Biographies & Memoirs - Books

Congratulations You Have Just Met the ICF

Biographies & Memoirs

The Inter City Firm…hard, terrifyingly vicious, brilliantly organised, tremendously feared and hihgly fashionable. They were the most notorious firm of the Seventies and Eighties football hooligans this country has ever seen. For the first time ever, all the aces of the West Ham firm reveal their memories and thoughts about the violence, the battles, the campaigns, the run-ins with the authorities, and all that came with it. Bestselling author Cass Pennant was one of the best-known figures of the I.C.F. He has used his unique position as a West Ham insider to bring together these first-hand accounts of the men who were at the eye of the storm, both on and of the terraces. These tales from the terraces range from the inflamed East End rivalry with Millwall, to the she-end battles with Chelsea, from aggravation at Anfield's Kop to the disaster in Heysel. These stories unfold against a backdrop of sharp fashion and music, such as The Cockney Rejects and Sham 69 that became the hallmark of the hoolifans.

Pirate Narratives

Biographies & Memoirs

Pirate Narratives is a collection of authentic tales of some of the notorious buccaneers and marauders. It contains biographies, first-hand accounts, diary entries, court documents and many other sources that make up very interesting and informative history of the pirates, covering a broad spectrum from Nordic marauders in Middle Ages, through Arabian plunderers, Barbary swashbucklers and pirates of Indian Ocean, to the most famous Atlantic and Caribbean buccaneers. Table of Contents: The Danish and Norman Pirates Adventures and Exploits of Captain Avery The Remarkable History of the Joassamee Pirates of the Persian Gulf The Barbarous Conduct and Romantic Death of the Joassamee Chief, Rahmah-Ben-Jabir The Life of Lafitte, the Famous Pirate of the Gulf of Mexico The Life of Captain Roberts The Life of Charles Gibbs History of the Adventures, Capture and Execution of the Spanish Pirates The Life of Benito De Soto the Pirate of the Morning Star The Adventures of Captain Robert Kidd The Bloody Career and Execution of Vincent Benavides a Pirate on the West Coast of South America The Life of Captain Davis Authentic History of the Malay Pirates of the Indian Ocean The Adventures of Captain Condent The Life of Captain Edward Low Life and Adventures of Captain Edward England Account of the Lynn Pirates History of the Ladrone Pirates The Life of Captain Lewis The Life, Career and Death of Captain Thomas White The Life, Atrocities, and Bloody Death of Black Beard The Exploits, Arrest, and Execution of Captain Charles Vane The West India Pirates The Adventures and Execution of Captain John Rackam The Life and Exploits of Anne Bonney The Adventures and Heroism of Mary Read The Algerine Pirates The Adventures, Trial and Execution of Captain Gow

Ce qui a tué John Lennon : Vies et morts d'une légende

Biographies & Memoirs

Dans cette biographie captivante, la célèbre biographe Lesley-Ann Jones étudie l'énigme qu'était John Lennon pour présenter un portrait complet de l'homme, de sa vie, de ses amours, de sa musique, de sa mort prématurée et finalement de son héritage. Suivant de près les événements de la vie et les traits de personnalité qui ont conduit John Lennon à vivre en exil volontaire à New York, où il a été abattu devant son appartement le 8 décembre 1980, Lesley-Ann Jones offre une vue à 360 degrés de l'une des légendes musicales les plus emblématiques du monde. Qui, ou quoi, a vraiment tué John Lennon ? Et quand le « vrai » John Lennon est-il mort ? Cet ouvrage nous plonge profondément dans sa psyché - le bon, le mauvais et le génie - quarante ans après sa mort.Lesley-Ann Jones est une biographe, romancière, animatrice et conférencière de renom. Elle est l'auteure à succès de Bohemian Rhapsody : The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury, Hero : David Bowie, and Ride a White Swan : The Lives & Deaths of Marc Bolan. Amie d'enfance de David Bowie, Lesley-Ann a interviewé beaucoup d’artistes dont Paul McCartney, Madonna et Prince, nouant souvent de belles amitiés. Elle est mère de trois enfants et vit à Londres.

