Rebels, Rulers, and Artists: 100 Captivating Lives

1. Alexander the Great By Arrian "He was a man like no other man has ever been"In twelve years that changed the world, Alexander the Great conquered a vast empire, extending from the Danube to the rivers of the Punjab, and from Egypt to Uzbekistan. Arrian, a Greek man of letters, military commander, and ... More »

2. The Life of Charlotte Bronte By Elizabeth Gaskell | Used Price: 60% Off Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) is a pioneering biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Bronte's and, having been invited to write the official life, determined to both tell the truth and honor her friend. This edition collates ... More »

3. Life of Black Hawk By Black Hawk | Used Price: 60% Off A rediscovered, defiant work of Native American literature, presented here on the 175th anniversary of its first publication Upon its publication in 1833, this unflinching narrative by the vanquished Sauk leader Black Hawk was the first thoroughly adversarial account of frontier hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans. ... More »

4. My Inventions and Other Writings By Nikola Tesla | Used Price: 60% Off The fascinating autobiography of the legendary inventor behind the radio, wireless energy, robotics, and much more. Famous for his pioneering contributions to the electronic age, his lifelong feud with Thomas Edison, and his erratic behavior, Nikola Tesla was one of the most brilliant and ... More »

5. Eminent Victorians By Lytton Strachey | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "Eminent Victorians" marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it, Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of ... More »

6. Up from Slavery By Booker T. Washington | Price: $0.01 Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African-Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In ... More »

7. Walden and Civil Disobedience By Henry David Thoreau | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The two defining works of a transcendentalist masterDisdainful of Americaâ€™s booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods near Walden Pond. Walden, the account of his stay, conveys at once a naturalistâ€™s wonder at the commonplace and ... More »

8. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas By Gertrude Stein | Used Price: 60% Off A fascinating insight into the vibrant culture of Modernism, and the rich artistic world of Paris' Left Bank, Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" includes an introduction by Thomas Fensch in "Penguin Modern Classics". For Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris ... More »

9. The Lives of the Artists By Giorgio Vasari | Used Price: 60% Off These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term "Renaissance," was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, ... More »

10. Homage to Catalonia By George Orwell | Used Price: 70% Off 'Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he ... More »

11. The Autobiography of Malcolm X By Malcolm X; Alex Haley | 70% Off From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct ... More »

12. The Words By Jean-Paul Sartre | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis. Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight ... More »

13. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha By Jack Kerouac | Used Price: 60% Off Jack Kerouac?s profound meditations on the Buddha?s life and religionIn the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac, a lifelong Catholic, became fascinated with Buddhism, an interest that had a significant impact on his ideas of spirituality and later found expression in such books as Mexico City Blues and The Dharma Bums. ... More »

14. Speak, Memory By Vladimir Nabokov | Used Price: 80% Off Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov's life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, ... More »

15. The Motorcycle Diaries By Ernesto Che Guevara | Used Price: 70% Off Â The book of the popular movie STARRING GAEL GARCIA BERNAL NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Â The young Che Guevaraâ€™s lively and highly entertaining travel diary, ... More »

16. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent By Robert F. Barsky; Noam Chomsky | 90% Off This biography describes the intellectual and political milieus that helped shape Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in contemporary linguistics, politics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. It also presents an engaging political history of the last several decades, including such events as the Spanish Civil War, the dropping of atomic ... More »

17. Out of Place: A Memoir By Edward W. Said | Used Price: 80% Off From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comes an extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and ... More »

18. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence By Martin Gayford | Used Price: 80% Off From October to December of 1888, Paul Gauguin shared a yellow house in the south of France with Vincent van Gogh. They were the odd couple of the art world -- one calm, the other volatile -- and the denouement of their living arrangement was explosive. Making use ... More »

19. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth By Chris Hadfield | Used Price: 50% Off Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging ... More »

20. Lincoln By David Herbert Donald | Price: $0.01 A masterful work by Pulitzer Prizeâ€“winning author David Herbert Donald, Lincoln is a stunning portrait of Abraham Lincolnâ€™s life and presidency.Donald brilliantly depicts Lincolnâ€™s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided ... More »

21. Six Records of a Floating Life By Shen Fu | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic ... More »

22. Mao Zedong: A Life By Jonathan Spence | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Â“Spence draws upon his extensive knowledge of Chinese politics and culture to create an illuminating picture of Mao. . . . Superb.â€Â (Chicago Tribune) From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a ... More »

23. Tristes Tropiques By Claude Levi-Strauss | Used Price: 60% Off A milestone in the study of culture from the father of structural anthropology. This watershed work records Claude LÃ©vi-Strauss's search for "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." From the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil, LÃ©vi-Strauss found ... More »

24. Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein By Abraham Pais | Used Price: 70% Off 2005 has been designated "World Year of Physics" to celebrate the publication of Einstein's Theory of Relativity one hundred years ago. In commemoration of this landmark anniversary, Oxford University Press brings Abraham Pais' major work on Einstein's life and work to a whole new generation of readers.Since ... More »

25. The Education of Henry Adams By Henry Adams | Used Price: 60% Off As a journalist, historian, and novelist born into a family that included two past Presidents, Henry Adams was forever focused on the experiences and expectations unique to America. A prompt bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) recounts his own and his country's development from ... More »

26. Seven Pillars of Wisdom By T. E. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom encompasses an account of the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War alongside general Middle Eastern and military history, politics, adventure and drama. It is also a memoir of the soldier known as â€œLawrence of Arabia.â€Â Lawrence was a fascinating and ... More »

27. Goodbye to All That By Robert Graves | Used Price: 60% Off An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That" is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in "Penguin Modern Classics". In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, ... More »

28. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery By Henry Marsh A Financial Times Best Book of the Year, shortlisted forÂ both the Guardian First BookÂ AwardÂ and the Costa Book Award, and longlisted forÂ the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.With compassion and candor,Â leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets ... More »

29. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini By Benvenuto Cellini | Used Price: 80% Off "Men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, need not be subject to the law."--Pope Paul III on learning that Cellini had murdered a fellow artist Benvenuto Cellini was beloved in Renaissance Florence. A renowned sculptor and goldsmith whose works include the famous salt-cellar made for the King of ... More »

30. Life of Johnson By James Boswell | Used Price: 70% Off This complete and unabridged edition is the only complete critical edition in paperback. Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less on his literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding an ideal biographer in James Boswell. As Johnson's ... More »

31. Autobiography of Bertrand Russell By Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell remains one of the greatest philosophers and most complex and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Here, in this frank, humorous and decidedly charming autobiography, Russell offers readers the story of his life â€“ introducing the people, events and influences that shaped the man he was ... More »

32. Bob Dylan By Kevin J. H. Dettmar | Used Price: 70% Off A towering figure in American culture and a global twentieth-century icon, Bob Dylan has been at the centre of American life for over forty years. The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan brings fresh insights into the imposing range of Dylan's creative output. The first Part approaches Dylan's output ... More »

33. My Autobiography By Charles Chaplin | Used Price: 60% Off Born into a theatrical family, Chaplin's father died of drink while his mother, unable to bear the poverty, suffered from bouts of insanity, Chaplin embarked on a film-making career which won him immeasurable success, as well as intense controversy. His extraordinary autobiography was first published in 1964 and ... More »

34. Autobiography of Mark Twain By Mark Twain | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it awayâ€”to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain ... More »

35. Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen By Victor Kiernan | Used Price: 90% Off In this book the distinguished historian Victor Kiernan makes a case for seeing Shakespeare as a writer profoundly sensitive to the great social and political upheavals through which he lived. Shakespeareâ€™s poetic and dramatic achievement, Kiernan argues, was not something which transcended his environment but was directly enlarged ... More »

36. Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian By Dumas Malone | Used Price: 70% Off Dumas Maloneâ€™s classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jeffersonâ€™s life. Volume 1. Jefferson the VirginianThis first volume explores the early phases of Jeffersonâ€™s life, from his youth, education, legal career, and marriage, ... More »

37. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance By Ron Chernow | Used Price: 80% Off The winner of the National Book Award and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. Acclaimed by The Wall Street Journal as "brilliantly researched and written", the book tells the rich, panoramic story of four ... More »

38. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time By Joseph Frank Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable ... More »

39. The Memoir of Toussaint Louverture By Philippe R. Girard Here is an annotated, scholarly, multilingual edition of the only lengthy text personally written by Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture: the memoirs he wrote shortly before his death in the French prison of Fort de Joux. The translation is based on an original copy in Louverture's hand never before ... More »

40. Gustavas Adolphus By Michael Roberts This series provides critical studies of key figures in international political history since 1500. The books are not personal biographies, although they do contain biographical information, but are succinct interpretive essays on the career. Gustavus Adolphus (King of Sweden 1611-1632) was a key figure in 17th century European ... More »

41. Notes of a Native Son By James Baldwin | Used Price: 50% Off A new edition of the book many have called James Baldwinâ€™s most influential workWritten during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn ... More »

42. Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy By Paul Ratchnevsky | Used Price: 90% Off Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest continuous land empire ever. On his death in 1227, this extended from the Near East to the Yellow Sea, and was expanded by his successors to include what is now Iran, Iraq and southern Russia. By 1206, ... More »

43. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt By Edmund Morris | Used Price: 80% Off Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all timeDescribed by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore ... More »

44. Crazy Horse: A Life By Larry McMurtry | Used Price: 70% Off Legends cloud the life of Crazy Horse, a seminal figure in American history but an enigma even to his own people in his own day. This superb biography looks back across more than 120 years at the life and death of this great Sioux warrior who became a ... More »

45. Confessions By Jean-Jacques Rousseau | 80% Off In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and ... More »

46. Autobiography By John Stuart Mill | Used Price: 90% Off One of the greatest prodigies of his era, John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was studying arithmetic and Greek by the age of three, as part of an astonishingly intense education at his father's hand. Intellectually brilliant, fearless and profound, he became a leading Victorian liberal thinker, whose works - ... More »

47. Lady Sings the Blues By Billie Holiday | Used Price: 50% Off Lady Sings the Blues is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holidayâ€™s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to ... More »

48. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York By Robert A. Caro | Used Price: 60% Off One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses ... More »

49. Mountains Beyond Mountains: One doctor's quest to heal the world By Tracy Kidder; Paul Farmer | 80% Off This compelling and inspiring book, now in a deluxe paperback edition, shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prizeâ€”winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who loves the world and has set out to do all he can ... More »

50. Memoirs of My Life By Edward Gibbon | Under $1.00 Edward Gibbon was one of the world's greatest historians and a towering figure of his age. When he died in 1794 he left behind the unfinished drafts of his Memoirs, which were posthumously edited by his friend Lord Sheffield, and remain an astonishing portrait of a rich, full ... More »

51. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! By Richard Feynman | Used Price: 70% Off A New York Times bestsellerâ€”the outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with ... More »

52. A Moveable Feast By Ernest Hemingway | Used Price: 60% Off Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingwayâ€™s most enduring works. Since Hemingwayâ€™s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it ... More »

53. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II By Kenneth Kitchen | Used Price: 80% Off A thorough and detailed account of one of the best known pharaohs of Egypt, written by the leading expert on the subject. Kitchen discusses the early life and childhood of the young king, his reign, politics, wars and policies, and his death and the after-life. This book is ... More »

54. Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica By T. J. Clark Picasso and Truth offers a breathtaking and original new look at the most significant artist of the modern era. From Pablo Picasso's early The Blue Room to the later Guernica, eminent art historian T. J. Clark offers a striking ... More »

55. Autobiographies By William Butler Yeats | Under $1.00 Autobiographies consists of six autobiographical works that William Butler Yeats published together in the mid-1930s to form a single, extraordinary memoir of the first fifty-eight years of his life, from his earliest memories of childhood to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume provides a vivid series ... More »

56. The Periodic Table By Primo Levi | Used Price: 50% Off (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Leviâ€™s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew. It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community ... More »

57. The Autobiography and Other Writings By Benjamin Franklin | Under $1.00 Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanack to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime he knew ... More »

58. Memoirs of a Revolutionist By Peter Kropotkin | Used Price: 50% Off Born into a wealthy family of landowners, Prince Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin (1842-1921) served in the court of the Tsar and held prestigious diplomatic posts. But the prince renounced his life of privilege to embrace nonviolent anarchism, a revolutionary alternative to Marxism. A leading theoretician of his day, Kropotkin ... More »

59. Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir By Gore Vidal | Used Price: 90% Off In a witty and elegant autobiography that takes up where his bestelling Palimpsest left off, the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal reflects on his remarkable life.Writing from his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, ... More »

60. Tolstoy By Henri Troyat | Used Price: 80% Off Leo Tolstoy embodies the most extraordinary contradictions. He was a wealthy aristocrat who preached the virtues of poverty and the peasant life, a misogynist who wrote Anna Karenina, and a supreme writer who declared, "Literature is rubbish." From Tolstoy's famously bad marriage to his enormously successful career, Troyat ... More »

61. Machiavelli By Quentin Skinner | Used Price: 60% Off Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil that good may come of it. Offering the first brief introduction to Machiavelli's thought to appear in twenty-five years, Skinner focuses on his three major works, The Prince, Discourses, and The History of Florence. He discusses the ... More »

62. Confessions By Saint Augustine | Used Price: 70% Off In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely personal narrative, Augustine relates his rare ascent from ... More »

