Biography from I Cannot Live Without Books

Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree that Changed America by Harry N. MacLean On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend and possible accomplice, Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to… Read more about this item

Lincoln's Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed the Future of Espionage by Jane Singer and John Stewart A month after Lincoln's assassination, William Alvin Lloyd arrived in Washington, D.C., from the former Confederacy to press a claim against the federal government. He was due money for serving as the president's spy throughout the Civil War. According to Lloyd, Lincoln… Read more about this item

The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America by Winston Groom In this masterful narrative, historian Winston Groom transports readers to the world of the American Revolution, where bold ideas, improbable events, and three extraordinary characters led to the remarkable birth of the country we know today. When the Revolutionary War ended in victory, there remained a… Read more about this item

The Passion of Anne Hutchinson: An Extraordinary Woman, the Puritan Patriarchs, & the World They Made and Lost by Marilyn J. Westerkamp When English colonizers landed in New England in 1630, they When English colonizers landed in New England in 1630, they constructed a godly commonwealth according to precepts gleaned from Scripture. For these 'Puritan' Christians, religion both provided the center… Read more about this item

American Demagogue: The Great Awakening and the Rise and Fall of Populism by J.D. Dickey In November 1739, the American colonies felt an earthquake. It arrived not in the form of a natural disaster, but with a twenty-five-year-old preacher, George Whitefield. He had come to the New World to tell his listeners to repent their sins and be reborn, to reject… Read more about this item

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already… Read more about this item

Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman behind Benedict Arnold's Plot to Betray America by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case Histories of the Revolutionary War have long honored heroines such as Betsy Ross, Abigail Adams, and Molly Pitcher. Now, more than two centuries later, comes the first biography of one of the war's most remarkable women, a beautiful Philadelphia society girl… Read more about this item

Kamala's Way: An American Life by Dan Morain There's very little that's conventional about Kamala Harris, yet her personal story also represents the best of America. She and her younger sister were raised by a single mother, a no-nonsense cancer researcher who emigrated from India at the age of nineteen in search of a better education. Harris's mother and her father, an… Read more about this item

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and… Read more about this item

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, "Samuel Adams was the man." John Adams thought his cousin "the most sagacious politician" of all. With high-minded ideals and bare knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign… Read more about this item

Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen C. Guelzo THERE IS A RED "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGE. Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership.… Read more about this item

Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy by Anne Sebba In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on death row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the U.S. government was aware that the evidence against… Read more about this item

With Malice Aforethought: The Execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti by Theodore W. Grippo For Sacco and Vanzetti, the nightmare began on the night of May 5, 1920. They were riding on a streetcar to Sacco's home when it suddenly stopped. Officer Connolly boarded with his gun drawn. He confronted the two Italians and asked where they came from and… Read more about this item

What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life by Marc Leepson THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. Francis Scott Key is enshrined in America's iconography as a paragon of patriotism on par with Betsy Ross, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, and John Hancock -- individuals who hold exalted places in American history for performing one memorable… Read more about this item

Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village by Jan Jarboe Russell Hundreds of books have been written about Eleanor Roosevelt, yet, as America's longest-serving first lady, she remains a compelling and elusive figure. Perhaps the most mysterious period of her life began with her decision in 1920 to step away from her… Read more about this item

The Agitator: William Bailey and the First American Uprising Against Nazism by Peter Duffy By 1935, Hitler had suppressed all internal opposition and established himself as Germany's unchallenged dictator. Yet many Americans remained largely indifferent as he turned his dangerous ambitions abroad. Not William Bailey. Just days after violent anti-Semitic riots had broken out in Berlin, the SS Bremen, the flagship of… Read more about this item

A Being So Gentle: The Frontier Love Story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson by Patricia Brady THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. The love story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson is one of the greatest in American history. The young lawyer met the daughter of one of Nashville's founders in 1788, while Rachel was still married to… Read more about this item

A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot by Mary Walton THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. Alice Paul began her life as a studious girl from a strict Quaker family in New Jersey. In 1907, a scholarship took her to England, where she became passionately devoted to the suffrage movement. Upon her return… Read more about this item

Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war, as vice president under two very different presidents -- John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson -- and as secretary of state. But he is perhaps… Read more about this item

Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis Angela Y. Davis has been a political activst at the cutting edge of the Black liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movement for more than fifty years. First published in 1974 and edited by Toni Morrison, Angel Davis: An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of Davis's early years in struggle. Davis describes her… Read more about this item