Written in History, Simon Sebag Montefiore
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Written in History
Letters That Changed the World

Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrator: Simon Russell Beale, Tuppence Middleton, Rupert Penry-Jones, Juliet Stevenson

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2019


Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs—and one of our pre-eminent historians and a prizewinning writer—an outstanding selection of great letters from ancient times to the 21st century, touching on power, love, art, sex, faith, and war.

Written in History: Letters that Changed the World celebrates the great letters of world history, and cultural and personal life. Bestselling, prizewinning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects letters that have changed the course of global events or touched a timeless emotion—whether passion, rage, humor—from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling, some are exquisite works of literature, others brutal, coarse, and frankly outrageous, many are erotic, others heartbreaking. It is a surprising and eclectic selection, from the four corners of the world, filled with extraordinary women and men, from ancient times to now.

Truly a choice of letters for our own times encompassing love letters to calls for liberation to declarations of war to reflections on life and death. The writers vary from Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great to Mandela, Stalin and Picasso, Fanny Burney and Emily Pankhurst to Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks, Oscar Wilde, Chekhov and Pushkin to Balzac, Mozart and Michelangelo, Hitler, Rameses the Great and Alexander Hamilton to Augustus and Churchill, Lincoln, Donald Trump and Suleiman the Magnificent.

In a book that is a perfect gift, here is a window on astonishing characters, seminal events, and unforgettable words. In the colorful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading and how they can unveil and enlighten the past—and enrich the way we live now.

Author Bio

Simon Sebag Montefiore's bestselling books are published in more than forty languages. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Sashenka. As a historian, his works include Jerusalem: The Biography; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; and Young Stalin, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Prize (United Kingdom), and Le Grand Prix de Biographie Politique (France). One Night in Winter won the 2014 Political Fiction Book of the Year Prize (United Kingdom) and was long-listed for the Orwell Prize.

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