Search Results: Biography from I Cannot Live Without Books

The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War by James McGrath Morris
Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps. When the war was over, both men knew they had to write about it; they had to give voice to what they felt about war and life.
Their friendship and collaboration developed through the peace of the 1920s and 1930s, as Hemingway's novels soared to success while Dos Passos penned the greatest antiwar novel of his generation, THREE SOLDIERS. In war, Hemingway found adventure, women, and a cause. Dos Passos saw only oppression and futility. Their different visions eventually turned their private friendship into a bitter public fight, fueled by money, jealousy, and… Read More

Angelic Music: The Story of Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica By Corey Mead
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The glass armonica, the first musical instrument invented by an American was constructed of stacked glass bowls and played by rubbing one's fingers on the rims. As it evolved, it becames so popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss composed for it; Marie Antoinette and numerous monarchs played it; Goethe and Thomas Jefferson praised it; and Dr. Franz Mesmer used it for his hyponotizin Mesmerism sessions.
In Angelic Music, Corey Mead descibes how Franklin's instrument fell out of popular favor, partly due to claims that its haunting sounds could drive musicians out of their minds. Some thought its etheral tones summoned spirits or had magical powers. It was banned in some places. But in recent years, the armonica has enjoyed a revival. Composers are writing for it in genres ranging from chamber music… Read More

Apostles of Revolution: Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe by John Ferling
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe were in the vanguard of Revolutionary ideas in the eighteenth century. As founding fathers, they risked their lives for American independence but they also wanted more. Each wished for profound changes in the political and social fabric of pre-1776 America and hoped that the American Revolution would spark republican and egalitarian revolutions throughout Europe, sweeping away the old monarchical order. Ultimately, each rejoiced at the opportunity to be a part of the French Revolution, though each grew disappointed as the cause gave way to the bloody Reign of Terror.
Apostles of Revolution spans a crucial period in Western Civilization ranging from the American insurgency against Great Britain to the Declaration of Independence, from desperate engagements on American battlefields to the threat posed to the ideals of the… Read More

The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan
Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During her Cape Cod summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter -- the gentle, handsome handyman at the motel -- took her and her sister on adventures in his truck, sometimes to his "secret garden" in the Truro woods. He was one of the few kind, understanding adults in her life.
But there was one thing she didn't know: the babysitter was a serial killer.
Some of his victims were buried -- in pieces-- right there, in his garden in the woods. Though Tony Costa's gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never connected her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer until decades later.
Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now she and co-writer Jennifer Jordan reveal the unimaginable story of a charming but brutal psychopath through… Read More

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan
More than thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teenage Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. Despite the many works devoted to Anne's story -- journalism, books, plays, and novels -- none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding, undetected for more than two years -- and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.
With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators poured over tens of thousands of pages of documents -- some never before seen -- and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team meticulously pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest -- and came to… Read More

The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession that Shaped an Empire by Susan Jaques
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Napoleon is one of history's most fascinating figures. But his complex relationship with Rome -- both with antiquity and his contemporary conflicts with the pope and the Holy See -- has undergone little examination.
In The Caesar of Paris, Susan Jaques reveals how Napoleon's fascination with antiquity informed his effort to turn Paris into "the new Rome" through architectural and artistic commissions around the city. His aggressive pursuit of ancient treasures and models from Italy gave Paris much of the classical beauty we know and adore today, but it did not occur without political machinations -- and even a midnight kidnapping -- behind the scenes.
Napoleon had a tradition of appropriating from past military greats to legitimize his regime -- Alexander the Great during his invasion of Egypt, Charlemagne during his… Read More

Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder
John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war, as vice president under two very different presidents -- John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson -- and as secretary of state. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" while serving as U.S. senator from South Carolina, and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union -- and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly… Read More

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback, titled The Double Helix, on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the building blocks of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn't become scientists, she decided she would.
Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned their curiosity into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that… Read More

Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles
From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner T.J. Stiles comes a brilliant new biography of General George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times.
In this magisterial biography, Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer's legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer's historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person -- capable, yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years).
The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves… Read More

Gentleman and Soldier: The Extraordinary Life of General Wade Hampton by Edward G. Longacre
Gentleman and Soldier is the first biography in more than 50 years of Wade Hampton III, a Confederate general whose remarkable life provides a unique sweeping insight into the entire history of the Civil War in the South. Hampton was a leading citizen of South Carolina before the War, the highest ranking cavalry leader during the War, fought in a remarkable number of battles from Antietam to Gettysburg to Bentonville, and was South Carolina's governor and U.S. Senator after the War.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hampton was one of the richest planters in the South. He managed a half dozen plantations in two states. When South Carolina became the first state to declare its independence and inspite of his doubts that the Confederacy would be victorious, Hampton bankrolled the creation of t6he Hampton Legion. In 1862 he became second in command to J.E.B. Stuart. He fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville,… Read More

