Nina Burleigh

Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt

Mirage

Presents an account of the highly publicized 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher that examines the controversial prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of her American roommate while critiquing vulnerabilities in the Italian legal system.

The Trials of Amanda Knox

The Fatal Gift of Beauty

A suspenseful account of the high-stakes world of biblical antiques forgery places an emphasis on the James Ossuary and the struggle between the faithful and the scientific community, in a report that also discusses the scholars, evangelicals, and millionaire collectors who contribute to its illicit practices. 30,000 first printing.

A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land

Unholy Business

The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer

A Very Private Woman

New York Times bestselling author Nina Burleigh weaves together the key narrative strands to create an uncompromising and highly informed expose about our shared global pandemic experience and what it means for our future Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic takes readers on an extraordinary journey from the medical science of viruses and vaccines, to conspiracy theories, through the history of knowledge, to the precipice—where we are now—of uncertainty about the future. This is not a book for those who think they already know how the story ends, but one that asks the tough questions in terse, hard-hitting paragraphs and chapters. Virus walks a tightrope wire, in the same way that nearly all Americans are already doing, and does not presume our lives will be saved by any one approach or answer, or that any side has ownership of the truth, but puts us on a path towards a better understanding of what just happened to us and where we’re likely to be headed when, not if, the next virus appears. Here is: • The true story behind the triumph of science in an era of unprecedented science denialism; • The other true story of government malfeasance that brought the U.S. to its knees and saw more Americans die from the pandemic than in any other nation; • An eye-opening series of interviews with researchers and creators of the mRNA vaccine, its test subjects, and other key figures; • The history behind one of the great medical milestones: the astonishingly fast development and clinical deployment of the first mRNA vaccine, and how it will change the way medicine is practiced in the future; • The alternate reality of bizarre conspiracy theories that undergird pandemic denialism and vaccine hesitancy; • The return of eugenics and how shock doctrine capitalism, crony corruption and extreme free ideology killed people of color, the poor, and the frail; • An assessment of the lessons learned and opportunities lost and what this will mean for the future of our democracy and our people. Virus includes original research and interviews with many key figures and experts including MIT engineer (“The Edison of Medicine”) and Moderna founder Robert Langer, Stanford microbiologist David Relman, first mRNA clinical trial (Seattle) participant Missy Pena, medical anthropologist Martha Louise Lincoln, among many others, and a deep reading of publicly available documents and reporting.

Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America's Response to the Pandemic

Virus

In her illuminating and dramatic biography The Stranger and the Statesman, New York Times bestselling author Nina Burleigh reveals a little-known slice of history in the life and times of the man responsible for the creation of the United States' principal cultural institution, the Smithsonian. It was one of the nineteenth century's greatest philanthropic gifts - and one of its most puzzling mysteries. In 1829, a wealthy English naturalist named James Smithson left his library, mineral collection, and entire fortune to the "United States of America, to found... an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men" - even though he had never visited the United States or known any Americans. In this fascinating book, Burleigh pieces together the reclusive benefactor's life, beginning with his origins as the Paris-born illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland and a wild adventuress who preserved for her son a fortune through gall and determination. The book follows Smithson through his university years and his passionate study of minerals across Europe during the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Detailed are his imprisonment - simply for being an Englishman in the wrong place - his experiences in the gambling dens of France, and his lonely and painstaking scientific pursuits. After Smithson's death, nineteenth-century American politicians were given the task of securing his half-million dollars - the equivalent today of $50 million - and then trying to determine how to increase and diffuse knowledge from the muddy, brawling new city of Washington. Burleigh discloses how Smithson's bequest was nearly lost due to fierce battles among many clashing Americans - Southern slavers, states' rights advocates, nation-builders, corrupt frontiersmen, and Anglophobes who argued over whether a gift from an Englishman should even be accepted. She also reveals the efforts of the unsung heroes, mainly former president John Quincy Adams, whose tireless efforts finally saw Smithson's curious notion realized in 1846, with a castle housing the United States' first and greatest cultural and scientific establishment.

The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil meets Camelot.”—Washington Post Book World In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the beautiful, rebellious, and intelligent ex-wife of a top CIA official, was killed on a quiet Georgetown towpath near her home. Mary Meyer was a secret mistress of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had known since private school days, and after her death, reports that she had kept a diary set off a tense search by her brother-in-law, newsman Ben Bradlee, and CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton. But the only suspect in her murder was acquitted, and today her life and death are still a source of intense speculation, as Nina Burleigh reveals in her widely praised book, the first to examine this haunting story. Praise for A Very Private Woman “Power is so utterly fascinating. Sometimes it’s used for evil purposes, like the kind of power that has silenced the telling of Mary Pinchot Meyer’s mysterious murder for over three decades. In A Very Private Woman, Nina Burleigh has finally told this tragic tale of a privileged beauty with friends in high places.”—Dominick Dunne “A superbly crafted, evocative glimpse of an adventurous spirit whose grisly murder remains a mystery.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review “Proves that every Washington sex scandal is juicy in its own way.”—Glamour “Nina Burleigh has dissected Washington’s most intriguing murder mystery and produced a captivating biography, a thriller, and an insightful portrait of Georgetown in its golden presidential age.”—Christopher Ogden, bestselling author of Life of the Party: The Life of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman “Provocative, erudite . . . pure Georgetown noir.”—New York Observer “A rich array of real-life characters.”—New York Times Book Review

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist, Nina Burleigh, explores Donald Trump’s attitudes toward women by providing in-depth analysis and background on the women who have had the most profound influence on his life—the mother and grandmother who raised him, the wives who lived with him, and the daughter who is poised to inherit it all. Has any president in the history of the United States had a more fraught relationship with women than Donald Trump? He flagrantly cheated on all three of his wives, brushed off multiple accusations of sexual assault, publicly ogled his eldest daughter, bought the silence of a porn star and a Playmate, and proclaimed his now-infamous seduction technique: “grab ’em by the pussy.” Golden Handcuffs is a comprehensive and provocative account of the women who have been closest to Trump—his German-immigrant grandmother, Elizabeth, the uncredited founder of the Trump Organization; his Scottish-immigrant mother, Mary, who acquired a taste for wealth as a maid in the Andrew Carnegie mansion; his wives—Ivana, Marla, and Melania (the first and third of whom are immigrants); and his eldest daughter, Ivanka, groomed to take over the Trump brand from a young age. Also examined are Trump’s two older sisters, one of whom is a prominent federal judge; his often-overlooked younger daughter, Tiffany; his female employees; and those he calls “liars”—the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. Of these women, Burleigh writes, “where they come from and what they do now and in the future matters because they have or have had the ear of the most powerful man on earth.”

Part of the Deal

The Trump Women

Two hundred years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared to traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. But in 1798, more than 150 French engineers, artists, doctors, and scientists—even a poet and a musicologist—traveled to the Nile Valley under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and his invading army. Hazarding hunger, hardship, uncertainty, and disease, Napoleon's "savants" risked their lives in pursuit of discovery. The first large-scale interaction between Europeans and Muslims in the modern era, the audacious expedition was both a triumph and a disaster, resulting in finds of immense historical and scientific importance (including the ruins of the colossal pyramids and the Rosetta Stone) and in countless tragic deaths through plague, privation, madness, or violence. Acclaimed journalist Nina Burleigh brings readers back to the landmark adventure at the dawn of the modern era that ultimately revealed the deepest secrets of ancient Egypt to a curious continent.

Nina Burleigh

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