Rebels, Rulers, and Artists: 100 Captivating Lives


Rebels, Rulers, and Artists: 100 Captivating Lives is a list of outstanding biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies. As title suggests there is a political leaning, with rebels and rulers, and an emphasis on creative lives too, the artists. Each biography has been chosen based on its greatness as a biography and for the significance of its subject.

An honourable mention must also go to Clive Ponting for his biography of Winston Churchill, which is unfortunately out of print.

Is there anyone you think is missing from the list? Is there a great biography that should be included? Please comment below.

1. Alexander the Great

By Arrian

"He was a man like no other man has ever been"In twelve years that changed the world, Alexander the Great conquered a vast empire, extending from the Danube to the rivers of the Punjab, and from Egypt to Uzbekistan. Arrian, a Greek man of letters, military commander, and ... More »

Alexander the Great
The Life of Charlotte Bronte

2. The Life of Charlotte Bronte

By Elizabeth Gaskell | Used Price: 60% Off

Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) is a pioneering biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Bronte's and, having been invited to write the official life, determined to both tell the truth and honor her friend. This edition collates ... More »

3. Life of Black Hawk

By Black Hawk | Used Price: 60% Off

A rediscovered, defiant work of Native American literature, presented here on the 175th anniversary of its first publication Upon its publication in 1833, this unflinching narrative by the vanquished Sauk leader Black Hawk was the first thoroughly adversarial account of frontier hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans. ... More »

Life of Black Hawk
My Inventions and Other Writings

4. My Inventions and Other Writings

By Nikola Tesla | Used Price: 60% Off

The fascinating autobiography of the legendary inventor behind the radio, wireless energy, robotics, and much more. Famous for his pioneering contributions to the electronic age, his lifelong feud with Thomas Edison, and his erratic behavior, Nikola Tesla was one of the most brilliant and ... More »

5. Eminent Victorians

By Lytton Strachey | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"Eminent Victorians" marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it, Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of ... More »

Eminent Victorians
Up from Slavery

6. Up from Slavery

By Booker T. Washington | Price: $0.01

Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African-Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In ... More »

7. Walden and Civil Disobedience

By Henry David Thoreau | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

The two defining works of a transcendentalist masterDisdainful of America’s booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods near Walden Pond. Walden, the account of his stay, conveys at once a naturalist’s wonder at the commonplace and ... More »

Walden and Civil Disobedience
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

8. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

By Gertrude Stein | Used Price: 60% Off

A fascinating insight into the vibrant culture of Modernism, and the rich artistic world of Paris' Left Bank, Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" includes an introduction by Thomas Fensch in "Penguin Modern Classics". For Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris ... More »

9. The Lives of the Artists

By Giorgio Vasari | Used Price: 60% Off

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, ... More »

The Lives of the Artists
Homage to Catalonia

10. Homage to Catalonia

By George Orwell | Used Price: 70% Off

'Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he ... More »

11. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

By Malcolm X; Alex Haley | 70% Off

From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct ... More »

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Words

12. The Words

By Jean-Paul Sartre | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis. Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight ... More »

13. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha

By Jack Kerouac | Used Price: 60% Off

Jack Kerouac?s profound meditations on the Buddha?s life and religionIn the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac, a lifelong Catholic, became fascinated with Buddhism, an interest that had a significant impact on his ideas of spirituality and later found expression in such books as Mexico City Blues and The Dharma Bums. ... More »

Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha
Speak, Memory

14. Speak, Memory

By Vladimir Nabokov | Used Price: 80% Off

Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov's life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, ... More »

15. The Motorcycle Diaries

By Ernesto Che Guevara | Used Price: 70% Off

  The book of the popular movie STARRING GAEL GARCIA BERNAL NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   The young Che Guevara’s lively and highly entertaining travel diary, ... More »

The Motorcycle Diaries
Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent

16. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent

By Robert F. Barsky; Noam Chomsky | 90% Off

This biography describes the intellectual and political milieus that helped shape Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in contemporary linguistics, politics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. It also presents an engaging political history of the last several decades, including such events as the Spanish Civil War, the dropping of atomic ... More »