Voir Gandhi

Biographies & Memoirs

« J’ai voulu raconter l’histoire d’un périple et d’une transcendance. L’histoire d’un jeune aristocrate d’origine Italienne, dandy amoureux fou des femmes et lettré un peu misanthrope qui, un jour de décembre 1936, décide de tout laisser derrière lui, sa famille, sa situation, l’Europe, ses amis pour s’en aller, pieds nus, vers l’Orient, à la rencontre de Gandhi... »F.R. Ce marcheur infatigable assoiffé d’idéal, c’est Lanza del Vasto. Disciple de Gandhi, il popularisa sa pensée en Occident dans un ouvrage légendaire, Le pèlerinage aux sources. Intellectuel engagé, il fut de tous les combats contre la guerre, la bombe nucléaire, la société de consommation, le scepticisme de ses contemporains et, à sa façon, un des pionniers de l’écologie. Mystique pour certains, gourou pour d’autres, il fonda la communauté de l’Arche, dans le Larzac, pour mettre en pratique les enseignements du Mahatma. Voir Gandhi nous invite à redécouvrir, pas à pas, l’éveil spirituel de ce jeune homme, depuis le petit village des Pouilles où il naquit en 1901, jusque sur les contreforts hostiles de l’Himalaya où il comprit, en 1937, alors qu’il frôlait la mort, ce pour quoi il avait été créé. Plus qu’un récit d’apprentissage, un pèlerinage vers l’Absolu.

Elusive

Biographies & Memoirs

*A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Selection* The first major biography of Peter Higgs, revealing how a short burst of work changed modern physics On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in understanding why particles have mass, had finally been discovered. On the rostrum, surrounded by jostling physicists and media, was the particle’s retiring namesake—the only person in history to have an existing single particle named for them. Why Peter Higgs? Drawing on years of conversations with Higgs and others, Close illuminates how an unprolific man became one of the world’s most famous scientists. Close finds that scientific competition between people, institutions, and states played as much of a role in making Higgs famous as Higgs’s work did. A revelatory study of both a scientist and his era, Elusive will remake our understanding of modern physics.

Working

Biographies & Memoirs

“One of the great reporters of our time and probably the greatest biographer.” —The Sunday Times (London)From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply moving recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books.Now in paperback, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ's mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers' community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books.Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power but about the people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences—some previously published, some written expressly for this book—bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work.To understand more about Robert Caro's research, see the Sony Pictures Classic documentary “Turn Every Page.”

Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria

Biographies & Memoirs

El indeleble recuento del Che de la guerra revolucionaria cubana, la fuente de Che (Parte 1), la película del 2008 dirigida por Steven Soderbergh y protagonizada por Benicio del Toro.Luego de una larga prehistoria, la verdadera guerra revolucionaria cubana solo dura, increíblemente, un poco más de dos años, desde el 2 diciembre de 1956 al 1 de enero de 1959 --desde la desastrosa primera batalla en la que tres-cuartos de las fuerzas de expedición de 82 revolucionarios que viajaron a Cuba en el Granma fueron asesinados, a la victoria total a comienzos de enero de 1959. Y no existe mejor reporte de la guerra que este pequeño libro del líder guerrillero Che Guevara, ensamblado por el Che y compuesto de su diario de campaña, primero publicado en 1963, luego corregido y editado por el Che, finalmente publicado aquí en una edición autoritativa que no solo incluye las correcciones del Che, pero también, en la Parte 2 un número de ensayos cortos y artículos publicados por el Che en esos primeros años después del triunfo revolucionario. Como siempre, la escritura del Che es íntima, investigativa y autocrítica. Escrito, al igual que Diarios de motocicleta, en su mayoría en formato de diario, Pasajes es "más distintivo, refinado" en su estilo, así observa su hija Aleida Guevara en su prólogo, pero todavía mantiene ese "joven destello y dinamismo." Inicialmente habiéndose unido a la expedición cubana como médico de escuadrón, el Che describe su dilema al tener que elegir entre una mochila de medicamentos y una caja de municiones (elije la caja de municiones). Después de unos meses, lo promueven a comandante de guerrilla. En otro merecidamente famoso pasaje del libro, "El cachorro asesinado," el Che describe cómo tuvo que dar la orden de matar a un cachorro. A lo largo de Pasajes el movimiento de la historia y temas de vida y muerte son reproducidos a través de detalles pequeños e íntimos. Originalmente publicado como una serie de artículos para diarios cubanos, esta minuciosamente actualizada edición incluye, por primera vez, correcciones hechas por el Che a la primera edición publicada, un prólogo de la hija del Che, Aleida Guevara, y 32 páginas de fotos y mapas de la campaña guerrillera.

