Novelistic Biographies

As he was carried off on a stretcher at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Welsh swimmer David Davies was celebrating his success. His exhausting performance in the first ever 10 km open water race earned …

To define Nigeria is to tell a half-truth. Many have tried, but most have concluded that it is impossible to capture the true scope and significance of Africa’s most populous nation through words or …

John Snow was a Victorian physician who helped to establish that cholera was spread by contaminated water (not bad air, as theory had it). He traced the source of a deadly cholera outbreak to one pum …

Louisa Catherine Adams was daughter-in-law and wife of presidents, assisted diplomat J. Q. Adams at three European capitals, and served as a D.C. hostess for three decades. Yet she is barely remember …

Beloved as the family storyteller, Dorothy Winthrop Bradford left behind at her death in 1987 diaries, letters, scrapbooks and memorabilia that date back to the Civil War and provide a picture of a w …

This book tells the stories of 11 American gay men who tried to make sense of their identities in the years before the modern gay movement began. In their own words, these men recollect fascinating a …

The prolonged conflict in Iraq has shown us war’s transformative effect. Civilians rivet themselves to events happening halfway around the world, while young soldiers return home from battlefields, c …

Memoirs of a Party Animal, My seven decades in animal welfare …

Actor Richard Beale was a young officer in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. In the summer of 2014, he sat down to write a memoir of that time, now more than 70 years ago. The result is an …

The United Kingdom”s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, most commonly known as MI5, was founded in 1909 by Sir Vernon Kell KBE. Kell (”K” within the agency) not only founded MI5 bu …