For two hundred years after Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays. Since then dozens of rival candidates - including Sir Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford - have been proposed as their true author.

Contested Will unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi).

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro's fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined.

If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what's really contested: are the plays and poems of Shakespeare autobiographical, and if so, do they hold the key to the question of who wrote them?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, "and" The Romanovs "returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. <br>Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity as a young woman, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, when she reached the throne, attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent historical figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the Great, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and, surprisingly, the American naval hero, John Paul Jones. <br>Reaching the throne fired by Enlightenment philosophy and determined to become the embodiment of the "benevolent despot" idealized by Montesquieu, she found herself always contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life, including serfdom. She persevered, and for thirty-four years the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution that swept across Europe. Her reputation depended entirely on the perspective of the speaker. She was praised by Voltaire as the equal of the greatest of classical philosophers; she was condemned by her enemies, mostly foreign, as "the Messalina of the north." <br>Catherine's family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies--all are here, vividly described. These included her ambitious, perpetually scheming mother; her weak, bullying husband, Peter (who left her lying untouched beside him for nine years after their marriage); her unhappy son and heir, Paul; her beloved grandchildren; and her "favorites"--the parade of young men from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of youth as well as sex. Here, too, is the giant figure of Gregory Potemkin, her most significant lover and possible husband, with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of love and separation, followed by seventeen years of unparalleled mutual achievement. <br>The story is superbly told. All the special qualities that Robert K. Massie brought to "Nicholas and Alexandra" and "Peter the Great" are present here: historical accuracy, depth of understanding, felicity of style, mastery of detail, ability to shatter myth, and a rare genius for finding and expressing the human drama in extraordinary lives. <br>History offers few stories richer in drama than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, this eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.

PRAISE FOR CATHERINE THE GREAT :


"Massie once again delivers a masterful, intimate, and tantalizing portrait of a majestic monarch."--Publishers Weekly starred review 

"[A] rich, nuanced examination of Russia's lone female leader...--The Daily Beast  

"What "Catherine the Great" offers is a great story in the hands of a master storyteller." -The Wall Street Journal

       This is an autobiography in essays that conjures up a truly unique portrait of a world that is fast disappearing. Christopher Ondaatje is a true child of the British Empire. Born in Ceylon in 1933 and brought up on a tea plantation, he was sent as a teenager to boarding school in England. But soon after Ceylon was granted its independence in 1948, his family found themselves destitute, and the young Ondaatje left school and got a job. From these beginnings there followed a series of commercial triumphs until 1988 when he abruptly abandoned high finance at the peak of his career and reinvented himself as an explorer and an author, focusing mainly on the colonial period. It is the curious encounters behind these often precarious adventures that make up this book. The stories tell of Ondaatje's childhood days, his early life in Canada, his fascination with inexplicable events and local superstitions, and sometimes perilous travels researching his acclaimed biographies. Illustrated throughout with original images by Ana Maria Pacheco, "The Last Colonial" lives up to the romance of its tantalizing title.                                  

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For the first time in two hundred years, here is a full and authentic account of the beginnings of modern Australia. We all know the conventional story. Established as a dumping ground for Britain's criminals, Australia owes its existence simply to overcrowded jails and a daunting remoteness from everywhere else. In Botany Bay: The Real Story, Alan Frost goes beyond these cliches to shed new light on the decision to settle New South Wales. He examines the hopes and fears of the politicians who took the decision, and the larger commercial and military needs that underwrote it. In the years before the First Fleet sailed, Frost reveals, British authorities considered sending convicts to sites in North and South America, Africa and New Zealand. In deciding on Botany Bay, they hoped not only to rid Britain of its excess criminals, but also to gain a key strategic outpost and take control of valuable natural resources. The culmination of thirty-five years' study of previously neglected archives, Botany Bay is a groundbreaking work that offers new and surprising insights into how Australia came to be.

Author Biography: Alan Frost is a professor of history at La Trobe University, Melbourne. His previous books include The Global Reach of Empire, Voyage of the Endeavour, Arthur Phillip and Botany Bay 

The Great War: four devastating years told by twenty eyewitnesses. There are many books on the First World War, but award-winning and bestselling historian Peter Englund takes a daring and stunning new approach. Describing the experiences of twenty ordinary people from around the world, all now unknown, he explores the everyday aspects of war: not only the tragedy and horror, but also the absurdity, monotony and even beauty. Two of these twenty will perish, two will become prisoners of war, two will become celebrated heroes and two others end up as physical wrecks. One of them go mad, another will never hear a shot fired. Following soldiers and sailors, nurses and government workers from Britain, Russia and Germany, and from Australia and South America - and in theatres of war often neglected by major histories on the period - Englund reconstructs their feelings, impressions, experiences and moods. This is a piece of anti-history: it brings this epoch-making event back to its smallest component, the individual.

