Sowell unravels the world of intellectuals in order to illustrate an important social phenomenon: how the thinkers of a society mold that society, leaving an impact on people in every walk of life, even if these thinkers are basically unknown to the world at large.

Biographer Lee gives us a new Edith Wharton--tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born in 1862, Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. She developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous society that included Bernard Berenson, Aldous Huxley and most famously Henry James, who here emerges more as peer than...

Examines the life of the Florentine intellectual, his relationships with contemporaries ranging from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Cesare Borgia and Pope Alexander VI, his philosophies about power, and the legacy of The Prince.

Traces the reading habits and intellectual development of the cultural giants of the 20th century. Includes entries on people from a broad range of fields, including scientists, politicians, business figures, writers, religious leaders, figures from the performing arts and popular culture.

Set in 18th Century Italy, this is the tale of a young scholar named Giovanni who falls in love with a beautiful, yet forbidden, girl. Beatrice 's strange and unearthly beauty masks a terrifying curse which Giovanni tragically discovers. Her father, the mysterious Dr. Rappaccini, has made her the subject of a diabolical experiment. In Giovanni's attempt to free Beatrice from the control of her father and to escape the effect she has on him, he unwittingly...

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler established a Nazi research institute called The Ahnenerbe, whose mission was to search around the world for proof of ancient Aryan conquests. But history was not their most important focus--rather, the Ahnenerbe was an essential part of the plan for the Final Solution. The findings were used to convince armies of SS men that they were entitled to slaughter Jews and other groups. Himmler also hoped to use the research as...