Biografías, página 173 de 934

With a single shot from a pistol small enough to conceal in his hand, John Wilkes Booth catapulted into history on the night of April 14, 1865. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln stunned a nation that was just emerging from the chaos and calamity of the Civil War, and the president's untimely death altered the trajectory of postwar history. But to those who knew Booth, the event was even more shocking-for no one could have imagined that this fantastically gifted actor and well-liked man could commit such an atrocity. In Fortune's Fool, Terry Alford provides the first comprehensive look at the life of an enigmatic figure whose life has been overshadowed by his final, infamous act. Tracing Booth's story from his uncertain childhood in Maryland, characterized by a difficult relationship with his famous actor father, to his successful acting career on stages across the country, Alford offers a nuanced picture of Booth as a public figure, performer, and deeply troubled man. Despite the fame and success that attended Booth's career--he was billed at one point as "the youngest star in the world"--he found himself consumed by the Confederate cause and the desire to help the South win its independence. Alford reveals the tormented path that led Booth to conclude, as the Confederacy collapsed in April 1865, that the only way to revive the South and punish the North for the war would be to murder Lincoln--whatever the cost to himself or others. The textured and compelling narrative gives new depth to the familiar events at Ford's Theatre and the aftermath that followed, culminating in Booth's capture and death at the hands of Union soldiers 150 years ago. Based on original research into government archives, historical libraries, and family records, Fortune's Fool offers the definitive portrait of John Wilkes Booth.

In AD 60/61, Rome almost lost the province of Britain to a woman. Boudica, wife of the client king Prasutagus, fomented a rebellion that proved catastrophic for Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), and Verulamium (St Albans), destroyed part of a Roman legion, and caused the deaths of an untold number of veterans, families, soldiers, and Britons. Yet with one decisive defeat, her vision of freedom was destroyed, and the Iceni never rose again. Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain introduces readers to the life and literary importance of Boudica through juxtaposing her different literary characterizations with those of other women and rebel leaders. This study focuses on our earliest literary evidence, the accounts of Tacitus and Cassius Dio, and investigates their narratives alongside material evidence of late Iron Age and early Roman Britain. Throughout the book, Caitlin Gillespie draws comparative sketches between Boudica and the positive and negative examples with which readers associate her, including the prophetess Veleda, the client queen Cartimandua, and the rebel Caratacus. Literary comparisons assist in the understanding of Boudica as a barbarian, queen, mother, commander in war, and leader of revolt. Within the ancient texts, Boudica is also used as an internal commentator on the failures of the emperor Nero, and her revolt epitomizes ongoing conflicts of gender and power at the end of the Juilio-Claudian era. Both literary and archaeological sources point towards broader issues inherent in the clash between Roman and native cultures. Boudicas unique ability to unify disparate groups of Britons cemented her place in the history of Roman Britain. While details of her life remain elusive, her literary character still has more to say.

Whatever we may think of Alexander--whether Great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopath--most people do not regard him as a religious leader. And yet religion permeated all aspects of his career. When he used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. In Egypt, he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh, and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king. When Alexander disregarded religion, he and his army suffered. In Iran, for instance, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted. In India, he killed Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus by the hundreds of thousands until his officers, men he regarded as religious companians, rebelled against him and forced him to abandon his campaign of conquest. Although he never fully recovered from this last disappointment, he continued to perform his priestly duties in the rest of his empire. As far as we know, the last time he rose from his bed was to perform a sacrifice. Ancient writers knew little about Near Eastern religions, no doubt due to the difficulty of travel to Babylon, India, and the interior of Egypt. Yet details of these exotic religions can be found in other ancient sources, including Greek, and in the last thirty years, knowledge of Alexanders time in the Near East has increased. Egyptologists and Assyriologists have written the first thorough accounts of Alexanders religious doings in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Recent archaeological work has also allowed scholars to uncover new aspects of Macedonian religious policy. Soldier, Priest, and God, the first religious biography of Alexander, incorporates this recent scholarship to provide a vivid and unique portrait of a remarkable leader.

