Books in Oxford Portraits series

Alfred Hitchcock is a fascinating look at the life of one of the most influential filmmakers in the world -- a man known for his portly profile and distinct, leery voice almost as much as for his groundbreaking movies. From Hitchcock's first film, Blackmail -- the first British movie with sound -- to his blockbuster Hollywood successes, Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, and Vertigo. Alfred Hitchcock chronicles the Master of Suspense's close working relationship with his wife, Alma, who was an integral part of his filmmaking process, and the struggle to gain full artistic control over his work. With illustrations throughout and sidebars showcasing Hitchcocks techniques and directing style, Alfred Hitchcock reveals how some of the greatest films ever created came to be through the life and work of one of the most admired filmmakers ever.Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents, memorabilia, framing the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history.

An influential justice who refused to bow to politics and devoted his keen mind to the U.S. Supreme Court until the age of 90, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) helped formulate some of the most progressive judicial thought in 20th-century American history. G. Edward White first sketches Holmes's early years-his childhood in Boston, undergraduate years at Harvard, and his valiant service in the Civil War, during which he was severely wounded three times. After the war, Holmes went into private law practice, wrote his landmark treatise The Common Law in 1881, had a short tenure on the Harvard Law School faculty, and spent 20 years as a judge on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts before being named to the U.S. Supreme Court. The author focuses on his remarkable 30-year service as a Supreme Court Justice, beginning in 1902, and details Holmes's most significant cases--Abrams v. United States, Northern Securities Co. v. United States, Lochner v. New York, Schenck v. United States, and others--which limited working hours, set a mandatory minimum wage, protected women's rights, legalized labor unions, and defined freedom of speech.OXFORD PORTRAITS are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents, and memorabilia, framing the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history.

At a time when women were regarded as second-class citizens, Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) led a life of many "firsts." She was the first woman stockbroker, the first woman to speak before Congress, and the first woman to run for President of the United States.Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents, memorabilia, framing the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, yet he considered them only a small part of his literary output. He expected to be remembered for his historical fiction, especially The White Company. He also wrote science fiction novels, short stories, and horror tales. He was knighted for a pamphlet he wrote justifying England's actions during the Boer War, in which he served as a physician in a field hospital. After one of his sons was killed during World War I, he turned to spiritualism for comfort. He became a prominent spiritualist, lecturing and writing frequently on the subject. This book--the first biography of Arthur Conan Doyle written for young adults--provides a lively account of the writer's fascinating life. Pascal considers the overlaps between the fictional Holmes and Watson and their creator, and draws a memorable picture of late Victorian society. Sidebars containing excerpts from Doyle's writings, and numerous photographs and illustrations invigorate the captivating narrative. Oxford Portraits is a new series of biographies for young adults. Written by prominent writers and historians, each of these titles is designed to supplement the core texts of the middle and high school curriculum with intriguing, thoroughly informative and insightful accounts of the lives and work of the notable men and women who helped shape history. Each book is illustrated with numerous graphics, photographs, and documents. A unique feature is the inclusion of sidebars containing primary source material, mostly excerpts from the subject's writings. A chronology, further reading list, and index rounds out every volume.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the first champion of women's rights in the modern Western world. Wollstonecraft's experience teaching young women in London led her to write her first book, in which she argued for equal education for girls and boys. The moderate success of her autobiographical novel Mary, A Fiction convinced her to start writing full-time. Under the tutelage of her publisher and mentor Joseph Johnson, she joined a circle of liberal intellectuals which included poet and artist William Blake, chemist Joseph Priestley, and political thinker William Godwin.In 1790 Wollstonecraft penned A Vindication of the Rights of Men, an impassioned reply to conservative criticism of the French Revolution and a call for social equality. She developed her ideas further in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which extended the notion of natural rights to include women's rights as well. Going so far as to suggest that women should be allowed to vote, Wollstonecraft's revolutionary ideas garnered her overnight fame--and notoriety. She traveled to Paris, lived through the Reign of Terror, fell in love with an American, and gave birth to her first daughter. Though the love affair ended tragically, resulting in her thwarted suicide attempt, she happily wed William Godwin in 1797. That year she gave birth to her second child (the future author of Frankenstein Mary Shelley). She died a few days later from complications of childbirth.Wollstonecraft's writing inspired leaders of the American woman suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and moved one admirer to call her a "pioneer of modern womanhood."Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents, memorabilia, framing the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history.

George Orwell (1903-1950) is remembered mainly as the author of two of the most powerful, cogent social critiques ever written: Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1948). Less known is the turbulent life story of the popular novelist, from his birth in India as Eric Arthur Blair to his struggle to complete 1984 while suffering from tuberculosis, the disease that would kill him two years after the book's publication.An original, independent spirit, Orwell chose an unusual career for an Eton graduate--he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Five years later, he came back to Europe and lived in both Paris and London, investigating the lives of the underprivileged and often sharing their experiences firsthand by living as a tramp. He fought against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War and simultaneously honed his writing skills while working as a journalist. Eventually he turned to writing as a full-time occupation, drawing on his varied experiences to recreate the precise details for which his novels are famous. Tanya Agathocleous's concise biography is enhanced by sidebars and picture captions which include numerous excerpts from Orwell's journalistic and literary writings. A final chapter explores Orwell's cultural legacy--his lasting contributions to freedom of thought throughout the world.Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents, memorabilia, framing the personality and achievements of its subject against the backdrop of history.

