If there is a literary gene, then the Waugh family mostcertainly has it—and it clearly seems to be passed down from fatherto son. The first of the literary Waughs was Arthur, who, when hewon the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford in 1888, broke withthe family tradition of medicine. He went on to become adistinguished publisher and an immensely influential bookcolumnist. He fathered two sons, Alec and Evelyn, both of whom wereto become novelists of note (and whom Arthur, somewhat uneasily,would himself publish); both of whom were to rebel in their ownways against his bedrock Victorianism; and one of whom, Evelyn, wasto write a series of immortal novels that will be prized as long aselegance and lethal wit are admired. Evelyn begat, among sevenothers, Auberon Waugh, who would carry on in the family traditionof literary skill and eccentricity, becoming one of England’s mostincorrigibly cantankerous and provocative newspaper columnists,loved and loathed in equal measure. And Auberon begat Alexander,yet ano

In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of MarkTwain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant orTwain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision wouldprofoundly alter not only both their lives but the course ofAmerican literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two menbecame close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant racedagainst the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of hislife and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish hisgreatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Inthis deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writerMark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twaininspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentiallyAmerican masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careersof these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusivefortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought themtogether as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk

Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the secondcentury A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world byone of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In whatis by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch revealsthe character and personality of his subjects and how they ledultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full ofdetail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus andTheseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many morepowerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome. The present translation, originally published in 1683 inconjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes andpreface are also included in this edition.

A swashbuckling Texan, a teller of tall tales, a womanizer,and a renegade, Fred Cuny spent his life in countries rent by war,famine, and natural disasters, saving many thousands of livesthrough his innovative and sometimes controversial methods ofrelief work. Cuny earned his nickname "Master of Disaster" for hisexploits in Kurdistan, Somalia, and Bosnia. But when he arrived inthe rogue Russian republic of Chechnya in the spring of 1995,raring to go and eager to put his ample funds from George Soros togood use, he found himself in the midst of an unimaginably savagewar of independence, unlike any he had ever before encountered.Shortly thereafter, he disappeared in the war-rocked highlands,never to be seen again. Who was Cuny really working for? Was he a CIA spy? Who killedhim, and why? In search of the answers, Scott Anderson traveled toChechnya on a hazardous journey that started as as a magazineassignment and ended as a personal mission. The result is agalvanizing adventure story, a chilling pic

The first complete, unvarnished history of Southern rock’slegendary and most popular band, from its members’ hardscrabbleboyhoods in Jacksonville, Florida and their rise to worldwide fameto the tragic plane crash that killed the founder and the band’srise again from the ashes. In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie VanZant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band toplay covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds and thecountry and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming theirband after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee SeniorHigh School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiringmusicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties,and bars throughout the South. During the next decade LynyrdSkynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commerciallysuccessful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since theAllman Brothers. Their hits “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama”became classics. The

A German soldier during World War II offers an inside look atthe Nazi war machine, using his wartime diaries to describe how aruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinaryGermans to carry out his monstrous schemes.

Drawing on an exceptional combination of skills as literarybiographer, novelist, and chronicler of London history, PeterAckroyd surely re-creates the world that shaped Shakespeare--andbrings the playwright himself into unusually vivid focus. Withcharacteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us insixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape–the industry,the animals, even the flowers–that would appear in Shakespeare’splays. He takes us through Shakespeare’s London neighborhood andthe fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor andwriter. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constantreviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details withprofound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd hasproduced an altogether engaging masterpiece.

If you had to give America a voice, it’s been said more thanonce, that voice would be Willie Nelson’s. For more than fiftyyears, he’s taken the stuff of his life—the good and the bad—andmade from it a body of work that has become a permanent part of ourmusical heritage and kept us company through the good and the badof our own lives. So it’s fitting, and cause for celebration, thathe has finally set down in his own words a book that does justiceto his great gifts as a storyteller. In The Facts of Life ,Willie Nelson reflects on what has mattered to him in life and whathasn’t. He also tells some great dirty jokes. The result is a bookas wise and hilarious as its author.

Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-olddaughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir toEngland’s throne was designed to heal old political wounds betweenthe two countries, and in the years that followed, she would becomean important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influencewould come to last centuries. But Queen Isabella’s politicalmachinations led generations of historians to malign her, earningher a reputation as a ruthless schemer and an odious nickname, “theShe-Wolf of France.” Now the acclaimed author of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir,reexamines the life of Isabella of England, history’s othernotorious and charismatic medieval queen. Praised for her fairlooks, the newly wed Isabella was denied the attentions of EdwardII, a weak, sexually ambiguous monarch with scant taste for hisroyal duties. As their marriage progressed, Isabella was neglectedby her dissolute husband and slighted by his favored malecourtiers. Humiliated and deprived of

From the moment it was first published in The New Yorker, thisbrilliant work of literary criticism aroused great attention. JanetMalcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend ofSylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plathbiographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.

Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists,and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and,later, of German-American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties,built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities,and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But theirvery success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism,and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in aGermany that had declared Jews the enemy. Ron Chernow's hugely fascinating history is a groupportrait of a clan whose members were renowned for theirbrilliance, culture, and personal energy yet tragically vulnerableto the dark and irrational currents of the twentieth century. "Splendid.... Chernow does a wonderful job fleshing outthe lives of the major characters in this family drama."

