An arresting new study of the life, times, and achievement of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Taylor's endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different...

Mark Rothko was not only one of the most influential American painters of the twentieth century; he was a scholar, an educator, and a deeply spiritual human being. Born Marcus Yakovlevich Rotkovitch, he emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United...

Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence – in his many letters, extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating...

Leonard Bernstein stood at the epicentre of twentieth-century American musical life. His creative gifts knew no boundaries as he moved easily from the podium, to the piano, to television with his nationally celebrated Young People's Concerts, which i...

"Becoming Freud" is the story of the young Freud – Freud up until the age of fifty – that incorporates all of Freud's many misgivings about the art of biography. Freud invented a psychological treatment that involved the telling and revising of life...

An arresting new study of the life, times, and achievement of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Taylor's endeavor is not to explain the life by the novel or the novel by the life but to show how different events, different...

Leon Blum (1872-1950) was many things: a socialist and political activist, leader of the Popular Front; a dedicated statesman who served as France's prime minister three times; a hero who courageously opposed anti-Semitism, Nazi aggression, and the p...

David Ben-Gurion cast an enormous shadow across his world, and his legacy in the Middle East and beyond continues to be hotly debated to this day. There have been many books written about the life and accomplishments of the Zionist icon and founder o...

Glamorous, talented, audacious – Lillian Hellman knew everyone, did everything, had been everywhere. By the age of twenty-nine she had written "The Children's Hour", the first of four hit Broadway plays, and soon she was considered a member of Americ...

In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of only...