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Catch!: Dangerous Tales and Manly Recipes from the Bering Sea
by Travis Lofland Jason LoflandAs seen on Discovery Channel&’s Deadliest Catch: a king crab fisherman and cook shares death-defying tales and dangerously delicious recipes. Travis Lofland makes his living as a deckhand and cook on the Bering Sea doing one of the deadliest jobs on the planet: Alaskan king crab fishing. Now he shares stories of his incredible adventures—and the secrets to preparing the best food the ocean has to offer. Whether you&’re cooking in a galley or on your porch, you&’ll find great tips for putting smiles on hungry faces. Sample chapter titles and recipes include: Snag a First Date Appetizers: Sure to Impress Chipotle Avocado Brie Melt Soups and Manwiches: Slap a Smile on Your Face Ahi Sandwich Lose the Beer Belly Salads: Dutch Harbor Salmonberry Vinaigrette Excursion Entrees: At Sea Sashimi Boat Meals: Nuked King Crab Legs Tuck in Your Shirt, but Don&’t Bother with the Tie Entrees: Reckless Red Salmon Desserts: Slimy Limey Coconut Sundae
Catcher in the Wry: Outrageous But True Stories of Baseball
by Bob Uecker Micky HerskowitzWhat do Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, and Bob Uecker have in common? Nothing. They were superstars. He was a lifetime .200 hitter. They left the fans cheering. If he was lucky, he left them laughing. But anyone with talent can play major-league baseball. For Bob Uecker, it was a triumph of the human spirit. Now, Bob Uecker tells the whole, never-before-revealed story of his undistinguished career as a catcher with the Braves, Cardinals, and Phillies, his success as a broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers and ABC-TV's Monday Night Baseball, and the incredible fame he has achieved as the star of a national beer commercial.
Catching Babies: A Midwife's Tale
by Sheena ByromA midwife's heartwarming and inspirational true storyCatching Babies is a moving account of an extraordinary career. It reveals the unique experiences that filled midwife Sheena Byrom's days as she looked after mums and dads and helped to bring their precious babies into the world. From her very first day as a nervous student nurse in Blackburn to the dedicated completion of her midwifery qualifications in Burnley, Sheena has never once looked back, enjoying a thirty-five-year career with the NHS. At the forefront of evolving medical practices, she was the first midwife to oversee a home water birth in her area, but also found herself at the centre of a traumatic delivery that tested her to her limits. Yet, whatever has come Sheena's way, ultimately, there are the strong mothers who taught her so much and the little miracles who have made every single moment as a midwife truly magical.
Catching Babies: A Midwife's Tale
by Sheena ByromA midwife's heartwarming and inspirational true storyCatching Babies is a moving account of an extraordinary career. It reveals the unique experiences that filled midwife Sheena Byrom's days as she looked after mums and dads and helped to bring their precious babies into the world. From her very first day as a nervous student nurse in Blackburn to the dedicated completion of her midwifery qualifications in Burnley, Sheena has never once looked back, enjoying a thirty-five-year career with the NHS. At the forefront of evolving medical practices, she was the first midwife to oversee a home water birth in her area, but also found herself at the centre of a traumatic delivery that tested her to her limits. Yet, whatever has come Sheena's way, ultimately, there are the strong mothers who taught her so much and the little miracles who have made every single moment as a midwife truly magical.
Catching Homelessness: A Nurse's Story of Falling Through the Safety Net
by Josephine EnsignAt the beginning of the homelessness epidemic in the 1980s, Josephine Ensign was a young, white, Southern, Christian wife, mother, and nurse running a new medical clinic for the homeless in the heart of the South. Through her work and intense relationships with patients and co-workers, her worldview was shattered, and after losing her job, family, and house, she became homeless herself. She reconstructed her life with altered views on homelessness—and on the health care system. In Catching Homelessness, Ensign reflects on how this work has changed her and how her work has changed through the experience of being homeless—providing a piercing look at the homelessness industry, nursing, and our country&’s health care safety net.
Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century
by Mary TerrallNatural history in the eighteenth century was many things to many people--diversion, obsession, medically or economically useful knowledge, spectacle, evidence for God’s providence and wisdom, or even the foundation of all natural knowledge. Because natural history was pursued by such a variety of people around the globe, with practitioners sharing neither methods nor training, it has been characterized as a science of straightforward description, devoted to amassing observations as the raw material for classification and thus fundamentally distinct from experimental physical science. In Catching Nature in the Act, Mary Terrall revises this picture, revealing how eighteenth-century natural historians incorporated various experimental techniques and strategies into their practice. At the center of Terrall’s study is René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757)--the definitive authority on natural history in the middle decades of the eighteenth century--and his many correspondents, assistants, and collaborators. Through a close examination of Réaumur’s publications, papers, and letters, Terrall reconstructs the working relationships among these naturalists and shows how observing, collecting, and experimenting fit into their daily lives. Essential reading for historians of science and early modern Europe, Catching Nature in the Act defines and excavates a dynamic field of francophone natural history that has been inadequately mined and understood to date.
Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers
by Dick J. ReavisSeasoned journalist and professor Dick Reavis reported to a labor hall each morning, hoping to "catch out," or get job assignments. To supplement his retirement savings, the sixty-two-year-old North Carolinian joined people dispatched by an agency to manual jobs for which they were paid at the end of each day. Written with the flair of a gifted portraitist and storyteller, Catching Out describes Reavis's jobs at a factory; as a construction and demolition worker, landscaper, road crew flagman, auto-auction driver and warehouseman; and several days spent sorting artifacts in a dead packrat's apartment. On one pick-and-shovel job, he finds that his partner is too blind to see the hole they're digging. In each setting, he describes the personalities and problems of his desperate peers, the attitudes of their bosses, and the straits of immigrant coworkers, so many of whom make up the three-million-strong day-laborer poor. This is a gritty, hard-times evocation of the often colorful men and women on the bottom rung of the American workforce. It is partly a guide to performing hard, physical tasks, partly a celebration of strength, and partly a venting of ire at stingy and stern overseers. Reavis reminds us that physical exertion, even when painful or unpleasant, remains vital to the economy -- and that those who labor, though poorly paid, bring vigor, skill, and cunning to their tasks. In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Catching Out is destined to become a classic of our troubled times.
Catching the Light (Why I Write)
by Joy HarjoUnited States Poet Laureate and winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award Joy Harjo examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing &“Her enduring message—that writing can be redemptive—resonates: &‘To write is to make a mark in the world, to assert &“I am.&”&’ The result is a rousing testament to the power of storytelling.&”—Publishers Weekly &“Harjo writes as if the creative journey has been the destination all along.&”—Kirkus Reviews In this lyrical meditation about the why of writing poetry, Joy Harjo reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her fifty years as a poet. Composed of intimate vignettes that take us through the author&’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory—in both the private, individual journey and as a vehicle for prophetic, public witness. Harjo insists that the most meaningful poetry is birthed through cracks in history from what is broken and unseen. At the crossroads of this brokenness, she calls us to watch and listen for the songs of justice for all those America has denied. This is an homage to the power of words to defy erasure—to inscribe the story, again and again, of who we have been, who we are, and who we can be.
Catching the Sky
by Colten Moore Keith O'BrienA transcendent story about risk and the pursuit of happiness, family, and the bond between brothers.Dust and prairie were abundant on the Texas Panhandle, the land that gave birth to generations of Moores. But instead of working the landor the cattle that fed upon it, the Moore brothers, Colton and Caleb, heeded another call. Their dreams, paired with hard work and family sacrifice, eventually became reality. The Moore brothers, with their boundary-exploding athleticism, innovation and appetite for risk, became stars on the burgeoning freestyle ATV and snowmobile circuits. If it had wheels, they could flip it--often higher and better than anyone else--leading a band of pioneers intent on breaking new ground and in a new sport before multitudes of fans at the X Games and beyond. In this vivid, page-turning narrative, Colten Moore offers a profound and deeply moving perspective on his life and that of his brother. Catching the Sky is a clear-eyed look at extreme sports, what drives people to take wild chances, and how one man, Colten, couldn't stop even after the worst possible outcome. His story reminds us that we can dream--and sometimes achieve the impossible, that we can follow our own path, that we can lose something, lose everything, only to find it again--often in the most unlikely place.
Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975
by Neal GablerThe epic, definitive biography of Ted Kennedy—an immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality. In the tradition of the works of Robert Caro and Taylor Branch, Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal Gabler&’s magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. It is at once a human drama, a history of American politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism. Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father&’s fortune and his brothers&’ coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw—a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed. The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedys, a lightweight. He lived an agonizing childhood, being shuffled from school to school at his mother&’s whim, suffering numerous humiliations—including self-inflicted ones—and being pressed to rise to his brothers&’ level. He entered the Senate with his colleagues&’ lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his &“ninth-child&’s talent&” of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator. And with the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission. In Catching the Wind, Kennedy, using his late brothers&’ moral authority, becomes a moving force in the great &“liberal hour,&” which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Then, with the election of Richard Nixon, he becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a &“shadow president,&” challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalized, while Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration. Catching the Wind also shows how Kennedy&’s moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism. In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America.
Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison
by Jordan BelfortIn the 1990s Jordan Belfort became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper. He was THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, whose life of greed, power and excess was so outrageous it could only be true; no one could make this up! But the day Jordan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs was not the end of the madness.Catching the Wolf of Wall Street tells of what happened next. After getting out of jail on $10 million bail he had to choose whether to plead guilty and act as a government witness or fight the charges and see his wife be charged as well. he cooperated.With his trademark brash, brazen and thoroughly unputdownable storytelling, Jordan details more incredible true tales of fortunes made and lost, money-making schemes, parties, sex, drugs, marriage, divorce and prison.PRAISE FOR THE WOLF OF WALL STREET'What separates Jordan's story from others like it, is the brutal honesty.' - Leonardo DiCaprio'Raw and frequently hilarious.' - The New York Times'Reads like a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese's Goodfellas ... Laugh-out funny.' - The Sunday Times
Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison
by Jordan BelfortListen to what happened next in the follow-up to the bestselling The Wolf of Wall Street, now a major motion picture directed by MARTIN SCORSESE, starring LEONARDO DICAPRIO, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, JONAH HILL, JEAN DUJARDIN, KYLE CHANDLER and JOANNA LUMLEY.In the 1990s Jordan Belfort became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper. He was THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, whose life of greed, power and excess was so outrageous it could only be true; no one could make this up! But the day Jordan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs was not the end of the madness.Catching the Wolf of Wall Street tells of what happened next. After getting out of jail on $10 million bail he had to choose whether to plead guilty and act as a government witness or fight the charges and see his wife be charged as well. he cooperated.With his trademark brash, brazen and thoroughly unputdownable storytelling, Jordan details more incredible true tales of fortunes made and lost, money-making schemes, parties, sex, drugs, marriage, divorce and prison.PRAISE FOR THE WOLF OF WALL STREET'What separates Jordan's story from others like it, is the brutal honesty.' - Leonardo DiCaprio'Raw and frequently hilarious.' - The New York Times'Reads like a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese's Goodfellas ... Laugh-out funny.' - The Sunday Times(P)2009 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison (The Wolf of Wall Street #2)
by Jordan BelfortIn this astounding account, Wall Street's notorious bad boy--the original million-dollar-a-week stock chopper--leads us through a drama worthy of The Sopranos, from the FBI raid on his estate to the deal he cut to rat out his oldest friends and colleagues to the conscience he eventually found. With his kingdom in ruin, not to mention his marriage, the Wolf faced his greatest challenge yet: how to navigate a gauntlet of judges and lawyers, hold on to his kids and his enraged model wife, and possibly salvage his self-respect. It wasn't going to be easy. In fact, for a man with an unprecedented appetite for excess, it was going to be hell. But the man at the center of one of the most shocking scandals in financial history soon sees the light of what matters most: his sobriety, and his future as a father and a man.
Caterina Da Vinci: El origen
by Erma CárdenasDescubre la historia de la extraordinaria mujer detrás del gran genio del renacimiento. «Al comprender el orden universal, el mundo nos pertenece un poco más, Leonardo. No importa qué rama del conocimiento estudiemos, en la oscuridad debe haber luz.» Una joven aldeana ha dado a luz a un bastardo, predestinado a convertirse en el artista más grande de todos los tiempos. Caterina se convierte repentinamente en madre de un niño que posee una inteligencia prodigiosa y ella, con espíritu curioso y algo de intuición, lo lleva a descubrir su talento. Un futuro luminoso se abre frente a ese genio al que bautiza como Leonardo. En esta ágil y entrañable novela se nos desvela la infancia de Leonardo, sus pasiones, su juicio por sodomía, el fulgor de la Florencia de los Médici, el Milán de los Sforza, los talleres de los grandes artistas y, en suma, el esplendor del Renacimiento italiano. Caterina y Leonardo recorren un largo camino rodeados por los prejuicios de la época. Sin embargo, ella permanecerá fiel y él, a su vez, acabará por deslumbrarla.