Born in Poland in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus launched a quiet revolution. No scientist so radically transformed our understanding of our place in the universe as this curious bishop's doctor and church official. In his quest to discover a beautiful and coherent system to describe the motions of the planets, Copernicus placed the sun in the center of the system and made the earth a planet traveling around the sun. Today it is hard to imagine our solar system any other way, but for his time Copernicus's idea was earthshaking. In 1616 the church banned his book Revolutions because it contradicted the accepted notion that God placed Earth in the center of the universe. Even though those who knew of his work considered his idea dangerous, Revolutions remained of interest only to other scientists for many years. It took almost two hundred years for his concept of a sun-centered system to reach the general public. None the less, what Copernicus set out in his remarkable text truly revolutionized science. For this, Copernicus, a quiet doctor who made a tremendous leap of imagination, is considered the father of the Scientific Revolution.Oxford Portraits in Science is an on-going series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

When Gregor Mendel passed away in 1884, not a single scholar recognized his epochal contributions to biology. The unassuming abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno (in today's Czech Republic) was rediscovered at the turn of the century when scientists were stunned to learn that their findings about inheritance had already been made by an unknown monk three decades earlier. A dedicated researcher who spent every spare hour in the study of the natural sciences, Mendel devised a series of brilliantly simple experiments using a plant easily grown on the monastery's grounds--the garden pea. In the course of just a few years he made the famous discoveries that later became the centerpiece of the science of heredity. In an entertaining and thoroughly informed narrative, Edward Edelson traces Mendel's life from his humble origins to his posthumous fame, giving us both a brief introduction to the fascinating science of genetics and an inspired account of what a modest man can accomplish with dedication and ingenuity.Oxford Portraits in Science is an ongoing series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

Chronicling Louis Pasteur's rise from humble beginnings to international fame, Louis Pasteur and the Hidden World of Microbes investigates the complex life of a man who revolutionized our understanding of disease. Alongside Pasteur's pioneering work with microorganisms, his innovative use of heat to kill harmful organisms in food--a process now known as "pasteurization"--and his development of the rabies vaccine, Louise Robbins places Pasteur in the context of his risky scientific methods and his rigid family and political beliefs. Robbins's reveals a man of genius with sometimes troubling convictions. Louis Pasteur and the Hidden World of Microbes is a fascinating look at one of the most important scientific minds of the last two centuries.Oxford Portraits in Science is an on-going series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was born in Denmark and emigrated to America at the age of 21. After several years of poverty, he found work as a police reporter, which took him into the worst of New York's ghettos and tenements. Appalled by the conditions he found there, he began to use the primitive new flash technology to photograph the dark places that had never before been so graphically exposed. The resulting book, How the Other Half Lives, brought to life an entire reform movement. Riis was a staunch ally in the young Theodore Roosevelt's battle to reform the New York police, breaking the brutal system of corruption and graft that had prevented the possibility of any real change in poor neighborhoods. Riis's activism involved him in such vital current controversies as hostility toward immigration, the growing gulf between rich and poor, the relative importance of heredity and environment, the need for adequate public schools, conflicts between social reform and personal freedom, and police brutality. But at the same time, his life raises some thought-provoking moral questions, because his compassion was flawed by an underlying prejudice; his writings are marred by a clear underlying conviction of the superiority of white Protestants, and he speaks with condescension and occasional scorn of other races and religions. He remained an active reformer all his life, founding a settlement house, writing several more books, most notably The Children of the Poor, and maintaining a taxing schedule of lecture tours. This biography includes a picture essay of Riis' photographs as well as, 35 black-and-white illustrations, a chronology, further reading, and an index.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the son of a blacksmith, described his education as "little more than the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at a common day-school." Yet from such basics, he became one of the most prolific and wide-ranging experimental scientists who ever lived. As a bookbinder's apprentice with a voracious appetite for learning, he read every book he got his hands on. In 1812 he attended a series of chemistry lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at London's prestigious Royal Institution. He took copious and careful notes, and, in the hopes of landing a scientific job, bound them and sent them to the lecturer. Davy was impressed enough to hire the 21-year-old as a laboratory assistant.In his first decade at the Institution, Faraday discovered benzene, isobutylene, and two chlorides of carbon. But despite these and other accomplishments in chemistry, he is chiefly remembered for his work in physics. In 1831 he proved that magnetism could generate an electric current, thereby establishing the field of electromagnetism and leading to the invention of the dynamo. In addition to his extraordinary scientific activities, Faraday was a leader in his church, whose faith and wish to serve guided him throughout his career. An engaging public speaker, he gave popular lectures on scientific subjects, and helped found a tradition of scientific education for children and laypeople that continues to this day. Oxford Portraits in Science is an ongoing series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

In Earl Warren, Christine Compston examines how a man with little judicial experience became one of the greatest Supreme Court chief justices in the history of the United States. A natural leader, Warren rose from a working-class childhood to become governor of California before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Warren had the courage to make decisions that were politically unpopular yet constitutionally sound and morally right, such as his first major opinion Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools. By examining the life of this extraordinary judge, Earl Warren illuminates, with black-and-white photos and illustrations throughout, the struggles behind some of the most profound events of the 20th century, including World War II and the Japanese internment, the civil rights movement, the criminal protection revolution (i.e. Miranda V. Arizona), and the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination.