- Benjamin Franklin
- Esmond Wright, Editor
- Ever the chronicler and teacher, Franklin wrote an autobiography, ostensibly for his illegitimate son William. Apart from hurried additions when he was in his eighties, his story halts at 1757. Tracing his footsteps centuries later, Franklin's most celebrated biographer completes the last twenty-five years of the autobiography by drawing on Franklin's most personal and insightful letters and writings--even making additions within the interrupted Autobiography to give us the expository memoir that Franklin intended. Indeed, as he wrote it.
- Hardcover 1990 / Paperback 1996
- Biography
- Nigel Hamilton
- For what purpose and for whom has biographical pursuit endured, and how does it play such a contested, popular role in contemporary Western culture, from biopics to blogs, memoirs to docudramas? Award-winning biographer Hamilton addresses these questions in an incisive and vivid narrative that will appeal to students of human nature and self-representation across the arts and sciences.
- Hardcover 2007
- The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2, 1914-1919
- Sigmund Freud
- Sándor Ferenczi
- Ernst Falzeder, Editor
- Eva Brabant, Editor
- Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, With
- Peter Hoffer, Translator
- Introduction by Axel Hoffer
- The nation-shattering events of World War I form a somber canvas for the exchanges of the two correspondents in Volume 2 (July 1914 through December 1919). Uncertainty pervades these letters: Will Ferenczi be called up? Will food and fuel-and cigar-shortages continue? Will Freud's three enlisted sons and son-in-law come through the war intact? And will Freud's "problem-child," psychoanalysis, survive?
- Hardcover 1996
- A Diary from Dixie
- Mary Boykin Chesnut
- Edited by Ben Ames Williams
- Foreword by Edmund Wilson
- One of the most important documents in southern history, this is a day-by-day diary of the Civil War years. It rings with authenticity while evoking the nostalgia, bitterness, and comedy of the Confederacy.
- Hardcover 1980 / Paperback
- Fanny Kemble's Journals
- Fanny Kemble
- Catherine Clinton, Editor
- Henry James called Fanny Kemble's autobiography "one of the most animated autobiographies in the language." Born into the first family of the British stage, Fanny Kemble was one of the most famous woman writers of the English-speaking world, a best-selling author on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to her essays, poetry, plays, and a novel, Kemble published six works of memoir, eleven volumes in all, covering her life, which began in the first decade of the nineteenth century and ended in the last. Her autobiographical writings are compelling evidence of Kemble's wit and talent, and they also offer a dazzling overview of her transatlantic world.
- Paperback 2000 / Hardcover 2000
- Francis Parkman
- Howard Doughty
- Paperback
- François Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality
- Siep Stuurman
- This groundbreaking work is the first comprehensive study of Poulain, a dropout from theology studies at the Sorbonne who embraced the philosophy of Descartes, became convinced of the injustice and absurdity of the subjection of women, and assembled an entirely original social philosophy. His writings challenging male supremacy and advocating gender and racial equality are the most radically egalitarian texts to appear in Europe before the French Revolution.
- Hardcover 2004
- From a Darkened Room
- Arthur C. Inman
- Daniel Aaron, Editor
- Only a few of us seek immortality, and fewer still by writing. But Arthur Inman challenged the odds. He calculated that if he kept a diary and spared no thoughts or actions, was entirely honest and open, and did not care about damage or harm to himself or others, he would succeed in gaining attention beyond the grave that he could not attain in life.
- Paperback 1996
- The Generalissimo's Son
- Jay Taylor
- By reacting to changing economic, social, and political dynamics on Taiwan, Sino-American rapprochement, Deng Xiaoping's sweeping reforms on the mainland, and other international events, Chiang Ching-kuo led Taiwan on a zigzag but ultimately successful transition from dictatorship to democracy. Jay Taylor underscores the interaction of political developments on the mainland and in Taiwan and concludes that if China ever makes a similar transition, it will owe much to the Taiwan example and the Generalissimo's son.
- Hardcover 2000
- Hadrian
- Thorsten Opper
- Even in the panoply of Roman history, Hadrian stands out. This book moves beyond the familiar image of Hadrian to offer a new appraisal of this Emperor’s contradictory personality, his exploits and accomplishments, his rule, and his military role, against the backdrop of his twenty-one-year reign.