17. Out of Place: A Memoir

By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 80% Off

From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comes an extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and ... More »

Out of Place: A Memoir
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence

18. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence

By Martin Gayford | Used Price: 80% Off

From October to December of 1888, Paul Gauguin shared a yellow house in the south of France with Vincent van Gogh. They were the odd couple of the art world -- one calm, the other volatile -- and the denouement of their living arrangement was explosive. Making use ... More »

19. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

By Chris Hadfield | Used Price: 50% Off

Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging ... More »

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
Lincoln

20. Lincoln

By David Herbert Donald | Price: $0.01

A masterful work by Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s life and presidency.Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided ... More »

21. Six Records of a Floating Life

By Shen Fu | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic ... More »

Six Records of a Floating Life
Mao Zedong: A Life

22. Mao Zedong: A Life

By Jonathan Spence | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

“Spence draws upon his extensive knowledge of Chinese politics and culture to create an illuminating picture of Mao. . . . Superb.â€Â (Chicago Tribune) From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a ... More »

23. Tristes Tropiques

By Claude Levi-Strauss | Used Price: 60% Off

A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology. This watershed work records Claude Lévi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, Lévi-Strauss found ... More »

Tristes Tropiques
Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

24. Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

By Abraham Pais | Used Price: 70% Off

2005 has been designated "World Year of Physics" to celebrate the publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity one hundred years ago. In commemoration of this landmark anniversary, Oxford University Press brings Abraham Pais' major work on Einstein's life and work to a whole new generation of readers.Since ... More »

25. The Education of Henry Adams

By Henry Adams | Used Price: 60% Off

As a journalist, historian, and novelist born into a family that included two past Presidents, Henry Adams was forever focused on the experiences and expectations unique to America. A prompt bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) recounts his own and his country's development from ... More »

The Education of Henry Adams
Seven Pillars of Wisdom

26. Seven Pillars of Wisdom

By T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom encompasses an account of the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War alongside general Middle Eastern and military history, politics, adventure and drama. It is also a memoir of the soldier known as “Lawrence of Arabia.â€Â Lawrence was a fascinating and ... More »

27. Goodbye to All That

By Robert Graves | Used Price: 60% Off

An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That" is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in "Penguin Modern Classics". In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, ... More »

Goodbye to All That
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

28. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

By Henry Marsh

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year, shortlisted for both the Guardian First Book Award and the Costa Book Award, and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets ... More »

29. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

By Benvenuto Cellini | Used Price: 80% Off

"Men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, need not be subject to the law."--Pope Paul III on learning that Cellini had murdered a fellow artist Benvenuto Cellini was beloved in Renaissance Florence. A renowned sculptor and goldsmith whose works include the famous salt-cellar made for the King of ... More »

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Life of Johnson

30. Life of Johnson

By James Boswell | Used Price: 70% Off

This complete and unabridged edition is the only complete critical edition in paperback. Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less on his literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding an ideal biographer in James Boswell. As Johnson's ... More »

31. Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

By Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell remains one of the greatest philosophers and most complex and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Here, in this frank, humorous and decidedly charming autobiography, Russell offers readers the story of his life – introducing the people, events and influences that shaped the man he was ... More »

Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Bob Dylan

32. Bob Dylan

By Kevin J. H. Dettmar | Used Price: 70% Off

A towering figure in American culture and a global twentieth-century icon, Bob Dylan has been at the centre of American life for over forty years. The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan brings fresh insights into the imposing range of Dylan's creative output. The first Part approaches Dylan's output ... More »

33. My Autobiography

By Charles Chaplin | Used Price: 60% Off

Born into a theatrical family, Chaplin's father died of drink while his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from bouts of insanity, Chaplin embarked on a film-making career which won him immeasurable success, as well as intense controversy. His extraordinary autobiography was first published in 1964 and ... More »

