At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light, a power generation and distribution system to sustain it, and the first motion picture cameras—all achievements more astonishing in their time than we can easily grasp today—Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels.

In a major reinterpretation of his legacy, biographer Randall Stross shows that Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was certainly a technical genius, but Stross excavates the man from layers of myth-making and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. This bold reassessment of Edison’s life and career tells the story of how he came upon his most famous inventions as a young man and spent the remainder of his long life trying to conjure similar success. We also meet his partners and competitors, presidents and entertainers, his close friend Henry Ford, the wives who competed with his work for his attention, and the children who tried to thrive in his shadow—all providing a fuller view of Edison’s life and times than has ever been offered before.

In this highly readable book, Stross tells the story of how Edison came upon his most famous inventions as a young man, and how he spent the remainder of his long life trying to conjure up similar success. The Wizard of Menlo Park reveals not only how Edison worked, but how he managed his own fame, becoming the first great celebrity of the modern age.

http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Menlo-Park-Thomas-Invented/dp/1400047625/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886634&sr=1-1

Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power by Virginia Rounding

Dutiful daughter, frustrated wife, passionate lover, domineering mother, doting grandmother, devoted friend, tireless legislator, generous patron of artists and philosophers—the Empress Catherine II, the Great, was all these things, and more. Her reign lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during those years she worked to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St. Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London in the beauty of its architecture, the glittering splendor of its Court and the magnificence of its art collections.

Yet the great Catherine was not even Russian by birth and had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne; she seized it and held on to it, through wars, rebellions and plagues, by the force of her personality, by her charm and determination, and by an unshakable belief in her own destiny. This book reveals the story of an extraordinary woman, in all her complexity. Using many of Catherine’s own words from her voluminous correspondence and other documents, as well as contemporary accounts by courtiers, ambassadors and foreign visitors, Virginia Rounding penetrates the character of this most powerful, fascinating and surprisingly sympathetic of eighteenth-century women.

This is the story of Catherine the woman, whom power alone could never satisfy, for she also wanted love, affection, friendship and humor. The real Catherine, however, was more interesting than any rumor. The London Telegraph calls Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power “a great thumping triumph of a book.” This is the first comprehensive modern biography of Catherine the Great to explore her both as a woman and empress.

http://www.amazon.com/Catherine-Great-Love-Sex-Power/dp/0312328877/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886731&sr=1-1

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

A year after Teddy Roosevelt suffered a humiliating defeat in his 1912 run for the White House, the audacious adventurer determined to renew his broken spirit with an investigative trip to South America. What began as a relatively mundane float down previously mapped terrain became a much more dangerous journey into the unknown — an expedition down a locally feared tributary of the Amazon known as the “River of Doubt.” The expedition’s labors would forge a new map of the world as well as a previously unplumbed strength of character, necessary for survival.

The River of Doubt is Candice Millard’s account of Roosevelt’s unprecedented feat propels readers straight into the heart of the Amazon — a place filled with hazards of every conceivable description. From vines, poisonous snakes, and piranhas to cannibals and duplicitous guides, Roosevelt was forced to bushwhack a path much more perilous than that of 20th-century politics, and faced unspeakable hardships. Roosevelt and his fellow explorers faced constant illness and disease, fear of attack from hostile tribes, drowning, starvation, and even mutiny within their own ranks. A raging, flesh-eating infection that reached its peak at the most treacherous point in the journey brought Roosevelt himself to the brink of death.

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. Millard, a former writer and editor for National Geographic, succeeds where many have not; she has managed to convey Teddy Roosevelt’s energy and warm interactions, as well as the ex-president’s fervent desire for adventure and self-acceptance.

http://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darkest/dp/0767913736/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886778&sr=1-2

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

In Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin focuses on providing fresh insights into Abraham Lincoln's leadership style and his deep understanding of human behavior. Goodwin makes the case for Lincoln's political genius by examining his relationships with three men he selected for his cabinet, all of whom were his opponents for the Republican nomination in 1860: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates. These men, all accomplished and nationally known, originally disdained Lincoln for his backwoods upbringing and lack of experience, and were shocked and humiliated at losing to this relatively obscure Illinois lawyer. Yet Lincoln not only convinced them to join his administration, he ultimately gained their admiration and respect as well.

