Western Biography

In 1980, I was thirty years old, and my son, ten, when we traveled to Guinea, then a closed country in West Africa. My fiancé was a geologist working in a diamond exploration camp in Baoule Valley, near Kérouané. During my time there I kept a diary. Once back in the United States, I wrapped the diary in a silk scarf and tucked it away. I had had planned to return to Guinea and the diamond camp, but life took me in a different direction. I didn't open and read the diary until autumn of 2023, forty-four years later.

Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a universal empire. She gave him the opportunity to lead the way. In Walter Ralegh, Alan Gallay shows that, while Ralegh may be best known for founding the failed Roanoke colony, his historical importance vastly exceeds that enterprise. Inspired by the mystical religious philosophy of hermeticism, Ralegh led English attempts to colonize in North America, South America, and Ireland.

One of the biggest concerns as the Civil War wrapped up was that Confederate troops might disappear into the Appalachian Mountains where they could conduct guerrilla raids with relative impunity. If they did, the war could have been extended for years, maybe even decades as the insurgents crept out of their strongholds to conduct hit-and-run raids.

Paul Lamb is a hedgelayer. From the end of summer until the birds begin to nest in the spring, his primary employment is the maintenance and restoration of hedgerows. This book, following the rhythm of the seasons, describes Paul’s life on the road and the practical aspects of his job, including the highs and the lows. It is about practising a craft with skill and preserving it for future generations, and celebrating the glory of the landscape he loves so much.

When the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the United States, found himself rushing back to his beloved country. The earthquake ignited a passion in Joseph, inspiring him to run for president against great competition, including two well-known Haitian pop stars, his nephew Wyclef Jean and Michel Martelly. But he couldn't compete in a democratic system corrupt to the core.

Whilst it’s impossible to capture the essence of Nigeria in one story, its writers have given listeners the opportunity to experience the many different parts that make up Africa’s most populous nation. In Of This Our Country, acclaimed and award-winning Nigerian writers go a step further and describe their Nigeria, sharing personal essays about a country that holds so much more than any one perspective could. Through the words of these writers, a living portrait of Nigeria is woven, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

The Allied invasion of Europe during summer 1944 was widely expected, and it fell to the Axis intelligence services to provide High Command with advance warning of the precise date and place of the landings. Using cryptanalysis of Allied signals, undercover agents and ships, and photographic evidence, Axis intelligence was pitted directly against their Allied counterparts, who actively tried to create a decoy and aim their enemies at the wrong location.

Cameron West was in his thirties, a successful businessman, happily married and the father of a young son when he spoke these words. The “voice” he heard belonged to Davy, the first of twenty-four distinct alter personalities to emerge over a period of several months as West began to recall memories of horrific abuse he’d repressed since childhood.

If you are a hip hop fan and want "the real" about the "World's Most Dangerous Group" and all the players that paved the way for West Coast hip hop, this is the audiobook for you, told by the man who was there from the very beginning.

Nicolaus Copernicus was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer who lived during the Renaissance and Reformation eras and contributed to science with a new model of the universe that placed the Sun instead of the Earth at the center of the universe. Although a similar theory had been formulated centuries earlier by Aristarchus of Samos, Copernicus went much farther than anyone before him. A major milestone in the history of science, the publication of his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543 was a radical act that demolished thousand-year old beliefs. Born in Royal ...

At first glance, John Forbes Nash Jr. seemed to have it all: a PhD from Princeton, a beautiful wife, and a fantastic job teaching mathematics at MIT. He had no idea that at the age of 31, his entire life would fall apart, and it would take decades of hospitalization before his brilliant self would reemerge from the hell of schizophrenia - not unlike a butterfly trapped too long in a cocoon.

When Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957, it immediately became a target for opportunists determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. The military ousted the new nation’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of stealing the country’s gold and hiding it overseas. Into this story stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, John Ackah Blay-Miezah – a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty, Blay-Miezah declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions.

What if the richest man in history didn’t hoard his fortune—but gave it away? In the 14th century, a West African emperor named Mansa Musa shook the world with a single journey. His legendary pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by tens of thousands and rivers of gold, turned the Mali Empire into a symbol of wealth and wonder. But Mansa Musa was more than a man of riches—he was a visionary who believed that true power comes from faith, knowledge, and generosity.

Masters and Commanders has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

With the coming of the railroads, the American cowboy's job changed drastically, as the great trail herds became a thing of the past. Many cowboys faded into history, but there was a place in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah that still prized their skills. Val FitzPatrick's family homesteaded in this region, and Val became a rider for the Two-Bar at the age of 14. In later years, Val wrote many accounts of his life, and The Arbuckle Cafe is a collection of the best of his stories, all classic and authentic insights of what life on the range was really like.

In 2001, at 47, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, of Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed.

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.

On a warm night in September 1985, teenagers Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were brutally murdered in Westside Park in Muncie, Indiana. Their killer has never been charged. Early on, police focused on a family member of one of the teens as a primary suspect. The investigation even ruled out fantastic scenarios, including a theory that the perpetrator was a Dungeons & Dragons devotee. The case grew cold.

While Pang-Mei Natasha Chang was a Chinese Studies major at Harvard University, she stumbled across the name of her 83-year-old great aunt Chang Yu-i in a history book. Over the next several years, Pang-Mei spent long afternoons drawing forth her aunt's story. Born in Shanghai to a well-to-do family, Chang Yu-i lived a life of defiance, continually breaking class and culture barriers.

Meet Julian Dicks. Wonderful name, wonderful player, and (alongside Paulo Di Canio), undoubtedly the greatest 'cult figure' to play for West Ham United for a generation. Hammer Time is Dicks' hugely entertaining romp through his career with West Ham, shot through with all the great anecdotes of life as a pro back then, and peppered with all the marvellous characters who crossed his path in those halcyon days.