Biography & Autobiography : Historical

In 1795, at the age of twenty-four, Mungo Park began a journey from the Gambia into the uncharted interior of the African continent. Travelling with only native guides, and later entirely alone, his goal was to become the first European to reach the River Niger and the fabled city of Timbuctoo. The journey took him through warring African kingdoms and the fringes of the Sahara Desert, leading him into great physical hardship and danger. He endured imprisonment by a Moorish chief for several months, was repeatedly robbed, and came close to death from thirst and starvation. He eventually reached the Niger and mapped part of its course, before being forced to turn back. He had long been given up for dead by the time he returned to the Gambia in 1797. Throughout the journey he kept meticulous notes, which he transcribed into Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa on his return to Britain. His simple and modest account of his journey and the conditions he encountered along the way has been an inspiration to travellers and writers ever since it was first published in 1799. More than a travel journal, it is a story of adventure and survival that offers a unique insight into conditions in West Africa before widespread European settlement. more...

Price: $6.99

Despite Alexander the Great's unprecedented accomplishments, during the last seven years of his life, this indomitable warrior became increasingly unpredictable, sporadically violent, megalomaniacal, and suspicious of friends as well as enemies. What could have caused such a lamentable transformation? This biography seeks to answer that question by assessing the role of alcohol in Alexander the Great's life, using the figure of Dionysus as a symbol of its destructive effects on his psyche. more...

Price: $29.95

When Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, she was flying the longest leg of her around-the-world flight and was only days away from completing her journey. Her plane was never found, and for more than sixty years rumors have persisted about what happened to her. This story reminds us how daring early aviators were as they risked their lives to push the technology of the day to its limits - and beyond. more...

Price: $11.99

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. more...

Price: $9.95

Rita Huggins was stolen from her country as a child in the 1920s, and taken to what is now Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve. Life was ruled by the Aborigines Protection Act. From that time, she desired to make something better for herself, her family and Aboriginal people. She told her memories to her daughter Jackie, and some of their conversation is in this book. Witness their intimacy, their similarities and their differences. Two voices, two views on a shared life. more...

Price: $20.00