Review: -"'Reviews for his books on Battle of Poltava: 'The most outstanding brilliant military history I've ever read' (Telegraph) 
-'The best depiction of war I've ever read' (Simon Sebag Montefiore)" 


Author Biography: Peter Englund is an award-winning, bestselling Swedish historian. Having been a professor at Uppsala University, in 2008 he was appointed the new Permanent Secretary of Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. His breakthrough book on the Battle of Poltava was published to universal critical acclaim and sold over 250,000 copies in Sweden alone.                                            

Our world is governed by the numbers generated by the accounts of nations and corporations. We depend on these numbers to direct our governments, our institutions, corporations, economies, societies. But where did they come from and how did they become so powerful? The answer to these questions begins in the Dark Ages in northern Italy with a new form of record keeping perfected by the merchants of Venice called double-entry bookkeeping. The story of double entry stars a Renaissance monk, mathematician, magician and constant companion of Leonardo da Vinci, his 27-page treatise for merchants, renaissances in art and mathematics, and revolutions in communications and industry. The rise and metamorphosis of double-entry bookkeeping is one of history's best-kept secrets and one of its most important untold tales. Why? First, because it made possible the wealth and cultural efflorescence that was the Renaissance. Second, because it enabled capitalism to flourish, so changing the economies of the world forever. Third, because over several centuries it grew into a sophisticated system of numbers which in the twenty-first century governs the global economy. And finally, and most significantly, because today bookkeeping has the potential to make or break the planet.

Author Biography: Jane Gleeson-White is the author of Classics and Australian Classics.                                            

       In this companion volume of Thomas Keneally's widely acclaimed history of the Australian people, the vast range of characters who have formed our national story are brought vividly to life. Immigrants and Aboriginal resistance figures, bushrangers and pastoralists, working men and pioneering women, artists and hard-nosed radicals, politicians and soldiers all populate this richly drawn portrait of a vibrant land on the cusp of nationhood and social maturity. From the 1860s to the great rifts wrought by World War I, an era commenced in which Australians pursued glimmering visions of equity in a promised land. It was a time of social experiment and reform, of industrial radicalism and women's rights. We were a society the world had much to learn from, or so we believed. But as much as we espoused we were a special people and celebrated a larrikin anti-authoritarianism, we retained provincial objectives that saw ultimate respect for society's structures. There was no Australian revolution. With a rich assortment of contradictory, inspiring and surprising characters, Tom Keneally brings to life the people of a young and cocky nation. This is truly a new history of Australia, by an author of outstanding literary skill and experience, and whose own humanity permeates every page.

Author Biography: Thomas Keneally is the author of the history of Irish convictism, titled The Great Shame. His later work, The Commonwealth of Thieves, looked upon the penal origins of Australia in a way which sought to make the reader feel close to the experience of individual Aboriginals, convicts and officials. His novels include Bring Larks and Heroes, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, Schindler's Ark and The People's Train. He has the won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Book Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Prize, and the Scripter Award of the University of Southern California.                                            

Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December, 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After five weeks, tragedy struck. Ninnis was swallowed whole by a snow-covered crevasse, and Mawson and Mertz realised it was too dangerous to go on. With the scant food and provisions they had left, turning back was almost equally perilous. Their dwindling supplies forced them to kill their dogs to feed the other dogs, at first, and then themselves. Hunger, sickness and despair eventually got the better of Mertz, and he succumbed to madness and then to death. Mawson found himself all alone, 160 miles from safety, with next to no food. Peter FitzSimons tells the staggering tale of Mawson's survival, despite all the odds, arriving back just in time to see his rescue ship disappearing over the horizon. He also masterfully interweaves the stories of the other giants from the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration - Scott of the Antarctic, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen - to bring the jaw-dropping events of this bygone era dazzlingly back to life.

She created the look of the modern woman; she was the high priestess of couture; she inspired women to take off their bone corsets and to cut their hair. She believed in simplicity and elegance and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric; elevated the waistline and created bellbottom trousers, trench coats, turtleneck sweaters, and costume jewelry. In the 1920s when she employed more than two thousand people in her work rooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire. She was autocratic; a volatile woman of fierce ambition and drive; confidante of the rich and famous, friend of royalty and nobility. At the start of the Second World War, she closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Ritz . Picasso, her friend, called her "the most sensible women in Europe." She remained at the Ritz and moved on to Vichy and then Switzerland between 1945 to1954. For more than half a century, Chanel's life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor; mystery and myth... Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive expose--part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait--fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel's life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the war. Vaughan tells the story of Chanel's long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's high-ranking officials.

Nobody is more disturbed, said President Truman, three days after the destruction of Nagasaki in 1945, 'over the use of the atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour and their murder of our prisoners of war.