Caterina di Valois
by Carla Giannini Laurel A. RockefellerLa principessa francese dimenticata il cui coraggio ha creato la dinastia Tudor. La guerra l'ha fatta regina d'Inghilterra. Il suo amore per un uomo del Galles l'ha resa immortale. Meglio conosciuta come la sposa di Agincourt di Enrico V nell'opera di Shakespeare "Enrico V ", Caterina de Valois fu una straordinaria donna dotata di fede, coraggio e convinzione in un'epoca di donne politicamente potenti. Figlia più giovane di re Carlo VI di Francia, terrorizzata dalla sua malattia mentale, la principessa Caterina è sopravvissuta alle ingiurie della sua schizofrenia, ad una guerra civile in casa, e alla guerra di Re Enrico con la Francia fino a diventare una delle più affascinanti e coraggiose regine del Rinascimento inglese. Un saggio biografico della serie Donne della Storia del Mondo. Comprendente un albero genealogico della Guerra delle Due Rose, una cronologia dettagliata, ricco di letture consigliate.
Caterina di Valois: Versione per studenti e docenti (Libri di testo: Le leggendarie donne della storia mondiale #2)
by Laurel A. RockefellerMeglio conosciuta come la sposa di Agincourt nell'opera di Shakespeare "Henry V ", Caterina di Valois fu una straordinaria donna di fede, coraggio e dalle forti opinioni in un'epoca di donne politicamente potenti. Figlia più giovane di re Charles VI di Francia, terrorizzata dalla sua malattia mentale, Caterina sopravvisse alla schizofrenia del padre, ad una guerra civile in patria, ed alla guerra di Henry V contro la Francia, fino a diventare una delle più interessanti e coraggiose regine del Rinascimento inglese. La versione per studenti e docenti comprendente domande d’approfondimento alla fine di ogni capitolo con lo scopo di stimolare il ragionamento critico durante l’esercizio di lettura volto a migliorare le capacità di comprensione del testo.
Caterpillar Kisses: Lessons My Kindergarten Class Taught Me About Life
by Christine Pisera NamanA light, heart-warming and funny read
Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
by Andrew X. Pham“A brilliantly written memoir in which a young Vietnamese-American uses a bicycle journey in his homeland as a vehicle to tell his eventful life story.” —Kirkus ReviewsWinner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of the YearWinner of the Whiting Writers’ AwardA Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the YearCatfish and Mandala is the story of a young man’s solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—an odyssey in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Intertwined with an often-humorous travelogue is a memoir of war, escape, and ultimately, family secrets.Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as “boat people.” Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; on a thousand-mile loop from Narita in South Korea to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon.In Vietnam, he’s taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen; and in the United States he’s considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.
Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home
by Boyd VartyBoyd Varty had an unconventional upbringing. He grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, a place where man and nature strive for balance, where perils exist alongside wonders. Founded more than eighty years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty's father and uncle, visionaries of the restoration movement. But it wasn't just a sanctuary for the animals; it was also a place for ravaged land to flourish again and for the human spirit to be restored. When Nelson Mandela was released after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, he came to the reserve to recover. Cathedral of the Wild is Varty's memoir of his life in this exquisite and vast refuge. At Londolozi, Varty gained the confidence that emerges from living in Africa. "We came out strong and largely unafraid of life," he writes, "with the full knowledge of its dangers." It was there that young Boyd and his equally adventurous sister learned to track animals, raised leopard and lion cubs, followed their larger-than-life uncle on his many adventures filming wildlife, and became one with the land. Varty survived a harrowing black mamba encounter, a debilitating bout with malaria, even a vicious crocodile attack, but his biggest challenge was a personal crisis of purpose. An intense spiritual quest takes him across the globe and back again--to reconnect with nature and "rediscover the track." Cathedral of the Wild is a story of transformation that inspires a great appreciation for the beauty and order of the natural world. With conviction, hope, and humor, Varty makes a passionate claim for the power of the wild to restore the human spirit.
