Biografier

The Memoirs of Victor Hugo (1899) is an autobiographical work by Victor Hugo. Assembled from diaries and manuscripts left behind by the author following his death in 1895, the Memoirs are as much a record of a life as they are a portrait of nineteenth century France. Told from the perspective of a supremely gifted artist whose command of language is matched only by his commitment to morality, The Memoirs of Victor Hugo is an invaluable text for scholars and fans alike¿there is no shortage of interesting details and brilliant reflections within. For a writer of Hugös stature, whose poems, plays, novels, and essays earned him a reputation on an international scale as one of the nineteenth century¿s premier artists, there is always the chance that the myth will outlast the man, and that the work will fall victim to idolization. For Hugo, despite his immense success both during his life and in the twentieth century as his stories formed the basis for beloved films and musicals, this would very much have been the case if not for his understated Memoirs, which carefully place his life in context of the time in which he lived. Beginning with his youth, which coincided with the coronation of Charles X, Hugo moves through the passages of his memory while stopping to remember the literary heroes, such as Shakespeare, who influenced his vision of the world. As France descends into war and hunger, Hugo is there to guide us through the chaos, to show us the light that waits on the other side, distant but never too far out of reach. His story is the story of France, a personal history interwoven with meditations on faith, politics, and philosophy that remain essential to his legacy as one of France¿s greatest literary figures. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Victor Hugös The Memoirs of Victor Hugo is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Arranged by dynastic period, Pharaohs offers a compact history of the reign of god-kings, from Menes, who united the north and south kingdoms, to the Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra, who was defeated along with her lover Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE) by imperial Rome. Along the way the reader will learn about the Great Pyramid constructed by Khufu, the last of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world; Queen Hatshepsut, a rare female pharaoh whose name means "foremost of noblewomen"; and much more.

"A searing memoir about growing up behind the Iron Curtain, motherhood, addiction, and finding sustenance in the natural world." -KirkusIn The Hunger Book, Agata Izabela Brewer evokes her Polish childhood under Communism, where the warmth of her grandparents' love and the scent of mushrooms drying in a tiny apartment are as potent as the deprivations and traumas of life with a terrifyingly unstable, alcoholic single mother. Brewer indelibly renders stories of foraging for food, homemade potato vodka (one of the Eastern Bloc's more viable currencies), blood sausage, sparrows plucked and fried with linseed oil, and the respite of a country garden plot, all amid Stalinist-era apartment buildings, food shortages, martial law, and nuclear disaster in nearby Ukraine.Brewer reflects on all of this from her immigrant's vantage point, as she wryly tries to convince her children to enjoy the mushrooms she gathers from a roadside and grieves when they choose to go by Americanized versions of their Polish names. Hunting mushrooms, like her childhood, carried both reward and mortal peril. The Hunger Book, which includes recipes, is an unforgettable meditation on motherhood and addiction, resilience and love.

"A personal memoir in which Lyn Slater, known on Instagram as "Accidental Icon," brings her characteristic style, optimism, forward-thinking, and rules-are-meant-to-be-broken attitude to the question of how to live boldly at any age. When Lyn Slater started her fashion blog, Accidental Icon, at age sixty-one, she discovered that followers were flocking to her account for more than just her A-list style. As Lyn flaunted gray hair, wrinkles, and a megadose of self-acceptance, they found in her an alternative model of older life: someone who defied the stereotypes, refused to become invisible, and showed that all women have the opportunity to be relevant and take major risks at any stage of their life. Youth is not the only time we can be experimental. How to Be Old tells the ten-year story of Lyn's sixties, the sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-turbulent decade of Accidental Icon. This memoir is about the hopeful and future-oriented process of reinvention. It shows readers that while you can't control everything, what you can control is the way you think about your age and the creative ways you respond to the changes in your mind and body as they happen. Rather than trying to meet standards of youth and beauty as a measure of successful aging, Lyn promotes a more inclusive and empowering standard to judge our older selves by. In this paradigm-shifting memoir, Lyn exemplifies that even with its unique challenges, being old is just like any new beginning in your life and can be the best and most invigorating of all of life's phases, full of rebellion and reinvention, connection and creativity"--

A first-hand account of the most infamous coup attempt in recent history - and of what it takes to be a friend and survivor

