After Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) is the man most associated with communism and its influence and reach around the world. Lenin was the leader of the communist Bolshevik party during the October 1917 revolution in Russia, and he...
Born the son of slaves in America’s Deep South, he escaped the stifling racism of his native land to pursue a dream of freedom, wealth and personal happiness that took him from Brussels to Monte Carlo, and from Moscow to Constantinople. Embracing...
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was not yet 40 when he was executed by Falangists during the Spanish Civil War, yet he already towered over literature in Spain. He was arguably his generation's greatest poet and playwright. Although Lorca...
British author Everitt begins his biography of Augustus (63 B.C.– A.D. 14) with a novelistic reconstruction of the Roman emperor's last days, offering a new spin on his murder at the hands of his wife, Livia. Everitt presents the death as an...
t would be too easy to say Vidal's second memoir picks up where Palimpsest left off; as in that earlier book, he essentially lets his memories flow at will, often revisiting yet again the stories of his Washington childhood. The general focus,...
Jennifer Worth documents her experiences as a nurse and ward sister, treating patients who were nearing the end of their lives. Interspersed with these stories from Jennifer's post-midwife career are the histories of her patients, from the family...
This final book in Jennifer Worth's memories of her time as a midwife in London's East end brings her story full circle. As always there are heartbreaking stories such as the family devastated by tuberculosis and a ship's woman who 'serviced' the...