My Autobiography
Autobiography of Mark Twain

34. Autobiography of Mark Twain

By Mark Twain | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain ... More »

35. Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen

By Victor Kiernan | Used Price: 90% Off

In this book the distinguished historian Victor Kiernan makes a case for seeing Shakespeare as a writer profoundly sensitive to the great social and political upheavals through which he lived. Shakespeare’s poetic and dramatic achievement, Kiernan argues, was not something which transcended his environment but was directly enlarged ... More »

Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen
Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian

36. Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian

By Dumas Malone | Used Price: 70% Off

Dumas Malone’s classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jefferson’s life. Volume 1. Jefferson the VirginianThis first volume explores the early phases of Jefferson’s life, from his youth, education, legal career, and marriage, ... More »

37. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

By Ron Chernow | Used Price: 80% Off

The winner of the National Book Award and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. Acclaimed by The Wall Street Journal as "brilliantly researched and written", the book tells the rich, panoramic story of four ... More »

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time

38. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time

By Joseph Frank

Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable ... More »

39. The Memoir of Toussaint Louverture

By Philippe R. Girard

Here is an annotated, scholarly, multilingual edition of the only lengthy text personally written by Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture: the memoirs he wrote shortly before his death in the French prison of Fort de Joux. The translation is based on an original copy in Louverture's hand never before ... More »

The Memoir of Toussaint Louverture
Gustavas Adolphus

40. Gustavas Adolphus

By Michael Roberts

This series provides critical studies of key figures in international political history since 1500. The books are not personal biographies, although they do contain biographical information, but are succinct interpretive essays on the career. Gustavus Adolphus (King of Sweden 1611-1632) was a key figure in 17th century European ... More »

41. Notes of a Native Son

By James Baldwin | Used Price: 50% Off

A new edition of the book many have called James Baldwin’s most influential workWritten during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn ... More »

Notes of a Native Son
Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy

42. Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy

By Paul Ratchnevsky | Used Price: 90% Off

Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest continuous land empire ever. On his death in 1227, this extended from the Near East to the Yellow Sea, and was expanded by his successors to include what is now Iran, Iraq and southern Russia. By 1206, ... More »

43. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

By Edmund Morris | Used Price: 80% Off

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all timeDescribed by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore ... More »

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Crazy Horse: A Life

44. Crazy Horse: A Life

By Larry McMurtry | Used Price: 70% Off

Legends cloud the life of Crazy Horse, a seminal figure in American history but an enigma even to his own people in his own day. This superb biography looks back across more than 120 years at the life and death of this great Sioux warrior who became a ... More »

45. Confessions

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau | 80% Off

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and ... More »

Confessions
Autobiography

46. Autobiography

By John Stuart Mill | Used Price: 90% Off

One of the greatest prodigies of his era, John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was studying arithmetic and Greek by the age of three, as part of an astonishingly intense education at his father's hand. Intellectually brilliant, fearless and profound, he became a leading Victorian liberal thinker, whose works - ... More »

47. Lady Sings the Blues

By Billie Holiday | Used Price: 50% Off

Lady Sings the Blues is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to ... More »

Lady Sings the Blues
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

48. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

By Robert A. Caro | Used Price: 60% Off

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses ... More »

49. Mountains Beyond Mountains: One doctor's quest to heal the world

By Tracy Kidder; Paul Farmer | 80% Off

This compelling and inspiring book, now in a deluxe paperback edition, shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prize—winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who loves the world and has set out to do all he can ... More »

Mountains Beyond Mountains: One doctor's quest to heal the world
Memoirs of My Life

50. Memoirs of My Life

By Edward Gibbon | Under $1.00

Edward Gibbon was one of the world's greatest historians and a towering figure of his age. When he died in 1794 he left behind the unfinished drafts of his Memoirs, which were posthumously edited by his friend Lord Sheffield, and remain an astonishing portrait of a rich, full ... More »

51. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

By Richard Feynman | Used Price: 70% Off

A New York Times bestseller—the outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with ... More »

