The Classical French - second hand

A source of endless fascination and speculation, the subject of countless biographies, novels, and films, Elizabeth I is now considered from a thrilling new angle by the brilliant young historian Tracy Borman.

So often viewed in her relationships with men, the Virgin Queen is portrayed here as the product of women: the mother she lost so tragically, the female subjects who worshiped her, and the peers and intimates who loved, raised, challenged, and sometimes opposed her.

In vivid detail, Borman presents Elizabeth’s bewitching mother, Anne Boleyn, eager to nurture her new child, only to see her taken away and her own life destroyed by damning allegations--which taught Elizabeth never to mix politics and love. Kat Astley, the governess who attended and taught Elizabeth for almost thirty years, invited disaster by encouraging her charge into a dangerous liaison after Henry VIII’s death. Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) envied her younger sister’s popularity and threatened to destroy her altogether. And animosity drove Elizabeth and her cousin Mary Queen of Scots into an intense thirty-year rivalry that could end only in death.

Elizabeth’s Women contains more than an indelible cast of characters. It is an unprecedented account of how the public posture of femininity figured into the English court, the meaning of costume and display, the power of fecundity and flirtation, and how Elizabeth herself, long viewed as the embodiment of feminism, shared popular views of female inferiority and scorned and schemed against her underlings’ marriages and pregnancies.

Brilliantly researched and elegantly written, Elizabeth’s Women is a unique take on history’s most captivating queen and the dazzling court that surrounded her.

“Seldom does a sports biography—especially a page-turner—so comprehensively explain the forces that made an icon the way they are.” – Sports Illustrated From the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron comes the definitive biography of Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, baseball’s epic leadoff hitter and base-stealer who also stole America’s heart over nearly five electric decades in the game. Few names in the history of baseball evoke the excellence and dynamism that Rickey Henderson’s does. He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he’s scored more runs than any player ever. “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers,” the baseball historian Bill James once said. But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson’s is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him. And it’s a story of a sea change in sports, when athletes gained celebrity status and Black players finally earned equitable salaries. Henderson embraced this shift with his trademark style, playing for nine different teams throughout his decades-long career and sculpting a brash, larger-than-life persona that stole the nation’s heart. Now, in the hands of critically acclaimed sportswriter and culture critic Howard Bryant, one of baseball’s greatest and most original stars finally gets his due.