Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Historical

Here ... I have really lived.

Jessie MacKinnon Hartzell arrived in Northern Thailand in 1912, the young wife of a recently ordained Presbyterian missionary. Thousands of miles lay between her and her grandparents' farm in Nova Scotia, where she had been born and raised. But over the next sixteen years, Thailand became her beloved new home. She was awed by its physical beauty--the great rivers, the orchid-studded hills--and became devoted to its people. Beginning as a nurse, she eventually directed a small hospital. There she discovered her talent for organization and hard work. She...

The fall of Singapore and the brilliant victories achieved since the start of the war mean we are protected, but I don't know just how grateful I should be. --Takahashi Aiko, housewife, February 1942

This is my final departure from the home islands. I have paid my respects to those who have helped me. I have no regrets. --Itabashi Yasuo, navy kamikaze pilot, February 1944

We had rice gruel for lunch again. There was no tofu in it, but there were potatoes.... We went through with the closing ceremony and received our report cards. Everyone was there. From now on, I'll persevere...

The fall of Singapore and the brilliant victories achieved since the start of the war mean we are protected, but I don't know just how grateful I should be. --Takahashi Aiko, housewife, February 1942

This is my final departure from the home islands. I have paid my respects to those who have helped me. I have no regrets. --Itabashi Yasuo, navy kamikaze pilot, February 1944

We had rice gruel for lunch again. There was no tofu in it, but there were potatoes.... We went through with the closing ceremony and received our report cards. Everyone was there. From now on, I'll persevere...

Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), the fifth Tokugawa shogun, is one of the most notorious figures in Japanese history. Viewed by many as a tyrant, his policies were deemed eccentric, extreme, and unorthodox. His Laws of Compassion, which made the maltreatment of dogs an offense punishable by death, earned him the nickname Dog Shogun, by which he is still popularly known today. However, Tsunayoshi's rule coincides with the famed Genroku era, a period of unprecedented cultural growth and prosperity that Japan would not experience again until the mid-twentieth century. It was under Tsunayoshi that for...

First published in 1926, this entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of Billy in this century. Saga focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. Billy represented the...

Pedro Romero de Terreros, the first Count of Regla, was born in Spain in 1710. When he was twenty-one, his parents sent him to live with an uncle in New Spain and to assume control of the family's businesses. He married the daughter of a wealthy noble family in Mexico City and continued to build on the combined fortunes as a merchant and a mining entrepreneur.

From the mid-eighteenth century until his death in 1781, Regla was admired for his philanthropy, the recipients of which included colleges and monasteries and he helped establish a banking institution that enabled both rich and...

Malintzin was the indigenous woman who translated for Hernando Cortes in his dealings with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma in the days of 1519 to 1521. "Malintzin," at least, was what the Indians called her. The Spanish called her dona Marina, and she has become known to posterity as La Malinche. As Malinche, she has long been regarded as a traitor to her people, a dangerously sexy, scheming woman who gave Cortes whatever he wanted out of her own self-interest.

The life of the real woman, however, was much more complicated. She was sold into slavery as a child, and eventually given away to...

The history of the American West is full of intriguing life stories, and the fifteen essays in this collection weave a selection of those lives together to focus on the main currents in the region's history. The first five essays cover the period from contact to the mid-nineteenth century and feature Indian leaders and Spanish colonizers, characters from the Mexican period, explorers, mountain men, and missionaries. Familiar names in this portion are Juan Bautista de Anza, Stephen F. Austin, Dona Tules, Lewis and Clark, Jedediah Smith, and Narcissa Whitman.

The second group of essays...

A new paperback edition of the standard biography of the flamboyant Earl Van Dorn, one of the most promising yet disappointing officers in the Confederate Army.