Showing results by publisher "Charles River Editors" in Biographies & Memoirs

Nicolae Ceaușescu, one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators, was both typical and unusual. Outwardly, he resembled a standard leader of a communist country in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, yet he was even more repressive and opulent than his contemporaries. Nicolae Ceaușescu: The Life and Legacy of Romania’s Notorious Dictator During the Cold War examines the rise and reign of the Romanian leader.

John Moses Browning was raised in what was at the time the “Wild West” of the Utah Country. His educational upbringing was both sparse and basic, but through the impetus of his father’s gun-making business, he would become the greatest mind of the arms industry’s modern age. Where Colt labored over one solitary concept that eventually led him to the modern repeating revolver, Browning’s instinct proved able to visualize concepts far above his formal training and follow them through to a number of diverse and functional weapons.

"The employee is regarded by the employer merely in the light of his value as an operative. His productive capacity alone is taken into account." (Stanford) Leland Stanford: The Life and Legacy of the Railroad Executive Who Became California’s Governor and the West’s Most Famous Robber Baron chronicles the remarkable life of Stanford.

Recent research has revealed that the richest person of all time lived in the 14th century in West Africa and went by many names, including Kankan Musa Keita, Emir of Melle, Lord of the Mines of Wangara, Conqueror of Ghanata, and the Lion of Mali II, but today he is usually referred to as Mansa Musa. Adjusting his wealth to modern values, he was worth about an estimated $400 billion as the Sultan of ancient Mali, which controlled the trade routes across the Sahara Desert.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees?

Etta James, the legendary jazz, gospel, rhythm & blues, and soul singer, was perfectly positioned to reign as the supreme artist in the emerging soul genre of the '40s and '50s in America. No one ever doubted her talent, the highly distinctive and versatile nature of her voice, or her drive to succeed, and yet, she has been "woefully overlooked" in the history of indigenous rock and blues music in the United States.

There has been no shortage of shocking crimes and trials that generated frenzied coverage across America, but few can lay claim to the "crime of the century" like the murder carried out by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924. While studying as young adults at the prestigious University of Chicago, Leopold and Loeb devised a meticulous plot to kidnap and murder a child while managing to get away with ransom money, thereby perpetrating what they considered a "perfect crime".

Of all the colorful characters that inhabited the West during the 19th century, the most famous of them all is Wyatt Earp (1848-1929), who has long been regarded as the embodiment of the Wild West. Considered the "toughest and deadliest gunman of his day", Earp symbolized the swagger, the heroism, and even the lawlessness of the West.

On a beautiful sunny day in March 1979, as thousands of Egyptians awaited in anticipation, a plane landed in Cairo. Moments later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stepped out, welcomed by thunderous cheers from an overjoyed crowd. He had just returned to his country from Washington D.C., where five days earlier he had signed a historic treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, bringing an end to three decades of war and hostilities between Israelis and Egyptians.

It is the most fabled and storied journey in American history. From 1804-1806, the first expedition across the North American continent was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who had recently bought a vast swath of territory from France.

Over the course of the 19th century, the people of Sicily found themselves at the center of a struggle for freedom, one that ended up being long and often very bloody. It was during these crucial years of struggle that the Sicilian mafia, La Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing"), started to take shape. Cosa Nostra: The Notorious History and Legacy of the Sicilian Mafia examines how the world’s most famous mob formed, its inner workings, and the events that made it feared around the world.

Of all the authors and poets American schoolchildren may be exposed to over the course of their education, Robert Frost is often one of the first, and on rare occasions that he is not, it is still a near certainty that some of his most famous poems will be discussed at some point. Frost may not be as remembered or influential as other American literary giants, or even poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but his career was historic in terms of its length and breadth of accomplishments.

A little more than 100 years ago a Mexican peasant named Emiliano Zapata gathered a rural army from the plantations and villages of southern Mexico, seized the lands of the haciendas, and began to distribute them among the peasants of Anenecuilco, his hometown, in the state of Morelos. Outraged and impatient with the ceaseless destitution of the indigenous peoples at the hands of the landowners, he had decided to take justice in his hands.

Sulla had become renowned in Rome as a general during the Jugurthine, Social, and Mithridatic Wars, but naturally he is now remembered for the gruesome acts committed during his tenure as Rome’s first lifelong dictator. Sulla’s unprecedented period of one-man rule is viewed by many historians as a means of re-establishing peace and order in Roman politics while safeguarding the Republican system from abuse by powerful individuals.

Although he is often overlooked in American history today, few presidents marked a turning point for the country quite like William McKinley. As the last president to have served in the Civil War, he represented the end of an era, while at the same time his pro-business policies set in motion the Progressive Era, a period almost universally associated with Theodore Roosevelt.

The World War II era produced many leaders of titanic determination, men whose strengths and weaknesses left an extraordinary imprint on historical affairs. Josip Broz Tito, better known to history as Marshal Tito, was undoubtedly one of these figures. Originally a machinist, Tito leveraged his success in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and a number of extraordinary strokes of luck into dictatorial rule over Yugoslavia for a span of 35 years. World War II proved the watershed that enabled him to secure control of the country.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet enjoys within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is a staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

Perhaps America's most innovative and prolific architect, the works of Frank Lloyd Wright are almost too vast and diverse to list. Recognized for designing unique churches and distinctive commercial buildings, and admired for his geometric style house designs, Wright has been widely imitated, and his work continues to influence architecture not only in the United States but around the world.

Queen Mary I ruled England and its territories for only five years, from 1553 to 1558, yet she has been remembered for nearly 500 years as Bloody Mary, the Catholic oppressor of a Protestant country. The truth, as usual, is more complicated than the myth. Mary grew up in a era of religious and political turmoil. Mary's life was shaped by her experience of this, and by the twisted family politics of her father, Henry VIII.

The men and women who won World War II for the Allies have been called "the greatest generation," and rightfully so, for they saved the Western world from destruction and domination by totalitarian dictators. As Winston Churchill so eloquently put it, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." However, even within this glorious group, there was another, perhaps even more superlative generation made up of men and women who fought not only in World War II, but also World War I, which at the time was the deadliest and most destructive war in history.