A charming, illustrated gift book combining two timelessly stylish subjects - Audrey Hepburn and the city of Paris.Both classic, both inimitable, both fashion icons - Audrey Hepburn and Paris are a match made in heaven. Falling in love with the city at a young age, Audrey returned to Paris again and again in some of her most celebrated films (Sabrina, Funny Face, How to Steal a Million, Charade) wearing outfits from her favourite Parisian couturier, Hubert de Givenchy, and creating some of the most significant fashion moments of the twentieth century.Audrey in Paris brings together over 100 stunning photographs of her most iconic moments in the city, from film stills and behind-the-scenes shots to candid images of Audrey enjoying the city as a visitor. The book also includes a bespoke illustrated map showing her favourite spots. While dozens of successful books on Audrey have been published, this will be the first to document her time in the city of light.Tapping into Audrey's status as a fashion idol, which spans across the generations, as well as Paris's status as the world's capital of elegance, Audrey in Paris combines the gifty charm of How to be Parisian Wherever You Are with Audrey's forever appeal as a fashion muse.Gorgeous finishes will make this a stylish gift book to be treasured for years to come.

The first anthology of women's writing about walking, edited by Wanderers author Kerri Andrews.

The gripping and revealing autobiography of one of Britain's most successful international cyclists of the modern era'Getting in a break was my one chance of winning. The hard part was working out, again and again, how to make that chance count'Sharp, resourceful and a permanent outsider; for nearly 20 years Steve Cummings determinedly blazed his own winning trail in international cycling. A maverick who defied the dominant teams, to record a sequence of gloriously improbable victories, he has lived and raced with legends of the sport - Cavendish, Wiggins, Froome, Thomas and others - about whom he has strong views and untold stories.This autobiography of one of Britain's most successful international riders of the modern era takes the reader from Steve's earliest days as a junior, pounding across the flatlands of the Wirral, through his love-hate relationships with the British Cycling track cycling squad, to his series of top-level breakaway victories in the Tour de France, Tour of Britain and Vuelta a España and - rather than standout physical talent - how developing his own strategies and training techniques enabled him to succeed against the odds.The Break will be the first full-length account of the life and times of, in the words of ProCycling magazine, a 'universally popular and respected rider in the cycling world'.

Richard Gallegos is a veteran ultramarathoner, husband, father, and mental health advocate. In this searingly honest account of his life, Richard relates his descent into alcohol and opiate abuse to cope with the emotional toll of being a first responder paramedic, witnessing every aspect of the horror and devastation that can be experienced by humanity.Faced with the reality of the irreparable damage his addictions were causing, Richard made the decision to regain control of his life and re-build his self-esteem by taking part in a series of ultramarathons, culminating in his participation in a one hundred mile raceThis is a truly inspiring and heartfelt autobiography, written by a man who hit absolute rock bottom and clawed his way back with astounding strength and determination. For anyone struggling with addiction, PTSD or any mental or emotional obstacles, Recovery Run is a must-read.

The remarkable 200-year history of The RNLI and their invaluable role in British Maritime history. A beautiful book of kindness, courage, and community to treasure for years to come.

In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance -- his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope.Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayalof both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

A comprehensive illustrated biography of Harry Styles's amazing story to date Harry Styles is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor. Following his elimination early on, he was brought back to join the boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Styles released his self-titled debut solo album through Columbia Records in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US, and became one of the world's top-ten best-selling albums of the year. Its lead single, "Sign of the Times", topped the UK Singles Chart. Styles' second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted a top the US Billboard 200 with the biggest first-week sales by an English male artist in history, and was listed among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Harry's new Album Harry's House was released in 2022 and achieved No 1 on The Billboard 200 breaking records along the way. He is the first UK male artist to debut at No 1 on the Billboard Chart with his first 3 albums.

Famously selected as the 199th pick, in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft, Tom Brady's career trajectory is nothing short of legendary. By the time he hung up his cleats in 2023, Brady held nearly every major quarterback record, including career passing yards, career touchdown passes, and quarterback wins. He won seven Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was named Super Bowl MVP five times. These moments and memories are collected in Sports Illustrated Tom Brady, a fully illustrated gift book commemorating the career of the NFL's greatest player of all time. Featuring more than 100 photographs and unparalleled written coverage from the pages of Sports Illustrated(TM), this new volume provides readers a complete portrait of the player whose impact on football history cannot be overstated--from his earliest days in New England to Super Bowl euphoria and beyond.

