101 World Heroes: Great Men and Women for an Unheroic Age
About this book
In "101 World Heroes", bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore presents his personal selection of the 100 most heroic figures from the pages of world history. Emperors and queens, soldiers and statesmen, religious leaders and philosophers rub shoulders with composers and poets, scientists and explorers, artists and storytellers from three millennia. All are united not just by what they did in their own lifetimes, but also by the enduring legacy they have bequeathed to the sum of human experience and achievement. The central spine of the book consists of a series of narrative entries recording the lives and legacies of the 101 heroes and heroines. Each entry is accompanied by a brief essay opening a window on the times in which he or she lived. Thus the life of Egypt's greatest pharaoh, Ramses II, is accompanied by an essay looking at the gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt, while the entry for Admiral Horatio Nelson explores the tactics and gunnery of a ship-of-the-line. The book is illustrated throughout with maps, diagrams, paintings and photographs, and an appendix celebrates a further 100 individual deeds of heroism with a special claim to immortality. The heroes include: Ramses the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, King Solomon, Elizabeth I of England, Winston Churchill, The Buddha, Tokugawa Ieyasu, M. K. Gandhi, Aristotle, William Shakespeare, F.D. Roosevelt, Alexander the Great, Thomas Jefferson, David Ben Gurion, Hannibal, Voltaire, George Orwell, Jesus, Napoleon Bonaparte, Elvis Presley, Marcus Aurelius, Horatio Nelson, J. F. Kennedy, Mohammed, Duke of Wellington, John Paul II, Charlemagne, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Darwin.