Never heard of Jacob Fugger? That’s probably because he was born in Augsburg in 1459, the grandson of a Swabian peasant. But by the time he died in 1525, Fugger had become, according to author Greg Steinmetz (who compared the net worth of wealthy people with the size of the economy in which they operated), the richest man who ever lived.

How Fugger rose to such riches is the tale Steinmetz spins so adroitly in his new book. By the time he was born, Fugger’s family had already gained some prominence as textile traders. The family sent young Jacob to Venice, then a great trading center, where he learned banking and was an early adopter of newly invented accounting practices that would give him a leg up on his competitors throughout his life. From there, Fugger went on to finance commercial enterprises, the Vatican, wars and even the election of the Holy Roman emperor. He battled the Roman Catholic Church’s usury laws, and his victory, says Steinmetz “ was a breakthrough for capitalism. Debt financing accelerated. The modern economy was underway.” According to Steinmetz, by facilitating the sale of papal indulgences, Fugger also lit the fuse for the Reformation.

Steinmetz, a former journalist who now works as a securities analyst, writes about Fugger in thoroughly modern terms. He attributes much of Fugger’s success, for example, to “his willingness to bet big, defy odds, and go anywhere for a deal.” This makes the book a swift and compelling read. But despite the corruption he witnessed and fostered in the church of his day, Fugger also believed the church was the route to his eternal salvation. Fugger is, writes Steinmetz, “a recognizable figure to modern observers.” Yes he is. But he is also very much a product—perhaps an advanced product—of his own extraordinarily interesting times.

In his farewell remarks to the White House staff after his resignation from the presidency, Richard Nixon said, “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” In his illuminating and compelling One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, award-winning author and journalist Tim Weiner tells the story of a tormented man, considered by many to be a brilliant politician, in the process of destroying himself. Weiner, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on secret government programs and a National Book Award for Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA, bases his book in great part on tens of thousands of government documents declassified between 2007 and 2014. Every quotation and citation is on the record.

Nixon saw himself as a great statesman whose top priority was to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. At the same time, he regarded politics as war. Anyone who opposed him was considered his enemy, particularly antiwar protesters. Weiner reveals the extremes Nixon was willing to go to defeat his enemies at home and abroad. He strongly believed that John Kennedy stole the 1960 presidential election from him and vowed to do whatever it took to keep that from happening again. And he did.

Days before the 1968 presidential election, with his lead over Hubert Humphrey dropping in the polls, Nixon convinced government leaders in South Vietnam to wait until after the election to make any binding deals because, as president, Nixon told them he could negotiate better terms for ending the war than President Johnson could. It is a federal crime for a citizen to conduct diplomacy with a foreign government against the interests of the U.S. Nixon would long remember that his victory that fall depended on deception and acts of dubious legality. He won by less than half a million votes, and not since 1912 had a president been elected with less of a popular mandate. Years later, Philip Habib, a senior State Department diplomat at the Paris peace talks, who served both presidents Johnson and Nixon, believed the talks then in progress would have succeeded if Nixon had not intervened. Habib said he was convinced that if Humphrey had won the election, “the war would have been over much sooner.”

Nixon’s grand strategy included persuading the leaders of China and the Soviet Union to put pressure on North Vietnam to help him pursue peace. But as that initiative failed, his frustration and anger led him to take personal control of much of the massive military power at his command, thinking he could bomb the enemy in Vietnam into submission. He did not trust anyone else, even members of his cabinet and his closest advisers (although he did count on top aides Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig to carry out his plans), and he was increasingly secretive and duplicitous. One of the best examples of this was his decision in 1970 to invade Cambodia, over the strong objections of his secretaries of state and defense. In 1971, relations between the country’s national defense and intelligence communities and the president were so bad that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had their own officially approved spy inside the White House.

H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, noted accurately that “without the Vietnam War there would have been no Watergate.” After the 1970 congressional elections and with the country bitterly divided over the war, Nixon felt he had reached the low point of his presidency. At that point he devoted much time and effort to political strategy meetings that he hoped would lead him to an overwhelming re-election victory in 1972. Toward that end, the break-in at the offices of Lawrence O’Brien and the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel and other related activities came about because of Nixon’s obsession with doing everything possible that would reflect negatively on his opponents.

Rich in behind-the-scenes views of political and foreign-policy maneuvering, One Man Against the World is an excellent guide to better understand Nixon as a man, as well as his policy in Vietnam and the beginnings of the Watergate scandal. Weiner writes so well that his book is not only authoritative but a riveting read.

Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Jean Shrimpton, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell: Name a famous model, and more likely than not, she was once represented by Eileen Ford, who started her eponymous modeling agency with husband Jerry in 1947 and built it into an international powerhouse.

In the fascinating Model Woman, author Robert Lacey paints Ford as an intriguing paradox. She was a ruthless businesswoman about whom rival John Casablancas once said, “I will fight. I will never sleep with both eyes closed as long as that woman is around.” She was a woman uncomfortable with her own history, whitewashing her Jewish heritage and erasing an impetuous early marriage from her biography. And she was a motherly figure who raised four successful children and many of her models to live with her family as they came to New York as mere teens.

 “She kept an eye out for me, and because she did, I think other male agents and photographers were more careful around me, more respectful,” Turlington said. “Every young model should have such protection.”

Ford, who died in 2014 at the age of 92, broke new ground in the modeling industry again and again. She was an early adopter of the practice of international scouting, plucking leggy blondes from obscurity in Scandinavia. She also was shrewd in the art of brand-building, launching a makeup line in the 1960s and writing a monthly beauty advice column that was syndicated nationwide. She and Jerry helped negotiate some of the earliest long-term makeup contracts, signing Lauren Hutton with Revlon for a record-setting $200,000 in 1973.

Lacey highlights the heady world of New York City modeling: The drug-fueled nights at Studio 54 in the 1970s, which Ford likened, not flatteringly, to the last days of the Roman Empire. The 1980s, when, “at one stage . . . every member of the pop group Duran Duran had a girlfriend who was on the books with Ford.” The 1990s, when supermodels danced in George Michael videos and didn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.

Model Woman is a wholly entertaining, insightful and slightly bitchy look inside the moneyed world of modeling.

Anyone who has completed a grueling round of sun salutations may be glad to learn that such exertions were intended for adolescent boys. Yoga, as it was taught to Americans by Indra Devi in the 1950s, was a slower series of postures, yet it was no more “authentic” than the intense hatha yoga of today. As Michelle Goldberg capably illustrates in The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, yoga has always been a bizarre blend of Eastern and Western tradition, particularly in the U.S. Like many other trends, yoga’s popularity began in Hollywood.

Devi, the subject of Goldberg’s terrific new biography, arrived in the City of Angels when she was almost 60 years old. Born Eugenia Peterson in early 20th-century Russia, Devi bounced from her war-torn home to Berlin in the 1930s. An actress, dancer and incurable adventurer, Devi soon traveled to a land she’d always dreamed of: India. While there, she put her charisma to good use by convincing recalcitrant yogis to be her teacher. (She also starred in a silent film on the side.) Just before she moved to Shanghai to be a diplomat’s wife, her latest guru told her to devote herself to spreading the practice of yoga. She opened her first studio the following year. When she finally arrived in Hollywood, minus the diplomat, it was 1947. Soon she was teaching the likes of Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Arden. And her story, improbable though it may seem, was only beginning. (She lived to be 102.)

As spectacular a figure as Devi obviously was, Goldberg wisely devotes a lot of her book to yoga itself: the development and popularization of not simply a physical activity, but also a philosophy. For anyone interested in the practice, The Goddess Pose offers an irresistible story of yoga’s unlikely and, yes, even audacious origins.