The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich by Nancy Dougherty
An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil; a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler's Nazi elite, the designer and executor of the Holocaust; interwoven with commentary by Reinhard Heydrich's wife, from the author's in-depth interviews.
He was called "the Hangman" of the Gestapo, "the Butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthless, efficient killer. He was the head of the SS and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac.
In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty and, following her death, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt masterfully explores who Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. With his chiseled presence --… Read More

Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman by Harlow Giles Unger
In a critical and little-known chapter of early American history, author Harlow Giles Unger tells how a fearless young Kentucky lawyer threw open the doors of Congress during the nation's formative years and prevented dissolution of the infant American republic.
The only freshman congressman ever elected Speaker of the House, Henry Clay brought an arsenal of rhetorical weapons to subdue feuding members of the House of Representatives and established the Speaker as the most powerful elected official after the President. During fifty years in public service -- as congressman, senator, secretary of state, and four-time presidential candidate -- Clay constantly battled to save the Union, summoning uncanny negotiating skills to force bitter foes from North and South to compromise on slavery and forego secession. His famous "Missouri Compromise" and four other compromises thwarted civil war "by a power and influence," Lincoln said, "which… Read More

Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan
Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist.
As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground conspiracy to overthrow King Louis XVIII, and became an international symbol of liberty. Finally, as a revered elder statesman, he was instrumental in the overthrow of the Bourbon Dynasty in the Revolution of 1830.
From enthusiastic youth to world-weary old age, from the pinnacle of glory to the depths of despair, Lafayette never stopped fighting for the rights of all… Read More

Isabella of Castile: Europe's First Great Queen by Giles Tremlett
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In 1474 when Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania (present-day Spain and Portugal), a twenty-three-year-old woman named Isabella ascended the throne. At a time when successful queens regnant were few and far between, Isabella faced not only the considerable challenge of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom riddled with crime, debt, corruption, and religious factionism. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon united two kingdoms, a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Their pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and setting the stage for its golden era of global dominance.
Acclaimed historian Giles Tremlett chronicles the colorful life of Isabella of Castile as she led her country out of the… Read More

The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton by Andrew Porwancher
In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption and revolutionizes our understanding of an American icon.
This radical reassessment of Hamilton's religious upbringing gives us a fresh perspective on both his adult years and the country he helped forge. Although he didn't identify as a Jew in America, Hamilton cultivated a relationship with the Jewish community that made him unique among the founders. As a lawyer, he advocated for Jewish citizens in court. As a financial visionary, he… Read More

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White by Patricia Sullivan
History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In this landmark reconsideration of Robert Kennedy's life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader.
When civil rights protests broke out across the South, John F. Kennedy's young attorney general confronted escalating demands for racial justice. What began as a political probem soon became a moral one. In the face of vehement pushback from Southern Democrats bent on massive resistance, Kennedy put the weight of the federal government behind school desegregation and voter registration.
Bobby Kennedy's youthful energy, moral vision, and capacity to lead created a momentum for change. He helped shape the 1964 Civil Rights Act, reaching out to prominent Republicans for support, but he knew no law would end… Read More

Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk by Amy S. Greenberg
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While the women's rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk. Now, Amy S. Greenberg's riveting biography, Lady First, brings Sarah's story into vivid focus. We meet Sarah as the daughter of a frontiersman who raised her to discuss politics and business with men. We see the savvy and charm she brandished to help her brilliant but unlikable husband, James K. Polk, ascend to the White House. We watch as she exercises truly extraordinary power as First Lady: quietly manipulating elected officials, shaping foreign policy, and directing a campaign in support of America's expansionist war against Mexico. And we meet many of the enslaved men and women whose… Read More

The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution by Robert Service
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In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of that revolution, Robert Service, the eminent historian of Russia, examines Nicholas's life and thought from the months before his momentous abdication to his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.
The story has been told many times, but Service's deep understanding of the period and his forensic examination of the Tsar's diaries and untapped sources from the official inquiry testimonies shed remarkable new light on his tormented reign and also reveal a troubling vision of the Russia that Nicholas wanted to emerge from the Great War.
The Last of the Tsars is a masterful study of a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps… Read More

Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen
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Victor Sebestyen's riveting biography of Vlaimir Ilyich Lenin -- the first major biography in English in nearly two decades -- is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century but also a fascinating portrait of Lenin the man.
Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess, and the English classics, Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887. Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first communist revolution in history. Uniquely,Sebestyen has discovered that throughout Lenin's life his closest relationships were with his mother, his sisters, his wife, and his mistress. The long-suppressed story told here of the love triangle that Lenin had with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya,… Read More

The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family by Helen Rappaport
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The murder of the Romanov family in July 1918 horrified the world and its aftershocks still reverberate today. In Putin's autocratic Russia, the Revolution itself is considered a crime and its one hundredth anniversary was largely ignored. In stark contrast, the centenary of the massacre of the Imperial Family will be a huge ceremony attended by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
While the murder itself has received major attention, what have never been investigated in detail are the various plots behind the scenes to save the family -- on the part of their royal relatives, other governments, and Russian monarchists loyal to the Tsar. Rappaport refutes the accusation that the fault lies entirely with King George V, as has been the traditional claim for the last century. The responsibility for failing… Read More