Challenging the colonial narratives surrounding the Netflix film Against the Ice, this personal, editorial project by a present-day descendant opens-up to cultural and historical inclusion by broadening the storytelling. The new Netflix film Against the Ice is based on the adventures of a Danish polar explorer, captain, and coloniser in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), who marked his agenda and achievements in books and maps that contributed to the production of 'collective memory' and the dominant history of Nordic colonialism. This book is designed and edited by Gudrun Havsteen-Mikkelsen, the great-granddaughter of this same explorer, in collaboration with designer Anna Bierler. Combining visual and textual contributions, archival material, dialogues, and controversies, Snowblindness - Let's talk about storytelling, colonialism, Netflix and my great grandfather presents new grounds for engagement with the polar explorer's stories, whether these are visually, orally, or textually transferred. The result is a generous and vulnerable reader, which weaves information from a multiplicity of sources, and places particular emphasis on collaboration, trust, and questioning. Our lives resonate through storytelling. The writing and rewriting of history, family stories handed down through generations, the inclusion of plural perspectives and subsequent broadening of conversations; our identities are made by narratives colliding and shifting. In Snowblindness, colonial narratives are challenged through such storytelling, encouraging a questioning of history, ethics, and aesthetics.

"'I was a writer, but not the writer I needed to be. For that I had to become a different person,' Robert Glèuck, widely acclaimed as a novelist and as a theorist of 'the new narrative,' recently told the Paris Review, in which a section of About Ed has appeared. About Ed is Glèuck's portrait of the artist Ed Aulerich-Sugai, his sometime lover, met in the seventies in San Francisco, when gay life emerged unabashedly from the closet. 'I wanted to find in Ed something to latch on to that was outside my egotism and fear, my threadbare relation to the world-a leap through Ed into lyric time,' Glèuck has said, and in this book that is both 'a novel and my version of an AIDS memoir' he wanted to capture the full range of his feelings for Ed: 'estranged from Ed, bored by him, moved by him.' It is a book about the life they lived together-art and writing and family and sex and death-and, composed over many decades, it is also a book about how the past continues to change in memory and to charge the present. 'What is the right question to ask about a life?' Glèuck asks, describing About Ed as a 'collaborative project,' since 'Ed helped me write this book.' Ed gave him 'notes to fashion a chapter about the day he was diagnosed so I could describe his experience from the inside,' and 'after Ed died, Daniel, Ed's partner, lent me Ed's dream journals.... He started writing them in 1970, the year that we met. We both used his journals, not as puzzles to solve the truth of a self but as a commons producing images that we harvested for paintings and poems. And fifty years later, there I was reading and copying out and running away from his dreams. Are they a condensed version of Ed? Shorthand? Distillation? Is he knowable and unknowable in the same degree sleeping or waking?' About Ed is a challenging and beautiful book by one of America's finest and most adventurous writers"

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!"I like to think of Not All Diamonds and Rosé as the ultimate reunion. I know readers will be surprised, entertained, and even shocked at what's in store." -Andy Cohen Dave Quinn's Not All Diamonds and Rosé is the definitive oral history of the hit television franchise, from its unlikely start in the gated communities of Orange County to the pop culture behemoth it has become-spanning nine cities, hundreds of cast members, and millions of fans.What is it really like to be a housewife? We all want to know, but only the women we love to watch and the people who make the show have the whole story. Well, listen in close, because they're about to tell all.Nearly all the wives, producers, and network executives, as well as Andy Cohen himself, are on the record, unfiltered and unvarnished about what it really takes to have a tagline. This is your VIP pass to the lives behind the glam squads, testimonials, and tabloid feuds.Life's not all diamonds and rosé, but the truth is so much better, isn't it?"This exhaustive oral history features dishy interviews with 185 cast and crew members behind the Bravo phenomenon. Fans will delight to read about how it all got started."-New York PostIncludes Color Photographs

The definitive account of the infamous court battles between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, from the reporter who was there.