Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Historical

"A Woman Named Catherine" begins with the birth of Catherine de Medici in Florence, Italy. The story follows the story of the woman who grew facing immense challenges and threats to her life and achieved nothing less than to rise as Queen of France. Facing an unwelcoming court, this Queen not only controled the fate of France for thirty years, but secured the throne of the fleur de lis for her three sons. As France entered its most dificult period during the wars of Religion, which would not end well until after Catherine's death, Catherine was faced with the challenge of a dead husband and...

"This is a beautifully written, insightful chronicle of a young girl's Holocaust survival. Though very private and personal, it nevertheless captures the common torments of children living through this disastrous civilizational breakdown.

What makes this book unique is that the author pulls the reader into the story. We get to know her parents and other memorable characters for the kind of people they were. There is an immediacy in the writing that almost makes the reader a participant in the daily struggles to keep alive. We get an honest look at the relationships between men and women on...

"Loyalty On Trial" reveals that Arthur Wolter was accused of being the "power behind the throne" of an organization targeted by J. Edgar Hoover during WWII as subversive and un-American. Referenced in the index files of the House Special Committee on un-American Activities as the "poet laureate of the German American Bund," Wolter's writings were used against him in the government's attempt to revoke his citizenship.

In an effort to assure Americans during WWII that the homeland was secure from subversives and potential saboteurs, the loyalty of German Americans was challenged by the FBI,...

An incredible, true story of a Holocaust survivor.

When your world collapses around you, when your family is exterminated and your life is worth less than a dog's life, what do you do to survive?

Young, David Tenenbaum chooses an unusual path to survival...Equipped with the false Arian identity papers, he goes where only non-Jews would risk going at the time--he volunteers for work in Germany, in their Arbeit camps. What does he need to do to survive? How close is far enough from death?

From Nazi Germany we are taken to the communist post-war Poland where we gain insight to the...

On May 8, 1944, the B17 climbed and joined other bombers in the cloudy skies over England. It had been a smooth takeoff.

Thomas L. Thomas adjusted his navigator's seat in the plane's nose section and glanced out toward the clouds that quickly enveloped the ground beneath the plane. In one sense, he felt somewhat sheltered when the plane joined other planes 25,000 feet above the English Channel. He imagined that the layer of clouds hid the Flying Fortresses from the flak of enemy fire. However, he knew it was a false sense of security.

Starting at age eight, Dean Sims has worked at being several different kinds of a working journalist. He never has stopped collecting stories to make for a more interesting and better-informed world of people. He did human-interest features for The Kansas City Star, Ottawa, Kans., Herald, the Burlington, IA. Hawk-Eye Gazette, Toledo Blade and The Associated Press. Sometimes he gets into The Reader's Digest as a contributor. But all during these times, he has made his primary living at public relations management jobs, in the U.S. and overseas.

His specialty is sharing the ironies of life...

July 8, 1932, 11 PM. East Austin, an African-American district in Jim Crow Texas. Sixty-year-old Charles Johnson is driving home from Bible study when a car full of young white men swerves in front of him. A brief altercation ensues. Convinced that his life is threatened, Johnson fires his pistol and drives away. Johnson's shot kills the unarmed, eighteen-year-old son of Albert Allison, a prominent cotton landlord, influential in politics, and an advocate for racial justice. Although devastated, Allison personally thwarts a lynch mob and then insists that Austin's courts treat Johnson fairly....

"Love, Loss and Hope" is the compelling autobiographical account of the authors journey from a peasant village in southern Poland to owning a business with her son in Jackson, Michigan.

Experience the story of how her widowed mother provided for her and her ailing older sister through the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland during World War II.

Trudge with her through the snow and the frontlines of the advancing Soviet Army as they 'liberate' Poland and then close the Iron Curtain.

Feel her pain as she fends off the abuse at the hands of her brutal step-father, and only escapes...

Most book reviewers know very little about the history or the art of biography. Indeed, if there is any art in biography, it is the rare reviewer that acknowledges it or knows how to discuss it. Usually the reviewer regards biography as an occasion to wax eloquent about what he or she thinks of the subject. Little space, if any, is devoted to the biography's structure or style, to the biographer's peculiar problems, or to how the biography relates to others about the same subject.

Carl Rollyson, a professional biographer and weekly columnist ("On Biography") for "The New York Sun,"...

When you think of someone in their 80s, the first thing that comes to mind is a retirement home, a rocking chair and spending each day the same; perhaps watching television, not really paying attention to what's on...or playing checkers with another resident whose name may have been forgotten.

