Most Popular Books by Vincent Sheean

In this book, the author of Personal History, Vincent Sheean, demonstrates that Gandhi’s life, work and teaching were for the whole world as well as for India. it is suggested that the terrifying weapon of non-violence, having freed India, might be about to free the world. Though this book is in one sense an attempt to reveal the meaning of Mahatma Gandhi’s power and life and teaching, it is, in a more important sense, the author’s eloquent testament of belief in Gandhi’s mission. Vincent Sheean went to India to ask Gandhi many questions. It was a quest brought on by the failure of every other human institution to supply hope for the future. What he learned there, from Gandhi and others, is of immense, immediate importance to all men everywhere and to the future of humanity. Thoughtful men have begun to see that the only weapon even more awesome than the atom bomb, the only weapon able to contend with it on anything like equal terms, is the irresistible weapon of non-violence conceived by Mahatma Gandhi. Here is the record of its first great success, the story of how it was created, and a clear, sympathetic explanation of the philosophy that brought it into being, indeed made it inevitable. Here, also, are chapters on the background of Hindu philosophy, on Gandhi’s own beliefs and how he applied them, on Gandhi’s progress from an obscure lawyer in South Africa to his position as India’s leader and deliverer and the greatest force for peace at the present time, on the author’s own meetings with Gandhi, the assassination and funeral, both of which he witnessed, and a final chapter of the author’s conclusions on Gandhi’s meaning to the future of world peace in this atomic age. The title of the book comes from Gandhi’s favourite hymn, which was always sung on solemn occasions, including the funeral march to the Ganges.

This book is the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film, "Foreign Correspondent."

This unusual book is an appreciation of an aspect in the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay which reflects as much as any other the essence of her nature and her poetry -- her extraordinary relationship with the birds. It was Miss Millay who introduced the author to the indigo bunting, described by Audubon as a bird that is blue all over, has a sweet, delicate voice, and sings when most other bird voices are still. From their first meeting the indigo bunting became to him the symbol of this poet. Though he knew the poet only in her later years, there developed a mutual understanding rarely achieved in a lifetime association. Vincent Sheean was one of the few people ever allowed to visit the room at the top of the stairs where Miss Millay kept her books. It was here that, inadvertently, he saw her bird diary with its revealing entries -- excerpts of which are included. Few people knew Miss Millay well; she was more in communication with nature than with human beings. But Mr. Sheean saw her in a range of moods: one rainy week end, quoting other poets she had memorized, or talking of Shelley and Keats, or discussing the habits of the scarlet tanager; on another occasion silent, withdrawn and seemingly frightened in a period of being unable to write; again, coming bare-legged across the rocks at Ragged Island, a circle of sea gulls overhead. Against a background of this unique friendship, and quoting liberally from Miss Millay''s poems, Vincent Sheean reveals new and fascinating aspects of a complex and elusive artist. The Indigo Bunting is a moving and beautifully written volume which will appeal to admirers of author and subject alike.

Marie Curie is a women who changed the face of science for all time, not just because of her discovery of the radioactive element Radium and her work with it, but because of her incredible strides forward in a such a male dominated world as laboratory science at the turn of the 19th century. This is the Madame Curie many people know but here is a biography written by her daughter Eve that shows her human side, in a way that can only be viewed and admired from a family member describing her as a caring mother, devoted and passionate wife. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This is a new release of the original 1960 edition.

A fresh evaluation of the life of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer-patriot, whose music has thrilled the world for a hundred years and about whose stormy personal life there is so much curiosity today.

This biography of Jefferson centers on his public life and career.

The action in this novel centers around the battle of Fontenoy in 1745 between the French and English. With flashbacks and side stories, it becomes a wonderful look at the whole era.

After a dramatic incident which brought to Gandhi a realization of the plight of his people, he devoted his life to struggling for Indian Independence.

Concerns the relationship between writers Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis and their circle of influential political and artistic friends.

This is the spiritual background of a young man who grew up ina small town in Illinois in the early 1900''s and shows the way people felt during First World War.

A historical novel set in Naples.

"To those who read Lead Kindly Light (1949) and shared through that Sheean''s mystical experience with Gandhi in search of peace, this novel will come as something of a shock. For here he tells, in convincing terms, the story of a very troubled lady who goes to India, seeking help and understanding -- and finds it, but not through her contact with mysticism and asceticism, not through her time of contemplation in a "clean and tidy Ashram", not through watching others prostrate themselves before an imposing woman, the "Feminine Principle" or the carefully guarded yoga. All of that she found faintly ridiculous, unreal (and one senses that to Sheean, also, it has become unreal). Through a young Hindu she has a more enlightening experience in meeting his guru, and learns that her own readiness is vital- and that when that comes she will find the answer, in her own heart. The story is told in counterpoint:- first Elizabeth''s story, as she journeys half a world away from her husband, a member of the State Department, learns that she is at times possessed wholly, unreasonably, by a purely physical lust, the object meaningless to her, and that she must understand this in herself before she can accept -- and bring him to accept- her undeviating love for her husband; second- and alternating thereafter- the story of her husband, Charles, and his brief but spectacular involvement in "the Affaire Sneeze", when his interest in human beings in trouble persuades him to help a couple escape the closing-in of the net of the Soviet -- and almost costs him his job. Ultimately, of course, she finds the answer in her own heart- and they are joined again, this time "for keeps".--Kirkus.

High quality reprint of Not Peace But A Sword by Vincent Sheean.