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
A Moveable Feast

52. A Moveable Feast

By Ernest Hemingway | Used Price: 60% Off

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it ... More »

53. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II

By Kenneth Kitchen | Used Price: 80% Off

A thorough and detailed account of one of the best known pharaohs of Egypt, written by the leading expert on the subject. Kitchen discusses the early life and childhood of the young king, his reign, politics, wars and policies, and his death and the after-life. This book is ... More »

Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II
Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica

54. Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica

By T. J. Clark

Picasso and Truth offers a breathtaking and original new look at the most significant artist of the modern era. From Pablo Picasso's early The Blue Room to the later Guernica, eminent art historian T. J. Clark offers a striking ... More »

55. Autobiographies

By William Butler Yeats | Under $1.00

Autobiographies consists of six autobiographical works that William Butler Yeats published together in the mid-1930s to form a single, extraordinary memoir of the first fifty-eight years of his life, from his earliest memories of childhood to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume provides a vivid series ... More »

Autobiographies
The Periodic Table

56. The Periodic Table

By Primo Levi | Used Price: 50% Off

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi’s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community ... More »

57. The Autobiography and Other Writings

By Benjamin Franklin | Under $1.00

Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanack to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime he knew ... More »

The Autobiography and Other Writings
Memoirs of a Revolutionist

58. Memoirs of a Revolutionist

By Peter Kropotkin | Used Price: 50% Off

Born into a wealthy family of landowners, Prince Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin (1842-1921) served in the court of the Tsar and held prestigious diplomatic posts. But the prince renounced his life of privilege to embrace nonviolent anarchism, a revolutionary alternative to Marxism. A leading theoretician of his day, Kropotkin ... More »

59. Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir

By Gore Vidal | Used Price: 90% Off

In a witty and elegant autobiography that takes up where his bestelling Palimpsest left off, the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal reflects on his remarkable life.Writing from his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, ... More »

Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir
Tolstoy

60. Tolstoy

By Henri Troyat | Used Price: 80% Off

Leo Tolstoy embodies the most extraordinary contradictions. He was a wealthy aristocrat who preached the virtues of poverty and the peasant life, a misogynist who wrote Anna Karenina, and a supreme writer who declared, "Literature is rubbish." From Tolstoy's famously bad marriage to his enormously successful career, Troyat ... More »

61. Machiavelli

By Quentin Skinner | Used Price: 60% Off

Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil that good may come of it. Offering the first brief introduction to Machiavelli's thought to appear in twenty-five years, Skinner focuses on his three major works, The Prince, Discourses, and The History of Florence. He discusses the ... More »

Machiavelli
Confessions

62. Confessions

By Saint Augustine | Used Price: 70% Off

In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely personal narrative, Augustine relates his rare ascent from ... More »

63. The Voyage of the Beagle

By Charles Darwin | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

"The Voyage of the Beagle" is Charles Darwin's account of the momentous voyage which set in motion the current of intellectual events leading to "The Origin of Species". This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Janet Brown and Michael Neve. When HMS Beagle ... More »

The Voyage of the Beagle
Karl Marx: A Biography

64. Karl Marx: A Biography

By David McLellan | Used Price: 70% Off

All the great political revolutions of the twentieth century referred back to Marx. Reviled by some, revered by many, Marx's influence can be found in every area of the humanities and social sciences from literary criticism to globalization. In this thoroughly revised and updated new edition of his ... More »

65. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life

By Marshall Frady | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Marshall Frady, the reporter who became the unofficial chronicler of the civil rights movement, here re-creates the life and turbulent times of its inspirational leader. Deftly interweaving the story of King’s quest with a history of the African American struggle for equality, Frady offers fascinating insights into his ... More »

Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

66. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie

By Barbara Goldsmith | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the myth—an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is ... More »

67. A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi

By Kiyosawa Kiyoshi; Marius B. Jansen

A Diary of Darkness is one of the most important and compelling documents of wartime Japan. Between 1942 and 1945, the liberal journalist Kiyosawa Kiyoshi (1890-1945) kept at great personal risk a diary of his often subversive social and political observations and his personal struggles. The diary caused ... More »

