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'Surely definitive ... I enjoyed every page and recommend this book highly' (Simon Sebag Montifiore, Mail on Sunday )
'A fluent, thorough and enjoyable biography, which for comprehensiveness, balance and deftness of touch outclasses all the alternatives for the English reader' (Mark Mazower, New Statesman )
'The best concise account I have ever seen of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The narrative is gripping. It does not merely present all the facts of Ataturk's career but paints a credible picture of the whole man' (Geoffrey Lewis )
'The profundity of Mango's analysis and his empathy with the years of national regeneration lift Ataturk to a higher level of biography than any previous account' (Alan Palmer, Literary Review )
'Takes its place at the top' (Norman Stone, Sunday Times )
While researching his excellent earlier book: Veterans of World War I, author Richard Van Emden encountered a fascinating personality of that long-ago conflict. After witnessing German naval attacks on British civilians, Norman Collins enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders of the 51st Highland Division, even though he was under age. Collins fought at the battles of Beaumont Hamel, Arras, and Passchendaele, and was wounded several times. Collins lived to be 100 and had an unusually detailed collection of letters, documents, illustrations and photographs. Richard Van Emden has written a moving biography of a unique personality at war, and his long life after the dramatic events of his youth.
The fascinating story of the life and times of Robert Wood Johnson, a creative and dynamic leader who put the public trust before profit. He made Johnson & Johnson one of the world's great companies, then left his fortune to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve health care in America.
Fortune magazine deemed him "the most important investment banker in the Western world." A ferociously energetic, charming, and ruthless businessman, he had, by the age of forty, helped save the foundering auto giant Citroën, established France's first consumer finance company, and been awarded the Legion of Honor. He was a trusted adviser of the Kennedys and an intimate of Lyndon Johnson, William Paley, and Katharine Graham. His numerous business accomplishments included the building or revitalizing of such corporate giants as Avis, Holiday Inns, Warner-Lambert, and Engelhard Minerals & Chemicals. One of the world's savviest individual investors, he amassed a personal fortune of well over $200 million, yet to his dying day never gave up the search for the ultimate buck.André Meyer, "The Picasso of Banking," was all this—and much more. A man of seemingly endless contradictions, he was respected and admired by many, scorned and disliked by many others. In this riveting, classic biography, renowned author and National Book Award finalist Cary Reich skillfully captures the many facets of this colorful and complex figure, painting an illuminating and captivating portrait of an enigmatic icon who climbed his way from modest beginnings to become what David Rockefeller called "the most creative financial genius of our time in the investment banking world."Born in 1898 in Paris, André Benoit Mathieu Meyer was saddled with adult responsibilities early on, having to provide for his family when his father, an inveterate gambler, "left a vacuum at the head of the household." After getting his professional start at a small Paris bank, he quickly caught the attention of the eminent private banking firm Lazard Fréres, whose prestigious ranks he joined in 1925. Within a year, Meyer was made partner.With the advent of World War II, Meyer was forced into exile by the Nazi occupation. Resettling in the United States, he took over Lazard's New York operation, building it into the most venturesome investment bank in America. During the 1940s and 1950s, when industry was thirsting for capital for its relentless growth, he financed anything and everything from Texas ranchland to New York City real-estate projects. In the sixties, when it became clear the big corporations could get bigger only by gobbling up other corporations, Meyer masterfully got the merger-and-acquisition ball rolling, and became the world's most prolific marriage broker for countless corporate combinations.Financier brilliantly captures Meyer's financial wizardry, a phenomenal talent that was tempered only by the volatile tantrums, ruthlessness, and insatiable greed that went hand in hand with his genius. Unveiling the dueling sides of his complex personality, this absorbing account shows Meyer at his best—as a father figure for the likes of Felix Rohatyn, his most famous protégé, and for Jacqueline Onassis in the years after the assassination—and presents him at his worst—as a tortured and possessive father and a cruel, often vindictive boss.Financier is a work that is as compelling, unforgettable, and monumental as its inimitable subject.Railblazers Rediscovering the Pioneers of BusinessCritical praise for Financier: The Biography of André Meyer"A first-rate biography of an extraordinary man." —Andrew Tobias"A fascinating mix of financial history involving household names of the corporate scene, gossip at rarefied altitudes and big bucks. The focus is on people, mutual back-scratching, wheeling and dealing through the conglomerate jungle." —The Wall Street Journal."This book is fun to read. Mr. Reich, while prudently avoiding heavy legal and accounting exegesis, has a talent for the clear explanation of essential technical detail." —New York Times Book Review."Hard-edged and uncompromising . . . a lucid and well-researched account." —The New Republic.
John Sergeant is ITNs Political Editor and before that spent 30 years at the BBC coalface, latterly as the Corporations political correspondent. He is widely respected both by the denizens of the Houses of Parliament and fellow journalists. This is a deliciously funny insider account of British politics and of the BBC from one of the most highly regarded and well-liked broadcasters.
EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson
‘Isaacson’s biography is readable and highly professional, based on extensive research and thorough checking by expert physicists and historians. Anyone coming to Einstein’s life and work for the first time will be accurately informed and intellectually stimulated…A memorable conclusion: “For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe.” This is as pithy as Einstein himself’
Andrew Robinson, New Scientist 14/4
‘What captures the public attention will be the biographer’s revelation that Einstein fathered a daughter, Lieserl, before he married his fellow mathematician, Mileva Mari, and that the child mysteriously disappears from the record’
Lisa Jardine, The Times 28/4
‘[A] brilliant biography, rich with newly available archival material’
Literary Review, June issue
‘Beautifully written, it renders the physics understandable… Einstein was one of the creators of the modern world, and anyone that does not possess a biography of him should acquire this one’
Sunday Telegraph 3/6
‘With prodigious effort and businesslike calm, Isaacson has given us much more than Einstein the magus, he has given us Einstein the mensch’
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 3/6
‘Isaacson is excellent at explaining the science…. But moments later the reality of the understanding has slipped away and one’s sense of amazement returns. This is because Einstein is analyzing a world beyond the direct perception of our senses’
Daily Express 8/6
'YOU REALLY MUST READ… Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson: a highly readable, dramatic and revelatory biography'
Sunday Times 10/6
‘This book is popular science, biography, history and dramatic writing at its very best’
5 stars, London Lite 12/6
'A thorough exploration of his subject's life, a skilful piece of scientific literature and a thumping good read...It's one of the greatest stories of modern science and to his credit and my surprise, Isaacson has done a first-rate job in telling it. This is, quite simply, a riveting read'
Robin McKie, Observer 10/6
'This book is a splendid achievement'
Daily Telegraph 23/7
'[Isaacson] has written a great book, one that provides everything one would want from a biography of Einstein'
The Spectator 30/6
'YOU REALLY MUST READ… a highly readable, dramatic and revelatory biography'
Sunday Times 17/6
'A readable, dramatic and revelatory life, based on a mass of new letters'
Sunday Times 1/7
‘The popular Einstein story is impossible to resist. A young man fails his mathematics exams yet becomes the world’s greatest scientist. He works in obscurity. When he publishes his great papers, he’s ignored. Despite all this – and his autism – he triumphs. But he does so only with the help of his wife, a key source of his ideas. It turns out that none of that is true. The reality, however, is even better’
FT 4/8
‘This book reads very much like a labour of love… While Einstein may have changed from scientific revolutionary to reactionary during his career, his life remained fascinating and complex to the end, and this book does him justice’
Independent on Sunday 12/08
'In the end, Einstein left his mark on the world because he always had the courage to stand up to conventional wisdom and was never afraid to ask seemingly naïve questions, most of which began with the words "what if?". This tendency to rebel was the source of his creativity and his real talent was an ability to focus on mundane things that his contemporaries had overlooked. He has always deserved a biography that radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence - and now, thanks to Walter Isaacson, he finally has one'
Sunday Business Post (Ireland) 5/8
‘His sympathetic biography of “science’s pre-eminent poster boy” can justifiably claim to be more comprehensive than any before.
‘Isaacson still manages to explain Einstein’s revolutionary thinking with infectious enthusiasm, but it is the man behind the science who is now brought into sharper focus’
Guardian 25/8
‘Walter Isaacson’s achievement is to take us beyond the myth of the huge brain. Through an artful mix of biography and lucid illumination of the most mind-blowing theoretical leaps in science, he makes the case that Einstein’s genius depended not on ‘brute processing power’, but imagination, independence, creativity and passion’
5 stars, Mail on Sunday 2/9
'It is the portrayal of [Einstein's] weaknesses and foibles that makes this book and Albert himself such a delight. He might have been able to understand quantum theory and imagine the universe as a series of equations that swept through existence like a wave, but people! He was just like the rest of us. His private life as a lover, husband and father shows many faults and mistakes. The book is a glorious attempt to showing a towering genius in human terms' Venue 28/9
'A compelling biography of the little scientist who never wore socks and who changed the way we see the world. Isaacson elegantly and fluently interweaves Einstein's interestingly chaotic personal life with confidently lengthy accounts of the work'
Favourite Biographies of 2007, Sunday Times 25/11
'A wealth of information about a complex and divided character. Einstein said his public acclaim made him feel a fraud, but he was an adept manipulator of his own image; when it was rumoured that he was too absent-minded to remember his socks in the morning, he stopped wearing them so as not to disappoint anyone'
Tim Martin, Biographies of the Year Daily Telegraph 24/11
EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson - 9781847370488
'In the end, Einstein left his mark on the world because he always had the courage to stand up to conventional wisdom and was never afraid to ask seemingly naïve questions, most of which began with the words "what if?". This tendency to rebel was the source of his creativity and his real talent was an ability to focus on mundane things that his contemporaries had overlooked. He has always deserved a biography that radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence - and now, thanks to Walter Isaacson, he finally has one'
Sunday Business Post (Ireland) 5/8
"Albert comes vividly to life and so do his space-warping, mind-bending theories. Isaacson uses personal letters that have only recently become available and it turns out he was as passionate about the female of our species as he was about the rest of the universe"
Alan Alda, Hawkeye and Science buff, The Times 8/11
'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?': A Confrontation in the Desert 
'with action so real your Dad will be spitting sand out of his mouth, this gripping account of a Chinook pilot's bravery under enemy fire in Afghanistan will transport him right to the frontline.' (News of the World )
'Sweating the Metal is a description of the Afghan war from the cockpit, the highs and lows of combat-flying at its most dramatic'. (Daily Telegraph )