Given the endless parade of biographies of Founding Fathers and Tudor monarchs, one might be forgiven for wondering whether there are any fresh candidates for a lengthy life study left. Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan (Villa Air-Bel) proves the answer is yes with Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the masterfully told and meticulously researched story of a truly remarkable life.

Born in 1926 and raised in luxury in Moscow, the only daughter of Russia’s all-powerful leader Joseph Stalin, Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina (who later took her mother’s name of Alliluyeva) was beautiful, intelligent and privileged. But not even Stalin’s favorite child was exempt from the terror that his reign ushered in. Before her father’s death in 1953, Alliluyeva would suffer the loss of her mother, two brothers, numerous aunts and uncles and even her first love to death or deportation. Her father’s role in their fates was something she spent her entire life struggling to reconcile.

If that were all that ever happened to Alliluyeva, her story would still be worth reading. But life had much more in store for this proud, passionate and impulsive woman. After Stalin’s death, she was alternately lauded, spied on and reviled, depending on the prevailing politics of the day. She married three times and bore three children, two of whom she left behind in the Soviet Union after she took the remarkable step of defecting during the height of the Cold War, at the age of 41. It was a desperate attempt to escape her father’s shadow, but Alliluyeva was not able to put the past completely behind her—in fact, she shaped her writing career around it, beginning with a best-selling memoir that made her a millionaire. By the time of her death in 2011, Alliluyeva was living in near poverty in Wisconsin—an anything but predictable end for a Kremlin princess.

Sullivan weaves Svetlana’s fascinating story with cinematic grace, bringing settings as diverse as Moscow, India, England and the United States to life with equal ease. She also sustains a surprising amount of suspense—Alliluyeva’s defection in 1967 in particular has the tension of a spy thriller or an episode of “The Americans.” Combining archival research with journal excerpts and testimony from friends and family, most notably Alliluyeva’s youngest daughter, Olga, Stalin’s Daughter is an intimate portrait of a complicated woman who was a symbol to many but truly known by only a few.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, May 2015

Nowadays, the title of a nonfiction book is almost invariably followed by a phrase hyping the contents, including words like incredible, survival or secret. No such subtitle is needed for two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough’s latest book, The Wright Brothers, even though it contains all three elements.

Of course, McCullough’s name alone virtually guarantees bestseller status. Author of Mornings on Horseback and The Path Between the Seas and acclaimed biographer of Harry Truman and John Adams, he has earned his reputation as one of the best (and most-read) historians of our time. By turning his attention to the two shy brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who pioneered the age of flight, he guarantees that millions will learn a story that is, well, incredible.

“Shy” doesn’t quite do justice to the brothers (an armchair psychiatrist would likely conclude that one or both had Asperger’s syndrome), but McCullough does his best to bring out the personalities of two men virtually indistinguishable in the public eye. (If you don’t know which brother was which, join the crowd.) For McCullough, it’s not all propellers, wind tunnels and sand dunes: By emphasizing the Wright family dynamics, with a particular focus on their father, Bishop Milton Wright, and ever-supportive sister, Katharine Wright, he humanizes their story and makes it more relatable.

As for the technical side, readers won’t be disappointed. McCullough traces the development of powered, piloted flight from the brothers’ earliest interest in a crude flying toy to hard-won success at Kitty Hawk. Amazingly, in hindsight, it was another five years after the historic Dec. 17, 1903, flights before the brothers achieved worldwide acclaim. McCullough is at his best recounting this period, when fish-out-of-water Wilbur travels to France to disprove the doubters and Orville almost loses his life in a crash near Washington, D.C.

The Wrights didn’t totally shun fame, but they didn’t chase it either. The story of the brothers’ single-minded quest to master the skies is a compelling one, made even more compelling by McCullough’s sure-handed storytelling skills. He knows the prose doesn’t need to soar—the brothers and their accomplishments provide all the soaring that’s necessary.

