Western Biography

For more than half a century, a shared love of canals and narrowboats has been inseparable from the marriage of Timothy West and Prunella Scales. The two iconic actors have spent many of the happiest days of their life together enjoying the calming pleasures of watching land and nature unfold before them at four miles an hour.

When Chick Ferguson made plans to go to the Yukon, he wasn’t planning on taking his newlywed Mary. He definitely was not planning on spending much of the next 18 years in the wilderness. For he was just a photographer with a little studio in a little town in Montana. His business was failing and having heard of the riches of the fur trade he was hoping to spend a year or two trapping, making a stake and returning to his routine life. But he didn’t figure on love....

When they fell in love in 1928, Rika and Waldemar could have not been more different. She was a thirty-seven-year-old Dutch-born mother, estranged from her husband. He was her immigrant boarder, not yet twenty, and a wealthy Surinamese descendant of slaves. The child they have together, brown skinned and blue eyed, brings the couple great joy yet raises some eyebrows. Until the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands explodes their promising life. What unfolds is more than the astonishing story of a love that prevailed over convention. It’s also the quest of a young boy.

FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all 32 NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. Journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, tells the story of his life in his own words. In this opening volume, Grant covers his early years, including his time at the U.S. military academy at West Point and his service during the Mexican War under Zachary Taylor. Grant wrote his memoirs in order to rescue his family from debt and they were published as he lay dying of throat cancer. Today, they are an American classic.

Shotguns and Stagecoaches tells the true stories of the Wild West heroes who guarded the iconic Wells Fargo stagecoaches and trains, battling colorful thieves, vicious highwaymen, and robbers armed with explosives....

George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten - an omission that John Taliaferro's commanding biography now sets right with historical care and narrative flair.

In 1939, a team of workers beneath the Vatican unearthed an early Christian grave. This surprising discovery launched a secret quest that would last decades a quest to discover the long-lost burial place of the Apostle Peter. From earliest times, Christian tradition held that Peter, a lowly fisherman from Galilee, whom Christ made leader of his church was executed in Rome by Emperor Nero and buried on Vatican Hill. But his tomb had been lost to history. Now, funded anonymously by a wealthy American, a small army of workers embarked on the dig of a lifetime.

Of all the legends and folk heroes who lived in the 19th century, men such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, few actually accomplished as much as Kit Carson. A frontier boy who hopped onto the Santa Fe Trail as a teen, Carson became the quintessential mountain man during the 1830s and was literally a trailblazer for John C. Fremont's historic expeditions through the West in the 1840s.

This succinct account the life of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott focuses on his development as poet, playwright, and man of the theater: director, producer, teacher. Friends and colleagues who figured in his career are recalled. The importance of his native St Lucia and family influences in the shaping of his creativity and his view of the world are highlighted, as these evolved in synergy with his receptivity to the poetry and theater of the wider world.

In a tragic tale of heroism and perservereance, follow the Sager orphans as they take the Oregon Trail in the hopes of finding a new life. When the seven children's parents perish on the journey, how will they survive? This account remains one of the most authentic firsthand accounts of the journeys and hardships of the pioneers in the early West.

Embark on a journey unlike any other—a journey of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and the search for true freedom. Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Elsen, also known as Brother Sun, begins his story with a childhood steeped in curiosity and wonder, guided by enlightened parents who planted the seeds of a life filled with purpose.

Do you want to learn about the artist Benjamin West but don’t have the time or patience to read a thick book? Then this is the short and concise book for you! Grew up in colonial Pennsylvania and with little formal instruction became a portrait painter at a very young age. The first American artist to travel to Italy to study the art of the great masters. Painted the first historical art in America. His art helped transform the Neoclassical art world. Historical painter for Britain’s King George III. Helped found the Royal Academy of Art in London. His “American School” in London ...

Meet Phil Collen. You may know him as the lead guitarist in Def Leppard, whose signature song "Pour Some Sugar on Me" is still as widely enjoyed as when it debuted in 1988. Maybe you've heard of him as the rock star who gave up alcohol and meat more than 25 years ago. Most likely you've seen him shirtless - in photos or in real life - flaunting his impeccably toned body to appreciative female fans.

At the Crossroads is the heartfelt story of Bridgie Ned, a woman whose life began in the rugged beauty of rural Doona, Ballycroy, in the West of Ireland. From the simplicity of her childhood in a small stone cottage without electricity or running water, to her journey across the Atlantic at just 17, Bridgie’s story is one of resilience, love, and laughter. Settling in America, she built a new life, but her heart never truly left her village, with its windswept shores, close-knit neighbors, and the ever-watchful Slieve Mor. Through her wit, humor, and enduring spirit, Bridgie brings to ...

In old age, Charlie Siringo was called "Ulysses of the Wild West" for the long journey he took across the western frontier. Son of the Old West brings him and his legendary world vividly to life.

When Melissa Gould’s husband, Joel, was unexpectedly hospitalized, she could not imagine how her life was about to change. Overwhelmed with uncertainty as Joel’s condition tragically worsened, she offered him the only thing she could: her love and devotion. Her dedication didn’t end with his death. Melissa soon realized that her and Joel’s love lived on. Melissa found she didn’t fit the typical mold of widowhood or meet the expectations of mourning. She didn’t look like a widow or act like a widow, but she felt like one. Melissa was widowish.

In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York, for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their soci-ety luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teach-ing jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied—shocking their families and friends.

For two months every year, from 1946 to his death 18 years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white-sand beach on Jamaica's stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written there. This audiobook explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation of Fleming's iconic postwar hero. The island was for Fleming part retreat from the world, part tangible representation of his values, and part exotic fantasy.

Lacing his vivid narration with poetic interludes, Doig masterfully crafts a remarkable memoir. This House of Sky speaks many truths about family, love, loss, and the landscapes that mold us all.