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Beiträge, die mit biography getaggt sind

Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter by Clare Mulley, 2024

The incredible and inspiring story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the World War II female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#biography
#women
#Poland
#Britain
#WWII
#resistance
During World War II, Elzbieta Zawacka—the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo—was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the "Silent Unseen.” She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then she was the only female member of these forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo (who arrested her entire family), she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland. After the war, she was discharged as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned (and tortured) her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over forty years. Now, through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Agent Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten heroine back to brilliant life—while transforming how we value the history of women resistance fighters during World War II.
#Britain #books #resistance #biography #Women #wwii #nonfiction #poland @bookstodon group

“In his excitement at the prospect of the examined life Boswell invented modern biography.”

—Andrew O’Hagan’s celebration of James Boswell, London Review of Books, 5 Oct 2000

4/5

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n19/andrew-o-hagan/self-hugging

#Scottish #literature #biography #JamesBoswell #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson
Boswell’s way of talking about himself can seem to us very modern: pre-Freud and pre-tabloid, he talks in a shockingly open way about the nature of his own (and other people’s) desires, affections, tribulations and thoughts of death. He also suggests the quality of his own delight. He is a self-watcher and a self-hugger. And his way of looking at other people – including Johnson – reveals him to be a harbinger of the documentary techniques and psychological modes of enquiry we now take for granted. In his excitement at the prospect of the examined life Boswell invented modern biography. He wrote like hell, and the full fragrance, the authentic buzz, of his own life and period, such as it was, rises with Flemish exactness from every other sentence he chose to write down.

Andrew O’Hagan · Self-Hugging: A Paean to Boswell

Admiration is defined by Johnson in that Dictionary as ‘taken sometimes in a bad sense, though generally in a good...
Andrew O’Hagan (London Review of Books)
#literature #biography #scottish #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson #jamesboswell

“A fool can utter a brilliant sentence but it seems quite rare for a fool to be able to write an admirable biography of seven or eight hundred pages…”

Jorge Luis Borges asks, Was Boswell just an idiot who had the good fortune to meet Johnson & write his biography? Or is this “Samuel Johnson” actually a brilliant dramatic character created by Boswell?

3/5

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2013/07/28/lecture-johnson-and-boswell/

#Scottish #literature #biography #JamesBoswell #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson #Borges #JorgeLuisBorges

A Lecture on Johnson and Boswell | Jorge Luis Borges | The New York Review of Books

We have to think that just as Sancho is the companion Quixote sometimes treats badly, we see Boswell in that same relation to Dr. Johnson: a sometimes stupid and loyal companion.
Jorge Luis Borges (The New York Review of Books)
#literature #biography #scottish #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson #jamesboswell #jorgeluisborges #borges

James Boswell (1740–1795) – a man for whom the word “scapegrace” might have been invented – was born #OTD, 29 Oct.

A Happy Bozzy Birthday thread

1/5

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/james-boswells-scotland-106667503/

#Scottish #literature #biography #JamesBoswell #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson
Early on, James had served notice that he was not cut out to follow in his father’s strait-laced footsteps. Scots are well known for being torn between dour conformity and impetuous rebelliousness, a contradiction emphatically personified by Boswell father and son. When James was 18, he developed a passion for the theater and fell for an actress a good ten years older. After Lord Auchinleck banished him to the University of Glasgow, Boswell, still under the spell of his Catholic mistress, decided to convert—tantamount to career suicide in Presbyterian Scotland—and ran away to London. There he lost interest in Catholicism, caught a venereal disease and decided he wanted to be a soldier.

James Boswell's Scotland

The author of the Life of Samuel Johnson spent much of his own life trying to escape the country of his birth
Smithsonian Magazine
#literature #biography #OTD #scottish #18thcentury #SamuelJohnson #jamesboswell

10. Addiction

Repülős Gizi, a tolvajok királynője (Bodnár Gizella)
[Flying Gizi, Queen of Thieves]

The autobiography of the famous Hungarian thief Bodnár Gizella (Flying Gizi). An honest and fascinating read about addiction, living through the entire 20th century as a woman, struggles, poverty, and life in prison. Being a talented thief is the least memorable thing about this woman's story.

https://www.libri.hu/konyv/Repulos-Gizi-A-tolvajok-kiralynoje-16.html

#nonfiction #books #bookstodon #Hungarian #crime #biography

Repülős Gizi - A tolvajok királynője (Bodnár Gizella)

Temérdek cifra dolgot láttam, hallottam, amit mások észre sem vesznek, vagy ha igen, nem tudják végiggondolni, micsoda mit jelent. Mennyi a súlya.
Libri Könyvkereskedelmi Kft.
#books #bookstodon #biography #crime #hungarian #nonfiction

People I would like to read biographies about and no one has written them yet:

Willy Clarkson
Bunny Roger
Ynés Mexia
Dr. Anandabai Joshee, Dr. Kei Okami & Dr. Tabat M. Islambooly

#books #biography #history #nonfiction
#history #books #biography #nonfiction

Topic 7: Nature conservation

Book:
The lady and the sharks, by Eugenie Clark

I love a good autobiography by a trailblazing woman scientist, and this one did not disappoint. Eugenie Clark is famous for her work with sharks, even though she also worked with many other fascinating fishes that she writes about with equal enthusiasm.

This one was a very entertaining read, including personal details such as what it's like to dive while pregnant.

#shark #sharks #nature #WomenInSTEM #biography
#Nature #biography #sharks #womeninstem #shark

Topic 2: Hungarian poetry

Book:
Il pane perduto by Bruck Edith

This one is the autobiography of a Hungarian Jewish poet who is also a Holocaust survivor. She was labeled by the media "the Anne Frank who lived", which I think is a bit iffy, but the book is nonetheless interesting. Most of it tells about her trying to find her place and purpose in the world again after surviving Auschwitz. She ended up living and publishing in Italy.

#poetry #JewishWomen #WomensHistory #Hungary #biography
#Poetry #hungary #biography #womenshistory #jewishwomen

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