Category: Biography

Connected Women by Kate Hodges

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The Blurb On The Back:

Behind every great woman …

Is another great woman.

Connected Women is a collection of 84 illustrated portraits that celebrate female collaboration and the extraordinary achievements, relationships and secret histories of pioneering women.

From ground-breaking scientist Marie Curie to political activist Malala Yousafzai; from feminist author Virgina Woolf to the game-changing Billie Jean King; Connected Women creates a gigantic web of womanhood, threading tales from across the globe and throughout history.

Featuring Michelle Obama, Gala Dalí, Emma Watson, Nina Simone, Frida Kayla, Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and many more inspired and inspirational women who have shaped the world we live in today.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

You can order CONNECTED WOMEN by Kate Hodges from Amazon UK, and Waterstone’s.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Legacies: Black British Pioneers by Lania Narjee

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The Blurb On The Back:

Discover amazing people who made their mark on the world!

From scientists to sports stars, artists to activists, read all about Black British people who set records, broke new ground, and lifted others up.  Find out what it means to create a legacy with these inspiring stories of incredible people and their hugely informative achievements.

LEGACIES – BLACK BRITISH PIONEERS was released in the United Kingdom on 4th August 2022.  Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

You can order LEGACIES – BLACK BRITISH PIONEERS by Lania Narjee from Amazon UK, or Waterstone’s.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past And The Journey Home by Mark Mazower

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The Blurb On The Back:

This is the remarkable story of a family, and the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants.  Mark Mazower uncovers the history of his ancestors, who fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even into the ranks of the Wehrmacht.  His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping the civil war and revolution.  Max, the grandfather, had started out as a socialist and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it.  His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making its way in Soviet society.  

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

You can order WHAT YOU DID NOT TELL: A RUSSIAN PAST AND THE JOURNEY HOME by Mark Mazower from Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Marie Curie by Nell Walker

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The Blurb On The Back:

Discover the fascinating story of MARIE CURIE a trailblazing scientist who discovered two radioactive elements.

Did you know that Marie studied science at a secret university? 

Or that she invented portable x-ray machines that helped save many soldiers’ lives during the First World War?

Packed with facts, photographs, illustrations and more, DK Life Stories take you beyond the basics to find out all about history’s most amazing people.  

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

You can order MARIE CURIE by Nell Walker from Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Serving Face: Lessons On Poise And (Dis)grace From The World Of Drag by Felix Le Freak

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The Blurb On The Back:

Let the world’s most celebrated drag artists transform and empower you with their sick’ning style, wit and wisdom.

However you want to werk it – out-there eleganza, easy-breezing realness and everything in-between – Serving Face is like the gentle hand of your Drag Mother guiding you towards a life more fabulous.  Featuring interviews with 20 artists, it has all the inspiring motivational and practical tips and tricks you need to jack up your confidence and tease out your own special blend of charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.  So dive in, discover your inner diva and bring joy, love and laughter to life’s runway. 

You can buy SERVING FACE: LESSONS ON POISE AND (DIS)GRACE FROM THE WORLD OF DRAG by Felix Le Freak from Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Primo Levi: The Last Interview – Conversations with Giovanni Tesio by Giovanni Tesio

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The Blurb On The Back:

At the start of 1987, Primo Levi took part in a remarkable series of conversations about his early life with a friend and fellow writer, Giovanni Tesio.  This book is the result of those meetings, originally intended to be the basis for an authorised biography and published here in English for the first time.

In a densely packed dialogue, Levi responds to Tesio’s tactful and never too insistent questions with a watchful readiness and candour, breaking through the reserve of the public persona to allow a more intimate self to emerge.  Following the thread of memory, he lucidly discusses his family, his childhood, his education during the Fascist period, his adolescent friendships, his reading, his shyness and his passion for mountaineering, and recounts his wartime experience as a partisan and the terrible price it exacted from him and his comrades.  Though we glimpse his later life as a writer, the story breaks off just before his deportation to Auschwitz due to his sudden death.

In The Last Interview, Levi the man, the witness, the chemist and the writer all unite to offer us a story which is also a window onto history.  These conversations shed new light on Levi’s life and will appeal to the many readers of this most eloquent witness to the horrors of the Holocaust. 

You can order Primo Levi: The Last Interview – Conversations with Giovanni Tesio by Giovanni Tesio from Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Be More RBG by Marilyn Easton

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The Blurb On The Back:

Make yourself heard – on and off the bench

Whether you spend your days arguing your case at work, fighting gender discrimination, or raising the next generation of dissenters, call an adjournment and ask yourself,

”What would RBG do?”