The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Vol. 2

Biographies & Memoirs

George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale (1788–1824) is one of the central writers of British Romanticism and his 'Byronic' hero - the charming, dashing, rebellious outsider - remains a literary archetype. But to what extent is this character a portrayal of the author himself? Byron was known for his extremely unconventional, eccentric character and his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle: he had numerous scandalous love affairs, including a suspiciously close relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his lovers, famously described him as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. This two-volume work, compiled by his friend Thomas Moore, to whom Byron had given his manuscript memoirs (which he later burnt), was published in 1830. Volume 1 gives an account of Byron's life to 1816, and Volume 2 continues the narrative up to his early death in Greece in 1824.

Helikopter w ogniu

Biographies & Memoirs

Kanwa filmu Ridley’a Scotta i międzynarodowy bestseller końca XX wieku, którego polskie wydanie ukazuje się po raz pierwszy prawie 20 lat po wydarzeniach w Mogadiszu. Próba ujęcia adiutantów somalijskiego watażki zakończona strąceniem 2 helikopterów i śmiercią 18 amerykańskich żołnierzy nie jest luźnym rozważaniem nad sensem amerykańskiej interwencji, ale trzymającą w napięciu niemalże stenograficzną relacją z pola bitwy. Książka Marka Bowdena przypomina dokładnie ułożoną grę strategiczną, w której pionkami są elitarne oddziały rangersów i Delta Force, grę rozsypującą się na naszych oczach jak kostki domina. Nieprzypadkowo Bitwa o Mogadiszu, jak nazwały operację wojskową media stanowi klasyczne studium przypadku jak wszystko, co miało pójść dobrze, poszło całkowicie źle.

The Last Gentleman of the SAS

Biographies & Memoirs

In 1945, John Randall was the first Allied officer to enter Bergen-Belsen – the concentration camp that would reveal the horrors of the Holocaust to the world. Randall was one of that league of extraordinary gentlemen handpicked for suicidally dangerous missions behind enemy lines in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany throughout the Second World War. He was a man of his class and of his times. He hated the Germans, liked the French and was unimpressed by the Americans and the Arabs. He was an outrageous flirt, as might be expected of a man who served in Phantom alongside film stars David Niven and Hugh Williams. He played rugby with Paddy Mayne, the larger-than-life colonel of the SAS and winner of four DSOs. He pushed Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, out of an aeroplane. He wined and dined in nightclubs as part of the generation that lived for each day because they might not see another.This extraordinary true story, partly based on previously unpublished diaries, presents a different slant on that mighty war through the eyes of a restless young man eager for action and adventure.

Mémoires d'une fourmi

Biographies & Memoirs

Depuis Les Fourmis : 30 romans, 30 ans, 30 traductions, 30 millions de lecteurs...Bernard Werber, c'est une vie à part et une oeuvre mondialement reconnue où se croisent des anges, des dieux, des chats, des templiers, des fourmis et des abeilles..., où la science nous initie au « savoir relatif et absolu » du professeur Wells.Sous la forme de 22 chapitres correspondants aux 22 arcanes d'un jeu de tarot, Bernard Werber nous révèle dans ce livre les secrets de ses romans, les surprenantes aventures et expériences qui les inspirent, comme la pratique du rêve lucide et l'hypnose régressive. Entre art du suspense et puissance de l'imaginaire, c'est un véritable atelier d'écriture dont il ouvre les portes pour la première fois.Intime et captivant, Mémoires d'une fourmi nous renvoie aux mystères de nos propres vies. " Un merveilleux récit de vie." Lire-Magazine Littéraire

The Travels Volume Two

Biographies & Memoirs

Volume Two of the thirteenth-century Venetian explorer’s famous travelogue, recounting his historic journeys through Asia and his encounters with Kublai Khan.In 1271, Marco Polo embarked from Venice on a voyage to China. Together with his father and uncle, he came upon the court of the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan. After twenty years in the service of the Great Khan, the Polos returned home—only for Marco to be taken prisoner during a conflict between Venice and Genoa. While detained, Marco recounted the incredible stories of his many travels—through China, Burma, Sumatra, India, and Siam, across the Gobi Desert and the mountains of Tibet, encountering strange customs, religions, fabrics, and spices—to his fellow prisoner, the scribe Rustichello da Pisa. Marco Polo’s epic travelogue brought vivid depictions of the Far East to medieval Europe, offering a fascinating glimpse into lands and cultures previously unknown to Western scholars. The second book of this two-volume edition begins with Polo’s journeys deep into West and South China, and features the legends he learned of the mythic king Prester John.

