Will In The World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Why should we read Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World? There have been innumerable biographies of William Shakespeare, but the greatest of all writers remains the great unknowable. We know about the petty business dealings, the death of his son, his career as a man of the theatre, and (of course) the seemingly contemptuous bequeath to Anne Hathaway of his ‘second best bed’. But any biographer is left scratching for much more than that--apart, of course, from adducing what can be read of the man's characters from his work (an enterprise fraught with danger). Shakespeare is not Hamlet, Lear or Benedict--though, of course, he is also, in a real sense, all three...

In a magnificent feat of re-creating sixteenth-century London and Stratford, best-selling biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd brings William Shakespeare to life in the manner of a contemporary rather than a biographer. Following his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement with this definitive and imaginative biographical masterpiece.

Prize-winning historian and biographer, Carolly Erickson has created an eminently readable biography that recognizes the humanity of Great Catherine - Empress of Russia - with her majesty and immense capability. Dispelling some of the myths surrounding her voracious sexual appetite, the biographer portrays Catherine as a lonely woman far ahead of her time - achieving greatness in an era when women were executed on a husband's whim.

Shakespeare - The Biography

In a magnificent feat of re-creating sixteenth-century London and Stratford, bestselling biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd brings William Shakespeare to life in the manner of a contemporary rather than a biographer. Following his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement with this definitive and imaginative biographical masterpiece.

Catherine the Great - Portrait of a Woman

Once upon a time, there was a minor German princess named Sophia. She went on to become the world's richest and most powerful woman, ruler of its then-largest empire, revered as "Catherine the Great." Her accomplishments and shortcomings as an autocrat and a woman make for a remarkable saga, and though many have tried, there may be no better author to take on the daunting task of chronicling than Robert K. Massie, a seasoned biographer of the 400-year Romanov dynasty, most notably with Peter the Great: His Life and World, which won a 1981 Pulitzer Prize.