Henry Wellcome

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Paul Brannigan & Ian Winwood

As they embark upon the fourth decade of the career, Metallica's legacy is remarkable. Following the acclaimed first volume, which chronicled the band's rise to international stardom, the authors now explore the challenges and tensions that ensued for the band from the phenomenal, breakthrough, success of 1991's 'Black' album to the band's reinvention with the 'Load/Reload' albums; bassist Jason Newsted's shock exit in 2001 and the group's subsequent meltdown.

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[by] Elizabeth Longford

Capaciously documented, this first volume of a two-volume life of the Duke of Wellington places its author, Lady Longford (author also of Queen Victoria) in the front ranks of 20th century military and political biographers. Through family connections with Wellington's inadequate wife, Kitty Pakenham, she has had access to hitherto untapped family records: her knowledge of his campaigns has enabled her to write knowledgeably of his defeats, victories and frustrations, his brutal discipline and his concern for the welfare of men who called him ""Nosey"" and followed him with grudging confidence. Three months older than Napoleon, Arthur Wesley or Wellesley was born in Ireland in 1769, the second--and awkward--son of a noble family. Poor and without apparent talents, he joined the army and in an appallingly mismanaged winter campaign in 1794 against the French learned how not to run an army or fight a war. Ordered to India in 1796, Arthur made money and enemies and achieved fame, now often forgotten, by defeating Tipoo, Sultan of Mysore, and the ""tumultous"" Mahrattas. Returning to England in 1806, he became involved with the notorious Hariette Wilson and made the mistake of marrying his former Irish sweetheart, Kitty Pakenham. Seat to Spain in 1808 when Napoleon prepared his own downfall by putting his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, Arthur, after six heartbreaking years drove tile French from the Peninsula, for which he was made Duke of Wellington. On Napoleon's escape from exile in Elba in 1815 he was appointed commander of the allied armies in Belgium, meeting and defeating his old enemy at Waterloo on June 16: the author's account of this battle is one of the best parts of tin amazing book. It is at once stirring biography and stimulating social history, dispassionate and sympathetic, and even it' Wellington hasn't quite the instantaneously identifiable appeal of Victoria, still it will he read widely, Implemented by its selection for April by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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Susan Williams

In this candid and moving account Susan Williams tells the story of what really happened to King Edward, drawing on diaries, secret documents and thousands of letters sent to Edward by the public to re-create the tragic events that led to his abdication. She reveals a hugely popular, deeply loved monarch, one whose modern ideas and sympathy for the poor so unsettled the establishment that his devotion to Wallis Simpson provided the perfect excuse to force him off the throne.

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Michael J. Neufeld

The first authoritative biography of Wernher von Braun, chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich—creator of the infamous V-2 rocket—who became one of the fathers of the U.S. space program. In this meticulously researched and vividly written life, Michael J. Neufeld gives us a man of profound moral complexities, glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, a man whose brilliance and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition. As one of the leading developers of rocket technology for the German army, von Braun yielded to pressure to join the Nazi Party in 1937 and reluctantly became an SS officer in 1940. During the war, he supervised work on the V-2s, which were assembled by starving slave laborers in a secret underground plant and then fired against London and Antwerp. Thousands of prisoners died—a fact he well knew and kept silent about for as long as possible. When the Allies overran Germany, von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans. The U.S. Army immediately recognized his skills and brought him and his colleagues to America to work on the development of guided missiles, in a covert operation that became known as Project Paperclip. He helped launch the first American satellite in 1958 and headed NASA’s launch-vehicle development for the Apollo Moon landing. Handsome and likable, von Braun dedicated himself to selling the American public on interplanetary travel and became a household name in the 1950s, appearing on Disney TV shows and writing for popular magazines. But he never fully escaped his past, and in later years he faced increasing questions as his wartime actions slowly came to light. Based on new sources, Von Braun is a brilliantly nuanced portrait of a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.