Hardcover Nonfiction

by Lin Yutang · Reynal & Hitchcock

by Hendrik Willem van Loon · Simon & Schuster

by Eve Curie · Doubleday, Doran

"A biography [of Nobel Prize winner Madame Curie] that stirs the heart and the mind by a fine counterpoint of sense and sensibility, a great story superbly told."--New York Times Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman scientist to win worldwide acclaim and was, indeed, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. Written by Curie's daughter, the renowned international activist Eve Curie, this biography chronicles Curie's legendary achievements in science, including her pioneering efforts in the study of radioactivity and her two Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. It also spotlights her remarkable life, from her childhood in Poland, to her storybook Parisian marriage to fellow scientist Pierre Curie, to her tragic death from the very radium that brought her fame. Now updated with an eloquent, rousing introduction by best-selling author Natalie Angier, this timeless biography celebrates an astonishing mind and a extraordinary woman's life.

by The New York Herald Tribune Home Institute · Scribner

by Alexander Woollcott · Viking Press

by Eugene Lyons · Harcourt, Brace

by Winston S. Churchill · Putnam

Insightful biographical sketches of major historical figures of the twentieth century, from the incomparable British statesman. Winston S. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of "his mastery of historical and biographical description." Nowhere is that mastery more evident than in Great Contemporaries—which features Churchill's profiles of many of the major figures of his time. These short biographies cover political and cultural personalities ranging from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Lawrence of Arabia, and Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. This edition includes five previously uncollected essays and a number of photographs, plus an enlightening introduction and annotations by noted Churchill scholar James W. Muller. Written in the decade before Churchill became prime minister, these essays focus on the challenges of statecraft at a time when the democratic revolution was toppling older regimes based on tradition and aristocratic privilege. Churchill's keen observations take on new importance in our own age of roiling political change. Ultimately, Great Contemporaries provides fascinating insight into these subjects as Churchill approaches them with a measuring eye, finding their limitations at least as revealing as their merits.