In the years following his and Francis Crick’s toweringdiscovery of DNA, James Watson was obsessed with finding twothings: RNA and a wife. Genes, Girls, and Gamow is the marvelouschronicle of those pursuits. Watson effortlessly glides between hisheartbreaking and sometimes hilarious debacles in the field of loveand his heady inquiries in the field of science. He also reflectswith touching candor on some of science’s other titans, from fellowNobelists Linus Pauling and the incorrigible Richard Feynman toRussian physicist George Gamow, who loved whiskey, limericks, andcard tricks as much as he did molecules and genes. What emerges isa refreshingly human portrait of a group of geniuses and a candid,often surprising account of how science is done.

He’s been imprisoned, shot at, denounced, shunned, and banned,yet Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams remains resolute in his beliefthat peace is the only viable option for the Irish people. Adamsled the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on anextraordinary journey from armed insurrection to activeparticipation in government. Now he tells the story of thetumultuous series of events that led to the historic Good FridayAgreement as only he can: with a tireless crusader’s conviction andan insider’s penetrating insight. In vivid detail, Adams describes the harrowing attack on his life,and he offers new details about the peace process. We learn ofpreviously undisclosed talks between republicans and the Britishgovernment, and of conflicts and surprising alliances between keyplayers. Adams reveals details of his discussions with the IRAleadership and tells how republicans differed, “dissidents”emerged, and the first IRA cessation of violence broke down. Herecounts meetings in the Clinton White House,

Saucerful of Secrets is the first in-depth biography of thisvery private group. At the heart of the saga is Syd Barrett, thegroup's brilliant founder, whose public decline into shatteredincoherence--attributable in part to his marathon use of LSD--isone of the tragedies of rock history. The making of Dark Side ofthe Moon and Floyd's other great albums is recounted in detail, asare the mounting of "The Wall"? ? and the creation of the flyingpigs, crashing? ? planes, "Mr. Screen" and the other elements oftheir spectacular stage shows. The book also explores the manybattles between bass player/song writer Roger Waters and the restof the group, leading up to Water's acrimonious departure for asolo? ? career in 1984 and his unsuccessful attempt to disolve thegroup he had left behind. Saucerful of Secrets is an electrifying account of thisground-breaking, mind-bending group, covering every period of theircareer from? ? earliest days to latest recordings. It is full of? ?revealing information that will

It is remarkable how infrequently, over a period of more thanfifty years, Alfred Hitchcock spoke about the legendary actresseshe directed–including Ingrid Bergman, Kim Novak, and Grace Kelly.But his leading ladies greatly enriched his films, and many of themachieved international stardom precisely because of their work forHitchcock. Rich with new material, anecdotes, andnever-before-told personal observations, this explosive portraitdetails Hitchcock’s outbursts of cruelty, the shocking humor, andthe odd amalgam of adoration and contempt that characterizedHitchcock’s obsessive relationships with women–and that also,paradoxically, fed his genius.

The epic life and times of one of the most important politicalfigures in our history. He was the Great Compromiser, a canny and colorful legislator andleader whose life mirrors the story of America from its foundinguntil the eve of the Civil War. Speaker of the House, senator,secretary of state, five-time presidential candidate, and idol tothe young Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay is captured in full at lastin this rich and sweeping biography that vividly portrays all thedrama of his times. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler present Clay in his earlyyears as a precocious, witty, and optimistic Virginia boy, raisedon a farm, who at the age of twenty transformed himself frombumpkin to attorney—a shrewd and sincere defender of the ordinaryman who would be his eventual political base. The authors revealClay’s tumultuous career in Washington, one that transformed thecapital and the country. Nicknamed “the Western Star,” Clay becamethe youngest Speaker of the House shortly before the War of 1812and tran

A chance encounter in Spain in 1959 brought young Irishreporter Valerie Danby-Smith face to face with Ernest Hemingway.The interview was awkward and brief, but before it ended somethinghad clicked into place. For the next two years, Valerie devoted herlife to Hemingway and his wife, Mary, traveling with them throughbeloved old haunts in Spain and France and living with them duringthe tumultuous final months in Cuba. In name a personal secretary,but in reality a confidante and sharer of the great man’s secretsand sorrows, Valerie literally came of age in the company of one ofthe greatest literary lions of the twentieth century. Five years after his death, Valerie became a Hemingway herselfwhen she married the writer’s estranged son Gregory. Now, at last,she tells the story of the incredible years she spent with thisextravagantly talented and tragically doomed family. In prose of brilliant clarity and stinging candor, Valerie evokesthe magic and the pathos of Papa Hemingway

"Authorized, intimate, and definitive, Ben Hogan: A Life isthe long-awaited biography of one of golf's greatest, mostenigmatic legends, narrated with the unique eloquence that has madeauthor James Dodson a critically acclaimed national bestseller. "One man is often credited with shaping the landscape of moderngolf. Ben Hogan was a short, trim, impeccably dressed Texan whosefierce work ethic, legendary steel nerves, and astonishing triumphover personal disaster earned him not only an army of adoring fans,but one of the finest careers in the history of the sport. Hogancaptured a record-tying four U.S. Opens, won five of six majortournaments in a single season, and inspired future generations ofprofessional golfers from Palmer to Norman to Woods. Yet for allhis brilliance, Ben Hogan was an enigma. He was an American herowhose personal life, inner motivation, and famed "secret" were thesource of great public mystery. As Hogan grew into a giant on thepro tour, the combination of his cool outward demeanor an