A spirited dive into the life and career of a performer, writer, and director who dominated twentieth-century American comedy. Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, is one of the great comic voices of the twentieth century. Having w...

A revealing biography of Sidney Reilly, the early twentieth-century virtuoso of espionage. Sidney Reilly (c. 1873-1925) is one of the most colorful and best-known spies of the twentieth century. Emerging from humble beginnings in southern Russia, Re...

A riveting exploration of the brilliant, combative, and controversial "Father of the Nuclear Navy" Known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy", Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A b...

The story of the prophet Elijah's transformation from fierce zealot to compassionate hero and cherished figure in Jewish folklore. In the Bible Elijah is a zealous prophet, attacking idolatry and injustice, championing God. He performs miracles, res...

"When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying". So said Polish-born American rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) of his involvement in the 1965 Selma civil rights march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Heschel, who spoke with a fiery mor...

Man Ray (1890-1976), a founding father of Dada and a key player in French Surrealism, is one of the central artists of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most elusive. In this new biography, journalist and critic Arthur Lubow uses Man Ray's...

In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-twentieth-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own maki...

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a virtuoso German poet, satirist, and visionary humanist whose dynamic life story and strikingly original writing are ripe for rediscovery. In this vividly imagined exploration of Heine's life and work, George Prochni...

Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, a doctor's son. From a young age he was consumed by photography, chess, and, above all else, movies. He was a self‑taught filmmaker and self‑proclaimed outsider, and his films exist in a unique world of their own outside...

Few artists have had as much of an impact on American popular culture as Stan Lee. The characters he created – Spider-Man and Iron Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four – occupy Hollywood's imagination and production schedules, generate billions at t...