Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

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  The Emperor Commodus - God and...

  John S. McHugh

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  This historical biography goes beyond popular legend to present a nuanced portrait of the first century Roman emperor. 
   
  Commodus, who ruled over Rome from 177 to 192, is generally remembered as a debaucherous megalomaniac who fought as a gladiator. Ridiculed and maligned by historians since his own time, modern popular culture knows him as the patricidal villain in Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator. Much of his infamy is clearly based on fact, but John McHugh reveals a more complex story in the first full-length biography of Commodus to appear in English.  
   
  McHugh sets Commodus’s twelve-year reign in its historical context, showing that the ‘kingdom of gold’ he supposedly inherited was actually an empire devastated by plague and war. Openly autocratic, Commodus compromised the privileges and vested interests of the senatorial clique, who therefore plotted to murder him. Surviving repeated conspiracies only convinced Commodus that he was under divine protection, increasingly identifying himself as Hercules reincarnate. This and his antics in the arena allowed his senatorial enemies to present Commodus as a mad tyrant—thereby justifying his eventual murder.

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  Barbra - The Way She Is

  Christopher Andersen

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  She is a one-name legend, a global icon, the ultimate diva. Yet most of what we know about Barbra Joan Streisand is the stuff of caricature: the Brooklyn girl made good, the ugly duckling who blossomed into a modern-day Nefertiti, the political dilettante driving to the barricades in her Rolls-Royce, the Oscar-winning actress and bona fide movie mogul, the greatest female singer who ever lived, a skinflint, a philanthropist, a connoisseur and a barbarian, the woman whose physical characteristics are instantly identifiable around the planet—the tapered nails, those slightly crossed eyes, that nose, the voice. Even to the multitudes around the world who idolize her, Streisand remains aloof, unknowable, tantalizingly beyond reach. Until now. In the manner of his number-one New York Times bestsellers The Day Diana Died and  The Day John Died, Christopher Andersen taps into important sources—eyewitnesses to Streisand's remarkable life and career—to paint a startling portrait of the artist...and the woman.Whether you love her, hate her, or are simply spellbound by her titanic talent, Barbra is one thing above all others: a true American original.

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  Edward VI - The Lost King of...

  Chris Skidmore

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  The birth of Edward on October 12, 1537, ended his father's twenty-seven-year wait for an heir. Nine years later, Edward was on the throne, a boy-king in a court where manipulation, treachery, and plotting were rife.Henry VIII's death in January 1547 marked the end of a political giant whose reign had dominated his kingdom with an iron grip for thirty-eight years. Few could remember an England without him---certainly little had remained untouched: the monasteries and friaries had been ripped down, the Pope's authority discarded, and new authoritarian laws had been introduced that placed his subjects under constant fear of death.Edward came to the throne promising a new start; the harsh legislation of his father's was repealed and the country's social and economic problems approached with greater sensitivity. Yet the early hope and promise he offered soon turned sour. Despite the terms of Henry's will, real power had gone to just one man---the Protector, Edward's uncle, the Duke of Somerset, and there were violent struggles for power, headed by the duke's own brother, Thomas Seymour.Chris Skidmore reveals how the countrywide rebellions of 1549 were orchestrated by the plotters at court and were all connected to the burning issue of religion: Henry VIII had left England in a religious limbo. Court intrigue, deceit, and treason very nearly plunged the country into civil war. The stability that the Tudors had sought to achieve came close to being torn apart in the six years of Edward's reign.Even today, the two dominant figures of the Tudor period are held to be Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Yet Edward's reign is equally important. His reign was one of dramatic change and tumult, yet many of the changes that were instigated during this period---certainly in terms of religious reformation---not only exceeded Henry's ambitions but have endured for over four centuries since Edward's death in 1553.

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  City Parks - Public Spaces...

  Catie Marron

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  Catie Marron’s City Parks captures the spirit and beauty of eighteen of the world’s most-loved city parks. Zadie Smith, Ian Frazier, Candice Bergen, Colm Tóibín, Nicole Krauss, Jan Morris, and a dozen other remarkable contributors reflect on a particular park that holds special meaning for them.Andrew Sean Greer eloquently paints a portrait of first love in the Presidio; André Aciman muses on time’s fleeting nature and the changing face of New York viewed from the High Line; Pico Iyer explores hidden places and privacy in Kyoto; Jonathan Alter takes readers from the 1968 race riots to Obama’s 2008 victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park; Simon Winchester invites us along on his adventures in the Maidan; and Bill Clinton writes of his affection for Dumbarton Oaks.Oberto Gili’s color and black-and-white photographs unify the writers’ unique and personal voices. Taken around the world over the course of a year, in every season, his pictures capture the inherent mood of each place. Fusing images and text, City Parks is an extraordinary and unique project: through personal reflection and intimate detail it taps into collective memory and our sense of time’s passage.

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  Charmed Circle - Gertrude Stein...

  James R. Mellow

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  The renowned writer Gertrude Stein, her peers, and avant-garde Paris come to life in this “meticulous and loving reconstruction of the period” (The New York Times Book Review). 
   
  On almost every Saturday of the first half of the twentieth century, Gertrude Stein would open her door to the likes of Picasso and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Cocteau and Apollinaire, welcoming them into a salon alive with vivid avant-garde paintings and sparkling intellectual conversation. In Charmed Circle, James R. Mellow has recreated this fascinating world and the complex woman who dominated it. His engaging narrative illuminates Stein’s writing—now celebrated along with the work of such literary giants as Joyce and Woolf—including her difficult early periods, which adapted cubism and abstraction to the written word. Rich with detail and insight, it conveys both the serene rhythms of daily life with her devoted partner, Alice B. Toklas, and the radical pulse and dramatic upheavals of her exciting era. 
   
  Spanning the years from 1903, when Stein first arrived in Paris, to her final days at the end of the Second World War, Charmed Circle is a penetrating and lively account of a writer at the heart of modernity. 
   
  “A rich and compelling portrait of an extraordinary personage and a mural of the people in her life. She has been given a biographer worthy of her.” —Los Angeles Times 
   
  “Entertaining and comprehensive . . . a delightful book.” —The New Yorker 
   
  “A beautifully achieved work of biography, one which superbly captures its eccentric subject.” —Reason

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  Memoirs of a Stuka Pilot

  Helmut Mahlke

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  “Well-written and holds the reader’s attention . . . an engaging book and a rare personal view of flying one of the most iconic aircraft of WWII.” —Firetrench   After recounting his early days as a naval cadet, including a voyage to the Far East aboard the cruiser Köln and as the navigator/observer of the floatplane carried by the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer during the Spanish Civil War, Helmut Mahlke describes his flying training as a Stuka pilot.   The author’s naval dive-bomber Gruppe was incorporated into the Luftwaffe upon the outbreak of war. What follows is a fascinating Stuka pilot’s-eye view of some of the most famous and historic battles and campaigns of the early war years: the Blitzkrieg in France, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the bombing of Malta, North Africa, Tobruk, and Crete, and, finally, the invasion of the Soviet Union.   Mahlke also takes the reader behind the scenes into the day-to-day life of his unit and brings the members of his Gruppe to vivid life, describing their off-duty antics and mourning their losses in action. The story ends when he himself is shot down in flames by a Soviet fighter and is severely burned. He was to spend the remainder of the war in various staff appointments.   “An engaging, engrossing and exceptionally informative book. A worthy addition to any military enthusiast’s library and is unhesitatingly and heartily recommended.” —Aviation History

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