Special Collections

Pulitzer Prize Award Winners

Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer the following titles, winners of the Pulitzer Prize Award. Note: Some drama winners are available and are listed under Fiction awards. #award


Showing 301 through 325 of 360 results
 
 

Growing Up

by Russell Baker

The Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir about coming of age in America between the world wars: &“So warm, so likable and so disarmingly funny&” (The New York Times).   One of the New York Times&’ &“50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years&”   Ranging from the backwoods of Virginia to a New Jersey commuter town to the city of Baltimore, this remarkable memoir recounts Russell Baker&’s experience of growing up in pre–World War II America, before he went on to a celebrated career in journalism.   With poignant, humorous tales of powerful love, awkward sex, and courage in the face of adversity, Baker reveals how he helped his mother and family through the Great Depression by delivering papers and hustling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post—a job which introduced him to bullies, mentors, and heroes who endured this national disaster with hard work and good cheer.   Called &“a treasure&” by Anne Tyler and &“a blessing&” by Time magazine, this autobiography is a modern-day classic—&“a wondrous book [with scenes] as funny and touching as Mark Twain&’s&” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).   &“In lovely, haunting prose, he has told a story that is deeply in the American grain.&” —The Washington Post Book World   &“A terrific book.&” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1983

Category: Biography

The Making of the President, 1960

by Theodore H. White

The greatest political story ever told—the epic clash between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, as captured in Theodore White's dramatic and groundbreaking chronicle

The Making of the President 1960 is the book that revolutionized—even created—modern political journalism. Granted intimate access to all parties involved, Theodore White crafted an almost mythic story of the battle that pitted Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice-President Richard M. Nixon—from the decisive primary battles to the history-making televised debates, the first of their kind. Magnificently detailed and exquisitely paced, The Making of the President 1960 imbues the nation's presidential election process with both grittiness and grandeur, and established a benchmark against which all new campaign reporters would measure their work.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1962

Category: Non-Fiction

Late Wife

by Claudia Emerson

In Late Wife, a woman explores her disappearance from one life and reappearance in another as she addresses her former husband, herself, and her new husband in a series of epistolary poems. Though not satisfied in her first marriage, she laments vanishing from the life she and her husband shared for years. She then describes the unexpected joys of solitude during her recovery and emotional convalescence. Finally, in a sequence of sonnets, she speaks to her new husband, whose first wife died from lung cancer. The poems highlight how rebeginning in this relationship has come about in part because of two couples' respective losses. The most personal of Claudia Emerson's poetry collections, Late Wife is both an elegy and a celebration of a rich present informed by a complex past.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2006

Category: Poetry

The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah's Book Club)

by Colson Whitehead

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. • The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins.Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.Look for Colson Whitehead&’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2017

Category: Fiction

The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2013

Category: Fiction

Evicted

by Matthew Desmond

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • ONE OF TIME&’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES&’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY One of the most acclaimed books of our time, this modern classic &“has set a new standard for reporting on poverty&” (Barbara Ehrenreich, The New York Times Book Review).In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur &“Genius&” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as &“wrenching and revelatory&” (The Nation), &“vivid and unsettling&” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America&’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: President Barack Obama, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Fortune, San Francisco Chronicle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Politico, The Week, Chicago Public Library, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal,  Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Shelf AwarenessWINNER OF: The National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism • The PEN/New England Award • The Chicago Tribune Heartland PrizeFINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE AND THE KIRKUS PRIZE&“Evicted stands among the very best of the social justice books.&”—Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth &“Gripping and moving—tragic, too.&”—Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones &“Evicted is that rare work that has something genuinely new to say about poverty.&”—San Francisco Chronicle

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2017

Category: Non-Fiction

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

by Richard Hofstadter

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was awarded the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction. It is a book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1964

Category: Non-Fiction

American Lion

by Jon Meacham

Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency. Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson's election in 1828 ushered in a new and lasting era in which the people, not distant elites, were the guiding force in American politics. Democracy made its stand in the Jackson years, and he gave voice to the hopes and the fears of a restless, changing nation facing challenging times at home and threats abroad. To tell the saga of Jackson's presidency, acclaimed author Jon Meacham goes inside the Jackson White House. Drawing on newly discovered family letters and papers, he details the human drama-the family, the women, and the inner circle of advisers-that shaped Jackson's private world through years of storm and victory. One of our most significant yet dimly recalled presidents, Jackson was a battle-hardened warrior, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the architect of the presidency as we know it. His story is one of violence, sex, courage, and tragedy. With his powerful persona, his evident bravery, and his mystical connection to the people, Jackson moved the White House from the periphery of government to the center of national action, articulating a vision of change that challenged entrenched interests to heed the popular will-or face his formidable wrath. The greatest of the presidents who have followed Jackson in the White House-from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Truman-have found inspiration in his example, and virtue in his vision. Jackson was the most contradictory of men. The architect of the removal of Indians from their native lands, he was warmly sentimental and risked everything to give more power to ordinary citizens. He was, in short, a lot like his country: alternately kind and vicious, brilliant and blind; and a man who fought a lifelong war to keep the republic safe-no matter what it took. Jon Meacham in American Lion has delivered the definitive human portrait of a pivotal president who forever changed the American presidency-and America itself.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2009