Team of Rivals is a valuable resource on the life of Abraham Lincoln relative to his dealings with other persons. It not only shows how he brilliantly transformed his three better-born, better-educated rivals into allies, but it also demonstrates his strong leadership abilities, as well as benevolence and understanding on his part, even during difficult times when obstacles would stand in the way of his purposes. Lincoln may have been "the indispensable ingredient of the Civil War," but the contributions and talents of Seward, Chase, and Bates were invaluable to Lincoln and they played key roles in keeping the nation intact.

Goodwin tells the story of Lincoln's prudent political management as a highly personal tale, not a political or bureaucratic one. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history. Had Lincoln not possessed the wisdom and confidence to select and work with the best people, he could not have led the nation through one of its darkest periods.

http://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Doris-Kearns-Goodwin/dp/B000OVLNII/ref=ed_oe_h

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey by Linda Greenhouse

In Becoming Justice Blackmun, Linda Greenhouse reveals the backstage story of the Supreme Court through the eyes and writings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Especially gripping is the intense human drama of the breakup of his lifelong friendship with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, which had its roots beginning in kindergarten in St. Paul, Minnesota and culminating in 16 years together on the Supreme Court.

Once the closest of friends, Blackmun and Burger diverged personally and ideologically in 1973, when Burger assigned Blackmun to write the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade. The story of how Blackmun's lifelong friendship with Burger withered in the crucible of life on the high court reveals how political differences became personal, even for the country's most respected jurists. A Nixon appointee, Blackmun became the Supreme Court's most liberal justice after the retirement of William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. During Blackmun's twenty-four years on the bench from 1970 to 1994, the Supreme Court justices repeatedly tussled with one another over the contentious cases that came their way - Roe v. Wade, the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon tapes, Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Greenhouse shows us the Court as a human institution, where nine very smart and very opinionated lawyers seek to make decisions and bring others around to their point of view all behind closed doors. Greenhouse, the New York Times' veteran Supreme Court watcher, was the first print reporter to have access to Harry Blackmun's extensive archive and private and public papers. Becoming Justice Blackmun provides an engrossing portrait of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and Greenhouse's meticulous narrative history provides new ammunition for Justice Blackmun's critics as well as his admirers.

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Justice-Blackmun-Blackmuns-Supreme/dp/0805080570/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886904&sr=1-1

Frank Lloyd Wright by Ada Louise Huxtable

From the way we build to the way we live, Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on American architecture is visible all around us. Now, Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize winning architecture writer for The Wall Street Journal and chief architecture critic for The New York Times for nearly twenty years, offers an outstanding look at the architect and the man. Huxtable pairs a critique of Wright's architecture with an engaging narrative of his scandalous private life, including his abandonment of his first family, the murder of a mistress and her children by a deranged servant and other tempestuous relationships with artistic, high-strung women.

Through the journey, Huxtable takes us not only into the mind of the man who drew the blueprints, but also into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever. A story of great triumph and heartbreak, Frank Lloyd Wright is, like Wright's own creations, an expertly wrought tribute to a man whose genius lives on in the very landscape of American architecture. She explores the sources of his tumultuous and troubled life and his long career as master builder as well as his search for lasting, true love.

