Biografier

From the time she saw the movie Fame, the author wanted to be a star. A line from the theme song stayed with her - 'I'm gonna live for ever, I'm gonna learn how to fly.' This book gives us the chance to fly alongside her on her journey from lonely teenager to international star.

The life of Karl Dane was a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong. The immigrant from Copenhagen was transformed from a machinist to a Hollywood star after his turn as the tobacco-chewing Slim in ""The Big Parade"". This biography tells the tale of a daring yet tragic man who aimed for his wildest dreams and succeeded, if only for a short time.

Presents the fascinating life of the father of the New Germany. This book tells how, in an astonishing political career that spanned six decades including fourteen years as chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) was instrumental in shaping the modern political landscape, both of his own country and of Europe.

A catalogue of history's greatest military leaders - from the Classical Age to the Napoleonic Era - and what drove them to victory.

';A superb biography, not to be missed either by armchair explorers or students of human naturereveals the famed missionary and explorer as he really was.'Cleveland Plain DealerDavid Livingstone is revered as one of history's greatest explorers and missionaries, the first European to cross Africa, and the first to find Victoria Falls and the source of the Congo River. In this exciting new edition of his biography, Tim Jeal, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Stanley, draws on fresh sources and archival discoveries to provide the most fully rounded portrait of this complicated mandogged by failure throughout his life despite his full share of success.Using Livingstone's original field notebooks, Jeal finds that the explorer's problems with his African followers were far graver than previously understood. From recently discovered letters he elaborates on the explorer's decision to send his wife, Mary, back home to England. He also uncovers fascinating information about Livingstone's importance to the British Empire and about his relationship with the journalist-adventurer Henry Morton Stanley. In addition, Jeal here evokes the full pathos of the explorer's final journey. This masterful, updated biography also features an excellent selection of new maps and illustrations.';Fascinating.'Los Angeles Times';A thrilling and in the end moving workThe Livingstone who emerges is a man of terrifying dimensions.'Irish Press

Saxon brings together more than 300 letters written by the self-styled "Prince of Humbugs." Here we see him, opinionated and exuberant, with only the rarest flashes of introspection and self-doubt, haggling with business partners, blustering over politics, and attempting to get such friends as Mark Twain to endorse his latest schemes.

Translated by Audie E. Bock."A first rate book and a joy to read.... It''s doubtful that a complete understanding of the director''s artistry can be obtained without reading this book.... Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction."--Variety"For the lover of Kurosawa''s movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments."--Washington Post Book World

Benjamin Britten was one of the outstanding British composers of 20th century. He shot to international fame with his operas, performed by his own English Opera Group, and a series of extraordinary instrumental works. His music won a central place in the repertoire and affection of successive generations of listeners. This title tells his story.

His story, based on new archival sources and told with verve and wit, is sure to become the definitive work on a man and his era.

A remarkable memoir of strength and bravery from Leon Leyson, one of the youngest children to survive the Holocaust on Oskar Schindler's list.

Lady Hyegyong's memoirs, which recount the chilling murder of her husband by his father, is one of the best known and most popular classics of Korean literature. From 1795 until 1805 Lady Hyegyong composed this masterpiece, which depicts a court life whose drama and pathos is of Shakespearean proportions.

The author's son Jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein and a photographic memory. At nine he developed an original theory in astrophysics that may earn a Nobel Prize. This book is about the power of love and what can happen when we tap the true potential that lies within every child.

Mackinnon recounts his own fascinating journey from north Wales to the Black Sea in a small Mirror dinghy. A marvelous madcap adventure, told with verve and humor by the indefatigable 'captain.'

This provocative biography tells the story of how an ambitious young Londoner became England's greatest novelist. Focused on the 1830s, it portrays a restless, uncertain Dickens who could not decide on a career path. Through twists and turns, the author traces a double transformation: in reinventing himself Dickens reinvented the form of the novel.