Congo Diary

Biographies & Memoirs

Ernesto Che Guevara's diary of his revolutionary struggle in Congo alongside Cuban guerrillas.In April 1965, Che Guevara set out clandestinely from Havana to Congo to head a force of some 200 veteran Cuban soldiers to assist the African liberation movement against Belgian colonialists, four years after the assassination of the democratically elected socialist president of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. This diary deals with what Che admits was a "failure," and he examines every painful detail about what went wrong in order to draw constructive lessons for planned future guerrilla movements. Unique among his books, Congo Diary gives us Che's brutal honesty and his story-telling ability as he recounts this fascinating episode of guerrilla warfare unblinkingly and without sugar coating or jargon. Considered by some to be Che's best book, it is also one of the few that he had a chance to edit for publication after writing it.

Charles VII et son mystère

Biographies & Memoirs

"Le règne de Charles VII forme en quelque sorte le pivot de notre histoire. Il commande tout ce qui le suit et nous n'avons pas fini d'en être tributaires. Pendant ces trente-neuf années on vit une France déchirée, exsangue et aux trois quarts prisonnière devenir l'État le plus fort et le plus unifié d'Europe. On vit Jeanne d'Arc et son double miracle politique et psychique. On vit la victoire succéder au désastre, la solidarité nationale à la guerre civile, la centralisation monarchique à l'anarchie féodale, l'armée de métier aux Écorcheurs, l'ordre financier au pillage, la prospérité à la famine, les premières grâces de la Renaissance à la rudesse du Moyen Age. On vit l'héritier douteux, avili, misérable du Roi Fou finir au sommet de la puissance et de la gloire. On vit naître dans la douleur, croître et resplendir une déesse quasi inconnue, la patrie. L'observateur qui se penche sur ce siècle, débordant d'hommes et de faits à la manière d'une tapisserie de l'époque, est d'abord fasciné par l'auréole de la Pucelle et les flammes de son bûcher. Puis, il s'aperçoit que l'épopée de la vierge lorraine n'est que la plus extraordinaire des « merveilles advenues en ce temps ». La douloureuse préparation de l'événement, le labeur d'un quart de siècle grâce auquel en furent obtenus des fruits inespérés sont eux-mêmes des prodiges. Le souverain capable de les avoir accomplis ou simplement inspirés devrait, en bonne logique, égaler Richelieu, Elizabeth d'Angleterre, Pierre le Grand, Frédéric II. Mais l'historien, ayant écarté l'écran des flatteries et des insultes, découvre seulement un prince faible, contradictoire et sans génie. Personnage qui ne serait guère attachant s'il n'y avait l'énigme multiple dont il se trouve enveloppé. En vérité, Charles le Victorieux, le Bien Servi, le Très Chrétien, le Roi des Rois, reste, au premier chef, le Mystérieux. Tout en lui est trouble, parfois inexplicable sa naissance, son caractère, l'évolution de sa personnalité, son attitude devant une destinée changeante, ses nobles et ses basses actions, ses amours, son triomphe, sa mort. Il se révèle, selon l'occasion, lâche ou vaillant, sybarite ou laborieux, névrosé ou froidement réaliste, généreux ou insensible, dévot jusqu'au mysticisme ou luxurieux jusqu'à la dégradation, dangereux à sa propre cause ou profondément imbu de son devoir royal. Il est l'homme de la débâcle et l'homme des apothéoses." Philippe Erlanger

Czech Mates. Holocaust Legacy

Biographies & Memoirs

Take a journey to the "Old Country". Learn about small town European life with all of its simple pleasures and hardships. Read about the onset of Nazi influence in the 1930's and discover how two young Jews in their 20's and 30's beat the odds and survived the Holocaust. The story and journey of Tibor and Sarlota Weiss is a tribute and a testimony to the power of the human spirit. At the conclusion of the war, the two Survivors married one another and lived in the re-born, re-formed Czechoslovakia. Even with the news that most of their families were killed, the next three years did show a re-birth of hope for the Weiss's. Their only child was born and Czecholslovakia was, briefly, a proud democratic nation. The dark cloud of communism, however, appeared and like almost all of Slovakia's Jews, they left for Israel. After three years in the new Jewish nation, The Weiss's made their final move and came to Milwaukee. Life would be filled with incredible accomplishments, but also with the feeling and understanding that life was never as it truly should have been.This book will inform, educate and inspire a wide variety of readers. Get ready to take a winding, enriching, sometimes difficult (other times funny) but always enlightening journey with Tibor and Sarlota Weiss.