The fascinating life and work of the great American architect gets a stimulating, well-balanced treatment. With its dollop of sizzle, this fluently written biography will provoke renewed interest in Wright's architecture among general readers. She has merged all the versions of his life into an eminently readable story of the life of a genius. Along the way, Huxtable also introduces readers to Wright's masterpieces.

http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Lloyd-Wright-Penguin-Lives/dp/0670033421/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886965&sr=1-1

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

For all his generosity in enriching world literature with deathless characters - Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello - William Shakespeare kept his own personality remarkably hidden. In Will in the World, Harvard scholar Stephan Greenblatt sheds penetrating light on this enigmatic genius, teasing out the mystery of artistic transformation by carefully connecting the Bard's brilliant verse to his times and circumstances. A young man from the provinces - a man without wealth, connections, or university education - moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained?

Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. We see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly, competitive London theater world, while at the same time grappling with dangerous religious and political forces that took less-agile figures to the scaffold. Above all, we never lose sight of the great works that continue after four hundred years to delight audiences everywhere.

Greenblatt has impressively located the man in both his greatest works and the turbulent world in which he lived with a blend of biography, literary interpretation and history. As the same spirit of sympathetic inquiry - by turns subtly speculative and candidly skeptical - plays over other key episodes in Shakespeare's life, readers finally glimpse the exceptional man who turned poetry into a panoramic mirror for all of humanity. A brilliant reading of Shakespeare's world yields a new understanding of the man and his genius. A valuable resource for both professional and casual Shakespeareans.

http://www.amazon.com/Will-World-How-Shakespeare-Became/dp/0393050572/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887014&sr=1-2

Forty Ways to look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin

Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography. Eschewing the linear, chronological approach of most biographies, Gretchen Rubin has written forty brief chapters looking at the British prime minister from multiple angles: Churchill as son, father, husband, orator, painter, historian, enemy of Hitler and many other roles.

With penetrating insight and vivid anecdotes. Rubin makes Churchill accessible and meaningful to twenty-first-century readers with forty contrasting views of the man: he was an alcoholic, he was not, he was an anachronism, he was a visionary, he was a racist, he was a humanitarian, he was the most quotable man in the history of the English language, he was a bore. Writing on Churchill as a son, for instance, Rubin hammers home the point that he spent his life trying to measure up to an imagined, idealized father. Rubin makes it clear that Churchill's real father thought his son was destined for mediocrity and told him so. In crisp, energetic language, Rubin creates a new form for presenting a great figure of history and brings to full realization the depiction of a man too fabulous for any novelist to construct, too complicated for even the longest narrative to describe, and too valuable ever to be forgotten.

Rubin strives to capture the essence of her larger-than-life subject not through a head-on assault, but by circling him and taking snapshots from a multiplicity of angles. Her Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a feat of intelligent compression, a stereoscopic portrait for the space age, a biography in miniature, and not least, a rattling good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Forty-Ways-Look-Winston-Churchill/dp/0812971442/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887052&sr=1-1

Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King

Almost 500 years after Michelangelo Buonarroti frescoed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the site still attracts throngs of visitors and is considered one of the artistic masterpieces of the world. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling unveils the story behind the art's making, a story rife with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera.

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Four years earlier, at the age of twenty-nine, Michelangelo had unveiled his masterful statue of David in Florence; however, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and none with the curved surface of vaults which dominated the chapel’s ceiling. Michelangelo would spend the next four years laboring over the vast ceiling and he executed hundreds of drawings, many of which are masterpieces in their own right.

Ross King's fascinating book tells the story of those four extraordinary years. Battling against ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems, inadequate knowledge of the art of fresco, and the pope's impatience, Michelangelo created figures - depicting the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood - so beautiful that, when they were unveiled in 1512, they stunned his onlookers. Modern anatomy has yet to find names for some of the muscles on his nudes, they are painted in such detail. While he worked, Rome teemed around him, its politics, and rivalries with other city-states and with France at fever pitch, often intruding on his work. From Michelangelo's experiments with the composition of pigment and plaster to his bitter competition with the famed painter Raphael, who was working on the neighboring Papal Apartments, Ross King presents a magnificent tapestry of day-to-day life on the ingenious Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early-sixteenth-century Rome.

