Libri di Stacy Schiff migliori da leggere e consigliati

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” John Adams thought his cousin “the most sagacious politician” of all. With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent, and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a sin- gular moment, Adams packaged and amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool in an innovative arsenal to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’s improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.

Quando nel 51 a.C., all’età di diciotto anni, Cleopatra ereditò insieme al fratello-marito Tolomeo XIII il trono dei faraoni, l’Egitto era un paese ricco e florido, e quindi candidato a diventare una delle vittime designate dell’inarrestabile furia conquistatrice di Roma. In un ventennio di regno, invece, la celebre regina egizia riuscì a estendere il suo dominio su quasi tutta la costa orientale del Mediterraneo e a trasformare l’impero tolemaico in un temibile avversario – o in un alleato decisivo- per le opposte fazioni che, nell’Urbe, alimentavano sanguinosi guerre civili. La storiografia, però, fatica a riconoscere a una donna le qualità dei migliori strateghi. Per riscattare la fama di una delle regine più bistrattate dalla storia, la storica Stacy Schiff si propone di ricostruirne la vera identità, ristabilendo i pochi dati certi e, soprattutto, facendo giustizia degli stereotipi di una letteratura e di un’iconografia millenaria che ne hanno dissimulato le virtù per enfatizzarne la vocazione di amante insaziabile e di sovrana ambiziosa e senza scrupoli. Ne emerge il ritratto di una donna incredibilmente colta per la sua epoca, perspicace e carismatica, benché talvolta spietata, capace di destreggiarsi abilmente tanto sul campo di battaglia quanto al tavolo delle trattative.

Cleopatra’s palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order, a generation before the birth of Christ. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff’s is a luminous reconstruction of a dazzling life.