'She's experienced wealth, cultural alienation, homelessness, brushes with fame, prison, rehab, record deals, a million blown second chances, a dozen broken hearts and one bloody-knuckled ultimate spiritual redemption. She even died once in the process, and may very well have had sex with your wife back in the eighties...' Elizabeth GilbertWhen she was seven, Rayya Elias and her upper-class family fled the political conflict in their native Syria, settling in a suburb of Detroit. Bullied in school and caught between the world of her traditional family and her tough American classmates, she rebelled early. Rayya moved to New York City to become a musician and kept herself afloat with an uncommon talent for cutting hair. Eventually though, Elias's affairs with lovers of both sexes went awry, her (more than) occasional drug use turned to addiction and she found herself living on the streets - between visits to jail. Told with a keen sense of humour and a lack of self-pity in even the most harrowing situations, Harley Loco is a memoir about jumping in head-first, no questions asked. It's a book about living in the moment no matter what that might bring, and about pursuing, not always by choice, a life of extremes - highs and lows, pain and passion - until ultimately arriving at a place of contentment and peace.

Britain's leading cycling writer, William Fotheringham, goes back to speak to those who were there at the time and those who knew Merckx best to find out what made Eddy Merckx so invincible. 'The full unvarnished of one man's heaven, and hell, on wheels' Independent

Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust''s housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate picture of the daily life of a great writer who was also a deeply peculiar man, while Madame Albaret herself proves to be a shrewd and engaging companion.

John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (1644-1722), was one of the greatest military commanders and statesman in the history of England. His descendant, Sir Winston Churchill wrote this work as both an act of homage, and as an historical insight into the man behind the statesman.

The definitive biography, by a long way, of the most influential blues musician of them all. In a nutshell: no Muddy Waters, no Rolling Stones

Victor Bockris's much admired biography of Keith Richards has been constantly revised since its original publication, now with an additional 12,000 words for a new edition of the Omnibus Press paperback that brings the story up to the present day.

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's bestselling authors. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was seventeen in order to amuse her convalescent brother. This title tells her story.

Josef Sepp Allerberger was the second most successful sniper of the German Wehrmacht and one of the few private soldiers to be honored with the award of the Knights Cross.

Remarkable memoir of one of the last people to leave Hitler's Bunker Includes profiles of prominent members of Hitler's inner circle

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans embarks on an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation when she vows to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year.

Agatha Christie's personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels.

Arrian's account of Alexander's life and campaigns, published as the Anabasis and its companion piece the Indica, is our prime source for the history of Alexander, told with great narrative skill. This edition features a new translation of both texts, introduction, notes, guide to military systems and terminology, maps and a full index.

"In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's just ridiculous. It's as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Among primitive people they say that if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that." - William S. Burroughs In Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs, his biographer Ted Morgan wrote: 'As the single most important thing about Graham Greene was his viewpoint as a lapsed Catholic, the single most important thing about Burroughs was his belief in the magical universe. The same impulse that lead him to put out curses was, as he saw it, the source of his writing...' Burroughs' writings often describe magical, mystical or occult ideas - Invocations of Elder Gods, descriptions of Sex-Magick rituals, references to amulets, charms, ghosts, omens and spells - all the thematic set-dressing that we all know and love, from Hammer Horror Movies to Weird Tales, from H. P. Lovecraft to Dennis Wheatley and The X-Files... Then there is his personal involvement with belief systems and practices that come from strange 'other' territories outside the conventional mainstream - Scientology, Electronic Voice Phenomena,Orgone Accumulators; Ayahuasca, Rites of Pan in Morocco, Sweat-Lodges with Native American and, Chaos Magic. "Stevens has unravelled the threads to create a superlative supernatural treatise of El Hombre Invisible's life and work. Whether an initiate to the world of Burroughs or a seasoned scholar, this book opens new and fascinating vistas. Vitally unorthodox and yet true to the core, this is an essential text for anyone looking to go beyond the page into an alternative reality, where magic lives." Nina Antonia