You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2013 ‘Completely absorbing’ Amanda Foreman 'Enthralling’ Guardian ‘The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas’s own father, Alex - the son of a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up among slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality. Alex Dumas was the stuff of legend’ Daily Mail So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are there no statues of ‘Monsieur Humanity’ as his troops called him? The Black Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played in Dumas’s downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti to the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto – Reiss, like the novelist before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. ‘Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud’ Independent ‘Brilliant’ Glasgow Herald
The Black Count by Tom Reiss | A 15-minute Summary & Analysis Preview: The Black Count is the Pulitzer Prize winning biography written by author Tom Reiss. The book traces the life of Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, also known as Alexandre Dumas, a black general who fought in the French Revolution. The narrative is told through historical documents as well as writings of Dumas’ son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas was born in 1762 in the Saint-Domingue French sugar colony, modern day Haiti. His father, Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, was a French nobleman who became a marquis. After establishing a Jeremie ...
The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself 'Kurban Said' when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, and discovered a novel instead. Written on the eve of the Second World War, Ali and Nino is a captivating love story set in the glamorous city of Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. The novel's depiction of a lost cosmopolitan society is enthralling, but equally intriguing is the identity of the man who wrote it. Who was its supposed author? And why was he so forgotten that no one could agree on the simplest facts about him? For five years, Reiss tracked Lev Nussimbaum, alias Kurban Said, from a wealthy Jewish childhood in Baku, to a romantic adolescence in Persia on the run from the Bolsheviks, and an exile in Berlin as bestselling author and self-proclaimed Muslim prince. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth-century - of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism.
A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.
Once Ingo Hasselbach was a neo-Nazi, preaching racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-government terrorism. Now the 28-year-old founder and leader of the first neo-Nazi party in East Germany takes as his mission the prevention of others following the path of hate. In this eye-opening memoir, Hasselbach vividly exposes the violent movement he helped create--and tells why he left it behind. Photos.
Astonishing. Searingly honest with plenty of drama it is the true story of a young life led that promised much, delivered more that could ever have been envisaged until the bottom fell out of the author's world. From the realms of high finance and a chance encounter with the President to the comedic pathos of the participation in a football tournament, as an inpatient of a psychiatric facility. After a lengthy period flat out on the canvas of life, our pugilist in all but name, gets back into the ring and makes another attempt, successful again, to prove you can't keep a good man down. If only that were the end of the story. But there's a sting in the tail that brings readers up short. The lesson: it really is a good idea to make the most of every day granted to you. Tom Reiss professes to know less and less about life as he poignantly, and with good humour, reflects upon his own. Reiss's mastery of storytelling through his melodic prose gently guides the reader through the most compelling of lives. Quintessentially, this is a beautiful memoir by a truly remarkable man. Read it. You'll be surprised by what you may learn.
After 1945, Jewish writing in German was almost unimaginable—and then only in reference to the Shoah. Only in the 1980s, after a period of mourning, silence, and processing of the trauma, did a new Jewish literature evolve in Germany and Austria. This volume focuses on the re-emergence of a lively Jewish cultural scene in the German-speaking countries and the various cultural forms of expression that have developed around it. Topics include current debates such as the emergence of a post-Waldheim Jewish discourse in Austria and Jewish responses to German unification and the Gulf wars. Other significant themes addressed are the memorialization of the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, the uses...
The internationalization of research and technology is one key component of the globalization of trade and business, with potentially major impacts on patterns of economic development and public policies worldwide. Although certain aspects of this internationalization trend are well documented, and some effects can be quantified, the overall processes are extremely complex and the outcomes are highly uncertain. The existence of the phenomenon is generally accepted, but its importance and the trends are currently the topic of a lively debate. This study on "New Ways in Drug Development in Pharmaceuticals" is part of a three year project which aims at investigating how new concepts of industri...
A compelling biography of SoundCloud sensation and rising star XXXTENTACION -- from his candid songwriting and connection with fans to his tragic death. At the age of twenty, rapper Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy-aka XXXTENTACION-was gunned down during an attempted robbery on the streets of Deerfield Beach, Florida, mere months after signing a $10 million record deal with Empire Music. A rising star in the world of SoundCloud rap, XXXTENTACION achieved stellar levels of success without the benefit of a major label or radio airtime, and flourished via his passionate and unfettered connection to his fans. In Look at Me!, journalist Jonathan Reiss charts the tumultuous life and unguarded songwriting of t...
This is the first book-length study of installation art. JulieReiss concentrates on some of the central figures in its emergence,including artists, critics, and curators.