Resultados Editorial "Charles River Editors" en Biografías y memorias

If Lon Chaney will forever be recognized as The Man with 1,000 Faces, Jackie Gleason holds a legitimate claim to being The Man with 1,000 Personas. Indeed, during his time hosting The Jackie Gleason Show on television, he developed numerous alter egos, including tough guy Rudy the Repairman, the energetic Joe the Bartender, and the alcoholic Rum Dum.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

In the middle of the 20th century, there was perhaps no leading man as famous and popular as Rock Hudson, who would remain a star over the course of four decades. Today, however, Rock Hudson might be better known for his personal life. Acting in a more conservative era, Hudson struggled to keep his homosexuality out of the news, for fear it would destroy his career, even though many of his Hollywood contemporaries were aware of it.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees?

November 22, 1963 started as a typical Friday, and many Americans were unaware that President Kennedy was even heading to Dallas, Texas. John and Jackie arrived in Dallas in the morning, with Texas Governor John Connally alongside them and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson due to arrive later to meet them there. The Kennedys and the Connallys intended to participate in public events later in the day, and Jackie and John were pleasantly surprised by the warm reception they received....

Charlton Heston had one of the longest and most critically acclaimed careers of any man in Hollywood during the second half of the 20th century, winning an Academy Award for Best Actor and appearing in some of Hollywood's most beloved classics, including The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and Planet of the Apes (1968). Given so many popular and memorable roles, Heston became known across the nation for playing strong, moral men who were not just fatherly role models, but who were also voices of authority and forces for good.

The Christian Church has no shortage of revered figures and saints, but it is difficult to find one that had a more decisive impact on the course of the Church's history than Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was a bishop of Hippo Regius in Africa, but his works, sermons and writings helped hold the Church together even as the Western Roman Empire was in its death throes, to the extent that every major branch of Christianity recognizes him today.

Despite serving as the president of Russia from 2000 to 2008 following Boris Yeltsin's regime, and again since the spring of 2012, remarkably little is known of enigmatic former KGB spy Vladimir Putin other than the most mainstream life statistics and some minimally revealing fragments of memoirs and anecdotal observations.

The lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright are quintessential American stories. Growing up in America's heartland, the boys lived very ordinary lives with five other siblings and worked printing and repair jobs that involved tinkering with tools and bicycles.

Throughout the annals of history, there have been few men as reviled as Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger. To this day he is associated with murder, betrayal, violence, and infamy, so much so that in modern English his name provides the root for the words "brute" and "brutal", as it does in several other Romance languages. Indeed Brutus' reputation was so infamous that when Dante composed his timeless Divine Comedy, he relegated Brutus to the very nethermost depths of hell.

Aside from Jesus himself, one of the most important and best known individuals of the New Testament is Paul the Apostle, formerly Saul of Tarsus. A “Hebrew born of Hebrews”, Paul’s conversion to Christianity was unquestionably one of the seminal events in the history of the religion, because it would be Paul who spread Christianity across much of the Mediterranean.

For more than half a century, the name J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) has been synonymous with epic fantasy. Known across the world for his classic The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien both revived interest in fantasy literature and set the standard for the genre. Today he is widely acknowledged as the father of modern fantasy and its most famous author.

Few participants in World War I are more famous than Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. A German known for victories in a war that his country lost, a cavalry officer made famous as mounted combat disappeared, and an aristocratic hero in a century dominated by democracy; Richthofen's celebrity stands in stark contrast to the era.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees?

Mae West will always be remembered as one of Hollywood's biggest icons, and the American Film Institute named her the 15th greatest actress of the 20th century in its Top 100 list, but she also transcended the entertainment industry and became a critical part of Americana itself. Over the course of 7 decades, Mae redefined the boundaries of sexuality in ways that made more conservative Americans of the early 20th century uncomfortable, and for good measure she did so boldly and in people's faces.

Despite the enormous esteem he has garnered from virtually every corner of the music world, Jerry Garcia has continued to elude both fans and music historians as they attempt to determine his origins and categorize his art and influence on American music. Part of their difficulty lies in the fact that his work as the frontman for the Grateful Dead, "one of the most prolific and iconic guitarists of the twentieth century", tended toward a blending of the traditional with the experimental.

Sir Winston Churchill is often cited as Britain's greatest prime minister for leading the United Kingdom against Hitler's Nazi war machine during World War II, and indeed he was the idol of the one person who many think might have surpassed him: Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher not only became Britain's first female prime minister; she also became its longest serving prime minister.

For over 1,000 years England has had a monarchy, and though the line of succession did not always pass smoothly, it has almost always been continuous. England has more often been faced with the claims of competing kings and queens than with a period of no monarch at all.

The 1930s were, without a doubt, the height of the classical Hollywood era. It is no accident that 1939 has historically been designated as the pinnacle of Hollywood film history. The era was known for its lavish studio productions, with MGM, RKO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox all operating at the height of their powers.

In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own. Alongside actor and director Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton was at the peak of Hollywood. It’s no surprise that Keaton was so effective in silent films. He had been practicing comedy in his family’s vaudeville acts as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged”, and became a popular performer by the age of 5.