Chris

Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.

In this addition to the esteemed Oxford History of the United States series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era of revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated America's expansion and prompted the rise of mass political parties.

Vividly reminiscent of the goings-on at Sterling Cooper - the late nights, the three-martini lunches, the sex on couches, and, of course, the actual work of plugging products - this is the story of what Madison Avenue was really like in the 1960s. A worldwide best seller when first published in 1970, this frank, irreverent, and hilarious memoir is a one-of-a-kind cult classic.

Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time and place, develop so differently? What combinations of talents and temperaments gave them their signature styles?

The first uncensored biography to investigate our era's most celebrated, distinctive, and confounding filmmaker reveals the controversial private life behind the iconic public persona.

Eminent - and best selling - historian Simon Schama takes the listener back in time to the Britain that existed in the 17th and 18th centuries, introducing us to the ill-fated Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, John Milton and Benjamin Franklin, and some not-so-famous characters who helped define the course of British history. "Delightfully accessible," say the critics, "a powerful experience."

Over thirty years ago, a group of five Englishmen and one wayward American re-wrote the rules of comedy. Monty Python's Flying Circus, an unheralded collection of sketches, hilarities, inanities and animations first appeared on the BBC late one night in 1969. Its impact on the world has been felt ever since.

The epitome of grace, independence, and wit, Lauren Bacall continues to astound generations with her audacious spirit and on-screen excellence. Together with Humphrey Bogart, she produced some of the most electric scenes in movie history, and their romance on and off screen made them Hollywood's most celebrated couple.

With profound empathy and insight, Hermione Lee brilliantly interweaves Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age. In its revelation of both the woman and the writer, Edith Wharton is a landmark biography.

Beauchamp writes about the pictures Kennedy produced, the stars he made - and destroyed - and the men who did his bidding. She also writes about the Hollywood titans in his midst: William Randolph Hearst, Cecille B. DeMille, and David Sarnoff, whose collaboration with Kennedy resulted in the formation of RKO Studios.