A biography of Hitler that traces the story of how a bitter, failed art student from an obscure corner of Austria rose to unparalleled power, destroying the lives of millions and unleashing Armageddon.
Des favorites royales, la marquise de Pompadour est sans aucun doute la plus célèbre.
Pourtant, son ascendance bourgeoise aurait dû lui fermer les portes de la Cour. Et c'est grâce à sa beauté, à sa prodigieuse énergie et à son intelligence qu'elle parvint à séduire Louis XV. Même lorsque leur relation prit un tour platonique, elle resta sa plus chère amie. Avec talent et habileté, elle sut également s'imposer à Versailles et y exerça une influence qui ne se démentit jamais au cours des vingt années de son " règne " : faisant et défaisant les ministres, se mêlant de politique et de prodiguer ses conseils.
Femme de goût, elle fut encore un véritable mécène, soutien indéfectible des érudits et artistes de son temps. Dans l'intimité de cette femme de pouvoir, Nancy Mitford fait revivre la cour de Louis XV et décrit avec malice ses intrigues et l'entourage de la marquise.
A revisionist new biography reintroducing readers to one of the most subversive figures in English history--the man who sought to reform a nation, dared to defy his king, and laid down his life to defend his sacred honor Beckets life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guys hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry IIs chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henrys authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Beckets seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God.
Here is a Becket seldom glimpsed in any previous biography, a man of many facets and faces: the skilled warrior as comfortable unhorsing an opponent in single combat as he was negotiatingterms of surrender; the canny diplomat with the appetite of a wolf who unexpectedly became the spiritual paragon of the English church; and the ascetic rebel who waged a high-stakes contest of wills with one of the most volcanic monarchs of the Middle Ages. Driven into exile, derided by his enemies as an ungrateful upstart, Becket returned to Canterbury in the unlikeliest guise of all: as an avenging angel of God, wielding his power of excommunication like a sword. It is this last apparition, the one for which history remembers him best, that will lead to his martyrdom at the hands of the kings minions--a grisly episode that Guy recounts in chilling and dramatic detail.
An uncommonly intimate portrait of one of the medieval worlds most magnetic figures, Thomas Becket breathes new life into its subject--cementing for all time his place as an enduring icon of resistance to the abuse of power.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Kansas City Star Bloomberg From the Hardcover edition.
Adam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas - such as the 'Invisible Hand' of the market - have become icons of the modern world. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book, by one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith's other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand 'Science of Man', one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics.
Nicholas Phillipson reconstructs Smith's intellectual ancestry and formation, of which he gives a radically new and convincing account. He shows Smith's interactions with the rapidly changing and subtly different intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith's ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume. This superb biography is now the one book which anyone interested in the founder of economics must read.
Millions of people around the world watched in horror on that fateful day in Imola at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix when Ayrton Senna's car careered off the track at 190mph. The greatest driver in Formula One history was dead.
In this classic sports book, reissued to tie-in with a new Working Title documentary film about Senna, Richard Williams explores the complex Brazilian who was a hero in his own country and an icon to everyone who loved not just motor-racing but sport itself. In his drive to win and his desire always to test himself to the limit, Senna embodied all that is best and most thrilling in sport.
Carlo D'Este examines the life of Winston Churchill through his military service as both a soldier and warlord. He was the descendent of the first Duke of Marlborough who, despite never having risen above the rank of lieutenant colonel, eventually came at the age of sixty-five to direct Britain's military campaigns in the greatest conflict of the twentieth century.
D'Este explores Churchill's strategies in both world wars - the disastrous failures as well as the dazzling triumphs, and casts fresh light on his tumultuous relationships with his generals. Warlord is a masterful, unsparing portrait of one of history's most fascinating and influential leaders.
