stole an Empire takes us to the ancient kingdom of Anatolia (modern Turkey) during the 2nd millennium BC, where Hattusili reigned. He was both a political rival and treaty-partner of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great....

When it came time to hang Ned Kelly, the job fell to shit-shoveller-turned-quack-doctor-turned-drunken-chicken-thief Elijah Upjohn. Such is life indeed. Hanging Ned Kelly looks at the life and demise of Australia's most famous antihero from a new perspective: that of the vagabond who finally put the noose around his neck. Elijah Upjohn was the latest in a long line of flogging...

'You almost feel you are taking that trek with the party as Robert Macklin cites the obstacles - torrential river crossings, dense bush, the Snowy Mountains and more. Macklin covers Hume's public and private life, emphasising his affinity with the country and rapport with the Indigenous people, as well as providing a portrait of the evolving colony.' - SYDNEY MORNING...

Flak jackets are dreadful things. Sure, they have a purpose, and if one ever stopped a bullet or piece of shrapnel from spearing into my vital organs, I would kiss it, hang it up, and frame it. But that hasn't happened, yet. For almost ten years, Peter Stefanovic was Channel Nine's foreign correspondent in Europe, the US, Africa, and the...

In this Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling memoir that 'reads like a thriller', (Joanna Lumley), Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu shares a riveting account of his life as a Gurkha soldier. This marks the first time in its two-hundred-year history that a soldier of the Brigade of Gurkhas has been given permission to tell his story in his own words. In the...

Gavin Long finally gets the biography he richly deserves. While Charles Bean is the subject of several major biographies, this is the first life story of his acolyte, war correspondent, and editor, and principal author of the official history of the Second World War, Gavin Long. In Great at Heart, Garry Hills traces Long's career as a newspaper correspondent during...

Includes a new afterword: A "richly detailed" biography of the iconic feminist based on interviews with friends, family, colleagues, and Steinem herself (The Washington Post). Going beyond Gloria Steinem's public persona, this biography provides an in-depth portrait of the famed activist—covering her family of origin, Smith College education, travels in India, founding of Ms. magazine, and much more—drawn from fifty...

A cutting-edge exploration of how Marx's ideas have been adopted and adapted by revolutionary thinkers in the Global South. For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today, the legacy of Marxism is contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle....

Giants is a moving and inspirational story of survival, focusing on a troupe of seven dwarf siblings. Their story begins like a fairy tale but soon moves into the darkest chapters of their history and modern history as well. In a time when the phrase 'survival of the fittest' prevailed, the Ovitz family, with seven out of their ten members...

A lifetime of questions led us to discover that the grandfather we never knew had led a surprisingly interesting and varied life, having occupied himself as a farmer and a Populist, a town builder and a merchant, a Freethinker and a pioneer of the Great Dakota Boom. He and his contemporaries lived through the panics of 1873, 1893, 1907 and...

Absorbing and readable ... a genuine classic. The Lady A must for understanding the woman, her work and her time. American Gardener [A] delicious volume by two leading experts ... explains the processes and the very human side of a garden designer whose legacy endures. Country Life Gertrude Jekyll, one of the most influential garden designers of the early twentieth...

A compelling new picture of one of the most important, complex, and misunderstood figures of our time. The name George Soros is recognised around the world. Universally known for his decades of philanthropy, progressive politics, and investment success, he is equally well known as the nemesis of the far right—the target of sustained attacks from nationalists, populists, authoritarian regimes, and...

From Lexington Green in 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, one regiment marched thousands of miles and fought a dozen battles to uphold British rule in America: the Royal Welch Fusiliers. With a wealth of previously unused primary accounts, Mark Urban reveals the inner life of the regiment—and, through it, of the British army as a whole—as it fought one of...

A moving and engrossing photographic narrative exploring the lives—past and present—of some of the rescued monkeys currently residing at the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in South Texas, USA. From Harm to Healing combines photography and narrative to explore the stories of eight monkeys rescued from traumatic and abusive situations and rehomed to one of the largest animal sanctuaries in...

In this concise yet comprehensive critical biography, Ritchie Robertson examines the work of Friedrich Nietzsche within the context of his life. The book traces Nietzsche's development from outstanding classical scholar to cultural critic, who measured Imperial Germany by the standards of ancient Greece. It follows him thence to prophet (in the persona of Zarathustra) and savage polemicist against modern liberal...

In April this year, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. There, he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers then on the island. His articles, based on these interviews, for The Age and SMH drew an enormous response from readers. Freeing Ali expands beyond that article to...

Frederick Barbarossa, also known as Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor from 1155, was a dominant figure in late 12th-century European history. He is remembered as one of the greatest medieval German emperors; some even regard him as a German hero. He brought peace to Germany, fought to maintain control over Italian cities, and engaged in a lengthy dispute with the...

A narrative account of the life and times of one of Australia's most extraordinary adventurers—a man who crossed Australia more than 70 times in the early part of the 20th century—by bicycle and car. In 1927, he achieved the greatest motoring feat of the times, driving a car from London to Melbourne. This story follows his exploits across scorching Arabic...

In 1958, Michel Foucault arrived in Poland to work on his thesis—a work that eventually came to be published as The History of Madness. While he was there, he became involved with a number of members of the gay community, including a certain "Jurek," who eventually led the secret police directly to Foucault's hotel room, causing his subsequent exit from...

