Beethoven was a genius so universal that his popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow. It now encircles the globe: Beethoven's most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. Biographer Morris brings the composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel...

In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father. Situating Jefferson within the context of America's evolution and tracing his legacy over the past two hundred years, Hitchens brings the character of Jefferson to life as a man of his time and also as a symbolic figure beyond it. Conflicted by power, Jefferson wrote...

Bill Bryson's bestselling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship-updated with a new introduction by the author to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild...

By far the most important figure in the history of the United States, George Washington liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire against all military odds, and presided over the production and ratification of a constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. Yet today Washington remains a distant figure to many Americans-a failing that acclaimed author Paul Johnson sets out to...

Francis Crick-the quiet genius who led a revolution in biology by discovering, quite literally, the secret of life-will be bracketed with Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein as one of the greatest scientists of all time. In his fascinating biography of the scientific pioneer who uncovered the genetic code-the digital cipher at the heart of heredity that distinguishes living from non-living things-acclaimed bestselling science writer Matt Ridley traces Crick's...