WJung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China.
WCitizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is a book by the historian Simon Schama, published in 1989, the bicentenary of the French Revolution. "The terror," declared Schama in the book, "was merely 1789 with a higher body count; violence ... was not just an unfortunate side effect ... it was the Revolution's source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary." In short, “From the very beginning [...] violence was the motor of revolution.” Schama considers that the French Revolutionary Wars were the logical corollary of the universalistic language of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and of the universalistic principles of the Revolution which led to inevitable conflict with old-regime Europe.
WPeter John Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London.
WThe Railway Man is an autobiographical book by Eric Lomax about his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II and being forced to help build the Thai-Burma Railway for the Japanese military. The book won the NCR Book Award and the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography.
WSir Simon Michael Schama is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, New York.
WJoe Simpson is an English mountaineer, author, and motivational speaker. While climbing in Peru in 1985, he suffered severe injuries and was thought lost after falling into a crevasse, but he survived and managed to crawl back to his base camp. He described the ordeal in his best-selling 1988 book Touching the Void, which was adapted into a 2003 documentary film of the same name.
WClaire Tomalin is an English journalist and biographer, known for her biographies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
WTouching the Void is a 1988 book by Joe Simpson, recounting his and Simon Yates' successful but disastrous and nearly fatal climb of the 6,344-metre (20,814 ft) Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. It has sold over a million copies and has been translated into over 20 languages. In 2013 the 25th Anniversary eBook edition of Touching the Void was published by DirectAuthors.com. It features additional photography from the expedition.
WWild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography. The book won two awards: the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year. The book has been translated into 37 languages and sold over 13 million copies.