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Both born in 1884, Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth could have been classmates in school. It’s easy to imagine Eleanor sitting up front (or even helping teach the class) and Alice occupying a back-row spot, launching spitballs and making wisecracks.

As Hissing Cousins makes clear, the two women from one of America’s foremost families could not have been more different. And that makes for some highly entertaining reading, especially if you like your history sweetened with delicious anecdotes and tasty bon mots.

Eleanor was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Alice was Theodore’s daughter from his first marriage, fated never to know her mother (who died the day after Alice was born). The first cousins may have been from the same family tree, but complicated circumstances—some political, some personal—pulled them apart as they matured into adulthood. At that point the stage was set, with shy social reformer Eleanor on the side of the Democratic party and attention-loving gadfly Alice casting her lot with the Republicans.

Authors Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer have a can’t-miss subject on their hands, and they bring the reader along for an exhilarating ride. Any history lessons, including a brief account of the Teapot Dome scandal, are a bonus, and there’s enough philandering to make the residents of Peyton Place blush.

For better or worse, most of the hissing in Hissing Cousins is done from afar. Face to face, on numerous social occasions, the cousins are all smiles. But as the authors know, where’s the fun—and the book—in that?

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

To imagine what life was like growing up in a French village in the early 15th century, don’t think of A Year in Provence. Think of modern-day Syria.

It was the France of the Hundred Years War with England, a land and a people ravaged by unchecked violence. Catholic belief permeated everyday life, and the French were taught that their travails were a punishment from God. Out of this mélange of catastrophe and faith came the village teenager we know as St. Joan of Arc, to this day her country’s icon.

Hundreds of books have been written about her, but the story remains astounding enough for new interpretations. Kathryn Harrison, the well-known author of novels, memoirs and a previous biography of a saint, has now taken up the challenge with the deeply researched and thoughtful Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured.

Harrison expertly cross-cuts Joan’s life (1412-1431) in its historical context with the remarkable parallels between her story and the life of Jesus and with consideration of the books, plays, movies and paintings she has inspired. Each age invents its own Joan.

But even stripped of fable, Joan was a phenomenon: a peasant girl who pronounced herself the messenger of God, donned men’s clothes and armor, inspired the French king and army to victory, fought beside them and stood up boldly to the quisling court that condemned her to burn. In Harrison’s hands, Joan’s confidence and intelligence come alive.

Whatever we make of Joan’s “Voices”—angels, hallucinations or mental illness—she was utterly convinced of their reality and purity. The French churchmen allied with England who killed her believed the voices were demons, but Harrison shows that Joan’s worst crime in their eyes was her revolutionary audacity in dressing and behaving like a man. Of course, the ultimate victory was hers.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, November 2014

From “Game of Thrones” to The Pillars of the Earth, popular culture offers up medieval stories where royals grab for power, where crucial alliances are built between church and state, where important people suddenly fall over dead after a sumptuous meal, poisoned by a hidden rival. But this world did, in fact, exist, and the subject of Kirstin Downey’s fascinating new biography, Isabella: The Warrior Queen, maneuvered through it with unlikely and thrilling success.

Most have heard of Isabella and Ferdinand, the monarchs who commissioned Columbus’ famous voyage, but what is less widely known is that Isabella ran the kingdom while Ferdinand merely signed the papers. Born in 1451, she left her fingerprints all over Spain by initiating the Inquisition, waging war against foes, pursuing a trans-Atlantic empire and brilliantly matchmaking her five children.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of an acclaimed biography of Frances Perkins, Downey is a brilliant storyteller. Despite the difficulties posed by a limited and inevitably incomplete archive, she writes with eloquence and intensity about Isabella’s life. And readers will quickly see why she chose to write about this medieval queen, whose life often seems pulled from the pages of a novel. Take, for example, Isabella’s engagement to a man she passionately did not want to marry. She prayed to God to smite either the man or her, and the suitor died on the road of a sudden illness.

