French Biography

When Mark Greenside - a native New Yorker living in California, political lefty, writer, and lifelong skeptic - is dragged by his girlfriend to a tiny Celtic village in Brittany at the westernmost edge of France in Finistere, or what he describes as "the end of the world," his life begins to change. In a playful, headlong style, and with enormous affection for the Bretons, Greenside shares how he makes a life for himself in a country where he doesn't speak the language or understand the culture.

Nagel tells a remarkable story of an astonishing woman, from her birth, to her upbringing by doting parents, through to Revolution, imprisonment, exile, Restoration, and, finally, her reincarnation as saint and matriarch.

Twenty-one-year-old Linda Kovic needs to learn a language fast in order to fulfill her dream of becoming a flight attendant, so she contracts to become an au pair for a wealthy family in the Loire Valley. In order to secure the nanny position, she lies on her application and pretends to speak French, confident she'll be forgiven once she arrives at her destination. This book captures Linda's real-life story inside and outside the Chateau de Montclair, detailing her challenges and triumphs as she tries to adjust to her new life.

Even before Susan Herrmann Loomis wrote her now-classic memoir, On Rue Tatin, Americans have been compelled by books about the French's ease with cooking. With In a French Kitchen, Loomis—an expat who long ago traded her American grocery store for a bustling French farmer's market—demystifies in lively prose the seemingly effortless je ne sais quoi behind a simple French meal.

When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters.

A little over 10 years ago, Janine Marsh and her husband gave up their careers in London to chase the good life in the countryside of northern France. Having overcome the obstacles of starting to renovate her dream home - an ancient, dilapidated barn - and fitting in with the peculiarities of the locals, Janine is now the go-to expat in the area for those seeking to get to grips with a very different way of life. In this book, Janine regales us with the delights and dramas of a year attempting to live the rural idyll.

This comprehensive military biography of George Washington entertainingly examines Washington's capacity as a military leader. Acclaimed historian Edward G. Lengel, an associate editor of the University of Virginia's Papers of George Washington project, bases this engrossing work on the most extensive collection of Washington's personal correspondence.

A compelling, thought-provoking memoir about Nancy French's journey from her family's mountain roots to success as a ghostwriter, only to be rejected by her party, church, and community. Ghosted by New York Times bestselling author Nancy French is for all who were alienated by those closest to them and left spiritually and politically homeless.

Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War, Andrew Roberts presents us with a bracingly honest and deeply insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Margaret Thatcher. Each one of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war in which their nation was embroiled.

Écrit par l’auteur de la biographie autorisée de Steve Jobs, voici le récit intime de l’innovateur le plus fascinant et le plus controversé de la planète. Visionnaire défiant toutes les règles, Elon Musk est l’homme qui a fait entrer le monde dans l’ère des voitures électriques, de l’exploration spatiale privée et de l’intelligence artificielle. Ah, au fait : il a aussi racheté Twitter. Durant son enfance en Afrique du Sud, Elon Musk est la cible des violences de ses camarades. Un jour, une bande le pousse du haut d’une volée de marches et le roue de coups, réduisant son visage à une masse de chair boursouflée.

The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.

On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place of his brother King Charles, who had gone mad. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, the city's chief law enforcement officer - and one of history's first detectives. As de Tignonville began to investigate, he realized that his hunt for the truth was much more dangerous than he ever could have imagined.

In This Country of Ours, H. E. Marshall tells the story of America from the start of the settlements, to 1912, ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. She tells it in a fashion that children are able to understand, and that will keep them interested. Marshall has filled this book with about 100 years of history, breaking them down by regions.

Appel: A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion is the first-hand account of the author’s six years as a professional soldier during the 1990s, and his experience in the Legion's elite Groupe des Commandos Parachutistes (GCP). Joel Struthers recounts the dangers and demands of military life, from the rigours of recruitment and operational training in the rugged mountains of France, to face-to-face combat in the grasslands of some of Africa’s most troubled nations.

En 2022, Lisa Marie Presley a demandé à sa fille de l’aider à terminer les mémoires qu’elle portait en elle depuis si longtemps. Un mois plus tard, Lisa Marie était morte, et le monde ne connaîtrait jamais son histoire avec ses propres mots, ni la femme passionnée, joyeuse, attentionnée et complexe que Riley aimait et pleurait maintenant. Riley a récupéré les cassettes que sa mère avait enregistrées pour le livre, s’est allongée dans son lit et a écouté Lisa Marie se raconter. Les voiturettes de golf qu’elle démolissait avec ses amis dans les jardins de Graceland.

Paul Johnson's book is a refreshing return to a concept whose time has come once again: the Great Man theory of biography. It serves as "the greatest possible refutation of those who hold that events are governed by forces, classes, economics, and geography rather than the powerful wills of men and women". Napoleon truly was the Great Man of his age, a towering and terrible genius who managed to conquer the Continent.

Don and Mindy Wallace have always been Francophiles, so when they had the opportunity to buy a home on a small French island off the coast of Brittany, they jumped—sight unseen—into a crumbling mess that challenged their finances and their family. But when the Wallaces arrived on the island, they found a building in ruin, and it wasn't long before their lives resembled it. Plagued by emergency repairs, a stock market crash, and very exasperated French neighbors, Don and Mindy could have accepted their fate. Instead, they embraced it.

Louis XIV, known as the Grand Monarch, or the Sun King, was a sovereign of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years is the longest recorded of any monarch in European history. In the age of absolutism, Louis XIV's France was the leader in the growing centralization of power.

Joseph Fouché (1759-1820) est l'une des figures les plus énigmatiques de son temps. Il a servi avec zèle la République, le Directoire, le Consulat, l'Empire et la Monarchie. Homme de l'ombre, disciple de Machiavel, Fouché aura survécu à tous les changements de régime sans jamais se départir de cette "absence de conviction" qui fascina Balzac autant que Stefan Zweig. Élève chez les Oratoriens, il devint sous la Révolution un pilleur d'églises. Conventionnel modéré, il vota la mort du roi et participa activement au massacre des Lyonnais royalistes.

Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romance-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine. In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romance-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison - a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder - unless he paid a one million euro ransom.