Historical Memoirs

Fabián Escalante, the founder of the Cuban Intelligence Services and head of the Cuban State Security Department, provides a clear-eyed, first-person account of his experiences defending Fidel Castro from the extraordinary attempts to take his life. From lethal poisons to plastic explosives to bazookas, Escalante introduces and describes an array of assassination plots and historical figures and depicts the ensuing cat-and-mouse game in the midst of the Cold War.

On a March night in 2000, two deputy sheriffs serving a warrant were shot in Atlanta, Georgia. One was severely wounded while the other would die a day later. The shooting kicked off a large manhunt in search of the alleged cop killer. Four days later in Alabama, authorities found their man—Jamil Al-Amin. He was a Muslim leader with the title of Imam in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. He was also the man formerly known as H. Rap Brown. He was a charismatic Black radical in the late '60s.

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.

A True Story of Resilience Survival and Unbroken Spirit A Civilian Dutch Woman in Europe During World War II Treasures of Sadness is the story of Corrie's unbroken spirit. If you love historical fiction, don't miss reading this real life memoir and page-turner: Treasures of Sadness Treasures of Sadness is a real life account of a woman’s journey that began during World War II. Corrie grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Amersfoort, Holland in the 1940’s. From there she fell in love with a German soldier, rubbed elbows with royalty in Vienna, Austria and ended up in a coal mining town ...

Cyrus Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of thirty had been "illuminated" by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the 20th century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised.

In his best-selling autobiography, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and chief architect of Nazi Germany, repeatedly insisted he knew nothing of the genocidal crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer's lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well. Kitchen reconstructs Speer's life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years.

Acclaimed author Joseph J. Ellis penned the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, a fixture on The New York Times best seller list for an entire year, and one of the most popular history books of all time. Now this master historian turns his attention to the most exalted American hero, Founding Father and first President George Washington.

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

John Milton Cooper, Jr., is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s preeminent Woodrow Wilson biographers. This thoroughly researched profile of America’s 28th president is universally hailed for its scholarship and insight into the life and career ofone of the nation’s most polarizing leaders.

As a child, he was given his own suit of armor; at the age of 16, he helped defeat the French at Crecy. At Poitiers, in 1356, his victory over King John II of France forced the French into a humiliating surrender that marked the zenith of England's dominance in the Hundred Years War. As lord of Aquitaine, he ruled a vast swathe of territory across the west and southwest of France, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, and better known to posterity as "the Black Prince".

Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion - the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century. Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only 25 years old, the young queen saw herself as the nation’s Protestant savior, aiming to provide new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.

In this compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio gives us the real-life rags-to-riches story of Milton S. Hershey, a largely uneducated businessman whose idealistic sense of purpose created an immense financial empire, a town, and a legacy that lasts to this day.

In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.

The life story of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, lone survivor of an exterminated tribe, is unique in the annals of North American anthropology. Ishi stumbled into the 20th century on the morning of August 29, 1911, when, desperate with hunger and terrified of the white murderers of his family, he was found in the corral of a slaughterhouse near Oroville, California.

This life-sized portrait of Stuart surveys his life from childhood through his training at West Point, his years on the Western frontier, and his decision to stand with Virginia when war arrived. His brilliant Civil War career is covered in detail, from the raid on Chambersburg to his final, fatal clash at Yellow Tavern.

Marcus Porcius Cato: aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops, political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher, a hardnosed defender of tradition who presented himself as a man out of the sacred Roman past-and the last man standing when Rome's Republic fell to tyranny. His blood feud with Caesar began in the chamber of the Senate, played out on the battlefields of a world war, and ended when he took his own life rather than live under a dictator.

How did DEA agents orchestrate the capture of one of the world’s most wanted weapons dealers? How does an all-female, unarmed group of rangers stop poachers from killing South Africa’s most majestic wild animals? And how did a scrappy crew of soldiers help desperate Afghans escape Kabul during the Taliban’s rapid takeover? Welcome to Heroes Behind Headlines: Only the Brave, where host Ralph Pezzullo takes you on deep dives into extraordinary true stories, told to you by the experts and the brave men and women who lived them.

In this first volume of a new chronicle, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending on Germany's comprehensive military defeat of Poland in 1939.

Ramachandra Guha takes us from Gandhi's birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London, and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi's contemporaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political, and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: "Great Soul".

History remembers Attila, the leader of the Huns, as the Romans perceived him: a savage barbarian brutally inflicting terror on whoever crossed his path. Following Attila and the Huns from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the court of Constantinople, Christopher Kelly portrays Attila in a compelling new light, uncovering an unlikely marriage proposal, a long-standing relationship with a treacherous Roman general, and a thwarted assassination plot.