Very few people know that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important but also his best work. He spent twelve years in research and many months in France doing archival work, and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell. He reached his conclusion about Joan's unique place in history only after studying in detail accounts...

"The girl who led an army, the peasant who crowned a king, the maid who became a legend. It is the fifteenth century, and the tumultuous Hundred Years' War rages on. France is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside destroying all who cross their path, and Charles VII, the uncrowned king, has neither the strength nor the will to rally his army. And in the quiet of her parents' garden in Domrémy, a peasant girl sees a spangle of...

Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and times.

There have been many iterations of the Joan of Arc story: "testimonies," books, and films have attempted to capture the drama of one of history's most famous gender warriors. But few, if any, have been undertaken by an author who met her subject matter with such recognition and insight, a fellow warrior, a rebel in kind. kari edwards, a transgender activist and key figure in the Bay Area experimental writing scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s,...