THE FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARThis absorbing collective biography of the genius Nobel family reveals how the Nobels' business and personal lives were fundamentally intertwined with the histories of Sweden and Russia, as well as the economic and entrepreneurial development of Europe in the long 19th century.The name Nobel is mainly associated with the Nobel prize. However, Alfred Nobel was only one of a family of conspicuously gifted individuals. The Nobels, who moved from Sweden to Russia in the 1830s, ran one of Russia's biggest machine factories and founded the Russian oil industry. Using thousands of Nobel family letters and other documents shared here for the first time, Bengt Jangfeldt provides a fascinating and authoritative multi-generational chronicle charting the family exploits. The author describes how the father, Immanuel Nobel, a polymath architect, inventor, and engineer set the family on a path to financial success amidst a backdrop of imperial Russian
Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele' tells for the first time the riveting life-story of an extraordinary individual, who came to define the times he lived in. The precociously bright son of a Swedis
Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele tells for the first time the riveting life-story of an extraordinary individual, who came to define the times he lived in. The precociously bright son of a Swedish
With access to previously unpublished material, Bengt Jangfeldt provides the first complete account of Wallenberg's life and sheds important new light on one of the greatest heroes of World War II.
A Life at Stake is the first serious biography of the legendary Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Physically imposing, crude, a sexual adventurer and ex-convict, Mayakovsky rose to fame between 1912 a
