Showing results for "Peter" in Historical

From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. 

Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.

By the bestselling author of Astoria, a thrilling and masterfully crafted narrative of the Conquistador Francisco Coronado’s expedition across 2,500 miles of the vast uncharted North American interior—“El Norte Misterioso” —where he was turned back by fierce indigenous resistance that...

What kind of man creates a boy who never grows up? More than 100 years after Peter Pan first appeared on the London stage, author J. M. Barrie remains one of the most complex and enigmatic figures in modern literature. A few facts, of course, are widely known: Peter Pan made Barrie the richest author of his time, and he bequeathed the royalties to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. In this brilliant biography, Lisa Chaney goes beyond the myths to discover the fascinating, frequently misunderstood man behind the famous boy.

Thoroughly updated and revised for 2024, JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY is the history of the Middle East through the lens of the Holy City and the Holy Land, from King David to the wars and chaos of today. The history of Jerusalem is the story of the world: Jerusalem is the universal city, the...

'Natalie Livingstone's deeply researched, unfailingly fascinating book gives the many extraordinary women at or near the centre of the Nuremberg trials their proper, important, and often ignored place in history' Salman Rushdie 'Brilliant . . . History erased these women. Natalie is righting...

The definitive life story of the Roman Emperor who shaped modern times. In this groundbreaking new biography of Justinian, Peter Sarris gives us an intimate insight into both the Emperor and the man. We meet a man who from the humblest beginnings, rose to become ruler of much of the known world...

Winner of the Best Picture Oscar 2011 Award. One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century – amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed ‘The Quack who saved a King’. Logue wasn’t a British aristocrat or even an Englishman – he was a commoner and an Australian to boot.

The obituary page of The New York Times is a celebration of extraordinary lives. This groundbreaking package includes 300 obits of the most important and fascinating obituaries the Times has ever published. The obituary page is the section many readers first turn to not only see who died, but to...

Inspiriert von der damaligen „bleiernen" Zeit und den Alltagserlebnissen in der DDR stehen diese Momentaufnahmen wie Zeitzeugnisse einer vergangenen Epoche. Sie beschäftigen sich mit dem stupiden grauen Arbeitsalltag, mit Umweltzerstörung, mit Freizeitbeschäftigungen, Kneipen- oder Konzertbesuchen, sind aber auch einigen literarischen Vorbildern gewidmet oder reflektieren frustrierende Erfahrungen aus der Grundwehrdienstzeit des Autors (1977–1979), die er als Soldat in einer Rostocker Kaserne verbringen musste.

Jane Austen is famous for such books as Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Now learn about the author’s journey through a life spent making up stories that touched the lives of millions. Jane Austen is now what she never was in life, and what she would have been horrified to become--a...

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night.

Flyv, vilde svaner bringer historien om Jungs familie – og Kinas – op til nutiden. Gennem deres respektive livsforløb beretter Jung Chang medrivende, dybt bevægende og uforglemmeligt om, hvordan det er at leve i et kommunistisk diktatur og om de trusler, det moderne Kina udgør for den internationale verdensorden. Bogen er på mange måder Jungs kærlighedsbrev til hendes mor, men den handler også om hendes bedstemor og hendes far, der begge døde tragisk under Kulturrevolutionen.

Our heroes can come from the most ordinary of places. As a shy lad growing up in country Victoria, no one in the district had any idea the man Albert Jacka would become. Albert 'Bert' Jacka was 21 when Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914. Bert soon enlisted in the Australian Imperial...

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.

On February 6, 2001, my nine-year-old daughter happened to wander into the room during a television segment marking Ronald Reagan's ninetieth birthday. She watched for a moment. Then she turned to me and asked, ""Dad, is that the President you worked for?"" What answer could I give her? How...

In 1914, the Great War was raging all around the globe. It was by far the largest and bloodiest conflagration the world had ever seen. The balance of vast imperial powers the world over was shifting in tectonic, unpredictable ways.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BCE) wrote some of ancient Rome's greatest poetry, melding languages and cultures with youthful ideals and a realist's recognition of the dictatorial world around him. Horace is famed for his fine phrases, lyric sex, and guidance on how to live, but he was a poet maddened by war, and many of his most self-revealing poems have rarely been seen. He could be sublime and obscene, amusing and abusive, a model of moderation and anything but.

He fought and beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery and then murdered his master to escape. He was captured by pirates--twice--and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved seconds before the noose dropped over his head. And all this happened before he was thirty years old. This is Captain John Smith's life.

Peter Wensierski erzählt von einer Generation Jugendlicher auf der Suche nach einem freien, selbstbestimmten Leben. Freitag, 10. April 1981: In Jena steigt der 23-jährige Matthias Domaschk in den Schnellzug nach Berlin. Er will zu einer Geburtstagsfeier. Doch er kommt nie an, denn der vollbesetzte Zug wird in Jüterbog gestoppt, Matthias und drei weitere Jenaer festgesetzt. Zwei Tage später ist er tot, nach einem Verhör in der Stasi-Untersuchungshaftanstalt Gera.