Eccentrics, Iconoclasts and Extraordinary Lives: Home

Captain Matthew Webb's gallant twenty-two-hour endeavor popularized the sport of swimming and was the highlight of his life, but it was also the beginning of his ruin. Wearing a ten-pound bathing suit and fueled by eggs and bacon washed down with beer, brandy and claret, he accomplished the aquatic equivalent of summiting Mount Everest.

This is the little-known story of Noah Webster and the creation of Webster's dictionary.

Pancho Barns, a pilot, went through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army and out-maneuvered the U.S. government.

In the 1880s, Frank Lenz set out to bicycle around the world on the new "safety bicycle." He never made it and disappeared mysteriously in Turkey.

Peter Mark Roget lived a colorful life full of unexpected twists and discoveries: he narrowly avoided jain in Napoleon's France, assisted famed physician Thomas Beddoes y personally testing the effects of laughing gas, invented the slide rule, and brought to life the book that would become synonymous with synonyms.

John Randel Jr. (1787-1865) was an eccentric and flamboyant surveyor. In The Measure of Manhattan, Marguerite Holloway explores the science and symbolism of surveying, a craft that begat a surprising number of modern technologies. Tasked with "gridding" what was then an undeveloped, hilly island, Randel recorded the contours of Manhattan down to the rocks on its shores. In his precision he sought to tame the land; Holloway explores this philosophy as well as contemporary efforts to envision Manhattan as a wild island again.

This book describes the enormous task of compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, its editor, and the insane American who contributed over 10,000 words.

Marion "Joe" Carstairs held the world record for the fastest female speedboat racer in the 1920s, who was notorious for her cross-dressing. She was also the heiress to the Standard Oil fortune.

The stuntman's autobiography

Unveiling remarkable new details about Gabrielle Chanel's early years in a convent orphanage, and her flight into unconventional adulthood, Justine Picardie explores what lies beneath the glossy surface of a mythic fashion icon.

A fictionalized telling of the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer, a pair of wealthy brothers who lived in their 5th Avenue house in complete squalor.

This is the story of the dazzling wealth, ruthless power and seductive charms of Howard Hughes. It tells of his more infamous schemes of corruption and his secret private life.

The story of the trusted advisor to the Romanov family, who was considered either a saint or a "mad monk."

This is the account of the idiosyncratic lives of Sterling and Stephen Clark - two of America's greatest art collectors, heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune, and for decades enemies of each other.

A portrait of a true Victorian eccentric - an outrageous, flirtatious, unstoppable woman who survived a slew of misfortunes and wild adventures, mostly of her own making.

The life of Doris Duke, "The Million Dollar Baby."

This is the story of J.R. Brinkley, a man who aspired to become the richest quack doctor in the world. He developed a surgery that involved transplanting goat glands into humans, created the world's largest radio station, ran for Governor of Kansas and thumbed his nose at those who pursued him.

The true story of a scandal that nearly destroyed the French Third Republic

Jan Bondeson, M.D., focuses his medical expertise and his insightful wit on the great unsolved mysteries of disputed identity of the last two hundered years.

Read about the curiosities and cons of the most notorious hornswogglers and flim flam men of the nineteenth century; be astounded at the imposters, pretenders, and tricksters of the twentieth.

In 1835, a New York Newspaper, the Sun, published a series of six articles purported to reveal the existence of life on the moon - including unicorns, beavers that walked upright on the hind legs, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. This is the story of that elaborate hoax.