Living Biographies

To appreciate the meaning and beauty of the great works of art, we must be familiar with the lives of the geniuses who created them, for in their personalities and life-stories lie the key to their masterpieces. Here are the vivid stories of these twenty painters who dreamed, struggled, and suffered so that they might give expression to their divine gifts: Giotto, Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, El Greco, Diego Velasquez, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Joseph Turner, Goya, Jean Baptiste Corot, Jean François Millet, Van Gogh, Whistler, Renoir, Cézanne, and Winslow Homer.

Each of the individuals featured in this book played an important role in history. Their accomplishments span a wide range of fields, from the literary and the political to the medical. They include Cleopatra; Theodora; Joan of Arc; Mary, Queen of Scots; Queen Christina; Madame de Maintenon; Charlotte Brontë; George Eliot; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Florence Nightingale; Susan B. Anthony; Frances E. Willard; Catherine Breshkovsky; Sarah Bernhardt; Isadora Duncan; Ernestine Schumann-Heink; Jane Addams; Evangeline Booth; Helen Keller; and Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

This absorbing book presents the lives of twenty great founders and leading advocates of the world's foremost religions. Here are the historical facts and legends associated with these forceful personalities who have inspired and influenced humankind through the centuries. In the telling of these vivid and fascinating life stories, the authors have also simply and clearly outlined the principal teachings of each of the great religions. The book will give greater significance to the listener's own faith and a better understanding of the faith of others. The great religious leaders whose lives and tenets are presented here are: Jesus Christ, Moses, Isaiah, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, John the Baptist, Paul, Muhammad, Francis of Assisi, John Huss, Luther, Loyola, Calvin, George Fox, Swedenborg, Wesley, Brigham Young, Mary Baker Eddy, and Gandhi.

Every biography is a story of adventure. The energetic personalities of the world represent an adventure in living. The philosophical personalities, on the other hand, represent an adventure in thinking. And when we examine the lives of the philosophers, we find that the procession of a man's thoughts can be as exciting a spectacle as the pageantry of a man's deeds. The great thinkers introduced in this work include: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Spencer, Nietzsche, William James, Bergson, and Santayana.