As Australian social work education approaches its centenary in 2029, it is clear that much of the history of the profession has been forgotten or is merely shadowy memory, layered with gossip, cliché, and stereotypes rather than facts. Verl Lewis, a social work educator and historian, was right when he said that understanding their own history is essential for social...

'A close analysis of five gritty leaders whose extraordinary passion and perseverance changed history . . . a gripping read on a timeless and timely topic!' — Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit Ten years in the writing, Forged in Crisis, by renowned Harvard Business School historian and Davos and Aspen Institute speaker Nancy Koehn, presents five remarkable life journeys:...

The first biography of Henry VIII's court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age. In some portraits of Henry VIII, there appears another striking figure—a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. This is William or 'Will' Somer, the king's...

"I am not going to let my blindness build a brick wall around me. I'd give my eyes one hundred times again to have the chance to do what I have done, and what I can still do." – Brad Snyder speaking with First Lady Michelle Obama On the night Osama bin Laden was killed, US Navy Lieutenant Brad Snyder...

In this astonishing new history of wartime Britain, historian Stephen Bourne unearths the fascinating stories of the gay men who served in the armed forces and at home, and brings to light the great unheralded contribution they made to the war effort. Fighting Proud weaves together the remarkable lives of these men, from RAF hero Ian Gleed - a Flying...

[A] superb study of the way FDR successfully created a presidency that could renew America - Times Literary Supplement One of the greatest American presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, built a coalition of labour, ethnic, urban, low-income and African American voters that underwrote the Democratic Party’s national ascendancy from the 1930s to the 1980s. Over his four terms, he promoted the...

Eva Perón remains Argentina's best-known and most iconic personality, far outlasting her husband, President Juan Domingo Perón. He was himself a remarkable and charismatic political leader, without whom she, as an uneducated woman in an elitist and male-dominated society, could not have existed as a political figure. In Evita, Jill Hedges tells the story of a remarkable woman whose glamour,...

The culture war is over. If you want it to be. It wasn't even a culture war; it was a war on culture. A sustained attack, Dan Hicks argues, in the form of the weaponisation of civic museums, public art, and even universities - and one that has a deeper history than you might think. There's a culture war, we're...

Shortlisted for the Political Book Awards 2013 Political Book of the Year The first woman President of Ireland, who became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson has spent her life in pursuit of a fairer world. Now, for the first time, she reveals what lies behind the vision, strength, and determination that has helped her achieve so much...

Ingrid Betancourt's story—her exemplary courage, spirit, and resilience—has captured the world's imagination. A politician and presidential candidate celebrated for her determination to combat the corruption and climate of fear endemic in Colombia, in 2002 she was taken hostage by FARC, a terrorist guerrilla organisation. She was held captive in the depths of the jungle for six and a half years,...

Eugene V. Debs led the Socialist Party in the early twentieth century to federal and state office across the country, helped to pioneer a fighting union politics that organised all workers, and became the beloved figurehead of American radicalism. Imprisoned for speaking out against World War I, Debs ran for president from prison, receiving over one million votes. Debs’s story...

The first complete biography of an influential historian whose dramatic life intersected with many great events and thinkers of the twentieth century. This is the first complete biography of Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963), an influential German-American medieval historian whose colourful life intersected with many of the great events and thinkers of his time. Born into a wealthy Prussian-Jewish family, he fought...

Stalinism, that particularly brutal phase of communism, came to an end in most of Eastern Europe with the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, or at least with the Khrushchev reforms that began in the Soviet Union in 1956. However, in one country—Albania—Stalinism survived virtually unscathed until 1990. The regime that the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha led from the time...

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition. Engineers of Human Souls is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers—once the faithful servants of authority—into figures of political consequence. Maurice Barres, who first wielded the politics of identity. Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism. Maxim Gorky,...

The explosive new book from longtime royal journalist Omid Scobie, author of the international blockbuster Finding Freedom, Endgame is a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy. An unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a queen willing to go to great lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life...

Edmund Burke (1730-97) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the American colonies, and was a vocal critic of national policy during three European wars. He also advocated reform in Britain and became a central protagonist in the great debate on...

Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (1887–1970) was an impressive figure: a diplomat, intelligence agent, conspirator, journalist and propagandist who played a key role in both world wars. A man who charmed his way into the confidences of everyone from Leon Trotsky to Anthony Eden, and whom influential press baron Lord Beaverbrook claimed ‘could well have been prime minister’. And yet Lockhart...

The gripping story of the pioneer behind the Spitfire told in a major new biography. ‘Britain's leading aviation historian’ Daily Mail Reginald Mitchell is one of the greatest names in aviation history. A visionary engineer with a passion for speed, his legacy is the most iconic fighter aircraft of all time: the Spitfire. During the uneasy peace of the 1920s,...

Winner of the British Book Awards History Book of the Year Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize This thrilling biography of Stalin and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader and Russian tsar. Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals in captivating detail the fear and...

An exciting new telling of the life of Anne Boleyn, using new archival research to reveal the woman behind the myth, from the acclaimed historian Dr Estelle Paranque. A queen on the edge. Anne Boleyn has mesmerised the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become...

The Sunday Times Bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week Profiled in the New Yorker, a Telegraph and New Statesman Book of the Year 'Riveting' - Telegraph 'Enthralling' - Observer 'Gripping' - Sunday Times 'An antidote to despair' - Daily Mirror When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts...