Vol. 1 : A-K. - 480 p.

Artist, filmmaker, magazine publisher, instigator of Pop Art, Andy Warhol (19281987) used his canvasses of dollar bills, soup cans, and celebrities to subvert distinctions between high and popular culture. His spectacular career encompassed the underground scene as well as the equally deviant worlds of politics, show business, and high society. Warhol is the definitive chronicle of Warhol's storied life.

Already climbing the bestseller lists-and garnering rave reviews—this "little masterpiece" sheds brilliant light on the equation that changed the world. Bodanis begins by devoting chapters to each of the equation's letters and symbols, introducing the science and scientists forming the backdrop to Einstein's discovery—from Ole Roemer's revelation that the speed of light could be measured to Michael Faraday's pioneering work on energy fields. Having demystified the equation, Bodanis explains its science and brings it to life historically, making clear the astonishing array of discoveries and consequences it made possible. It would prove to be a beacon throughout the twentieth century, important to Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the structure of the atom, Enrico Fermi, who probed the nucleus, and Lise Meitner, who finally understood how atoms could be split wide open. And it has come to inform our daily lives, governing everything from the atomic bomb to a television's cathode-ray tube to the carbon dating of prehistoric paintings.

Vol. 1 : A - Barbosa. - 504 p.

The most authoritative account ever written of how an ordinary juvenile delinquent named Charles Manson became the notorious murderer whose crimes still shock and horrify us today. More than forty years ago Charles Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. It was the culmination of a criminal career that author Jeff Guinn traces back to Manson’s childhood. Guinn interviewed Manson’s sister and cousin, neither of whom had ever previously cooperated with an author. Childhood friends, cellmates, and even some members of the Manson Family have provided new information about Manson’s life. Guinn has made discoveries about the night of the Tate murders, answering unresolved questions, such as why one person on the property where the murders occurred was spared. Manson puts the killer in the context of his times, the turbulent late sixties, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege. Guinn shows us how Manson created and refined his message to fit the times, persuading confused young women (and a few men) that he had the solutions to their problems. At the same time he used them to pursue his long-standing musical ambitions, relocating to Los Angeles in search of a recording contract. His frustrated ambitions, combined with his bizarre race-war obsession, would have lethal consequences as he convinced his followers to commit heinous murders on successive nights. In addition to stunning revelations about Charles Manson, the book contains family photographs never before published.

Vol. 2 : F-L. - 524 p.

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination. India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

Bob Marley was the first, and possibly the only, superstar to emerge from the Third World. Although he lived a short life, only 36 years, Bob penned an enormous quantity of songs, pioneering a new reggae rhythm and sound that was distinctly Jamaican. An expert lyricist who could more than hold his own with any contemporary hip-hop word slinger, Bob crafted emotionally powerful chains of words that packed a serious punch. Twenty-five years after his death, the music of Bob Marley and the Wailers is as popular and relevant as it was the day it was released. Author David Moskowitz gives readers an inside look at the man behind the legend. Fans from all corners of the globe are a testament to the fact that his music transcends race, color, economic class, even language. From Marley's poverty stricken early childhood in rural Jamaica to break out his faith in Rastafarianism, this biography recounts the life and music of one of the most famous popular artists of the last century, an incredible story for long-time fans as well for a new and ever-increasing audience who were too young to witness Marley's history-making music career firsthand. A timeline, photos, and a rich bibliography of print and electronic sources make this biography ideal for both research purposes and casual reading.

Slepy traf sprawił, ze Witoldowi Pogorzelskiemu zawdzieczałam mozliwosc pracy naukowej. A było to tak: I ja, i mój pózniejszy - maz, Stefan Rolewicz studiujac matematyke na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim od 1950 r. znalezlismy sie w 1953 r. w sytuacji nie do pozazdroszczenia. Studia okazały sie byc dwustopniowe, kryteria przyjecia na tzw. kurs magisterski (nastepne dwa lata) tylko pozornie, jak sie okazało, miały byc wyłacznie merytoryczne, a tym, którzy sie na nie nie dostana, groził nakaz pracy, przewaznie gdzies na głucha wies. Oboje nie dostalismy sie na ten kurs magisterski (równiez paru innych bardzo dobrych studentów). Rolewicza jakos wybroniono jako olimpijczyka (ale to juz inna historia).

Vol. 1 : Abderhalden - Byers. - 522 p.

"SPECTACULAR" is a mild word for describing the strange experiment with life that comprises the story of Nikola Tesla, and "amazing" fails to do adequate justice to the results that burst from his experiences like an exploding rocket. It is the story of the dazzling scintillations of a superman who created a new world; it is a story that condemns woman as an anchor of the flesh which retards the development of man and limits his accomplishment and, paradoxically, proves that even the most successful life, if it does not include a woman, is a dismal failure.

I was first attracted to Friedrich Nietzsche as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. He represented a radical independence of thought to me, and I wrote my senior honors paper on what then seemed the most provocative of his ideas. As a graduate student in intellectual history at the University of Chicago, I decided to write my dissertation about Nietzche as well. By that time, the fog of adolescent enthusiasm had cleared somewhat, and the categories of psychoanalysis came naturally to hand as a means of explaining his unusual manner of thinking. Fortunately, Professor William McNeill, my adviser, countenanced and even encouraged my interest in psychobiography. The psychoanalytic focus of the dissertation also led me to a rewarding association with D r. George Moraitis of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago, who helped me to appreciate my own psychological involvement with Nietzsche as well asto avoid some of the pitfalls of historical diagnosis. I became dissatisfied with my psychoanalytic treatment of Nietzsche's life as I realized that it did not suffice to illuminate the conjuncture of his ideas. Nietzsche had carefully constructed both his life and his works as monuments of creativity and had cast himself in the role of the genius. I began to explore the theory of genius, which had become, in the nineteenth century, a veritable ideology, a vehicle for conveying the grand aspirations of unusual individuals to the culture at large. Many writers and artists employed it, both to marshal their own energies and to construct themselves and their oeuvres to fit this new archetype of creative life, thus making themselves recognizable to the public. The question of how Nietzsche became a genius, or how he constructed himself as a genius, linked what I knew about his unique personality to the cultural category of genius, a socially constructed role. Nietzsche learned about it from widely revered examx pIes like Goethe and Schiller. With his need fo r fa therly mentors, he fa stened his attention upon these men and emulated them. And after an extended apprenticeship to Schopenhauer and Wagner, he assumed the mantle of genius fo r himself. With th is understanding Nietzsche's development, I was in a position to write a quite dIoolt rent book. In fa ct, I found that the complementary relationShIp of personal psychology and the culture of ge nius provides a strategy fo r investigating many other great and unique creative figures. I had a research agenda that went far beyond Nietzsche. I have a great many fr iends and colleagues to thank fo r th eir confidence in me and my gradually developing project, and for their fri endship. Thanks first to my far-flung fr ends who believed that I could bring this to fru ition; to fo rmer colleagues in the Department of History at the University of North Carol ina; in the Department of German at the University of Pittsburgh; and in the Departments of History at Appalachian State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; and finally to my current colleagues at Miami University in Oxfo rd, Ohio. In the years SInce I began to write this book, I have incurred many other debts too personal to mention here, but no less gratefully re membered. For her sustaining confidence I am particularly grateful to Joyce Seltzer at The Free Press. Without her encouragement during the last several years, this book might not have been published. Without her intellectual advice and editorial criticism, it would bemuch less satisfactory than it is. To my daughter Laura, who can hardly know how uch she has helped with the book, I dedicate it.