Mortalidade

Biographies & Memoirs

Mortalidade é uma comovente viagem ao mundo da doença que marca o século XX, o cancro, sem nunca perder a racionalidade que o define. Nesta inevitável relação com a morte, Hitchens revela o seu lado mais humano e, ao mesmo tempo, mantém os seus principais traços jornalísticos.

Rahel Varnhagen

Biographies & Memoirs

A biography of a Jewish woman, a writer who hosted a literary and political salon in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany, written by one of the twentieth century's most prominent intellectuals, Hannah Arendt.Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman was Hannah Arendt’s first book, largely completed when she went into exile from Germany in 1933, though not published until the 1950s. It is the biography of a remarkable, complicated, passionate woman, and an important figure in German romanticism. Rahel Varnhagen also bore the burdens of being an unusual woman in a man’s world and an assimilated Jew in Germany.She was, Arendt writes, “neither beautiful nor attractive . . . and possessed no talents with which to employ her extraordinary intelligence and passionate originality.” Arendt sets out to tell the story of Rahel’s life as Rahel might have told it and, in doing so, to reveal the way in which assimilation defined one person’s destiny. On her deathbed Rahel is reported to have said, “The thing which all my life seemed to me the greatest shame, which was the misery and misfortune of my life—having been born a Jewess—this I should on no account now wish to have missed.” Only because she had remained both a Jew and a pariah, Arendt observes, “did she find a place in the history of European humanity.”

Le jeune homme

Biographies & Memoirs

En quelques pages, à la première personne, Annie Ernaux raconte une relation vécue avec un homme de trente ans de moins qu’elle. Une expérience qui la fit redevenir, l’espace de plusieurs mois, la "fille scandaleuse" de sa jeunesse. Un voyage dans le temps qui lui permit de franchir une étape décisive dans son écriture. Ce texte est une clé pour lire l’œuvre d’Annie Ernaux — son rapport au temps et à l’écriture.

Diary of a Drug Fiend

Biographies & Memoirs

Often overlooked in discussions of the great narcotics memoirs, Aleister Crowley’s rarely read 1922 work Diary of a Drug Fiend deserves to be mentioned alongside such addiction classics as Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Naked Lunch, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Trainspotting. The 'diary' is an outrageous drug-fueled romp offering fascinating first-hand insight into early recreational heroin and cocaine use. Not long after its publication, the British press dubbed Crowley “The Wickedest Man In The World.” Follow the harrowing escapades of lovers Peter Pendragon and Louise Laleham as they embark on a drug-fueled bender through Europe and encounter the enigmatic magician who could save them. This new digital edition of Diary of a Drug Fiend includes an image gallery showcasing rare portraits of Aleister Crowley and early black magic symbolism.

Cartas de amor y rebeldía

Biographies & Memoirs

Es un viaje que nos permite acompañar a la prestigiosa Lydia Cacho a través de su carrera, sus obstáculos, sus querencias, sus fallas, sus deseos y sus pasiones.Es un libro que enseña desde lo más humano hasta lo más profesional a hacer de la vida una pasión y que cada uno de nosotros persigamos lo que deseamos alcanzar. En el caso de Lydia, no sólo son historias: es la creencia plena de la justicia y del valor del ser humano.El nombre de Lydia Cacho es un nombre que resuena en cada uno de nosotros por distintos temas: búsqueda de justicia, protección a mujeres, feminista, pero sobre todo luchadora social cuando de encontrar la verdad se trata. En este maravilloso libro, tenemos la oportunidad de andar el camino a través de los ojos de esta gran mujer y entender los recovecos tanto de su vida personal, como de esos encuentros con el periodismo cara a cara y todo lo que tuvo que enfrentar: desde un secuestro, hasta el fallo a su favor este 2019.

Biographies & Memoirs Books