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.

The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth presidentin nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost WoodrowWilson scholars. A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years ofRepublican administrations, Wilson was a transformativepresident—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislationthat prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central togovernance through the early twenty-first century, including theFederal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided thenation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor ofjoining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonethelessestablished a new way of thinking about international relationsthat would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilsonalso steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while hisattorney general launched an aggressive attack on civilliberties. Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’sdomestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., r

A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductressof both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of thegreatest works of twentieth-century literature, Colette was ourfirst true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman's Secrets of theFlesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzlingreputation. Having spent her childhood in the shadow of anoverpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulentmarriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy--a literary charlatanwho took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary ofWilly's sexual domination, Colette pursued an extremely publiclesbian love affair with a niece of Napoleon's. At forty, she gavebirth to a daughter who bored her, at forty-seven she seduced herteenage stepson, and in her seventies she flirted with the Nazioccupiers of Paris, even though her beloved third husband, a Jew,had been arrested by the Gestapo. And all the while, thisincomparable woman poured forth a torrent of masterpieces,including Gigi, Sido,

He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court -- but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game. Coaxed to swing a racket while still in the crib, forced to hit hundreds of balls a day while still in grade school, Agassi resented the constant pressure even as he drove himself to become a prodigy, an inner conflict that would define him. Now, in his beautiful, haunting autobiography, Agassi tells the story of a life framed by such conflicts. Agassi makes us feel his panic as an undersized seven-year-old in Las Vegas, practicing all day under the obsessive gaze of his violent father. We see him at thirteen, banished to a Florida tennis camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning fast return. And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he los

Leni Riefenstahl, the woman known as “Hitler’s filmmaker,”made some of the greatest and most innovative documentaries evermade. They are also insidious glorifications of Adolf Hitler andthe Third Reich. Now, Steven Bach reveals the truths and liesbehind Riefenstahl’s lifelong self-vindication as an apoliticalartist who claimed to know nothing of the Holocaust and denied hercomplicity with the criminal regime she both used andsanctified. A riveting and illuminating biography of one of the mostfascinating and controversial personalities of the twentiethcentury.

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguezwent to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid tothis war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–asdoctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practicalthan her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two fromMichigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon foundshe had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her professionbecame known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate fora good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proudtradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea wasborn. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the KabulBeauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning butsometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers,overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challengesof a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her studentsto become their families’ breadwinners

In this nuanced and complex portrait of Barack Obama,Pulitzer Prize-winner David Remnick offers a thorough, intricate,and riveting account of the unique experiences that shaped ournation’s first African American president. Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends andteachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obamahimself, Remnick explores the elite institutions that first exposedObama to social tensions, and the intellectual currents thatcontributed to his identity. Using America’s racial history as abackdrop for Obama’s own story, Remnick further reveals how aninitially rootless and confused young man built on the experiencesof an earlier generation of black leaders to become one of thecentral figures of our time. Masterfully written and eminently readable, The Bridge isdestined to be a lasting and illuminating work for years to come,by a writer with an unparalleled gift for revealing the historicalsignificance of our present moment.