In this remarkable work, Terry Alford tells the story of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a Muslim slave who, in 1807, was recognized by an Irish ships surgeon as the son of an African king who had saved his life many years earlier. The Prince, as he had become known to local Natchez, Mississippi residents, had been captured in war when he was 26 years old, sold to slave traders, and shipped to America. Slave though he was, Ibrahima was an educated, aristocratic man, and he was made overseer of the large cotton and tobacco plantation of his master, who refused to sell him to the doctor for any price. After years of petitioning by Dr. Cox and others, Ibrahima finally gained freedom in 1828 through the intercession of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay. Sixty-six years old, Ibrahima sailed for Africa the following year, with his wife, and died there of fever just five months after his arrival. The year 2007 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Prince Among Slaves, the only full account of Ibrahimas life, pieced together from first-person accounts and historical documents gathered on three continents. It is not only a remarkable story, but also the story of a remarkable man, who endured the humiliation of slavery without ever losing his dignity or his hope for freedom. This thirtieth anniversary edition, which will be released to coincide with a major documentary being aired on Ibrahimas life, has been updated to include material discovered since the original printing, a fuller presentation and appreciation of other African Muslims in American slavery-Ibrahimas contemporaries-and a review of new and important literature and developments in the field.

Mario Cuomo was the most important Democratic officeholder during the Reagan era. The three-term governor of New York was also a famously eloquent defender of the Democratic Party's progressive legacy even as conservatives gained political power across the nation. As liberalism's most powerful and eloquent defender of the New Deal's legacy, he found a wide and receptive audience well beyond his home state of New York. Yet he never ran for president. Why?Saladin Ambar's American Cicero traces Cuomo's rise from the rough-and-tumble world of New York City politics to liberal champion, and a central question threads throughout the narrative: was he a symbol of liberalism's long decline in twentieth-century American politics, or a prophet in the wilderness, heralding the rise of a new progressivism? Moving from his youth in an immigrant neighborhood in Queens to his final years in Albany, Ambar argues that Cuomo kept the spent embers of liberalism alive in an era of conservative dominance. Cuomo's voice - buttressed by a string of electoral victories in New York - provided succor to the liberal faithful. Yet his decision not to run for president arguably hastened the end of his political career: he was voted out of gubernatorial office in 1994 in a nationwide Republican wave.Ambar's research took him to Italy in search of lingering questions, chiefly why Cuomo never ran for president. He learned of concerns about an assassination attempt - Cuomo's mother had admonished him, "remember what happened to the last Catholic president" - and even proto-"birther" rumors that Cuomo had been born in Italy. Whatever clinched his decision not to run, Cuomo's impassioned advocacy for liberalism nevertheless had a measurable impact on twenty-first century Democratic progressives, notably Barack Obama. American Cicero promises to not only re-establish Cuomo's central place in modern American liberalism, but also force readers to reassess liberalism's fortunes following the close of the New Deal era.

When Charles Miller Fisher was born in 1913 there was very little scientific knowledge about stroke. But thanks to him, our understanding of stroke and of other brain disorders are now well established in every neurology training program around the world. C. Miller Fisher is his story: his life, his method of study and of research, and his contributions. This work, reinforced with unequalled access to the CMF archives overseen by the Fisher estate and told in his own words (italicized in the text) from his memoirs, will shed light on one of the most important clinicians in North America and the world. He devoted his career and the great majority of every waking day to the study of stroke, both in the pathology laboratory and in people. Fishers discoveries and contributions and those of the individuals that he trained changed the knowledge basis of stroke and vascular disease for everyone.

Hindenburg reveals how a previously little-known general, whose career to normal retirement age had provided no real foretaste of his heroic status, became a national icon and living myth in Germany after the First World War, capturing the imagination of millions. In a period characterized by rupture and fragmentation, the legend surrounding Paul von Hindenburg brought together a broad coalition of Germans and became one of the most potent forces in Weimar politics.

A critical biography of Sir William Jones (1746-94), the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time, whose Sanskrit researches did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient.