**From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs--and
one of our pre-eminent historians and a prizewinning writer--comes an
inspiring, horrifying, and accessible collection of short, entertaining,
and vivid life stories about the giant characters who have changed the
course of world history.
**
These titans of history--encompassing queens, empresses, and actresses,
kings, sultans, and conquerors, as well as prophets, artists,
courtesans, psychopaths, and explorers--lived lives of astonishing
drama, courage and adventure, debauchery and slaughter, virtue and
crime. The subjects range widely throughout time and geography from
Buddha and Genghis Khan to Nero and Churchill; from Catherine the Great
and Anne Frank to Toussaint l'Ouverture and Martin Luther King; from
Mozart to Mao; from Jesus Christ and Shakespeare to Einstein and Elvis.
Through these lives, Montefiore recounts the most momentous world
events--from ancient times to the Crusades, the Holocaust, and the Gulf
Wars.
These are the historical figures that everyone should know and the
stories we should never forget.