http://www.amazon.com/Michelangelo-Popes-Ceiling-Ross-King/dp/B000MV8HCU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887095&sr=1-1

Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis

Audubon's Elephant was the nickname given to John James Audubon's masterpiece, The Birds of America - an oversized folio of 435 life-size ornithological prints that remains to this day the most compelling depiction of bird life in the United States. Born in Haiti and raised in France, Audubon spent much of his adult life as a struggling American businessman on the frontier, where his obsession with birds nearly brought him to financial ruin. In 1826, his ambitious project was also in a precarious position--his folio remained unfinished, without an American publisher willing to fund it. Had Audubon not set sail for England, his artistic triumph might easily have turned into failure.

Audubon's Elephant tells the story of the naturalist's unlikely success in Britain as a self-exiled artist in search of the money and inspiration necessary to complete his life's work. During twelve years spent traveling in Liverpool, Edinburgh, London, and Paris, Audubon won the interest of wealthy families, fellow artists, and the public with his eccentric brilliance and woodsman's charisma, ultimately securing enough subscriptions to publish The Birds of America.

Duff Hart-Davis, himself a naturalist, has written a lively, highly engaging biography of Audubon's heady and memorable days as a great American artist abroad.

http://www.amazon.com/Audubons-Elephant-Americas-Greatest-Naturalist/dp/0805077758/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887136&sr=1-2

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

The name Genghis Khan often conjures the image of a relentless, bloodthirsty' barbarian on horseback leading a ruthless band of nomadic warriors in the looting of the civilized world. But the surprising truth is that Genghis Khan was a visionary leader whose conquests joined backward Europe with the flourishing cultures of Asia to trigger a global awakening, an unprecedented explosion of technologies, trade, and ideas. In researching this book, Jack Weatherford, a professor of anthropology at Macalaster College, traveled thousands of miles, many on horseback, tracing Genghis Khan's steps into places unseen by Westerners since the khan's death and employing what he calls an "archeology of movement."

With an empire that stretched from Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans, the Mongols dramatically redrew the map of the globe, connecting disparate kingdoms into a new world order. But contrary to popular wisdom. Weatherford reveals that the Mongols were not just masters of conquest, but possessed a genius for progressive and benevolent rule. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan's accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination. Genghis Khan was an innovative leader, the first ruler in many conquered countries to put the power of law above his own power, encourage religious freedom, create public schools, grant diplomatic immunity, abolish torture, and institute free trade. The Mongols were the architects of a new way of life at a pivotal time in history.

In Genghls Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford, the only Western scholar ever to be allowed into the Mongols' "Great Taboo" - Genghis Khan's homeland and forbidden burial site - tracks the astonishing story of Genghis Khan and his descendants, and their conquest and transformation of the world. This dazzling work doesn't just paint an unprecedented portrait of a great leader and his legacy, but challenges us to reconsider how the modern world was made.

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/0609809644/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887178&sr=1-1

Camille Claudel: A Life by Odile Ayral-Clause

Until now, the gifted 19th-century French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864– 1943) may have been best known for her much-romanticized relationship with sculptor Auguste Rodin, who has been erroneously portrayed as abandoning the fragile Claudel to a nervous breakdown. The fiercely independent sculptor was widely recognized in her time as an artist of passion and intelligence, but was little known after her institutionalization in 1913, except as Rodin’s muse and mistress.

This first fully researched biography of Claudel abolishes the myths attached to her life and asserts the brilliance of her art. Drawing upon ample unpublished material, including family photographs, private letters, and medical records, Odile Ayral-Clause reveals the truth about Claudel's affair with Rodin and about her confinement and death in a mental asylum. Using Claudel's own words, she describes the crushing reproofs and prejudices the sculptor confronted - from her family, from society, from the male-dominated art world.

