I’ve always loved well-told stories of people who came before us, because I’ve always assumed that their lives offer us lessons. Subtle ones, perhaps, but important ones. That’s how, many years ago, I came across the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, who’s been called history’s first biographer. Eventually, I decided to have my own stab at interpreting the biographies of historical figures, and to weave history, philosophy, and psychology into (hopefully) gripping stories. As a journalist and a dual citizen of the US and Germany who’s also lived in the UK and Asia, I naturally looked all over the world for the right characters. And I still do.
I wrote
Hannibal and Me: What History's Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure
This is one of the best survival guides ever, and one of the most compelling looks into how human beings do or don’t accept a disastrous situation and (literally) flow with it. It’s the story of the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew, after their ship, the aptly named Endurance, got stuck in the Antarctic ice and then crushed by it. They were stranded, through the permanent darkness of the polar winter, on floating ice floes—with only blubber to eat, and no fiber at all (you work out the consequences). No shelter. No light. Water and waves underneath you. But they avoided going insane, and Shackleton figured out when to fight (the ice and the sea, in this case)—and when not to fight, in order to drift.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed between two ice floes. With no options left, Shackleton and a skeleton crew attempted a near-impossible…
The life of Julius Caesar, as brought to life by Goldsworthy, remains one of the most fascinating tales of ups and downs, boldness and overreach, war, statecraft, and propaganda (yes, he mastered that too). And adventure. Even if you think you know him, you probably don’t. What, for example, did he do after he was kidnapped at age 25 by pirates? Let’s just say you don’t want to be the pirates. But ultimately you don’t want to be Caesar either. Not least, you want to be careful with wannabe Caesers today, because he was also the most effective populist in history.
The story of one of the most brilliant, flamboyant and historically important men who ever lived.
'A superb achievement' LITERARY REVIEW
'Combines scholarship with storytelling to bring the ancient world to life: in his masterly new CAESAR he shows us the greatest Roman as man, statesman, soldier and lover' Simon Sebag Montefiore
'Magnificent' DAILY TELEGRAPH
From the very beginning, Caesar's story makes dazzling reading. In his late teens he narrowly avoided execution for opposing the military dictator Sulla. He was decorated for valour in battle, captured and held to ransom by pirates, and almost bankrupted himself by staging games for…
This book wouldn’t normally count as historical biography, but to me it’s one of the most inspiring tales about grit. It’s the true story of a group of boys like Joe Rantz, who grew up poor in the woods of Washington State and was abandoned by his family. Still, he claws himself through life, picking up skills, courage, and stamina along the way, and finds a ramp to meaning and success in rowing. The book would be worth reading just for the worm’s-eye view of athletic discipline—the pain and perseverance inside the boat and outside. But then these boys, having learned to be a team, find themselves in Berlin during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Olympics: From the woods of Washington to center stage in world history.
The #1 New York Times-bestselling story about the American Olympic rowing triumph in Nazi Germany-from the author of Facing the Mountain.
Soon to be a major motion picture directed by George Clooney
For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times-the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the…
Some of life’s greatest adventures, triumphs, and disasters are intellectual (which is why I compare Albert Einstein to Hannibal in my own book). As a young iconoclast, Einstein completely blew up the conventional wisdom in science. He found a new way of thinking about gravity, time, space, light, and the whole universe. Being eccentric, he came to embody our notions about the mad scientist. As a human being, he could be endearing but also cruel—it’s not clear whether he ever met, or cared about, his disabled daughter Lieserl. But the most intriguing lesson of his life to me is that even such a genius could get mentally stuck. It’s as if, in his later years, his imagination had been thrown into prison.
By the author of the acclaimed bestseller 'Benjamin Franklin', this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk - a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate - became…
Most obviously, this is a riveting account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the American West all the way to the Pacific, and I would recommend the book just for that. But to my own surprise, it also becomes a disquieting psychological study of Lewis, the alpha to Clark’s beta. Their triumph turns Lewis into a national celebrity. But somehow this fame ruins the young man. Unlike Clark, he can’t maintain fulfilling relationships or find a new purpose in life. He drinks himself into oblivion, until he kills himself in his despair, in one of the messiest suicides in one of the seediest places. The lesson here is that success can ruin you, if you’re not careful.
Every life has successes and failures, triumphs and disasters. The question is what these ups and downs reveal about you and make you become. You can find answers in the stories of other people. Hannibal, the Carthaginian who almost conquered Rome, can teach you how to win life’s battles, but also warns you about losing the peace. His Roman enemy Fabius shows you how to accept setbacks and endure. Hannibal’s nemesis, Scipio, inspires you to reinvent yourself.
To help you see yourself in their stories I compare these three to people who’ll be more familiar. Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pablo Picasso, Tiger Woods, Cleopatra, Amy Tan, and several more – they’re all in the story. But really that story is all about… you.
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.
With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…
Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.
With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…
