Despite lacking pitch, rhythm, or tone, Florence Foster Jenkins became one of America's best-known sopranos, celebrated for her unique recordings and her sell-out concert at Carnegie Hall-- | Author: Nicholas Martin, Jasper Rees | Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin | Publication Date: Jul 12, 2016 | Number of Pages: 256 pages | Language: English | Binding: Paperback/Biography & Autobiography | ISBN-10: 1250115957 | ISBN-13: 9781250115959
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - An "absorbing" (Los Angeles Times) biography of one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in Russian history--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs "[A] compelling portrait not just of a Russian titan, but also of a flesh-and-blood woman."--Newsweek ONE OF ESQUIRE'S BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL TIME - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Vogue, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Providence Journal Robert K. Massie returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became Catherine the Great. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution. Catherine's family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies--all are here, vividly brought to life. History offers few stories richer than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, an eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.
New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother. This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple in more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950's. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn't committed, orphaning her children. Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel's story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.
constance wu's is a can't-miss