Although Claudel's life has been romanticized in print and on film, a fully researched biography has never been written until this one. Camille Claudel: A Life draws upon much unpublished material, including letters and photographs that confirm the brilliance of her sculpture, clarify her relationship with Rodin (who did not exploit her, but, in fact, supported her work throughout his life), and reveal the true story of her confinement in a mental institution. Illustrated with personal family photographs, this is an intimate and moving tribute to an artist whose life and work have, until now, been misinterpreted and undervalued.

http://www.amazon.com/Camille-Claudel-Life-Odile-Ayral-Clause/dp/0810940779/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887206&sr=1-3

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours. He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical - though not most profound - political thinkers.

Franklin was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism, but the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity. Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow "leather-aprons" more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully and none so intuitively.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Benjamin Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.

http://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Franklin-American-Walter-Isaacson/dp/074325807X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887235&sr=1-1

John Adams by David McCullough

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

As he has with stunning effect in his previous books, McCullough tells the story from within - from the point of view of the amazing eighteenth century and of those who, caught up in events, had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out. Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites - one a Massachusetts farmer's son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country. At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day - their day of days – July 4, in 1826.

This is history on a grand scale - a book about politics, war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

http://www.amazon.com/John-Adams-David-McCullough/dp/0743223136/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887307&sr=1-1

The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television by Evan I. Schwartz

In a story that is both of its time and timeless, Evan I. Schwartz tells a tale of genius and greed, innocence and deceit, and corporate arrogance versus independent brilliance. Many men have laid claim to the title "The Father of Television," but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time. Farnsworth may have ended up a footnote in history, yet he was the first to demonstrate an electronic process for scanning, transmitting, and receiving moving images, a discovery that changed the way we live.

Growing up on a small farm in Idaho, Farnsworth was fascinated by anything scientific, especially, the newest thing on the market - radio. Wouldn't it be even more miraculous to project images along with sound? Driven by his obsession, Farnsworth found a local philanthropist willing to fund his dream. By the age of twenty, in 1926, Farnsworth was operating his own laboratory above a garage in San Francisco and filing his first patent applications. The resulting publicity brought him to the attention of David Sarnoff, the celebrated founder of the NBC radio network, whose own RCA laboratories soon began investigating - without much success - a way to transmit a moving image. Determined to control television the way he monopolized the radio - by owning all the royalty-producing patents - Sarnoff, from the lofty heights of his office in a New York skyscraper, devised a plan to steal credit for Farnsworth's designs.

Vividly written, and based on original research, including interviews with surviving members of the Farnsworth family, The Last Lone Inventor is the story of the epic struggle between two equally passionate adversaries and how their clash symbolized a turning point in the culture of creativity. Schwartz's cogent and elegant book persuasively argues Farnsworth's case and describes the heartbreak that defined his life. This is a fascinating inside story of how this eccentric loner invented television and fought corporate America.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lone-Inventor-Genius-Television/dp/0060935596/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887367&sr=1-3

Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose

Though principally a biography of Meriwether Lewis, this narrative also provides fascinating portraits of Thomas Jefferson, William Clark, Sacagawea and other members of the group of explorers who journeyed from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1803-1806.

Lewis’ intense curiosity about the world around him, his training as a naturalist, and his ability to record what he saw and experienced provide readers with a fascinating picture of the American frontier in the 19th century. Lewis’ strengths and weaknesses as a leader are revealed as he and his loyal followers meet every kind of challenge in their search for a navigable water route from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Stephen Ambrose incorporates recent research and new material on the expedition into this history, and includes detailed maps and examples of Lewis' journal entries. While scholarly and well documented, this account is at the same time a great adventure story, and Ambrose generates a sense of excitement and anticipation that mirrors, at least to some degree, the feelings Lewis and Clark must have had as they began their journey.

http://www.amazon.com/Undaunted-Courage-Meriwether-Jefferson-Expedition/dp/0684811073/ref=ed_oe_h

Founding Fathers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation - and perhaps any – came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries.

