by Andrew Roberts (Get the Book)
Military historian Roberts (Lehrman Inst. Distinguished Fellow, New-York Historical Soc.; Napoleon and Wellington) revisits the subject of a former work with a compelling biography of the preeminent French general Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) that stands apart from the rest owing to the author's thoroughness, accuracy, and attention to detail. Roberts relies on his military expertise, Napoleon's surviving correspondence (33,000 items in all), and exhaustive on-site studies of French battlegrounds during the Hundred Days to carefully describe what each battle, including the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War, must have been like for victors and losers. In the process, he deflates many of the myths that still surround the emperor nearly 200 years after his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The author doesn't apologize for Napoleon's errors but the tone of his study is positive: Napoleon "personified the best parts of the French Revolution" and his example and military reforms impacted not only European life but had lasting consequences on how contemporary wars are fought. VERDICT This voluminous work is likely to set the standard for subsequent accounts of Napoleon's life. It should appeal widely to readers of all types. --Library Journal
by Hermione Lee (Get the Book)
Although, sadly, not as well known in the U.S., Booker Prize winner Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a powerhouse of British letters, particularly acclaimed for her novel The Blue Flower (1995). Fitzgerald's wide-ranging career was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she didn't publish her first work, a biography of the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burke-Jones, until she was nearly 60. Her life up to that point, however, provided her with rich source material upon which to draw. Hers was a bohemian existence in London during the 1960s and 1970s, a turbulent time in which she tried to raise a family in near poverty, suffering the misfortunes of her alcoholic husband. Fitzgerald herself once said that biographies should be written about people you love, and clearly, exceptional biographer Lee (Edith Wharton, 2007) is fully enamored of her subject. Extensively researched and exuberantly detailed, Lee's examination delves the depths and heights of this roller-coaster life while meticulously deconstructing each of Fitzgerald's works. A first-rate trove of literary criticism and background that lovers of literature will find invaluable. --Booklist
by Boris Johnson (Get the Book)
While there are many accounts of Winston Churchill and his political savvy, one would be remiss to ignore this sprightly written volume by Johnson, whose day job is serving as mayor of London. Johnson's purpose in retelling Churchill's story is quite simple: he believes that the portly, cigar smoking, whiskey imbibing politician was, without doubt, the greatest British statesman in history. He further contends that we can learn much from examining how Churchill defended the British Empire, defeated Adolf Hitler's intimidating forces, and confronted the rise of communism-all in the name of representative government in the modern age. The author surveys Churchill's life (1874-1965) from beginning to end in a style that uses descriptive and occasionally unexpected words to portray the politician's business arrangements and entry into World War II. (For example, he employs the terms vaginal, cervix, uterus, and phallus to describe the Gallipoli Campaign, one of the Allies' greatest failures.) VERDICT Johnson's history of Churchill is well crafted, amply researched, and a pleasure to read. It can serve as a change of pace from more plodding accounts. --Library Journal
by Deborah Feldman (Get the Book)
In this follow-up to her New York Times-best-selling memoir Unorthodox (2012), Feldman positions herself as the quintessential wandering Jew. Exodus tells the story of Feldman's journey of self-discovery, which takes her from the American South to the Jewish ghettos of Old World Europe. Along the way, Feldman both meets and is alienated by Jews and Gentiles alike, falls in and out of love with a redneck (complete with motorcycle and shotgun collections), travels across continental Europe, and visits the tiny Hungarian village where her ancestors were born, always trying to find her own sense of identity separate from the strict Hasidic sect in which she was raised. Feldman's journey is undeniably and explicitly Jewish, but the aching need to find both a welcoming community and a sense of individuality is one that readers from all walks of life will be able to identify with. Those left unsatisfied with the abrupt ending to Unorthodox will enjoy the more hopeful conclusion to Feldman's second book as well as her more mature and increasingly eloquent writing style. --Booklist
by Meryle Secrest (Get the Book)
Ever-curious and wonderfully adept biographer Secrest (Modigliani, 2011) presents the first full portrait of dynamic couturier Schiaparelli. Bookish and rebellious while growing up in Rome, Schiaparelli landed in New York, wed to a con man whose stunts as a psychic investigator got them both in trouble. Left on her own to care for her ill daughter, dark-eyed and determined Schiaparelli, with her lithe physique and dragonfly mind, arrived in Paris like a mighty little tempest in 1922. An artist and by nature in sync with the surrealists she and Salvador Dali became close friends Schiaparelli created arresting trompe l'oeil knits depicting sailor's tattoos and x-rays and ingeniously used lobster, butterfly, newsprint, and circus motifs, exquisite embroidery, and wildly imaginative buttons to achieve a nonchalant chic. Secrest chronicles perfectionist Schiaparelli's business deals, A-list social network, gift for celebrity, arch wit, and ardor for new fabrics and saturated colors, especially the pink she named Shocking. Secrest also reveals the darker side of Schiaparelli's fame, from her FBI file to persistent but unsubstantiated suspicions of collaboration and espionage during the German occupation, her rivalry with Chanel, and the role fashion played in Parisian society during and after the world wars. Richly illustrated and endlessly intriguing, Secrest's biography illuminates the daredevil swagger of Schiaparelli's clothes and the oft-besieged couturier's inexhaustible tenacity and dazzling creativity. --Booklist
by Amy Biancolli (Get the Book)
"Your life isn't over." My dad says this. "I mean, YOUR life isn't over. Beyond the kids. You'll go on living, doing things. This isn't it." I know, I assure him. I have the kids. They need me. They're my life now. "OK," he replies, then grunts--more of a brief hum. He only hums when he thinks I'm full of shit. Shockingly single. Amy Biancolli's life went off script more dramatically than most after her husband of twenty years jumped off the roof of a parking garage. Left with three children, a three-story house, and a pile of knotty psychological complications, Amy realizes the flooding dishwasher, dead car battery, rapidly growing lawn, basement sump pump, and broken doorknob aren't going to fix themselves. She also realizes that "figuring shit out" means accepting the horrors that came her way, rolling with them, slogging through them, helping others through theirs, and working her way through life with love and laughter. Amy Biancolli is an author and journalist whose column appears in the Albany Times Union . Before that, Amy served as film critic for the Houston Chronicle where her reviews, published around the country, won her the 2007 Comment and Criticism Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Biancolli is the author of House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts , which earned her Albany Author of the Year. Amy lives in Albany, New York, with her three children. (Summary)
by Samuel C. Gwynne (Get the Book)
Dispensing with a chronological march through the life of Confederate General Thomas Jackson, Gwynne presents Jackson's eccentric personality in biographical episodes that he injects into the arc of Jackson's Civil War campaigns and battles. For example, the book covers the future hero's boyhood and his 1850s tenure at the Virginia Military Institute (a rich source of anecdotes of Jackson's oddities) after the 1861 Battle of Bull Run. Gwynne's technique succeeds, thanks to his spry prose and cogent insight, in revealing Jackson's character. Describing him as shy, serious, determined, and profoundly religious, Gwynne captures the stiff, asocial persona Jackson presented to the world. Yet Jackson did exhibit warmer traits in female company, evidenced by Gwynne' quotations of surviving letters, though those don't reveal his feelings about his estrangement from his Unionist sister, Laura. Better known is Jackson's inflexible attitude toward military duty and, most important to history, his tactical and strategic command of warfare. Showing Jackson's exploitation of speed and deception, Gwynne's vivid account of his Civil War run, which ended with his death in the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, is a riveting, cover-to-cover read for history buffs. --Booklist