Category: Biography

Original Meanings

by Jack N. Rakove

From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1997

Category: History

Custer's Trials

by T. J. Stiles

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryFrom the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, a brilliant biography of Gen. George Armstrong Custer that radically changes our view of the man and his turbulent times.In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer's legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer's historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person--capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years). The key to understanding Custer, Stiles writes, is keeping in mind that he lived on a frontier in time. In the Civil War, the West, and many areas overlooked in previous biographies, Custer helped to create modern America, but he could never adapt to it. He freed countless slaves yet rejected new civil rights laws. He proved his heroism but missed the dark reality of war for so many others. A talented combat leader, he struggled as a manager in the West. He tried to make a fortune on Wall Street yet never connected with the new corporate economy. Native Americans fascinated him, but he could not see them as fully human. A popular writer, he remained apart from Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and other rising intellectuals. During Custer's lifetime, Americans saw their world remade. His admirers saw him as the embodiment of the nation's gallant youth, of all that they were losing; his detractors despised him for resisting a more complex and promising future. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation in Custer's tumultuous marriage to his highly educated wife, Libbie; their complicated relationship with Eliza Brown, the forceful black woman who ran their household; as well as his battles and expeditions. It casts surprising new light on a near-mythic American figure, a man both widely known and little understood.From the Hardcover edition.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2016

Category: History

The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790

by Rhys Isaac

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Rhys Isaac describes and analyzes the dramatic confrontations--primarily religious and political--that transformed Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth century. Making use of the observational techniques of the cultural anthropologist, Isaac vividly recreates and painstakingly dissects a society in the turmoil of profound inner change.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1983

Category: History

Digest

by Gregory Pardlo

From Epicurus to Sam Cooke, the Daily News to Roots, Digest draws from the present and the past to form an intellectual, American identity. In poems that forge their own styles and strategies, we experience dialogues between the written word and other art forms. Within this dialogue we hear Ben Jonson, we meet police K-9s, and we find children negotiating a sense of the world through a father’s eyes and through their own.

Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2015

Category: Poetry

Move Your Shadow

by Joseph Lelyveld

The complexities of South Africa are illuminated upon in this acclaimed work that takes a close, clear look at the strange realities within that country.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1986

Category: Non-Fiction

Truman

by David McCullough

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America&’s beloved and distinguished historian.The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1993

Category: Biography

Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2012

Category: History

Honey in the Horn

by H. L. Davis

In this epic work by award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist H.L. Davis, the virtues of the frontier live again in the lives and characters of Oregon settlers during the homesteading period from 1906-1908.

Winner of the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1936

Category: Fiction

The Sixth Extinction

by Elizabeth Kolbert

A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino.

Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2015

Category: Non-Fiction

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novel is now a new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband&’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson&’s wife, Sofia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie&’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie&’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all.The Color Purple has sold more than five million copies, inspired an Academy Award-nominated film starring Oprah Winfrey and directed by Steven Spielberg, and been adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. Lauded as a literary masterpiece, this is the groundbreaking novel that placed Walker &“in the company of Faulkner&” (The Nation), and remains a wrenching—yet intensely uplifting—experience for new generations of readers.This ebook features a new introduction written by the author on the 25th anniversary of publication, and an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author&’s personal collection. The Color Purple is the 1st book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1983

Category: Fiction

The Return (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by Hisham Matar

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The acclaimed memoir about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing—one of The New York Times Book Review&’s ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeOne of the New York Times&’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father&’s disappearance. The Return is the story of what he found there. The Pulitzer Prize citation hailed The Return as &“a first-person elegy for home and father.&” Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Guardian • Financial Times&“A tale of mighty love, loyalty and courage. It simply must be read.&”—The Spectator (U.K.) &“Wise and agonizing and thrilling to read.&”—Zadie Smith &“[An] eloquent memoir . . . at once a suspenseful detective story about a writer investigating his father&’s fate . . . and a son&’s efforts to come to terms with his father&’s ghost, who has haunted more than half his life by his absence.&”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times &“This outstanding book . . . roves back and forth in time with a freedom that conceals the intricate precision of its art.&”—The Wall Street Journal &“Truly remarkable . . . a book with a profound faith in the consolations of storytelling . . . a testament to [Matar&’s] father, his family and his country.&”—The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) &“The Return is a riveting book about love and hope, but it is also a moving meditation on grief and loss. . . . Likely to become a classic.&”—Colm Tóibín &“Matar&’s evocative writing and his early traumas call to mind Vladimir Nabokov.&”—The Washington Post &“Utterly riveting.&”—The Boston Globe &“A moving, unflinching memoir of a family torn apart.&”—Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian &“Beautiful . . . The Return, for all the questions it cannot answer, leaves a deep emotional imprint.&”—Newsday &“A masterful memoir, a searing meditation on loss, exile, grief, guilt, belonging, and above all, family. It is, as well, a study of the shaping—and breaking—of the bonds between fathers and sons. . . . This is writing of the highest quality.&”—The Sunday Times (U.K.)

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2017

Category: Biography

Present at the Creation

by Dean Acheson

In these memoirs by the former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson sees himself as having been "present at the creation" of the American century. Acheson's policies were praised by many and damned by others, including Joseph McCarthy.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1970

Category: History

Theodore Roosevelt

by Henry F. Pringle

This is a carefully revised and--perhaps happily--shortened version of a biography first published almost a quarter of a century ago. The author said then, and reiterates now, that Theodore Roosevelt was polygonal. He was a man of many ideas, and few of them lacked brilliance. The book still attempts to tell the whole story of an extraordinarily full life.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1932

Category: Biography

The Confessions of Nat Turner

by William Styron

The &“magnificent&” Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times–bestselling novel about the preacher who led America&’s bloodiest slave revolt (The New York Times).The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron&’s complex and richly drawn imagining of Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia that led to the deaths of almost sixty men, women, and children. Published at the height of the civil rights movement, the novel draws upon the historical Nat Turner&’s confession to his attorney, made as he awaited execution in a Virginia jail. This powerful narrative, steeped in the brutal and tragic history of American slavery, reveals a Turner who is neither a hero nor a demon, but rather a man driven to exact vengeance for the centuries of injustice inflicted upon his people.Nat Turner is a galvanizing portrayal of the crushing institution of slavery, and Styron&’s deeply layered characterization is a stunning rendering of one man&’s violent struggle against oppression. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1968

Category: Fiction

Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

In 1934, Caroline Miller's novel LAMB IN HIS BOSOM won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was the first novel by a Georgian to win a Pulitzer, soon followed by Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND in 1937. In fact, LAMB was largely responsible for the discovery of GONE WITH THE WIND; after reading Miller's novel, Macmillan editor Harold S. Latham sought out other southern novels and authors, and found Margaret Mitchell.

Caroline Miller was fascinated by the other Old South-not the romantic inhabitant of GONE WITH THE WIND, but rather the poor people of the south Georgia backwoods, who never owned a slave or planned to fight a war. The story of Cean and Lonzo, a young couple who begin their married lives two decades before the Civil War, LAMB IN HIS BOSOM is a fascinating account of social customs and material realities among settlers of the Georgia frontier. At the same time, LAMB IN HIS BOSOM transcends regional history as Miller's quietly lyrical prose style plays poignant tribute to a woman's life lived close to nature-the nature outside her, and the nature within.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1934

Category: Fiction

The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI's secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini's spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican's role in the rise of Fascism in Europe. The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. In most respects, they could not have been more different. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and "Il Duce" had many things in common. They shared a distrust of democracy and a visceral hatred of Communism. Both were prone to sudden fits of temper and were fiercely protective of the prerogatives of their office. ("We have many interests to protect," the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922.) Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals. In a challenge to the conventional history of this period, in which a heroic Church does battle with the Fascist regime, Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini's dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope's demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life--as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler--the pontiff's faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini's anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican's inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years. The Pope and Mussolini brims with memorable portraits of the men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius's personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini's Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, an object of widespread derision who lacked the stature--literally and figuratively--to stand up to the domineering Duce; and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini's most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff as the controversial Pius XII, whose actions during World War II would be subject for debate for decades to come. With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI's papacy, the full story of the Pope's complex relationship with his Fascist partner can finally be told. Vivid, dramatic, with surprises at every turn, The Pope and Mussolini is history writ large and with the lightning hand of truth. Advance praise for The Pope and Mussolini "David Kertzer has an eye for a story, an ear for the right word, and an instinct for human tragedy. They all come together in The Pope and Mussolini to document, with meticulous scholarship and novelistic flair, the complicity between Pius XI and the Fascist leader in creating an unholy alliance between the Vatican and a totalitarian government rooted in corruption and brutality. This is a sophisticated blockbuster."--Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Revolutionary Summer

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 2015

Category: Biography

The Visible Hand

by Alfred D. Chandler

The role of large-scale business enterpriseâe"big business and its managersâe"during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book.

Alfred Chandler, Jr. , the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution. The managerial revolution, presented here with force and conviction, is the story of how the visible hand of management replaced what Adam Smith called the âe~invisible handâe(tm) of market forces. Chandler shows that the fundamental shift toward managers running large enterprises exerted a far greater influence in determining size and concentration in American industry than other factors so often cited as critical: the quality of entrepreneurship, the availability of capital, or public policy.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Date Added: 05/25/2017


Year: 1978

Category: History


Showing 301 through 325 of 360 results