A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi
Just Kids

68. Just Kids

By Patti Smith | Used Price: 80% Off

In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of More »

69. John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946

By Robert Skidelsky | Used Price: 50% Off

Robert Skidelsky’s three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes has been acclaimed as the authoritative account of the great economist-statesman’s life. Here, Skidelsky has revised and abridged his magnum opus into one definitive book, which examines in its entirety the intellectual and ideological journey that led an extraordinarily gifted ... More »

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

70. The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

By Stephen Kinzer | Used Price: 70% Off

A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s worldDuring the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures ... More »

71. Miles

By Miles Davis

Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles Davis was one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. Here, Miles speaks out about his extraordinary life.Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he ... More »

Miles
James Joyce

72. James Joyce

By Richard Ellmann | Used Price: 90% Off

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more. More »

73. The Life of Milarepa

By Tsangnyon Heruka | Used Price: 70% Off

A new translation of the classic biography of the most renowned saint in Tibetan Buddhist history The Life of Milarepa is one of the most beloved stories of the Tibetan people and a great literary example of the contemplative life. This biography, a dramatic tale from a ... More »

The Life of Milarepa
The Real Frank Zappa Book

74. The Real Frank Zappa Book

By Frank Zappa | Under $1.00

The brash and outrageously funny autobiography of music legend Frank Zappa--now in trade paperback. Here is the real story of how he became the state of the art in weirdness, as only he can tell it: wild rock 'n' roll road stories, confrontations with bureaucratic idiocy, and more. ... More »

75. The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa

By Fukuzawa Yukichi | Used Price: 50% Off

Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) was a leading figure in the cultural revolution that transformed Japan from an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged player in the modern world. He translated a wide range of Western works and adapted them to Japanese needs, inventing a colorful prose style close to ... More »

The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
My Life

76. My Life

By Giuseppe Garibaldi | Used Price: 70% Off

Translated for the first time into English from Garibaldi’s original manuscripts, these memoirs provide an authentic reading of the life and times of one of the most remarkable figures in history. The life of Giuseppe Garibaldi—distinguished by superhuman courage, personal tragedy, and tireless struggle ... More »

77. Guy Debord

By Anselm Jappe | Used Price: 70% Off

This is the first serious intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime mover of the Situationist International (1957-1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle, perhaps the seminal book of May 1968 in France. Anselm Jappe rejects recent attempts to set Debord up as a "postmodern" icon, arguing ... More »

Guy Debord
The Diary of a Young Girl

78. The Diary of a Young Girl

By Anne Frank | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish ... More »

79. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives

By Alan Bullock

Alan Bullock's bestselling and monumental masterpiece, now in a revised Second Edition 'It is practically unprecedented to take two such monsters as Hitler and Stalin, who never met, and interweave their lives chronologically, chapter by chapter, often paragraph by paragraph, as Bullock has done...a triumph of organization, lucidity ... More »

Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives
An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

80. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

By Mahatma Gandhi | Used Price: 90% Off

Gandhi's non-violent struggles against racism, violence, and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. He feared the enthusiasm for ... More »

81. Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power

By Philip Dwyer | Used Price: 60% Off

In this second volume of Philip Dwyer’s authoritative biography on one of history’s most enthralling leaders, Napoleon, now 30, takes his position as head of the French state after the 1799 coup. Dwyer explores the young leader’s reign, complete with mistakes, wrong turns, and pitfalls, and reveals the ... More »

Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power
John Dewey and American Democracy

82. John Dewey and American Democracy

By Robert B. Westbrook | Used Price: 50% Off

Highly regarded but largely unread today, Dewey is generally considered a pragmatist in the mainstream of American liberalism. This exciting portrait of the philosopher as an advocate of participatory democracy and a political activist presents him as a more radical voice than is generally assumed. Although the anti-Stalinist ... More »

83. Frantz Fanon: A Biography

By David Macey | Used Price: 50% Off

Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon (1925–61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a volunteer in the Free French Army, in which he saw combat at the end of the Second World War. In Algeria, ... More »

