Historiske og politiske biografier

The astonishing true account of John Chapman, Medal of Honor recipient and Special Ops Combat Controller, and his heroic one-man stand during the Afghan War, as he sacrificed his life to save the lives of 23 comrades-in-arms.

This memoir is the extraordinary story of how one Iranian woman overcame enormous adversity to fight for what she truly believed and founded a major movement for women around the world with the simple removal of her hijab.

'It doesn't get better' - that was the unofficial motto of Red Platoon, stuck at Command Post Keating, one of the most isolated and dangerous US army bases in Afghanistan, in the middle of a free-fire zone.

Based on explosive new evidence, bestselling author David Talbot tells America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA.

From the acclaimed author of Former People, a definitive biography of Rasputin, published to coincide with the centenary of his murder.

ANNE LISTER IS THE INSPIRATION FOR GENTLEMAN JACK, A NEW BBC/HBO SERIES BY SALLY WAINWRIGHT, STARRING SURANNE JONES.'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read for anyone interested in the history of gender, sexuality, and the intimate lives of women' SARAH WATERS'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUEWhen this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told. Anne Lister defied the role of nineteenth-century womanhood: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller and lesbian - a woman who lived her life on her own terms.'[Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage' JEANETTE WINTERSONThese diaries include the years 1816-1824. The second volume, NO PRIEST BUT LOVE, is available in ebook.

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India. His achievements were unparalleled - he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world. Robin Lane Fox's superb account searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on Alexander as a man of his own time. Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, it brings this colossal figure vividly to life.

Now at last in a single, abridged volume the definitive life.When the two volumes of Ian Kershaw s biography of Hitler, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis were published, they were immediately greeted around the world as the essential works on perhaps the most malign figure ever to hold power in modern Europe. In the face of considerable demand for such an edition, Kershaw has now created a single volume version. The result is a frightening, fascinating narrative of how a bitter provincial failure from an obscure corner of Austria rose to unparalleled power; how the half-baked, contemptible ideas of a vagrant former art student coalesced into an ideology that for twelve horrific years shaped the fate of millions; and how both in his determination to impose his will militarily and to fend off his many enemies he unleashed a genocidal Armageddon. No one individual can stand in as the scapegoat for the vast social, technological, economic and military forces that shape our societies but if ever there was one man whose ideas and personality shaped and cowed those forces, as well as embodying them, it was Hitler. This is his story and Kershaw tells it with unique authority, and with moral anger.

From the admiralty to the miner's strike, from the Battle of Britain to eventual victory over Nazi Germany, Churchill oversaw some of the most important events the world has ever seen. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for his personal writing and cautioning against a powerful Soviet Russia in his later years in office, his larger-than-life and complex personality has continued to fascinate writers and historians.In this comprehensive biography, Roy Jenkins faithfully presents these events, while also managing to convey the contradictions and quirks in Churchill's character. Weaving together in-depth analysis and brilliant historical research, Jenkins has succeeded in crafting this magnificent one-volume account packed with insights that only a fellow politician can convey. Bringing to life the statesman, writer, speaker and leader, Churchill is packed with insights into one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

A graphic novel version of the dramatic life and untimely death of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg

She tells of her numerous run-ins with the brutal government of Daniel arap Moi and of the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages.

The Oscar-winning film about the legendary French queen, directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on this magnificent book by bestselling historian Antonia Fraser.

The classic eye-witness account of Nazi Germany by Hitler's Armaments Minister and right-hand man.

Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, swashbuckler, poet, self-made gentleman, bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was a notorious lover of the Western world. This title contains the highlights of Casanova's life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; his dabbling in the occult; his imprisonment and escape; and his amorous conquests.

For 22 years, Dr Zhisui Li was Mao Tse-tung's personal physician, confidant and companion. In this biography Li provides insights into social and political events in China, and details of Mao's private life - from his sexual appetite to the political effects of his aims, fears and idiosyncrasies.

The most powerful woman in American political history tells the story of her transformation from housewife to House Speaker – how she became a master legislator, a key partner to presidents, and the most visible leader of the Trump resistance. When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: “Mother, get a life!” And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been. In The Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history – not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in our nation, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care. She describes the perseverance, persuasion, and respect for her members that it took to succeed, but also the joy of seeing America change for the better. Among the best-prepared and hardest working Speakers in history, Pelosi worked to find common ground, or stand her ground, with presidents from Bush to Biden. She also shares moving moments with soldiers sent to the front lines, women who inspired her, and human rights activists who fought by her side. Pelosi took positions that established her as a prophetic voice on the major moral issues of the day, warning early about the dangers of the Iraq War and of the Chinese government’s long record of misbehaviour. This moral courage prepared her for the arrival of Trump, with whom she famously tangled, becoming a red-coated symbol of resistance to his destructive presidency. Here, she reveals how she went toe-to-toe with Trump, leading up to January 6, 2021, when he unleashed his post-election fury on the Congress. Pelosi gives us her personal account of that day: the assault not only on the symbol of our democracy but on the men and women who had come to serve the nation, never expecting to hide under desks or flee for their lives – and her determined efforts to get the National Guard to the Capitol. Nearly two years later, violence and fury would erupt inside Pelosi’s own home when an intruder, demanding to see the Speaker, viciously attacked her beloved husband, Paul. Here, Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family. The woman who has been lauded by her opposition as “the most powerful Speaker” ever shows us why she is not afraid of a good fight. The Art of Power is about the fighting spirit that has always animated her, and the historic legacy that spirit has produced.

"Authoritative, personal, and vividly written, Romney: A Reckoning is a revealing account of Mitt Romney's life. Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals, this book offers a rare, portrait of a politician who in recent years has been at the center of our nation's most defining political dramas." --Amazon.

Norge har fostret mange gode jegere. Det å kunne overliste viltet var ofte avgjørende for familiens overlevelse tidligere, og ga dessuten høy status. Og blant alle disse dyktige jegerne finner vi legendene. De som gikk den ene mila ekstra, de som av en eller annen årsak visste nøyaktig hvor elgen kom og som allerede i samtiden fikk legendestatus. I denne boka kan du lese om 26 av dem, blant annet om Jo Gjende, Fridtjof Nansen, Helge Ingstad og MikkjelFønhus. Portrettene er i all hovedsak skrevet av Aleksander Bergan, som har dypdykketi historiene til 25 menn og en kvinne.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

The amazing tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-19th-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan.In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great.Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's 'The Man Who Would be King', but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region.Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan's long-lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan's footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game. If you enjoyed William Dalrymple's 'Return of a King', 'Josiah the Great' should be on your reading list.

A new interpretation of Tycho Brahe's pivotal role in the emergence of empirical science.