- Hardcover 2008
- Henry Adams
- Henry Adams
- Ernest Samuels, Editor
- Ernest Samuels' Pulitzer Prize-winning, multivolume work on Henry Adams is now a compact, updated, one-volume biography.
- Hardcover 1992
- Indonesian Destinies
- Theodore Friend
- "How can such a gentle people as we are be so murderous?" a prominent Indonesian asks. That question--and the mysteries of the archipelago's vast contradictions--haunt Theodore Friend's remarkable work, a narrative of Indonesia during the last half century, from the postwar revolution against Dutch imperialism to the unrest of today. Part history, part meditation on a place and a past observed firsthand, Indonesian Destinies penetrates events that gave birth to the world's fourth largest nation and assesses the continuing dangers that threaten to tear it apart.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
- The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649
- Richard Dunn, Editor
- James Savage, Editor
- Laetitia Yaendle, Editor
- John Winthrop
- For 350 years Governor John Winthrop's journal has been recognized as the central source for the history of Massachusetts in the 1630s and 1640s. This full-scale, unabridged edition uses the manuscript volumes of the first and third notebooks, and James Savage's transcription of the middle notebook (accidentally destroyed in 1825).
- Hardcover 1996
- The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist
- Samuel Curwen
- Edited by Andrew Oliver
- Oliver, combining painstaking documentation with an abundance of illustrations, provides a colorful, complete work which ranks as a valuable source of English social history from 1775 to 1784. It was during these years that Curwen, a Salem merchant, after fleeing from the harassment incurred by his loyalist activities, migrated to England and kept this journal.
- Hardcover 1972
- Julian the Apostate
- G. W. Bowersock
- This portrayal of one of antiquity's most enigmatic figures offers a vivid and compact assessment of the Apostate's life and reign. Proceeding directly from an evaluation of the ancient sources--the testimony of friends and enemies of Julian as well as the writings of the emperor himself--the author traces Julian's youth, his years as the commander of the Roman forces in Gaul, and his emergence as sole ruler in the course of a dramatic march to Constantinople. In Bowersock's analysis of Julian's religious revolution, the emperor's ardent espousal of a lost cause is seen to have made intolerable demands upon pagans, Jews, and Christians alike.
- Hardcover 1978 / Paperback 1997
- Kenmu
- Andrew Goble
- The short-lived Kenmu regime (1333-1336) of Japanese Emperor Go-Daigo is often seen as an inevitably doomed, revanchist attempt to shore up the old aristocratic order. But far from resisting change, Andrew Edmund Goble here forcefully argues, the flamboyant Go-Daigo and his associates sought to overcome the old order and renegotiate its structure and ethos.
- Hardcover 1996
- Lenin
- Robert Service
- Lenin: His politics still reverberate around the world even after the end of the USSR. His name elicits revulsion and reverence. And yet Lenin the man remains largely a mystery. This biography shows us Lenin as we have never seen him, in his full complexity as revolutionary, political leader, thinker, and private person.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002
- Lenin Lives!
- Nina Tumarkin
- Was the deification of Lenin a show of spontaneous affection--or a planned political operation designed to solidify the revolution with the masses? This book provides a startling answer. Exploring the cult's mystical, historical, and political aspects, Tumarkin demonstrates the galvanizing power of ritual in the establishment of the post-revolutionary regime. In a new Preface and Postscript, she brings the story up to date, considering the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia's new democracy.
- Paperback 1997
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume I, I Will be Heard!
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Walter M. Merrill
- Garrison's letters offer an insight into the mind and life of an outstanding figure in American history, a reformer-revolutionary who sought radical changes in the institutions of his day, and who, perhaps more than any other single individual, was ultimately responsible for the emancipation of the slaves. Included in this first volume are his letters from the earliest known--one to his mother during his apprenticeship in 1822--through the 1831 founding of his famous newspaper, The Liberator; the founding in 1832 and 1833 of the New England and the American Anti-Slavery Societies; his first trip to England to meet with British abolitionists; his courtship and marriage; and his being dragged through the streets of Boston by a mob out to tar and feather the British abolitionist George Thompson.
- Hardcover
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume II, A House Dividing against Itself
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Louis Ruchames
- This volume covers the five-year period in which Garrison's three sons were born and he entered the arena of social reform with full force.