When you think of Art Herriford, you think of a vivacious and energetic man, whose spirit and lust for life is like the Energizer Bunny(R)...he just keeps going and going.

A veteran of World War II, specifically the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Art's zest for life and the love of his family is...

"A Memoir in Letters: My Life on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain" is the touching autobiography that first chronicles the young life of German-born Hadwig Gofferje, born during World War II, then living under communist rule. She describes her journey to freedom, complete with an American university education, and a new life in the United States. During her war-torn childhood in Germany, Hadwig lived in her own world, where she occupied herself for hours with drawing and playing with her dolls and imaginary friends. But at night, she endured many terrifying bombing raids by the Allied Forces in...

When Nellie Smith from Oakland, California met Charlie Tower, a young millionaire from Philadelphia on a cruise to Alaska in l887, it was love at first sight. They soon married and moved to Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. In 1897, President McKinley appointed Charlie, now called Charlemagne, Minister to Austria-Hungary. The Towers moved with their five small children to a palace in Vienna where Mark Twain became a regular visitor. Charlemagne was named Ambassador to Russia in 1899. He and Nellie witnessed the sumptuous grandeur of the Court of Tsar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg. Upon the...

"Fry was the American Schindler...with desperate exiles, menacing Nazis, forged documents and midnight escapes... think] "Casablanca."" --New York Times

Varian Fry, the only American honored at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, was a young New Yorker who rescued more than 1,500 Europeans from the Nazi's including Mar Chagall, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, and other intellectuals, political activists, and "degenerative" artists, many of them Jews. This moving Holocaust rescue story is set against the backdrop of American isolationism and anti-Semitism.

"The drama here is in the thrill...

"Magyar, Stars & Stripes" strikingly recounts a Hungarian Jewish family's history of love, affection, persecution, and injustice. It tells about their close kinship and heart-wrenching experiences in labor and concentration camps.

The book chronicles Alexander Taub's life--from a playful childhood to a young adulthood shattered within a labor camp in Schachendorf, Austria. Every day is a new battle to survive amid countless bodies. He makes a daring escape and finds compassion in people who offer food and clothing. Rebuilding the ashes of his family, Taub takes us on an extraordinary...

The updated version of this authoritative biography of Wallenberg offers a 'closing" to the greatest unsolved mystery of the Rosenfeld's 'lucid evaluation of the evidence pro and con is the most sensible so far.this is the book of choice for those who want the most complete account of Wallenberg's heroism and martyrdom."-"Publishers Weekly"

'"A timely book. It helped me understand the ongoing clashes between Israelis and the Palestinians.""-Lois Santalo, teacher and author of "Oops, I Lost My Sense Of Humor"

'"Not only is"Gutsy Guys and Rattletrap Planes that Helped Save a Nation"entertaining, it's an informative insight into Middle Eastern conflicts.""-Marlie Moses, PhD, award-winning author

In the spring of 1948, Evelyn 'Evie" Dahms's husband, Fred, a World War II American Air Force veteran, receives a call from one of his war buddies about a too-good-to-be-true airline job in Rome. Excited about the new prospect, Evie...

"Raised Italian-American" remembers the history, stories, traditions, and values of growing up in an Italian neighborhood.

One of my fondest memories as a child was to take a ride and view the beautiful nativity scenes that were erected throughout the neighborhood each Christmas. The popularity of these large statues, they are called presepi in Italy, started in Italy in the 17th century when it was fashionable to find them in palaces and homes of wealthy citizens. The newfound enthusiasm of erecting a presepi during Christmas may be contributed to Saint Gaetano who openly encouraged...

What would happen if you ventured to a new country halfway aroundthe world where you could not speak the language? This was thesituation faced by your ancestors as they began the quest for a new andbetter life. It was to be a life full of hardships and injustice. Child laborwas legal, and safety laws were nonexistent. In addition to the highrate of job injuries, jobs were without fringe benefits.

Immigrants toiled in unsafe work conditions for poverty wages with nohope of citizenship for twenty years. It was a life to be endured withonly hopes and dreams for daily sustenance. This...

"Subway Music" is about finding things Reinhold Junker thought he had lost forever: his subway music and his name.

"Subway Music" begins in a Manhattan hotel room the day after he and his wife celebrated their Christmas anniversary. She coaxes him into taking her to Brooklyn to see where "all those stories you tell all of the time about growing up" took place. As a certified Californian, that's the last thing he wants to do. Subways were then. Freeways are now. But they go.

At Prospect Park he "finds" his father and learns about both courage and reverse prejudice-prejudice against his...