The book contains for the first time memories of the Russian Soviet front-line poet, translator David Samoilov (1920-1990). The collection includes memoirs of the poet’s relatives, students, and friends: Veniamin Smekhov, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Igor Guberman, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Alexander Davydov, Viktor Perelygin, Lydia Libedinskaya, Mikhail Kozakov, Yuliy Kim, Tamara Zhirmunskaya, etc. The...

American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 'father of the atomic bomb,' the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) gehörte zu den herausragenden Persönlichkeiten des deutschen Widerstands gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Der evangelische Theologe arbeitete aktiv mit an den Versuchen, das Hitler-Regime gewaltsam zu beseitigen. Im Frühjahr 1943 wurde er verhaftet; im April 1945 erhängte ihn ein SS-Standgericht kurz vor dem Eintreffen der US-Truppen.

Berlin, Anfang der Dreißigerjahre. Erich Kästner befindet sich auf dem Höhepunkt seines Erfolgs. Dann die Zäsur: Als die Nazis die Macht übernehmen, entscheidet sich Kästner, in Deutschland zu bleiben. Er, der kurz zuvor noch ein Spottgedicht auf Hitler verfasst hat, muss vor Ort mitverfolgen, wie seine Bücher verbrannt werden; bald darauf erhält er Publikationsverbot. Und doch gelingt es ihm,...

The first, modern, post-Soviet biography of the scientist-encyclopedist and poet Mikhail Lomonosov, one of the main pillars of modern Russian culture. The author used not only archival materials and documents, but also the writings of Lomonosov's contemporaries to complete the picture of the man in the context of his time.

Stefan Zweig based his biography of Marie Antoinette, who became the Queen of France at the age of fifteen, on the correspondence between her and her mother, and her great love the Count Axel von Fersen. Zweig analyzes the chemistry of a woman’s soul from her intimate pleasures to her public suffering as a Queen under the weight of misfortune and history. Zweig describes Marie Antoinette in the...

Trevor Noah, the funny guy who hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central, shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a...

Wolfgang Leonhard was a 13-year-old boy when he had to leave Nazi Germany with his mother and emigrated to the Soviet Union. There he grew up after the arrest of his mother in a home for German and Austrian emigrants, studied at the Moscow Pedagogical College of Foreign Languages and joined the Komsomol. He experienced the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in Moscow and was forcibly resettled...

He has always been popular, and his world literary status is now recognized: the author Hans Fallada has been completely rediscovered in recent years. It is time to take a new approach to his biography and to evaluate the rich, previously unexplored material.

The first major biography about the GDR's most fascinating author. Carsten Gansel's comprehensive biography provides an exciting reassessment of a writer's life in its ups and downs and a complex work that is currently being discovered and celebrated internationally.

To the large exhibition in the German Historical Museum, curated by Dr. Monika Boll, this special volume is published about one of Germany's most famous songwriters: Wolf Biermann.