In this thorough, encyclopedic study, Buchan goes beyond the modern myth of Adam Smith-father of the laissez-faire approach to free markets and champion of small government-to find a more nuanced view, one that supercedes the narrow views of contemporary disciples such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Taking the reader deep into Smith's works and beliefs, Buchan produces a thinker as often concerned with philosophy and aesthetics as with economics and finance, a man of immense gifts, nearly unlimited potential, and unrestrained drive who, although he achieved much, "meant to have done more." Smith died at 67 the author of perhaps the first great work of modern economics (The Wealth of Nations), but still hoping to complete treatises on the visual and performing arts and to revisit his first major book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Buchan clearly knows his subject, as his treatment is detailed and backed up with ample endnotes, and this volume will be of great interest to specialists or those w

The secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a French parent. French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special. Yet, the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old while those of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. And while her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, her French friends sip coffee while the kids play. Motherhood itself is a whole different experience in France. There's no role model, as there is in America, for the harried new mom with no life of her own. French mothers assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children and that there's no need to feel guilt

For more than six decades she has been a part of our lives. Now acclaimed biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli looks past the tabloid version of Elizabeth's life and offers the first-ever fully realized portrait of this American icon. You'll meet her controlling mother who plotted her daughter's success from birth...see the qualities that catapulted Elizabeth to stardom in 1940s Hollywood...understand the psychological and emotional underpinnings behind the eight marriages...and, finally, rejoice in Elizabeth's most bravura performance of all: the new success in family, friendships, and philanthropy she achieved despite substance abuse and chronic illness. It's the story of the woman you thought you knew--and now can finally understand. J. Randy Taraborrelli is a respected journalist, a recognizable entertainment personality, and in-demand guest on many television programs. He is the bestselling author of eight books. Taraborrelli is a reporter for the Times (London), Paris Match, and The Daily Mail (UK)

The best book yet written about Lady Thatcher." Daily Telegraph "A fascinating account. Campbell's research is as exhaustive as it is meticulous." Observer "Thorough, scholarly and fair-minded." Independent on Sunday "A searching and beautifully written volume." Independent "An exciting narrative...A triumph." Spectator From the Trade Paperback edition.

Who was Richard Nixon?The most amaxing thing about the man was not what he did as president,but that he became president at all.Using thousands of new interviews and recently discovered of declassifited documents and tapes,Richard Reeves's President Nixon offers a surprising portrait of a brilliant and contradictory man. "I have decided my major role is moral leadership," Nixon wrote in 1972 in one of his myriad memos to himself. (As Reeves writes, "Whatever else he accomplished, Richard Nixon produced more paper and tape than any president before or since.") That resolution quickly collapsed; instead, as the Vietnam War shaded into defeat and protests at home mounted, Nixon sank into a siege mentality, seeing himself as a lone crusader at war with the rest of the world. Reeves examines the cat-and-mouse quality of Nixon's relations with his inner circle and family, as well as the excruciating collapse of national leadership in the wake of missteps, miscalculations, and sheer crimes. Rigorous and thoughtf

More a biography of Mozart's music than a study of the man himself, Sadie's final opus—he died this year after publishing some 30 books—should delight musicologists but puzzle general readers. Not only is the music Sadie's primary interest, he does not believe it reveals anything, necessarily, about its composer. Indeed, he reminds readers not to impose contemporary values on Mozart's era. "Romantic eyes," for example, might see certain minor-key compositions as expressions of Mozart's grief over his mother's death, but Sadie argues that there's "no real reason to imagine that he used his music as [a] vehicle for the expression of his own personal feelings." Likewise, modern critics expect to see a certain type of progress in Mozart's oeuvre, with subsequent works building and elaborating former ones, in ways alien to Mozart on his contemporaries. Sadie is deft at situating various styles of musical composition in their cultural context: preferences for serious vs. comic opera, shorter vs. longer works, e

Sent to a military school at nine, Napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the French Army. But a Brilliant military career wasn't enough. Soon, the had seized control of France-and then he embarked upon a plan to rule all of Europe. Usborne Famous Lives retell the stories of fascinating people, bringing them to life so vividly, it's as if you're there with them.

国际读书网站Goodreads评选的 2013年度*传记类作品. "I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday." When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and e

Hillary Rodham Clinton is known to hundreds of millions ofpeople around the world. Yet few beyond her close friends andfamily have ever heard her account of her extraordinary journey.She writes with candor, humor and passion about her upbringing insuburban, middle-class America in the 1950s and her transformationfrom Goldwater Girl to student activist to controversial FirstLady. Living History is her revealing memoir of life through theWhite House years. It is also her chronicle of living history withBill Clinton, a thirty-year adventure in love and politics thatsurvives personal betrayal, relentless partisan investigations andconstant public scrutiny. Hillary Rodham Clinton came of age during a time of tumultuoussocial and political change in America. Like many women of hergeneration, she grew up with choices and opportunities unknown toher mother or grandmother. She charted her own course throughunexplored terrain -- responding to the changing times and her owninternal compass -- and became an

As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926,tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no Boys Own Paper tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and joyce.

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passion-ate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of theunknown. When he died in 323 B.C. at age thirty-two, his vast empire com-prised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India.His achievements were unparalleled--he had excelled as leader to his men,founded eighteen new cities, and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world.

In his breakout bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger created "a wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea and the often futile attempts of humans to withstand it" ( Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.,

Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumored to be very close to Bin Laden with a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive. This is the story of the only survivor of Operation Redwing, SEAL fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, and the extraordinary firefight that led to the largest loss of life in American Navy SEAL history. His squadmates fought valiantly beside him until he was the only one left alive, blasted by an RPG into a place where his pursuers could not find him. Over the next four days, terribly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell crawled for miles through the mountains and was taken in by sympathetic villagers who risked their lives to keep him safe from surrounding Taliban warriors. A born and raised Texan, Marcus Luttrell takes us from the rigors of SEAL training, where he an

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He was unbearable, vain, proud, brutal, inconsistent, human. Without him, I would have rotted to death. . . . He was my guardian devil. As the descendant of two prominent French families and director of one of the world s most celebrated champagne houses, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo was not someone in the habit of asking for help. Then, in 1993, right on the heels of his wife being diagnosed with a terminal illness, a paragliding accident left him a quadriplegic. Passing his days hidden behind the high walls of his Paris townhouse, Philippe found himself the modern equivalent of an untouchable unable to reach out to others, as others were afraid to reach out to him. The only person who seemed unaffected by Philippe s condition was someone who had been marginalized his entire life Abdel, the unemployed, uninhibited Algerian immigrant who would become his unlikely caretaker. In between dramas and jokes, he sustained Philippe s life for the next ten years. A Second Wind, the basis for the major motion