Фредрик Логевалл0.0 The definitive biography of John F. Kennedy, from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall. This is the untold story of how the rise of President Kennedy and the rise of the United States mirror one another - from 1917, when Kennedy was born, to 1963, when he died and the US was at the peak of its power. Full of new material from sources including a huge number of Oval Office tapes, a large volume of interviews with Jackie Kennedy, and never-before-seen CIA documents, Harvard professor Logevall focuses on international relations more so than any other biographer of this misunderstood figure. For example, he uncovers detailed material not only on President Kennedy's father as ambassador to Britain but also on his rapidly-established relationship with Harold Macmillan, and on his and Jackie's relationships with individuals in the United Kingdom. Peerlessly authoritative, this is a biography for the ages.
Судхир Хазарисингх0.0 The Haitian revolution began in the French colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in November 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black republic. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture became the leader of the colony's black population, commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. Treacherously captured by Napoleon's invading army a year later and imprisoned, he ended his days as the revolution's most eminent martyr. Louverture confronted the mighty forces of his age - slavery, settler colonialism, imperial domination, racial hierarchy and European cultural supremacy - and bent them to his will.
Sudhir Hazareesingh draws on a wealth of archival material, much of it overlooked by previous biographers, to follow every step in Louverture's singular career, to capture his voice and the force of his personality. To a greater extent than any previous biography, Black Spartacus understands Louverture's vision and leadership not solely in the context of events in Europe and imported Enlightenment ideals, but in a world of hybrid slave culture and African and Caribbean influences.
Sarah Lefanu0.0 In early 1900, the paths of three British writers--Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle--crossed in South Africa, during what's become known as Britain's last imperial war. Each of the three had pressing personal reasons to leave England behind, but they were also motivated by notions of duty, service and patriotism.
Sarah LeFanu compellingly opens an unexplored chapter of these writers' lives, at a turning point for Britain and its imperial ambitions. Was the South African War, as Kipling claimed, a dress rehearsal for the Armageddon of World War One? Or did it instead foreshadow the anti-colonial guerrilla wars of the later twentieth century?
Weaving a rich and varied narrative, LeFanu charts the writers' paths in the theatre of war, and explores how this crucial period shaped their cultural legacies, their shifting reputations, and their influence on colonial policy.
Самант Субраманьян0.0 J. B. S. Haldane’s life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama—from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him “the last man who might know all there was to be known.”
He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio—all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think.
Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character recounts Haldane’s boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics—questions that resonate even more urgently today.
