Edward III (1312-1377) was the most successful European ruler of his age. Reigning for over fifty years, he achieved spectacular military triumphs and overcame grave threats to his authority, from parliamentary revolt to the Black Death. Revered by h...

A bestseller when first published in Germany in 2003, Jens Malte Fischer's "Gustav Mahler" has been lauded by scholars as a landmark work. He draws on important primary resources – some unavailable to previous biographers – and sets in narrative cont...

Reissued with a new preface to commemorate the first publication of "a la recherche du temps perdu" one hundred years ago, " Marcel Proust" portrays in abundant detail the extraordinary life and times of one of the greatest literary voices of the twe...

One of the reasons baseball fans so love the sport is that it involves certain physical acts of beauty. And one of the most beautiful sights in the history of baseball was Hank Greenberg's swing. His calmly poised body seemed to have some special set...

Everything about Sarah Bernhardt is fascinating, from her obscure birth to her glorious career – redefining the very nature of her art – to her amazing (and highly public) romantic life to her indomitable spirit. Well into her seventies, after the am...

Susan Cheever observed that Richard Selzer "cares more about truth than consequences... and immerses us in the facts we all know but hate to admit" in her appraisal of his memoir "Down from Troy" in "The New York Times Book Review". "Selzer's Diary"...

Outlandish alchemist and magician, political intelligencer, apocalyptic prophet, and converser with angels, John Dee (1527-1609) was one of the most colourful and controversial figures of the Tudor world. In this fascinating book – the first full-l...

David Livingstone (1813-1873) is revered as one of history's greatest explorers and missionaries, the first European to cross Africa, and the first to find Victoria Falls and the source of the Congo River. In this exciting new edition, Jeal draws on...

This delightful book of writer-to-writer correspondence joins a full shelf of volumes in the genre, yet it is perhaps the first set of such letters ever transacted via the Internet. Also unusual, at least for correspondents in the twenty-first centur...

In this book John Radner examines the fluctuating, close, and complex friendship enjoyed by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, from the day they met in 1763 to the day when Boswell published his monumental "Life of Johnson". Drawing on everything John...