Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis

Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis

by Deborah Hayden

This brilliant work of social history reveals the hidden impact of syphilis on many of history's famous figures--from Wilde to Hitler to Abraham Lincoln--and its influence on the culture they created. Was Beethoven experiencing syphilitic euphoria when he composed "Ode to Joy"? Did van Gogh paint "Crows Over the Wheatfield" in a fit of diseased madness right before he shot himself? Was syphilis a stowaway on... (more)

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

by Kate Summerscale

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was... (more)

Chaplin: A Life in Film

by Stephen M. Weissman

Born in London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin grew up in dire poverty. Both his parents were in show business, but severe alcoholism cut short his father's flourishing career, and his beloved mother first lost her voice, then lost her mind to syphilis. Charlie at age seven was committed to the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. How then did this poor, lonely child become such an extraordinary comedian,... (more)

Sepulchre

by Kate Mosse

From the author of the New York Times– bestselling novel Labyrinth comes another haunting tale of secrets, murder, and the occult set in both nineteenth-century and twenty-first-century France. I n 1891, young Léonie Vernier and her brother Anatole arrive in the beautiful town of Rennes-les-Bains, in southwest France. They’ve come at the invitation of their widowed aunt, whose mountain estate, Domain de la... (more)

Out of Africa

by Isak Dinesen

In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions,... (more)

Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Revised Edition

Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Revised Edition

by James H. Jones

From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted a non-therapeutic experiment involving over 400 black male sharecroppers infected with syphilis. The Tuskegee Study had nothing to do with treatment. It purpose was to trace the spontaneous evolution of the disease in order to learn how syphilis affected black subjects. The men were not told they had syphilis; they were not warned about what the... (more)

In the Land of Pain

by Alphonse Daudet

As Julian Barnes writes in the introduction to his superb translation of Alphonse Daudet’s La Doulou, the mostly forgotten writer nowadays “ate at the top literary table” during his lifetime (1840–1897). Henry James described him as “the happiest novelist” and “the most charming story-teller” of his day. Yet if Daudet dined in the highest company, he was also “a member of a less enviable nineteenth-century French... (more)

Lord John Grey: Book 2

Lord John and the Private Matter

by Diana Gabaldon

Includes a sneak preview of the next Outlander novel, An Echo in the Bone . Adored bestselling author Diana Gabaldon brings us the first book in a new trilogy featuring many of the characters from her wildly popular Outlander series. In her New York Times bestselling Outlander novels, Diana Gabaldon introduced millions of readers to a dazzling world of history and adventure — a world of vibrant... (more)

The Last Crossing: A Novel

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of breathtaking quests, adventurous detours, and hard-won redemption. Englishmen Charles and Addington Gaunt are ordered by their tyrannical industrialist father to find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the American West. Charles, a disillusioned artist, and Addington, a disgraced military captain, set off to remote Fort Benton on the edge of the... (more)

MAN AND MICROBES: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times

MAN AND MICROBES: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times

by Arno Karlen

A noted medical historian places recent outbreaks of deadly diseases in historical perspective, with accounts of other alarming and recurring diseases throughout history and of the ways in which humans have adapted. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

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