63. The Voyage of the Beagle By Charles Darwin | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "The Voyage of the Beagle" is Charles Darwin's account of the momentous voyage which set in motion the current of intellectual events leading to "The Origin of Species". This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Janet Brown and Michael Neve. When HMS Beagle ... More »

64. Karl Marx: A Biography By David McLellan | Used Price: 70% Off All the great political revolutions of the twentieth century referred back to Marx. Reviled by some, revered by many, Marx's influence can be found in every area of the humanities and social sciences from literary criticism to globalization. In this thoroughly revised and updated new edition of his ... More »

65. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life By Marshall Frady | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Marshall Frady, the reporter who became the unofficial chronicler of the civil rights movement, here re-creates the life and turbulent times of its inspirational leader. Deftly interweaving the story of Kingâ€™s quest with a history of the African American struggle for equality, Frady offers fascinating insights into his ... More »

66. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie By Barbara Goldsmith | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the mythâ€”an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is ... More »

67. A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi By Kiyosawa Kiyoshi; Marius B. Jansen A Diary of Darkness is one of the most important and compelling documents of wartime Japan. Between 1942 and 1945, the liberal journalist Kiyosawa Kiyoshi (1890-1945) kept at great personal risk a diary of his often subversive social and political observations and his personal struggles. The diary caused ... More »

68. Just Kids By Patti Smith | Used Price: 80% Off In Just Kids, Patti Smithâ€™s first book ofÂ prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of More »

69. John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946 By Robert Skidelsky | Used Price: 50% Off Robert Skidelskyâ€™s three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes has been acclaimed as the authoritative account of the great economist-statesmanâ€™s life. Here, Skidelsky has revised and abridged his magnum opus into one definitive book, which examines in its entirety the intellectual and ideological journey that led an extraordinarily gifted ... More »

70. The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War By Stephen Kinzer | Used Price: 70% Off A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped todayâ€™s worldDuring the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures ... More »

71. Miles By Miles Davis Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles Davis was one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. Here, Miles speaks out about his extraordinary life.Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he ... More »

72. James Joyce By Richard Ellmann | Used Price: 90% Off Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more. More »

73. The Life of Milarepa By Tsangnyon Heruka | Used Price: 70% Off A new translation of the classic biography of the most renowned saint in Tibetan Buddhist history The Life of Milarepa is one of the most beloved stories of the Tibetan people and a great literary example of the contemplative life. This biography, a dramatic tale from a ... More »

74. The Real Frank Zappa Book By Frank Zappa | Under $1.00 The brash and outrageously funny autobiography of music legend Frank Zappa--now in trade paperback. Here is the real story of how he became the state of the art in weirdness, as only he can tell it: wild rock 'n' roll road stories, confrontations with bureaucratic idiocy, and more. ... More »

75. The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa By Fukuzawa Yukichi | Used Price: 50% Off Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) was a leading figure in the cultural revolution that transformed Japan from an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged player in the modern world. He translated a wide range of Western works and adapted them to Japanese needs, inventing a colorful prose style close to ... More »

76. My Life By Giuseppe Garibaldi | Used Price: 70% Off Translated for the first time into English from Garibaldiâ€™s original manuscripts, these memoirs provide an authentic reading of the life and times of one of the most remarkable figures in history. The life of Giuseppe GaribaldiÂ—distinguished by superhuman courage, personal tragedy, and tireless struggle ... More »

77. Guy Debord By Anselm Jappe | Used Price: 70% Off This is the first serious intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime mover of the Situationist International (1957-1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle, perhaps the seminal book of May 1968 in France. Anselm Jappe rejects recent attempts to set Debord up as a "postmodern" icon, arguing ... More »

78. The Diary of a Young Girl By Anne Frank | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classicâ€”a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish ... More »

79. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives By Alan Bullock Alan Bullock's bestselling and monumental masterpiece, now in a revised Second Edition 'It is practically unprecedented to take two such monsters as Hitler and Stalin, who never met, and interweave their lives chronologically, chapter by chapter, often paragraph by paragraph, as Bullock has done...a triumph of organization, lucidity ... More »

80. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth By Mahatma Gandhi | Used Price: 90% Off Gandhi's non-violent struggles against racism, violence, and colonialism in South Africa and India had brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. He feared the enthusiasm for ... More »

81. Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power By Philip Dwyer | Used Price: 60% Off In this second volume of Philip Dwyerâ€™s authoritative biography on one of historyâ€™s most enthralling leaders, Napoleon, now 30, takes his position as head of the French state after the 1799 coup. Dwyer explores the young leaderâ€™s reign, complete with mistakes, wrong turns, and pitfalls, and reveals the ... More »

