Книги жанра биографии и мемуары

Simon Callow plunges headlong into Wagner’s world to discover what it was like to be Wagner, and to be around one of music’s most influential figures.A hundred and thirty-five years after his death, Richard Wagner’s music dramas stand at the centre of the culture of classical music. They have never been more popular, nor so violently controversial and divisive. His music is still banned in Israel …

A powerful and inspiring book from the founders of IDEO, the award-winning design firm, on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us.Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the ‘creative types’. But two of the foremost experts in innovation, design and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is cr…

As Lance Armstrong’s precipitous fall from grace continues, New York Times sports reporter Juliet Macur takes the reader behind the scenes to bring you the astonishing twists and turns of an outrage that has rocked the world of cycling.With unprecedented access to the key players in the drama – from Armstrong’s fellow cyclists and top cycling officials to doctors, trainers and wives – ‘Cycle of Li…

For over 30 years Sherard Cowper-Coles was on the diplomatic front line in a distinguished Foreign Office career that took him from the corridors of power in Whitehall to a string of high-profile posts across the globe.Entering the Foreign Office fresh from Oxford in 1977, he enjoyed a meteoric rise with postings in Beirut, Alexandria and Cairo, Washington, and Paris, and working on Hong Kong, pun…

‘The small translucent bottle of shampoo outlived him. It was the kind you take home from hotels in distant places. For over a year it had sat on the shower shelf where he had left it. I looked at it every day.’After the death of her partner of thirty-two years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. The dead of prior generations lo…

‘Nominally a history of the hot air balloon, Falling Upwards is really a history of hope and fantasy—and the quixotic characters who disobeyed that most fundamental laws of physics and gave humans flight.’ —The New Republic, Best Books of 2013CHOSEN AS BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN ** Guardian ** New Statesman ** Daily Telegraph ** New Republic ****TIME Magazine 10 Top Nonfiction Books of 2013** **The…

From the bestselling author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a hilarious new book from Lynne Truss about her strange journey through the world of sport and sports journalism.Get Her Off the Pitch! is the story of one woman's foray into the very masculine and rather baffling world of sport. Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, spent four years as an unlikely sports writer for The Times. It wa…

It’s late on Friday night when Casey’s mobile starts to ring. She is expecting it to be her daughter Riley. But it isn’t Riley. It’s a woman from the Emergency Duty Team. So begins Casey and Mike’s latest fostering challenge – a fifteen-year-old girl called Keeley who’s run away from her long-term foster home 25 miles away.The Jonathan Ross Show has just started when Casey gets the call. She think…

Transformative lessons in life learnt through a remarkable three-year-old girl's battle with cancer. From Hannah's story emerge five profound lessons – of truth, joy, faith, compassion and wonder – that have the power to change our lives.Every once in a while a book comes along that can change your life – a book so special, it is destined not just to be read but to be cherished, to be passed from …

Part history, part travel journal and part autobiography, ‘Hotel Tiberias’ is a journey of many layers and resonances, as Sebastian Hope follows the tumultuous story of his family’s hotel in Palestine.In 1900,Thomas Cook, who had been running tours of the Holy Land since the 1890s, financed the building of a hotel in Tiberias, the largest town on the Sea of Galilee, which had long been a stopover …

With a foreword by Eddy MerckxThe world of professional cycling is fraught with fierce competition, fervent dedication and unerring ambition, and only a handful of competitors reach iconic status. Among them is Sir Bradley Wiggins – a man uniquely placed to reflect on the history of this remarkable sport and its unforgettable titans.In Icons, Wiggins takes the reader on an extraordinarily intimate…

In the vein of Bad Blood and Why be Happy when you can be Normal?: an enthralling, at times shocking, and deeply personal family memoir of growing up in, and breaking away from, a fundamentalist Christian cult.‘At university when I made new friends and confidantes, I couldn’t explain how I’d become a teenage mother, or shoplifted books for years, or why I was afraid of the dark and had a compulsio…

First time in ebook format, this biography of Isaac Newton reveals the extraordinary influence that the study of alchemy had on the greatest Early Modern scientific discoveries. In this ‘ground breaking biography’ Michael White destroys the myths of the life of Isaac Newton and reveals a portrait of the scientist as the last sorcerer.According to traditional accounts, Newton was the first modern s…

Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of MI14(d) and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time.‘This is an amazing story’ Simon Mayo, BBC Radio 2Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of 'Columba' – a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from tho…