Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Historical

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely...

A Monk's Confession is the first completely new English translation of Guibert of Nogent's remarkable memoirs in over seventy years. Written around the year 1115, they offer an unparalleled look at the life of a monk in the Middle Ages. Guibert, who lived his entire life in northern France, called these memoirs his book of monodiae, or solitary songs. Many scholars consider them the first Latin autobiography in the West after Augustine's Confessions.

Readers will be stirred and surprised by Guibert's intense preoccupation with the sinfulness of his soul,...

When Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as foreign minister of the Soviet Union in 1990, he ended one of the most remarkable and controversial political partnerships in modern history. Together with Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev, Shevardnadze led the dramatic Soviet about-face in the 1980s that ended the Cold War and transformed the international political climate. While Gorbachev and Yakovlev focused on domestic reform, Shevardnadze redirected foreign policy. His willingness to act decisively made him the "moral force" of new thinking and the point man for the policies of...

During the first half of the twentieth century, many young intellectuals and reformers sympathized with the aspirations of working people and supported the struggles of the labor movement. Powers Hapgood (1899-1949) was one of the most colorful and recognizable symbols of this crucial historical relationship. A Harvard graduate and the scion of a famous Progressive-Era family, Hapgood chose to devote his life to the working class. His fascinating political career, marked by a staunch commitment to workers' rights and civil liberties, also included important roles in the Socialist Party and...

Benjamin Franklin was undoubtedly one of the most important arbiters of American culture and society at the time of the Revolution, when the young nation was establishing its constitutions, laws, and civil institutions. Franklin also played a major role in defining a new and important role for women in this society. This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars who are either authorities on Franklin or on the role of women in the eighteenth century to adjudge the record and intentions of Franklin in this most vulnerable facet of his character, life, and place in history....

Otto III (980-1002) was one of the most powerful rulers in Europe in the late tenth century. He is also one of the most enigmatic. The son of the German emperor Otto II and the Greek princess Theophanu, he came to the throne at the age of three and was only twenty-one years old at the time of his death. Nonetheless, his reign had a lasting impact on both Germany and Italy for generations. In this book, Gerd Althoff provides a much-needed biography of this fascinating figure. In the process, he uses Otto's life to explain how in practice early medieval kingship worked.

First published by Penn State Press in 1992, The Infortunate has become a staple for teachers and students of American history. William Moraley's firsthand account of bound servitude provides a rare glimpse of life among the lower classes in England and the American colonies during the eighteenth century. In the decade since its original publication, Susan Klepp and Billy Smith have unearthed new information on Moraley's life, both before his ill-fated venture as an indentured servant from England to the "American Plantations" and after his return to England. This revised edition...

Published posthumously on the occasion of America's centennial celebration, George Lippard's Washington and His Generals, "1776" compiles into a single volume his five popular books of Revolutionary-era historical fiction. The first book, "The Battle-Day of Germantown," features Lippard's hometown and George Washington's intricate and ultimately overcomplicated assault on the British during the Philadelphia campaign of the American Revolution."The Wissahikon," the second book, depicts the defecting of a Tory to the rebel cause after witnessing General William Howe's failed attempt...

Depicting his life from his childhood in Pennsylvania to his time as a public official, including his experiences recruiting and training his own troops for the Revolutionary War, Graydon's memoirs provide a unique and personal view of the American Colonial period. First published in 1811, his memoirs were not initially popular, probably because of their inflammatory remarks about public figures ranging from Albert Gallatin to Thomas Jefferson and his followers. Memoirs of a Life Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania shows Graydon's disdain for those he saw as seduced by power and money...

Reprinted from its 1918 edition, The Tale of a Plain Man by Alexis Stone details the memories of Pennsylvania's turn-of-the-century state governor. During the Civil War, the adolescent Stone ran off to enlist in the volunteer army beginning a military career, which he then followed into private education, law practice, and public office. As an upstart attorney general, Stone was fired by President Grover Cleveland for his role in General Beaver's campaign for governor. Then, as governor, Stone used his power of item veto to reduce the land-grant value of the Pennsylvania State...

Nikita Khrushchev's proclamation from the floor of the United Nations that "we will bury you" is one of the most chilling and memorable moments in the history of the Cold War, but from the Cuban Missile Crisis to his criticism of the Soviet ruling structure late in his career, the motivation for Khrushchev's actions wasn't always clear. Many Americans regarded him as a monster, while in the USSR he was viewed at various times as either hero or traitor. But what was he really like, and what did he really think? Readers of Khrushchev's memoirs will now be able to answer these questions for...

Admiral Jean Francois Darlan's Western legacy is that of an opportunist, a fascist collaborator, or, at worst, a traitor during France's struggle for survival in the early years of World War II. This study, however, based upon new research from French, English, and German archival sources, paints a different picture. With a career beginning during the height of France's imperial power and lasting until the nation's rapid wartime decline, Darlan was a pragmatic statesman, a guardian of naval preparedness, a stout opponent of fascism, an earnest patron of the Anglo-French Alliance, and an...

This is the story of a young man caught in the whirlwind of the Holocaust, who survives a chain of events so harrowing they almost defy belief. As a boy, Joe Rosenblum watches as the Nazi overlords tighten their grip on his small Polish town. Narrowly escaping mass executions that take his own brother, Rosenblum is first sheltered by a local Gentile family, then takes refuge with Russian partisans. Once captured by the Germans, he begins a journey through three concentration camps--Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Dachau.

Living by his wits, a courier for the camp underground,...

Charles Young served as the highest-ranking African American officer in the U.S. Army until 1917. During his career, he served on the western frontier, in the Philippines, and in Mexico, and as military attache to both Haiti and Liberia. Young was also an accomplished linguist, a musician and composer, a published author, and an active member of the black intelligentsia. A history of Young's life transcends the fields of military, diplomatic, and African American history. For those interested in the history of the United States between Reconstruction and World War I, his life offers a...

It began with voices--St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret speaking to an ordinary farmer's daughter. Inspired to aid the future King Charles VII, whose right to the throne had been denied by the English in the Hundred Years War, Joan of Arc made her journey clad in male attire. Theologians testified to the veracity of her divine claims, and she was furnished with a host of troops. But how did she achieve the military feats that made her a legend?

Stephen W. Richey offers a unique look at this remarkable woman. Joan of Arc rapidly matured into a true battle commander...

A founder of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, William Jay was one of the most prolific and influential abolitionists of his day, yet Americans know little about him. This is the first extensive examination of his life and work in over 100 years. Like many of his contemporaries, Jay looked at a rapidly changing America and it frightened him. As a conservative social reformer, it was not merely sinfulness that alarmed Jay, but the perception that America was betraying its founding principles. From his early involvement in local temperance societies to his conversion to the cause of...

American independence was won not just with ideas and words, but also through force of arms. A key element of that battlefield victory was the combat leadership provided by a fierce list of hard-fighting warriors at the regimental, brigade, and division echelons or their naval equivalents. "Founding Fighters" recounts the stories of fifteen of the American Revolution's most important and colorful battlefield commanders. Collectively, these men participated in virtually all of the war's significant battles and campaigns. They experienced the conflict in all its variants: conventional...

Richard I, the Lionheart, remains forever (and perhaps wrongly) the mythical king of England who preferred to wage war than to rule over his empire. The familiar epithet conveys all the principal features of his indomitable character: courage, valor, prowess, the pursuit of glory, the thirst for fame, generosity in war and peace, a sense of honor combined with a sort of haughty dignity made up of both arrogance and pride. In this book, Jean Flori examines both Richard's role as prince and king in history, and also analyses the different and sometimes controversial elements which, for the...