Wilbur Smith - Ballantynes 02 - Men of Men (unabrdiged audiobook + text)
It was called The Devils’s Own: a steep scar in the African earth, around which men toiled with picks, shovels, and dreams of the milky treasures that would become prized, polished diamonds. In this demonic race, native tribesmen became miners. Sometimes they became thieves. And then they became rebels.
Zouga Ballantyne, an African-born Englishman, sees the Devil’s Own mine as his ticket to the North: a realm of waterfalls and fertile plains, teeming wildlife, and seeded fields of gold. But what happens in the diamond mines of the fledgling Boer Free State sets the course for Ballantyne and a cast of comrades, enemies, and lovers—and for the continent itself.

From the visions of imperialists to the fury between a father and a son, from the lengths a man will go for a woman and a woman for her convictions, a tragic clash of generations and civilizations was shaking 19th century Africa, where some warriors fought for their gods - and others for the men who came before them...

Isaac Newton
(Lives and Legacies Series)
This slim introduction to Newton accents the personality as it lays out the science.
Christianson presents traits in the adolescent Newton that flowered or festered when he became an adult, such as his childlike curiosity and his smoldering capacity for hatred. To be blunt, Newton was a disagreeable character. The list of Newton's feuds is long and occurred throughout his life: he fought with his mother and, when he became famous, with Robert Hooke, astronomer John Flamsteed, mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, philosopher John Locke, and who knows how many unrecorded tradesmen.