Archive for the 'Biography' Category



DICTATOR STYLE, by Peter York
(Chronicle, $24.95; release date June 1, 2006)

Published on June 19, 2006

Idi Amin’s shag rug, Saddam Hussein’s murals, what appears to be colonic-irrigation equipment in Nicolae Ceausescu palace (whose construction required the demolition of 7,000 structures) … laugh and cry as you pore through vintage photographs detailing the home decor of infamous men and women whom style-guru York calls “the world’s most colorful despots,” but who [...]


THE ANZA TRAIL, by Vladimir Guerrero
(Heyday Books, $16.95; release date June 1, 2006)

Published on May 29, 2006

California is so modern — so post-modern — that one hardly thinks of it as a place that needed to be discovered. But once, long ago, the land we now know of as California was unknown to anyone except for a few small bands of Native Americans. The Anza Trail tells a story that for [...]