“A sympathetic and believable portrait” of the American woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up the throne, with photos included (Christian Science Monitor).A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.It was the love story of the century—the king and the commoner. In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to...

The first comprehensive biography of Sharon Tate: Hollywood star, wife of Roman Polanski, victim of Charles Manson, and symbol of the death of the 1960s.It began as a home invasion by the "Manson family" in the early hours of August 9, 1969. It ended in a killing spree that left seven people dead: actress Sharon Tate, writer Voyteck Frykowski, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, hair stylist Jay Sebring, student Steven Parent, and supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his ...

Journey through the splendor and the excesses of the Gilded Age"Every aspect of life in the Gilded Age took on deeper, transcendent meaning intended to prove the greatness of America: residences beautified their surroundings; works of art uplifted and were shared with the public; clothing exhibited evidence of breeding; jewelry testified to cultured taste and wealth; dinners demonstrated sophisticated palates; and balls rivaled those of European courts in their refinement. The mess...

The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down.Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California’s famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the world’s tallest trees understand how unlikely it is that these last isolated groves of giant trees still stand at all. In this gr...

Power, pageantry, and prideQueen Victoria ruled the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, covering one fourth of the earth's land surface, reigning over subjects on every continent, and exercising undisputed mastery of the oceans in between. She was the "Grandmother of Europe," with descendants occupying the thrones of half a dozen nations, and more to come. The very era in which she lived already bore her name. In June 1897, her proud and prosperous nation marked her sixti...

**It was the most magnificent court in Europe—**a world of fairy-tale opulence, ornate architecture, sophisticated fashion, extravagant luxury, and immense power. In the last Russian imperial court, a potent underlying mythology drove its participants to enact the pageantry of medieval, Orthodox Russia—infused with the sensibilities of Versailles—against a backdrop of fading Edwardian splendor, providing a spectacle of archaic ceremonies carefully orchestrated as a lavish stage upon which ...

On a snowy January morning in 1889, a worried servant hacked open a locked door at the remote hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods. Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed, blood oozing from their mouths. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary appeared to have shot his seventeen-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera as she slept, sat with the corpse for hours and, when dawn broke, turned the pistol on himself.A century has transformed this bloody scene into romant...

The truth of the enduring mystery of Anastasia's fate-and the life of her most convincing impostor The passage of more than ninety years and the publication of hundreds of books in dozens of languages has not extinguished an enduring interest in the mysteries surrounding the 1918 execution of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The Resurrection of the Romanovs draws on a wealth of new information from previously unpublished materials and unexplored sources to probe t...

Drawing on unpublished letters and rare sources, this is the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that ignited World War I.In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Four years later all had vanished in the chaos of World War I. One event precipitated the conflict, and at its heart was a tragic love story. When Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand married for love against the wishes ...

The true story of the famous ocean liner, its glamorous passengers, and the torpedo that ended an era and prompted the US entry into World War I.Lusitania: She was a ship of dreams, carrying millionaires and aristocrats, actresses and impresarios, writers and suffragettes—a microcosm of the last years of the waning Edwardian Era and the coming influences of the Twentieth Century. When she left New York on her final voyage, she sailed from the New World to ...

"An extensively documented account of the 1956 sinking of the Italian luxury liner . . . amazing stories of serendipitous luck, heroism, cowardice, and tragedy." — BooklistIn 1956, a stunned world watched as the famous Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria sank after being struck by a Swedish vessel off the coast of Nantucket. Unlike the tragedy of the Titanic, this sinking played out in real time across radios and televisions, the fi...

Abundant, newly discovered sources shatter long-held beliefsThe collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 revealed, among many other things, a hidden wealth of archival documents relating to the imprisonment and eventual murder of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their children. Emanating from sources both within and close to the Imperial Family as well as from their captors and executioners, these often-controversial materials have enabled a new and comprehensive examination o...