- Hardcover 1971
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume III, No Union with the Slaveholders
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Walter M. Merrill
- Though plagued by illness and death in his immediate family throughout the years covered in this volume, Garrison drove himself to win supporters for the radical abolitionist cause. lecturing and touring often with Frederick Douglass. Throughout these years he continued to write extensively for The Liberator and involved himself in a variety of liberal causes; in 1849 he publicized and circulated in Massachusetts the earliest petition for women's suffrage.
- Hardcover 1974
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume IV, From Disunionism to the Brink of War
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Louis Ruchames
- Despite provocation, Garrison was a proponent of nonresistance during this period, though he continued to advocate the emancipation of slaves. Set against a background of wide-ranging travels throughout the western United States and of family affairs back home in Boston, Garrison's letters of this decade make a distinctive contribution to antebellum life and thought.
- Hardcover 1976
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume V, Let the Oppressed Go Free
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Walter M. Merrill
- Hardcover 1979
- The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume VI, To Rouse the Slumbering Land
- William Lloyd Garrison
- Edited by Walter M. Merrill
- Edited by Louis Ruchames
- Hardcover 1981
- Macaulay
- John Clive
- Paperback
- Mazarin's Quest
- Paul Sonnino
- Sonnino examines the diplomatic negotiations that took place in Westphalia from 1643 to 1648, which brought an end to the agonizing civil and religious conflict of the Thirty Years’ War.
- Hardcover 2009
- My Dearest Friend
- With a Foreword by Joseph J. Ellis
- Abigail Adams
- John Adams
- Edited by Margaret A. Hogan
- Edited by C. James Taylor
- Foreword by Joseph J. Ellis
- In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to "Miss Adorable," the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence--and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships--in American history.
- Hardcover 2007
- Napoleon
- Steven Englund
- This sophisticated and masterful biography brings new and remarkable analysis to the study of modern history's most famous general and statesman. As Englund charts Napoleon's dramatic rise and fall--from his Corsican boyhood, his French education, his astonishing military victories and no less astonishing acts of reform as First Consul (1799-1804) to his controversial record as Emperor and, finally, to his exile and death--he explores the unprecedented power Napoleon maintains over the popular imagination.
- Paperback 2005
- Nero
- Edward Champlin
- The Roman emperor Nero is remembered by history as the vain and immoral monster who fiddled while Rome burned. He murdered his younger brother and rival to the throne, probably at his mother's prompting. He then murdered his mother, with whom he may have slept. He ordered the spectacular punishment of Christians for the burning of Rome, many of whom were burned as human torches to light up his gardens at night. Edward Champlin reinterprets Nero's enormities on their own terms, as the self-conscious performances of an imperial actor with a formidable grasp of Roman history and mythology and a canny sense of his audience.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
- One and Inseparable
- Maurice G. Baxter
- One and Inseparable traces the interrelated evolution of the public career and the private life of this imposing and controversial Yankee. Reading Baxter's lucid, moving biography it is possible to understand why Ralph Waldo Emerson so detested Daniel Webster but also called him "the competest man" produced by America.
- Hardcover 1984
- Papers of John Adams, Volume 11, January - September 1781
- John Adams
- Edited by Gregg L. Lint
- Edited by Richard Alan Ryerson
- Edited by Anne Decker Cecere
- Edited by Celeste Walker
- Edited by Jennifer Shea
- Edited by C. James Taylor
- In mid-March 1781 John Adams received his commission and instructions as minister to the Netherlands and embarked on the boldest initiative of his diplomatic career. Disappointed by the lack of interest shown by Dutch investors in his efforts to raise a loan for the United States, Adams changed his tactics, and in a memorial made a forthright appeal to the States General of the Netherlands for immediate recognition of the United States. Published in Dutch, English, and French, it offered all of Europe a radical vision of the ordinary citizen's role in determining political events. In this volume, for the first time, the circumstances and reasoning behind Adams's bold moves in the spring of 1781 are presented in full.
