Nonfiction November - Week 4

We have already reached week 4 of Nonfiction November. Time passes very quickly when you have fun. So many interesting posts on the various themes. I have also found new blogging friends. Christopher @ Plucked from the Stacks is hosting this week, and the theme is: 

Week 4 (November 22-26) Stranger Than Fiction: This week we’re focusing on all the great nonfiction books that almost don’t seem real. A sports biography involving overcoming massive obstacles, a profile on a bizarre scam, a look into the natural wonders in our world—basically, if it makes your jaw drop, you can highlight it for this week’s topic.

I had a quick look back on nonfictions I have read, and have chosen a few of them.

Bess: the Life of Lady Ralegh, Wife to Sir Walter by Anna Beer

It is always interesting to read about strong women, especially when they lived in a time when there was not so much independence for women. I think Bess Throckmorton is one of those women, who had to endure a lot, but seems to have been very capable in handling every situation. 

"Young, beautiful, and connected by blood to the most powerful families in England, Bess Throckmorton had as much influence over Queen Elizabeth I as any woman in the realm—but she risked everything to marry the most charismatic man of the day. The secret marriage between Bess and the Queen’s beloved Sir Walter Ralegh cost both of them their fortunes, their freedom, and very nearly their lives. Yet it was Bess, resilient, passionate, and politically shrewd, who would live to restore their name and reclaim her political influence. In this dazzling biography, Bess Ralegh finally emerges from her husband’s shadow to stand as a complex, commanding figure in her own right.

Writing with grace and drama, Anna Beer brings Bess to life as a woman, a wife and mother, an intimate friend of poets and courtiers, and a skilled political infighter in Europe’s most powerful and most dangerous court. The only daughter of an ambitious aristocratic family, Bess was thrust at a tender age into the very epicenter of royal power when her parents secured her the position of Elizabeth’s Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. Bess proved to be a natural player on this stage of extravagant mythmaking and covert sexual politics, until she fell in love with the Queen’s Captain of the Guard, the handsome, virile, meteorically rising Ralegh. But their secret marriage, swiftly followed by the birth of their son, would have grave consequences for both of them.

Brooking the Queen’s wrath and her husband’s refusal to acknowledge their marriage, Bess brilliantly stage-managed her social and political rehabilitation and emerged from prison as the leader of a brilliant, fast-living aristocratic set. She survived personal tragedy, the ruinous global voyages launched by her husband, and the vicious plots of high-placed enemies. Though Raleigh in the end fell afoul of court intrigue, Bess lived on into the reign of James I as a woman of hard-won wisdom and formidable power."

The Empress of South America by Nigel Cawthorne

You can admire strong women, but sometimes there is nothing to admire. One of the most evil women I have read about, must be Eliza Lynch. A chocking story of power, selfishness and ruthlessness. 

"The extraordinary, true story of Eliza Lynch, an Irish courtesan in Paris, who destroyed Latin America’s wealthiest country -- and became its national heroine.

Born in Ireland in the 1840s, Elizabeth Lynch left the country as a young girl, fleeing the potato famine with her parents. As a young woman, she became one of Paris’s most celebrated courtesans until she was persuaded by the son of the dictator of Paraguay to leave Paris for South America where he promised he would make her Empress of the entire continent. In Asuncion, they embarked on a program of extravagant building and acquisition (Eliza's collection of jewelry was legendary), entertaining (Eliza was known to attend balls dressed as Elizabeth 1) and, finally, war. Paraguay declared war on a coalition that included not only all the other states in South America, but also the USA, France and Britain. By the time their reign was over, Paraguay’s populated had been devastated.

Eliza died in poverty in Paris. Buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, her corpse was dug up at dead of night in 1961 and smuggled back to Paraguay, where general Stroessner planned, despite the condemnation of the Church, to make her the centre of an Evita-style cult. Her body lies there to this day."

The Tigress of Forli (Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de' Medici by Elizabeth Lev

A most remarkable woman, ahead of her time and adapting to a life at a time when women had not so much power. She managed to protect her family and people in good and bad times. 

"The astonishing life of a long-misunderstood Renaissance virago.

Wife, mother, leader, warrior. Caterina Riario Sforza was one of the most prominent women in Renaissance Italy—and one of the most vilified. In this glittering biography, Elizabeth Lev reexamines her extraordinary life and accomplishments.

