The Black Count

Author: Tom Reiss
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307952959
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY • ONE OF ESQUIRE’S BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL TIME General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. But, hidden behind General Dumas's swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave—who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat. The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. TIME magazine called The Black Count "one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible." But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

Black Votes Count

Author: Frank R. Parker
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807869694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
Most Americans see the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement. When the law was enacted, black voter registration in Mississippi soared. Few black candidates won office, however. In this book, Frank Parker describes black Mississippians' battle for meaningful voting rights, bringing the story up to 1986, when Mike Espy was elected as Mississippi's first black member of Congress in this century. To nullify the impact of the black vote, white Mississippi devised a political "massive resistance" strategy, adopting such disenfranchising devices as at-large elections, racial gerrymandering, making elective offices appointive, and revising the qualifications for candidates for public office. As legal challenges to these mechanisms mounted, Mississippi once again became the testing ground for deciding whether the promises of the Fifteenth Amendment would be fulfilled, and Parker describes the court battles that ensued until black voters obtained relief.

The Orientalist

Author: Tom Reiss
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812972767
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 491

Book Description
A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.

Count Them One by One

Author: Gordon A. Martin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604737905
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when, in 1961, the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While thirty percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South, and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys. Gordon A. Martin, Jr., then a newly-minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi and interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

General Alexandre Dumas

Author: John G. Gallaher
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809320981
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
In 1799, however, Dumas left Egypt when Napoleon wanted him to remain with the army. This plunged Dumas deeply into the dungeon of Napoleon's disfavor. Later he was literally imprisoned in southern Italy until 1801. "Napoleon never forgave Dumas," Gallaher notes, "and even continued to punish his wife and children after his death.".

The Count of Monte Cristo Complete and Unabridged Edition: 4 Volumes in 1 (All Four Volumes in One)

Author: Alexandre Dumas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9782491251437
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 884

Book Description

The Black Book of Communism

Author: Stéphane Courtois
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674076082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 920

Book Description
This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

The Count of Monte Cristo - Vol II. (in Five Volumes)

Author: Alexandre Dumas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781473326866
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
This vintage book contains the second volume of Alexandre Dumas's famous adventure novel, "The Count of Monte Cristo." Set in early nineteenth century France during the time of the Bourbon Restoration, it tells the story of a man's wrongful imprisonment, his escape, and his indefatigable quest for revenge. A masterful tale of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness, "The Count of Monte Cristo" is rightfully one the most famous novels of all time, and deserves a place on every bookshelf. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a famous French writer. He is best remembered for his exciting romantic sagas, including "The Three Musketeers" and "Chicot the Jester." Despite making a great deal of money from his writing, Dumas was almost perpetually penniless thanks to his extravagant lifestyle. His novels have been translated into nearly a hundred different languages, and have inspired over 200 motion pictures. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing this antiquarian book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

The Red and the Black

Author: Stendhal
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1425051448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Book Description
"The Red and the Black" is a reflective novel about the rise of poor, intellectually gifted people to High Society. Set in 19th century France it portrays the era after the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena. the influential, sharp epigrams in striking prose, leave reader almost as intrigued by the author's talent as the surprising twists that occur in the arduous love life.

A Confederacy of Dunces

Author: John Kennedy Toole
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802197620
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).