- Hardcover 2003
- Papers of John Adams, Volumes 9 and 10, March 1780 - December 1780
- John Adams
- Gregg L. Lint, Editor
- Joanna Revelas, Editor
- Richard Alan Ryerson, Editor
- Celeste Walker, Editor
- Anne Decker, Editor
- These volumes chronicle Adams' efforts to convince the British people and their leaders that Britain's economic survival demanded an immediate peace; his "snarling growling" debate with the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, over the proper Franco-American relationship; and his struggle to obtain a loan in the Netherlands, where policies were dictated by Mammon rather than republican virtue. Adams' writings, diplomatic dispatches, and personal correspondence all make clear the scope of his intelligence gathering and his propaganda efforts in the British, French, and Dutch press.
- Hardcover 1996
- Percival Lowell
- David Strauss
- This engaging and wide-ranging biography casts new light on the life and careers of Percival Lowell. Scion of a wealthy Boston family, elder brother of Harvard President Lawrence and poet Amy, Percival Lowell is best remembered as the astronomer who claimed that intelligent beings had built a network of canals on Mars. But the Lowell who emerges in David Strauss's finely textured portrait was a polymath: not just a self-taught astronomer, but a shrewd investor, skilled photographer, inspired public speaker, and adventure-travel writer whose popular books contributed to an awakening American interest in Japan.
- Hardcover 2001
- The Puritans in America
- Alan Heimert, Editor
- Andrew Delbanco, Editor
- Exiled from England, the Puritans settled in what Cromwell called "a poor, cold, and useless" place--where they created a body of ideas and aspirations that were essential in the shaping of American religion, politics, and culture. In a felicitous blend of documents and narrative Heimert and Delbanco recapture the sweep and restless change of Puritan thought from its incipient Americanism through its dominance in New England society to its fragmentation in the face of dissent from within and without.
- Hardcover 1985 / Paperback
- A Requiem for Karl Marx
- Frank E. Manuel
- As Karl Marx the icon has fallen along with so many communist regimes, we are left with the mystery of Karl Marx the man, the complexities of a life that has profoundly affected millions. A Requiem for Karl Marx is Frank Manuel's searching meditation on that life, a learned and elegantly written engagement with the man and his work.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1998
- The Return of Martin Guerre
- Natalie Zemon Davis
- The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost won his case, when a man with a wooden leg swaggered into the French courtroom, denounced du TiIh, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. This book, by the noted historian who served as a consultant for the film, adds new dimensions to this famous legend.
- Hardcover 1983 / Paperback
- Samuel Gridley Howe
- Harold Schwartz
- This readable book is the first authoritative biography of Samuel Gridley Howe, the remarkable Bostonian who actively participated in most of the major reform movements of the nineteenth century. Schwartz traces Howe's public career, but also describes Howe's childhood, his choice of a medical career, his membership--together with Longfellow, Cornelius Felton, Charles Sumner, and George Hillard--in the social circle called the Five of Clubs, and his marriage to Julia Ward.
- Hardcover 1956
- Samuel Johnson
- Peter Martin
- Benefiting from recent critical scholarship that has explored new attitudes toward Johnson, Martin’s biography gives us a human and sympathetic portrait of Dr. Johnson. The Johnson that emerges from this biography is still the foremost figure of his age but a more rebellious, unpredictable, flawed, and sympathetic figure than has been previously known.
- Hardcover 2008
- Seven Wise Men of Colonial America
- Richard M. Gummere
- Gummere explores the attitudes toward the classics of seven prominent colonial Americans--Hugh Jones, Robert Calef, Michael Wigglesworth, Samuel Davies, Henry Melhior Muhlenberg, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Paine. Each of them was essentially pragmatic and judged the value of the classics not only on the basis of their intrinsic worth but also for their relevance to contemporary problems.
- Hardcover 1967
- Stalin
- Robert Service
- Overthrowing the conventional image of Stalin as an uneducated political administrator inexplicably transformed into a pathological killer, Service reveals a more complex and fascinating story behind this notorious twentieth-century figure. Drawing on unexplored archives and personal testimonies gathered from across Russia and Georgia, this is the first full-scale biography of the Soviet dictator in twenty years.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2006
- Up from History
- Robert J. Norrell
- This compelling biography reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Booker T. Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination.
- Hardcover 2009
- The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me
- Jonathan Rieder
- Taking us deep into King’s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders.
- Hardcover 2008
- Your Death Would Be Mine
- Martha Hanna
- Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008