82. John Dewey and American Democracy By Robert B. Westbrook | Used Price: 50% Off Highly regarded but largely unread today, Dewey is generally considered a pragmatist in the mainstream of American liberalism. This exciting portrait of the philosopher as an advocate of participatory democracy and a political activist presents him as a more radical voice than is generally assumed. Although the anti-Stalinist ... More »

83. Frantz Fanon: A Biography By David Macey | Used Price: 50% Off Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon (1925â€“61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a volunteer in the Free French Army, in which he saw combat at the end of the Second World War. In Algeria, ... More »

84. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh By Joyce A. Tyldesley | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Egypt?s Queen?or, as she would prefer to be remembered, King?Hatchepsut ruled over an age of peace, prosperity, and remarkable architectural achievement (c. 1490 b.c.). Had she been born a man, her reign would almost certainly have been remembered for its stable government, successful trade missions, and the construction ... More »

85. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is By Friedrich Nietzsche | Used Price: 60% Off Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the ... More »

86. Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism By Domingo Faustino Sarmiento | 90% Off Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century. More »

87. Simon Bolivar: A Life By John Lynch | Used Price: 80% Off SimÃ³n BolÃ­var was a revolutionary who freed six countries, an intellectual who argued the principles of national liberation, and a general who fought a cruel colonial war. His life, passions, battles, and great victories became embedded in Spanish American culture almost as soon as they happened. This is ... More »

88. Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man By Martin Kemp | Used Price: 80% Off This masterly account of Leonardo da Vinci and his vision of the world has long been recognized as the classic treatment of the Renaissance giant, offering unparalleled insight into Leonardo's intellect and vision at every stage of his artistic career. Martin Kemp, one ... More »

89. Pericles Of Athens And The Birth Of Democracy By Donald Kagan | Used Price: 60% Off "Kagan, faithful to his lifelong fascination with Pericles . . . gives us an accessible and invaluable account of his life and deeds".--Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind". More »

90. Augustus By A. H. M. Jones; Moses Finley | Price: $0.01 Constitutional changes, administrative revisions, factional rivalry, and war are all themes that Professor Jones develops within the main narrative. He treats separately such topics as finance, religion, social policy, literature and the arts, and the sources of this crucial period in the history of Rome. Professor Jones discusses ... More »

91. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson By Bernard Bailyn | Used Price: 80% Off â€œThis book,â€Â Mr. Bailyn writes, â€œdepicts the fortunes of a conservative in a time of radical upheaval and deals with problems of public disorder and ideological commitment.â€Â It is at the same time a dramatic account of the origins of the American Revolution from the viewpoint, not of ... More »

92. Resistance: My Life for Lebanon By Soha Bechara | Used Price: 50% Off In 1988, at the age of twenty, Souha BÃ©chara attempted to assassinate General Lahad, chief of militia in charge of Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon. Immediately apprehended, interrogated, and tortured for weeks, she was sent to Khiam, a prison and death camp regularly condemned by humanitarian organizations. After an intense ... More »

93. W.A. Mozart By Hermann Abert Hermann Abert's classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago and itself based on the definitive mid-nineteenth century study by Otto Jahn, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. The book is both the fullest account of the composerâ€™s life ... More »

94. Florence Nightingale By Cecil Woodham-Smith | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Draws on research by army historians to describe the cover-up of disastrous events in the Crimea, and to seperate Nightingale's real achievments from her mythical ones. More »

95. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter By Simone de Beauvoir | Used Price: 70% Off A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter" offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own ... More »

96. Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent By Alexander von Humboldt | Price: $0.01 One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora ... More »

97. Echoes of an Autobiography By Naguib Mahfouz | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 From the Foreword by Nadine Gordimer: "These pieces are meditations which echo that which was, has been, and is the writer Mahfouz. They are--in the words of the title of one of the prose pieces--'The Dialogue of the Late Afternoon' of his life. I don't believe any autobiography, ... More »

98. Long Walk to Freedom By Nelson Mandela | Under $1.00 The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize ... More »

99. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China By Ezra F. Vogel No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist-the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China's ... More »

100. Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age By Jack Copeland | Used Price: 60% Off Alan Turing is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing ... More »

Rebels, Rulers, and Artists: 100 Captivating Lives is a list of outstanding biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies. As title suggests there is a political leaning, with rebels and rulers, and an emphasis on creative lives too, the artists. Each biography has been chosen based on its greatness as a biography and for the significance of its subject.An honourable mention must also go to Clive Ponting for his biography of Winston Churchill, which is unfortunately out of print.Is there anyone you think is missing from the list? Is there a great biography that should be included? Please comment below.