Grab your collar and get motivated to change the world with words of inspirational wit and wisdom from Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  

You can order Be More RBG by Marilyn Easton from Amazon USA,  Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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He: A Novel by John Connolly

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The Blurb On The Back:

An extraordinary imagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who knew both adoration and humiliation; who loved, and was loved in turn; who betrayed, and was betrayed; who never sought to cause pain to others, yet left a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake …

And whose life was ultimately defined by one relationship of such tenderness and devotion that only death could sever it: his partnership with the man he knew as Babe.

he is Stan Laurel.

You can order He: A Novel by John Connolly from Amazon USA,  Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Teen Pioneers – Young People Who Have Changed The World by Ben Hubbard

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The Blurb On The Back:

Teen Pioneers celebrates the groundbreaking achievements of twenty young people. From journalists to political activists, and from inventors to green entrepreneurs, each of these teenage pioneers has acted to help others and make our world a better place in which to live.

This book will inspire and empower you and prove that anyone, no matter their age, can make a difference. 

You can order Teen Pioneers – Young People Who Have Changed The World by Ben Hubbard from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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The Traitors: A True Story Of Blood, Betrayal And Deceit by Josh Ireland

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The Blurb On The Back:

September 1939.  For years now Britain has been rudderless, divided and grievously unequal. Successive governments have floundered as they struggled to cope with economic misery at home and machinations abroad.  Many of the country’s citizens are seduced by fascism; others are simply left alienated by leaders who seem unwilling or unable to take the decisive action that is so desperately needed.

When war breaks out the imperilled nation achieves the unity and purpose that has eluded it for more than a decade.  It is a time of heroism and sacrifice, in which many thousands of soldiers and civilians give their lives.  But some Britons choose a different path, renegades who will fight for the Third Reich until its gruesome collapse in 1945. The Traitors tells the stories of four such men: the chaotic, tragic John Amery; the idealistic but hate-filled William Joyce; the cynical, murderous conman Harold Cole; and Eric Pleasants, an iron-willed pacifist and bodybuilder who wants no part in this war.

Drawing on recently declassified MI6 files, as well as diaries, letters and memoirs, The Traitors is a book about disordered lives in turbulent times; idealism twisted out of shape; of torn consciences and abandoned loyalties; of murder, deceit, temptation and loss.  It shows how a man might come to desert his country’s cause, and the tragic consequences that treachery brings in its wake.   

You can buy THE TRAITORS: A TRUE STORY OF BLOOD, BETRAYAL AND DECEIT by Josh Ireland from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Symphony For The City Of The Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M. T. Anderson

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The Blurb On The Back:

In September of 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history – two and a half years of bombardment and starvation.  More than a million citizens perished.  Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, the relatives of the dead having neither the means nor the strength to bury them.  Desperate citizens burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and – eventually – even one another to stay alive.

Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogised, and commemorated his fellow citizens – the Leningrad Symphony.  This testament of courage was copied onto microfilm, driven across the Middle East, and flown over the deserts of North Africa to be performed in the United States – where it played a surprising role in strengthening the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers. 

This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds.  It is also a look at the power – and layered meaning – of music in beleaguered lives. 

You can order SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD: DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH AND THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD by M. T. Anderson from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or Bookshop.org UK.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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Truevine by Beth Macy

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The Blurb On The Back:

Two brothers, a kidnapping and a mother’s quest: a true story of the American south.

The year was 1899, as the old people told the story; the place a sweltering tobacco farm in Truevine, Virginia, the heart of the Jim Crow South, where everyone the Muse brothers knew was either a former slave, or a child or grandchild of slaves.

George and Willie Muse were just six and nine years’ old, but they worked the fields from dawn to dark.  Until a white man offered them candy, and stole them away to become circus freaks.  For the next twenty-eight years, their distraught mother struggled to get them back.

But were they really kidnapped?  And how did their mother, a barely literate black woman in the segregated South, manage to bring them home?  And why, after coming home, did they want to go back to the circus?

At the height of their fame, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden.  They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era.  But the very root of their success was in the colour of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even ‘Ambassadors from Mars’.

The result of hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Truevine tells the extraordinary story of what really happened to the Muse brothers for the first time.  It is an unforgettable tale of cruelty and exploitation, but also of loyalty, determination and love. 

You can order TRUEVINE by Beth Macy from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Waterstone’s.  I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

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