Michael Foot

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Ross M. Martin

This is the story of a nine-year-old cotton weaver who went on to become a dominating presence in the Edwardian trade union movement, and a Member of Parliament who played a critical role in the infancy of the Labour Party.

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Ken Livingstone

" ... Whether describing his difficult childhood in working-class South LKondon, his love of nature or his battles with Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone is never less than fascinating. His stories of deals and intrigues in committee rooms and council chambers are eye-opening and he is frank about his relationships with party bosses whose instinct was often to run a mile from him. [This book] is also revelatory about how things get done in big cities: Livingstone has been a great reforming city [of London] leader, whose achievements range from the introduction of the congestion charge and related environmental policies to major changes in the integration of London's transport networks. His campaigns against racism and homophobia and for women's rights made him a hate figure in the 1980s, but much of what he was arguing then is now the common sense of all decent politicians. And he played a central role in bringing the [2012] Olympics to London. ..."--Book jacket.

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Michael Heseltine

"Michael Heseltine has enjoyed one of the most colourful and creative careers of modern British politics. By bestowing two successive nicknames - first 'Tarzan' and then 'Hezza' - the public displayed its instinctive rapport with him. For thirty years, from his days as Minister of Aerospace in the early 1970s to his appointments as Deputy Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, he has consistently ranked as one of the best-known and most admired of public figures." "In this autobiography he tells the story not just of his political life but of his business career as well - of his earliest commercial days running first a boarding-house and then a hotel in Bayswater; of how in 1962, as a property developer, he was almost forced into bankruptcy; of the way, after a disastrous start, he patiently built up his magazine empire to the point where it is today, one of the largest private companies in the land." "The book offers a number of personal glimpses. He tells of how he nearly died of meningitis at the age of five, of his sensitivity to his relative failure at his public school, of his feeling of vindication in being elected President of the Oxford Union in 1954 and of the subsequent ordeal of being trained as a national serviceman with the Brigade Squad at Caterham. He also writes movingly of his pride and joy, the arboretum at his country estate in Oxfordshire that he began planting twenty years ago."--Jacket.

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H.W. Brands

He was the foremost American of his day, yet today he is little more than a mythic caricature in the public imagination. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the pivotal figure in colonial and revolutionary America, comes vividly to life in this masterly biography.Wit, diplomat, scientist, philosopher, businessman, inventor, and bon vivant, Benjamin Franklin was in every respect America's first Renaissance man. From penniless runaway to highly successful printer, from ardently loyal subject of Britain to architect of an alliance with France that ensured America's independence, Franklin went from obscurity to become one of the world's most admired figures, whose circle included the likes of Voltaire, Hume, Burke, and Kant. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and a host of other sources, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has written a thoroughly engaging biography of the eighteenth-century genius. A much needed reminder of Franklin's greatness and humanity, The First American is a work of meticulous scholarship that provides a magnificent tour of a legendary historical figure, a vital era in American life, and the countless arenas in which the protean Franklin left his legacy.From the Trade Paperback edition.