Ellis focuses on 6 discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened: Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan: Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery - his last public act - and Madison's efforts to quash it: Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice: Adams' difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son: and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly, antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas. Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail. Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised public figures of his time. Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins. Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public. Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation. The stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.

http://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-Joseph-Ellis/dp/0375705244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887457&sr=1-1

Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward

In eight Tuesdays each year, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan convenes a small committee to set the short-term interest rate that can move through the American and world economies like an electric jolt. As much as any, the committee's actions determine the economic well-being of every American. The availability of money for business or consumer loans, mortgages, job creation and overall national economic growth flows from those decisions.

Perhaps the last Washington secret is how the Federal Reserve and its enigmatic chairman, Alan Greenspan, operate. In Maestro, Bob Woodward takes you inside the Fed and Greenspan's thinking, as well as the Fed's internal debates as the American economy is pushed into a historic 10-year expansion while the world economy lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis. Greenspan plays a sometimes subtle role, sometimes blunt behind-the-scenes role. He appears in Maestro up close as never before - alternately, nervous and calm, plunging into mathematics one moment and politics the next, skeptical, dispassionate, always struggling and often alone.

Maestro traces a fascinating intellectual journey as Greenspan, an old-school anti-inflation hawk of the traditional economy, is among the first to realize the potential in the modern, high-productivity new economy - the foundation of the current American boom. Woodward's account of the Greenspan years is a remarkable portrait of a man who has become the symbol of American economic preeminence.

http://www.amazon.com/Maestro-Greenspans-Fed-American-Boom/dp/0606225307/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887727&sr=1-1

Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dave Sobel

The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest.

Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then.

Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned.

http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Daughter-Historical-Memoir-Science/dp/0802713432/ref=sr_oe_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887779&sr=1-1

House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson's House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets 1798-1848 was hailed as "definitive" by The New York Times, a "great biography" by Time magazine, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 1998 by Business Week. Now, Ferguson concludes his myth - a brilliant portrait of one of the most powerful families of modern times at the zenith of its power.

From Crimea to World War II, wars repeated, threatened the stability of the Rothchild’s worldwide financial empire. Despite these upheavals, theirs remained the biggest bank in the world up until the First World War. Yet the Rothschild's failure to establish themselves successfully, in the United States proved fateful, and as financial power shifted from London to New York after 1914, their power waned.

At once a classic family saga and major work of economic, social and political history. The House of Rothchild is the riveting story of an unparalleled dynasty.

http://www.amazon.com/House-Rothschild-Worlds-Banker-1849-1999/dp/0140286624/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887831&sr=1-3

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester

Acclaimed biographer and historian, William Manchester, examines the career of General Douglas MacArthur, the legendary soldier-hero and paradoxical four-star general, a military genius who suffered from lapses in strategy. MacArthur was the most controversial American general of World War II and the decades that followed it. His presence shaped the modern American military, and his clashes with civilian authority shaped the relationship between presidents and generals forever after. The story of MacArthur is the story of the awakening of the Pacific Rim countries and the role America played in shaping these modern day economic miracles.

American Caesar traces MacArthur’s life through his army-brat upbringing, his remarkable years at West Point (he graduated first in his class), his distinguished service in World War I, his peacetime service as superintendent of West Point and army chief of staff, his inspiring leadership during World War II operating in a war theater many times the size of Europe but without the resources of that theater. Manchester also examines MacArthur’s historic term as military dictator of Japan, his return to wartime service in Korea, and his triumphant return to the U.S. after being fired by President Truman.