Cathedral: An Illness and a Healing
by Bill Henderson“This is the story about an aging man who builds a holy place in his backyard. It involves bugs, lousy weather, cancer and spiritual waverings.”<P><P> Thus begins Bill Henderson’s Cathedral: An Illness and a Healing, a memoir about cancer and construction.<P> On the face of it Cathedral is most akin to Henderson’s Tower: Faith, Vertigo and Amateur Construction (FSG), a Thoreau-esque chronicle of building a tall structure on the grounds of his hilltop property in Maine. But Cathedral is more overtly a spiritual memoir like his Simple Gifts: One Man’s Search for Grace (S&S), a tribute to the pleasures of singing hymns.<P> Like all his books, Cathedral is equal parts wisdom, self-deprecation, laughs, aching honesty, and inspiration. And, like his cathedral itself, it is lovingly constructed.
Cathedrals Of Science: The Personalities And Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry
by Patrick CoffeyIn Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, and their personalities often affected how that credit was assigned. Gilbert Lewis, for example, could be reclusive and resentful, and his enmity with Walther Nernst may have cost him the Nobel Prize; Irving Langmuir, gregarious and charming, "rediscovered" Lewis's theory of the chemical bond and received much of the credit for it. Langmuir's personality smoothed his path to the Nobel Prize over Lewis. Coffey deals with moral and societal issues as well. These same scientists were the first to be seen by their countries as military assets. Fritz Haber, dubbed the "father of chemical warfare," pioneered the use of poison gas in World War I-vividly described-and Glenn Seaborg and Harold Urey were leaders in World War II's Manhattan Project; Urey and Linus Pauling worked for nuclear disarmament after the war. Science was not always fair, and many were excluded. The Nazis pushed Jewish scientists like Haber from their posts in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism was also a force in American chemistry, and few women were allowed in; Pauling, for example, used his influence to cut off the funding and block the publications of his rival, Dorothy Wrinch. Cathedrals of Science paints a colorful portrait of the building of modern chemistry from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.
Catherine & Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher, and the Fate of the Enlightenment
by Robert ZaretskyIn a dual biography crafted around the famous encounter between the French philosopher who wrote about power and the Russian empress who wielded it with great aplomb, Robert Zaretsky invites us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.
Catherine de Medici: A Biography
by Leonie FriedaThe bestselling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th centuryOrphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots and like many of her children he died young). When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne.She nursed dynastic ambitions, but was continually drawn into political and religious intrigues between Catholics and Protestants that plagued France for much of the later part of her life. It had always been said that she was implicated in the notorious Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, together with the king and her third son who succeeded to the throne in 1574, but was murdered. Her political influence waned, but she survived long enough to ensure the succession of her son-in-law who had married her daughter Margaret.
Catherine de Medici: A Biography
by Leonie FriedaThe bestselling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th centuryOrphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots and like many of her children he died young). When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne. She nursed dynastic ambitions, but was continually drawn into political and religious intrigues between Catholics and Protestants that plagued France for much of the later part of her life. It had always been said that she was implicated in the notorious Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, together with the king and her third son who succeeded to the throne in 1574, but was murdered. Her political influence waned, but she survived long enough to ensure the succession of her son-in-law who had married her daughter Margaret.Read by Sarah Le Fevre(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018
Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
by Leonie Frieda“A beautifully written portrait of a ruthless, subtle and fearless woman fighting for survival and power in a world of gangsterish brutality, routine assassination and religious mania. . . . Frieda has brought a largely forgotten heroine-villainess and a whole sumptuously vicious era back to life. . . . This is The Godfather meets Elizabeth.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen of France to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds. Based on comprehensive research including thousands of Catherine’s own letters, Frieda unfurls Catherine’s story from her troubled childhood in Florence to her tumultuous marriage to Henry II of France; her transformation of French culture to her reign as a queen who would use brutality to ensure her children’s royal birthright. Brilliantly executed, this enthralling biography goes beyond myth to paint a very human portrait of this remarkable figure.