Lives of--

Shakespeare wrote with a feather quill and ink, Emily Dickinson wrote with a fountain pen, Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on a Yiddish typewriter. But what did such writers do when they weren't writing? What did Jane Austen eat for breakfast? What could make Mark Twain throw his shirts out the window? Why would Zora Neale Hurston punch a fellow elevator passenger? Lives of the Writers tells all that and more.

Every kid knows that pirates talk funny, swing a big sword, and seek buried treasure-don't they? What do we really know about Blackbeard, Madame Cheng, Sir Francis Drake, and other men and women of pirate history? What drove them to sail the high seas? What were their bad habits, favorite foods, and silly quirks? And did they actually talk like that? A lively style, lots of surprises, and solid research have made the Lives of... series of collective...

Profiles many of history's most noteworthy scientists, from Zhang Heng and Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein and Barbara McClintock, sharing lesser-known facts about their favorite activities, relationships, and eccentricities.