MacArthur, the public figure, the private man, the soldier-hero whose mystery and appeal created a uniquely American legend, portrayed in a brilliant biography that will challenge the cherished myths of admirers and critics alike. American Caesar is the tale of a man many times larger than life. A great look at a controversial figure.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-1880-1964/dp/0440304245/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887879&sr=1-2

Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg

Charles Lindbergh's solo flight from New York to Paris captured the imagination of a postwar generation hungry for heroes, and cemented an exalted spot for the 25-year-old pilot from Minnesota in the collective American imagination. From the moment he landed in Paris on May 21, 1927, Lindbergh found himself thrust upon an odyssey for which he was ill prepared - the first modern media superstar, defied and demonized many times over in a single lifetime. A. Scott Berg's thorough biography of the aviator suggests that despite the public scrutiny that accompanied his every move until his death in 1974, Lindbergh remained an intensely private man.

National Book Award winner, Berg casts dramatic new light on Lindbergh's childhood; his astonishing flight; the kidnapping of his son, which has been called "The Crime of the Century;" Lindbergh's fascination with Hitler's Germany; and his unsung work in his later years. Berg is the first and only writer to have been given unrestricted access to the massive Lindbergh archives and to be allowed to freely interview Lindbergh's friends, colleagues, and family members, including his children and his widow, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The result is a brilliant biography that clarifies a life long blurred by myth and half-truth.

This is a most compelling story of a most significant life: the most private of public figures finally revealed with a sweep and detail never before possible. This is at once Lindbergh the hero and Lindbergh the man. Here at last is the definitive life of one of the most legendary, controversial, and enigmatic figures in American history. With this book, Berg succeeds in surveying Lindbergh's fascinating life and assessing its historic impact. Lindbergh was the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

http://www.amazon.com/Lindbergh-Scott-Berg/dp/0425170411/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196887933&sr=1-2

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

With an uncanny feel for detail and a novelist's grasp of drama and depth, No Ordinary Time is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s account of the Roosevelt presidency during WWII highlights America's changing domestic front. Goodwin brilliantly narrates the interrelationship between the inner workings of the Roosevelt White House and the destiny of the United States. Goodwin paints a comprehensive, intimate portrait that fills in a historical gap in the story of our nation under the Roosevelts.

Goodwin focuses upon the wartime White House, "a small, intimate hotel" frequented by Churchill, Harry Hopkins, Lorena Hickock, Missy LeHand, and other guests of the state and of the Roosevelts. Her portraits of ER and FDR are highly sympathetic, showing them heroically - but by no means flawlessly - leading an unwilling nation into the wartime effort that helped defeat the Axis and changed America unimaginably. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines -Eleanor and Franklin's marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor's life as First Lady, and FDR's White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war.

No Ordinary Time is a monumental work, a brilliantly conceived chronicle of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in the history of the United States. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born. A compelling chronicle of a nation and its leaders during the period when modern America was created.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Ordinary-Time-Franklin-Roosevelt/dp/0684804484/ref=ed_oe_p

The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw

Veteran reporter and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw went to France to make a documentary marking the 40th anniversary of D-day in 1984. Although he was thoroughly briefed on the historical background of the invasion, he was totally unprepared for how it would affect him emotionally. Flooded with childhood memories of World War II, Brokaw began asking veterans at the ceremony to revisit their past and talk about what happened, triggering a chain reaction of war-torn confessions and Brokaw's compulsion to capture their experiences.

The Greatest Generation is more than a mere chronicle of a tumultuous time. It's history made personal by a cast of everyday people transformed by extraordinary circumstances: the first women to break the homemaker mold, minorities suffering countless indignities to boldly fight for their country, infantrymen who went on to become some of the most distinguished leaders in the world, small-town kids who became corporate magnates. The greatest generation learned resourcefulness in adversity early - the Depression - and then they went to war against two of the greatest military machines ever created. They won the war, they saved their enemies through the Marshall Plan, and then they came home to re-create America - its communities, roads, businesses, government, arts, and sciences. They never complained and they never told their stories.

In this superb book, Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values - duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. The Greatest Generation salutes those whose sacrifices changed the course of American history.

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Generation-Tom-Brokaw/dp/1400063140/ref=ed_oe_h

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