Because she wanted her daughters to be powerful leaders, Isabella made sure that their education (unlike her own) included instruction in Latin. And when she encountered the articulate dreamer Christopher Columbus, she chose to financially support his expeditions against the recommendations of her advisors. Downey’s Isabella is a generous, insightful and extremely ambitious leader who was determined to expand her kingdom against daunting odds—and who helped shape the world we inhabit today.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our Q&A with Downey about Isabella. 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Cleopatra, Nefertiti: These are the names that come to mind when thinking of the legendary female rulers of ancient Egypt. In her highly engrossing The Woman Who Would Be King, Egyptian scholar Kara Cooney shines a spotlight on Hatshepsut, Egypt’s largely overlooked, longest-ruling female pharaoh, who led her country through a period marked by peace, prosperity and architectural achievement.

Daughter of King Thutmose I, Hatshepsut was highly educated, trained in her duties from a very early age. At the death of her father, when she was 12 or 13, Hatshepsut married Thutmose II (her own brother—inter-family royal marriages were de rigueur in Egypt 3,500 years ago). Three years later, Thutmose II was dead. Hatshepsut had only one surviving child with him, a daughter, and so the crown was passed along to Thutmose III, whose mother was a lesser-born wife of Thutmose II. Because Thutmose III was only 3 years old at the time, it was clear a regent would need to rule in his stead. Hatshepsut easily stepped into the role.

It was common for mothers of young kings to rule for their sons until they came of age, so Hatshepsut becoming the regent for her stepson/nephew was nothing out of the ordinary. She was an effective, fair and respected ruler who surrounded herself with the right people. What was out of the ordinary, however, came around six to eight years later, when she announced that Amen-Re (king of the gods) had declared her to be co-king (there was no Egyptian word for “queen”). And so she shrewdly ruled Egypt alongside Thutmose III until her death, likely in her late 30s.

Though the exact reason is unknown, some 20 years after her death, Thutmose III ordered the removal of Hatshepsut’s name and likeness from all Egyptian buildings and monuments—which likely explains her obscurity in part. Though Egyptologists have managed to uncover and piece together some details of her rise to power and rule, hard facts are few and far between, something Cooney acknowledges right off the bat. While much of The Woman Who Would Be Queen is conjecture, it is informed-by-expertise, compellingly written conjecture that will draw curious readers in with its vivid depiction of life in Ancient Egypt and a truly remarkable woman.

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is such an iconic military figure that he is legendary to Civil War scholars and schoolchildren alike. So it’s hard to imagine an author breaking new ground with another Jackson biography. But S.C. Gwynne does just that in Rebel Yell, which deserves comparisons to Shelby Foote’s three-volume The Civil War for its depth of knowledge and graceful narrative. Gwynne, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Empire of the Summer Moon, casts Jackson as a human being, not as a bronze figure towering over a battlefield. Readers will come away from Rebel Yell with an understanding of the man that goes beyond his military exploits.

Gwynne is obligated to cover familiar territory, as when Thomas Jackson earned his nickname by standing his ground against superior Union forces at the First Battle of Manassas. A fellow Confederate general shouted, “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall,” and the rest, as they say, is history.

Jackson’s military prowess is impressive, but it is glimpses of Stonewall off the battlefield that are more fascinating. We learn that Jackson was a complex character with any number of quirks and tics. He was deeply religious and placed his fate in the hands of God. Thus, while he lived by the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” once the South declared war, he pledged his loyalty and felt that any death he caused was God’s will. Formerly a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson was introverted and soft-spoken, yet in the heat of battle, his eyes became fiery and his demeanor decisive as he barked out orders. He was consumed by his health, and a bad stomach propelled him to a diet of stale bread and buttermilk. Despite these peculiarities, Jackson rose to become one of the South’s fiercest and most beloved generals, so relied upon that his early death left Confederates wondering whether the war’s outcome might have been different if he had survived.

Gwynne’s masterful storytelling makes Rebel Yell an absorbing choice for general readers and Civil War buffs alike.

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.