Frantz Fanon: A Biography
Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh

84. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh

By Joyce A. Tyldesley | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Egypt?s Queen?or, as she would prefer to be remembered, King?Hatchepsut ruled over an age of peace, prosperity, and remarkable architectural achievement (c. 1490 b.c.). Had she been born a man, her reign would almost certainly have been remembered for its stable government, successful trade missions, and the construction ... More »

85. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is

By Friedrich Nietzsche | Used Price: 60% Off

Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the ... More »

Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is
Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism

86. Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism

By Domingo Faustino Sarmiento | 90% Off

Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century. More »

87. Simon Bolivar: A Life

By John Lynch | Used Price: 80% Off

Simón Bolívar was a revolutionary who freed six countries, an intellectual who argued the principles of national liberation, and a general who fought a cruel colonial war. His life, passions, battles, and great victories became embedded in Spanish American culture almost as soon as they happened. This is ... More »

Simon Bolivar: A Life
Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man

88. Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man

By Martin Kemp | Used Price: 80% Off

This masterly account of Leonardo da Vinci and his vision of the world has long been recognized as the classic treatment of the Renaissance giant, offering unparalleled insight into Leonardo's intellect and vision at every stage of his artistic career. Martin Kemp, one ... More »

89. Pericles Of Athens And The Birth Of Democracy

By Donald Kagan | Used Price: 60% Off

"Kagan, faithful to his lifelong fascination with Pericles . . . gives us an accessible and invaluable account of his life and deeds".--Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind". More »

Pericles Of Athens And The Birth Of Democracy
Augustus

90. Augustus

By A. H. M. Jones; Moses Finley | Price: $0.01

Constitutional changes, administrative revisions, factional rivalry, and war are all themes that Professor Jones develops within the main narrative. He treats separately such topics as finance, religion, social policy, literature and the arts, and the sources of this crucial period in the history of Rome. Professor Jones discusses ... More »

91. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson

By Bernard Bailyn | Used Price: 80% Off

“This book,â€Â Mr. Bailyn writes, “depicts the fortunes of a conservative in a time of radical upheaval and deals with problems of public disorder and ideological commitment.â€Â It is at the same time a dramatic account of the origins of the American Revolution from the viewpoint, not of ... More »

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson
Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

92. Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

By Soha Bechara | Used Price: 50% Off

In 1988, at the age of twenty, Souha Béchara attempted to assassinate General Lahad, chief of militia in charge of Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon. Immediately apprehended, interrogated, and tortured for weeks, she was sent to Khiam, a prison and death camp regularly condemned by humanitarian organizations. After an intense ... More »

93. W.A. Mozart

By Hermann Abert

Hermann Abert's classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago and itself based on the definitive mid-nineteenth century study by Otto Jahn, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. The book is both the fullest account of the composer’s life ... More »

W.A. Mozart
Florence Nightingale

94. Florence Nightingale

By Cecil Woodham-Smith | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

Draws on research by army historians to describe the cover-up of disastrous events in the Crimea, and to seperate Nightingale's real achievments from her mythical ones. More »

95. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

By Simone de Beauvoir | Used Price: 70% Off

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter" offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own ... More »

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent

96. Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent

By Alexander von Humboldt | Price: $0.01

One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora ... More »

97. Echoes of an Autobiography

By Naguib Mahfouz | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01

From the Foreword by Nadine Gordimer: "These pieces are meditations which echo that which was, has been, and is the writer Mahfouz. They are--in the words of the title of one of the prose pieces--'The Dialogue of the Late Afternoon' of his life. I don't believe any autobiography, ... More »

Echoes of an Autobiography
Long Walk to Freedom

98. Long Walk to Freedom

By Nelson Mandela | Under $1.00

The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize ... More »

99. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

By Ezra F. Vogel

No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist-the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China's ... More »

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age

100. Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age

By Jack Copeland | Used Price: 60% Off

Alan Turing is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing ... More »