by Roman Koropeckyj (2008)
"Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), Poland's national poet, was one of the extraordinary personalities of the age. In chronicling the events of his life - his travels, numerous loves, a troubled marriage, years spent as a member of a heterodox religious sect, and friendships with such luminaries of the time as Aleksandr Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper, George Sand, Giuseppe Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, and Aleksandr Herzen-Roman Koropeckyj draws a portrait of the Polish poet as a quintessential European Romantic." "Spanning five decades of one of the most turbulent periods in modern European history, Mickiewicz's life and works at once reflected and articulated the cultural and political upheavals marking post-Napoleonic Europe. After a poetic debut in his native Lithuania that transformed the face of Polish literature, he spent five years of exile in Russia for engaging in Polish "patriotic" activity.^ Subsequently, his grand tour of Europe was interrupted by his country's 1830 uprising against Russia; his failure to take part in it would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years Mickiewicz shared the fate of other Polish emigres in the West. It was here that he wrote Forefathers' Eve, part 3 (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834), arguably the two most influential works of modern Polish literature. His reputation as his country's most prominent poet secured him a position teaching Latin literature at the Academy of Lausanne and then the first chair of Slavic Literature at the College de France. In 1848 he organized a Polish legion in Italy and upon his return to Paris founded a radical French-language newspaper.^ His final days were devoted to forming a Polish legion in Istanbul." "This illustrated biography - the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911 - draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes."--BOOK JACKET.
Patricia C. McKissack
Brought up in France as the African slave companion of a nobleman's daughter, thirteen-year-old Zettie records the events of 1763, when she and her mistress escape to the New World where they are inadvertently drawn into the hostilities of the ongoing French and Indian War and, eventually, find a new direction to their lives.
Jonathan F. Vance
"When Nazi Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated in 1945, its records revealed that two young Canadians, Ken Macalister and Frank Pickersgill, were among its countless victims. At 30 and 31 years of age, they had been agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE ), an undercover unit established by Winston Churchill that used sabotage and subversion to bring down the Nazi regime from within. Jonathan F. Vance brings us the dramatic, untold story of two men who were the most unlikely of soldiers. Pickersgill, an up-andcoming journalist, and Macalister, one of the finest law students ever to attend the University of Toronto, were both living in France when the Nazis seized power. Pickersgill, arrested as an enemy alien, spent two years in prison before escaping to England. The men’s intelligence, resourcefulness and familiarity with French customs and language caught the attention of the SOE. Trained in special-operations techniques, from radio control to killing, they were paired together and parachuted into France—just as the underground network they were to join was cracked open by the Germans. Unlikely Soldiers is an extraordinary tale of unsung heroes, intrigue and tragic error. With access to the recently opened SOE archives, Vance draws new material into a fascinating narrative that will appeal to anyone interested in military history, the evolution of espionage, or simply the remarkable story of two heroic Canadians."--pub. desc.
Marvin R. O'Connell
This biography by Marvin R. O'Connell captures Pascal's life and times with a chronological narrative based on the published sources and Pascal's own works. From Pascal's early life as a child prodigy already experimenting in physics at the age of ten to his adult years as one of Europe's leading intellectuals, O'Connell takes readers on an eloquent journey into Pascal's world, showing them the passion that drove the man and the radical spirituality he sought in his own heart. In the process, O'Connell also illumines the social, political, and religious intrigue of seventeenth-century Paris, especially the winner-take-all struggle between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, with whom Pascal himself was allied.
Hubert Nyssen
Anecdotes, réflexions sur la littérature, la critique, le milieu littéraire et journalistique et croquis d'auteurs (Nina Berberova, François Nourissier, Nicolâas Guillén, etc.). Le journal d'un éditeur de premier plan qui se demande qu'est-ce qui le fait courir de Paris à Tel Aviv, d'Arles à Amsterdam, de New York à Montréal, de La Havane à Princeton (c'est l'amour de la littérature universelle).