Western Biography

In the grand scheme of things, very little is known of Mansa Musa’s life. We know that he was one of the greatest emperors of the Mali Empire. And we know that he was actually one of the richest men of all time due to the enormous gold deposits in West Africa that were under his dominion, but large parts of Mansa Musa’s life remain a mystery.

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.

An old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. When A. J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the well at the world’s end, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth.

From the early 1800s to the end of his life in 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody was as famous as anyone could be. Annie Oakley was his most celebrated protegee, the "slip of a girl" from Ohio who could (and did) outshoot anybody to become the most celebrated star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Herbert Hoover led one of the most fascinating lives of an America in the twentieth century. Orphaned as a young boy he would graduate from Stanford University, build a fortune as a mining engineer, and become the most accomplished humanitarian of his era. His complex personality led many to view him as aloof and uncaring, though ironically through his extreme generosity he helped feed millions of starving Europeans during two World Wars. After a brilliant career as Secretary of Commerce he became president of the United States in 1928 which was at the high point of America’s prosperity. ...

As a young woman growing up in Africa, 17-year-old Leymah Gbowee was crushed by a savage war when violence reached her native Monrovia, depriving her of the education she yearned for and claiming the lives of relatives and friends. As war continued to ravage Liberia, Gbowee’s bitterness turned to rage-fueled action as she realized that women bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule.

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West's most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women offers a glimpse into the Western women's experience that's less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late 1800s, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boomtowns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory.

In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way, binding together ambitious White entrepreneurs and enslaved Black workers in a strangling embrace....

On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters.

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.

True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times is the story of an American icon, a lasting portrait of Sam Shepard as he really was, revealed by those who knew him best. This sweeping biography charts Shepard’s long and complicated journey from a small town in Southern California to become an internationally known playwright and movie star. The only son of an alcoholic father, Shepard crafted a public persona as an authentic American archetype: the loner, the cowboy, the drifter, the stranger in a strange land.

Even when the dauphin’s own mother betrayed him, Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Sicily, fought to save her son-in-law and his claim to the throne. But the enemy seemed invincible. Just as French hopes dimmed, an astonishingly courageous young woman named Joan of Arc arrived from the farthest recesses of the kingdom, claiming that she carried a divine message. Now, on the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, this beautifully written book explores the relationship between these two remarkable women.

During the Civil War, the eyes of the nation usually stayed fixed to the Eastern theater, but one of the bright spots in the West for the Confederacy was Irish immigrant Patrick Cleburne, whose successes earned him the nickname "Stonewall of the West". Where so many Confederates were failing, Cleburne's strategic tactics and bold defensive fighting earned him fame and recognition throughout the South, even leading Lee to call him "a meteor shining from a clouded sky."

How can one pilot cram so much into a single lifetime? Climb into Captain Terry Reece's cockpit, fasten your seatbelt, and hold on for an exciting journey into the world of aviation. Born to a family of transplanted North Carolinians who moved to Washington State, a young Reece explored the hills of the Pacific Northwest. Hiking in the mountains and being a fire lookout gave him a taste of adventure, but he craved more-and he got it.

Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.

This book takes listeners into the life and legacy of a man who became a symbol of resistance against imperialism. Through gripping narratives and accounts, it explores Albizu Campos's intellectual development, his influences from global anti-colonial movements, and his fiery leadership. The examination of his speeches, political actions, and the devastating consequences of his stance, such as the Ponce Massacre, captivates listeners with the emotional and political stakes involved.

Lust for Life is Irving Stone's biographical novel about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Largely based on the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, the novel details the artist's difficult life, as well as describing the origins of many of his famous paintings, such as The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers, and others.

Even after WWI had ended, the region of Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas stubbornly refused to be tamed. It was still a place where frontier gunfights broke out at an alarming rate. Utilizing official records, newspaper accounts, and oral histories, Cowboys and Gangsters tells the story of the untamed "Wild West" of the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 1930s and introduces a rogues' gallery of six-gun-packing Western gunfighters and lawmen.

In this classic of social history, the author describes the lives of six obscure men and women of the Middle Ages. She draws on account books, records, letters, diaries, and wills to make the life of those times as concrete and comprehensible as our own.