Raised in the court of Milan and wed at age ten to the pope’s corrupt nephew, Caterina was ensnared in Italy’s political intrigues early in life. After turbulent years in Rome’s papal court, she moved to the Romagnol province of Forlì. Following her husband’s assassination, she ruled Italy’s crossroads with iron will, martial strength, political savvy—and an icon’s fashion sense. In finally losing her lands to the Borgia family, she put up a resistance that inspired all of Europe and set the stage for her progeny—including Cosimo de Medici—to follow her example to greatness.

A rich evocation the Renaissance,The Tigress of Forlì reveals Caterina Riario Sforza as a brilliant and fearless ruler, and a tragic but unbowed figure."

That was a few books about women. Now to something totally different.

Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused by Mike Dash

A fantastic story on how a flower ruled the world and caused the first stock exchange crash in the world. 

"In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens from every walk of life were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this unprecedented speculation was the tulip, a delicate and exotic Eastern import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike. For almost a year rare bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house.

Historians would come to call it tulipomania. It was the first futures market in history, and like so many of the ones that would follow, it crashed spectacularly, plunging speculators and investors into economic ruin and despair.

This is the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted--and beautiful--commodity in Europe. Historian Mike Dash vividly narrates the story of this amazing flower and the colorful cast of characters--Turkish sultans, Yugoslav soldiers, French botanists, and Dutch tavern keepers--who were centuries apart historically and worlds apart culturally, but who all had one thing in common: tulipomania."

Expeditionen: Min kärlekshistoria (The Expedition) by Bea Uusman

I am quite fascinated by the exploration trips to the north and south poles. One of the most mysterious expeditions was the Andrée expedition which set out in July 1897 in a hydrogen balloon. The group disappeared from radar the same year, and nothing was known about their destiny until a whale hunting boat found their bodies in 1930. This is not only a Stranger than Fiction story, but also the story how an author spent most of her life trying to solve the mystery. An extraordinary story in many different ways.  

"July 1897. Engineer Andrée's expedition sets off in a hydrogen balloon in the direction of the North Pole. A bold idea, without a chance from the start. Soon, three men, with minimal knowledge of Arctic conditions, are in the middle of a white nightmare.

For thirty-three years, a woman wonders where her fiancé went. In 1930, the men are found on a deserted glacier island in the Arctic Ocean. Their frozen diary announces: emergency landing on the ice after three days in the air. For months, they pull their several hundred kilos heavy sledges and try to get back to solid ground. On Vitön, all notes suddenly cease.

For over a hundred years, doctors, polar historians, writers and journalists have tried to solve the mystery of what happened on Vitön. Why did the expedition members die before they even unpacked the sledges, with warm clothes unpacked, with canned food unopened, with three working rifles and boxes of ammunition?

In the Expedition. My love story, the author and doctor Bea Uusma is looking for the truth about the fate of the expedition. She digs in archives and in the permafrost layers of the polar regions. She travels in the Arctic and to the North Pole. She meets survivors, forensic pathologists, osteologists, forensic scientists and crime scene investigators and seeks answers in laboratory tests, packing lists and in the only thing left by Andrée herself, some nail fragments stuck to the bottom of his gloves.

The result is not just a book that overturns old theories and provides new answers to what really happened. The story of the world's most unsuccessful polar expedition also contains a concert pianist whose hands can not stop shaking and a fortune teller in a bicycle cellar in Bredäng. But it's also a story about Bea herself. Why does an unusually comfortable person who hates freezing become obsessed with a hundred-year-old polar expedition and dedicates his life to following in its snow-covered footsteps? Always in the right place, but at the wrong time."

I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic by David Lagercrantz

Last but not least a sport story. One of our greatest, or I should maybe say, our greatest football player all time must be Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He grew up in the south of Sweden as an immigrant, fighting against rasism and almost everything and everyone around him. An angry young man who took his skills on the football court to unimaginable heights. 

"Born to Balkan immigrants who divorced when he was a toddler, Zlatan learned self-reliance from his rough-and-tumble neighborhood. While his father, a Bosnian Muslim, drank to forget the war back home, his mother’s household was engulfed in chaos. Soccer was Zlatan’s release. Mixing in street moves and trick plays, Zlatan was a wild talent who rode to practice on stolen bikes and relished showing up the rich kids—opponents and teammates alike. Goal by astonishing goal, the brash young outsider grew into an unlikely prodigy and, by his early twenties, an international phenomenon.

Told as only the man himself could tell it, featuring stories of friendships and feuds with the biggest names in the sport, I Am Zlatan is a wrenching, uproarious, and ultimately redemptive tale for underdogs everywhere."