Kirjahaku

Charles Higham successfully presents the most plausible and convincing solution yet to the mystery of who killed William Desmond Taylor. In the process he paints a vivid portrait of Hollywood in the 1920s - from its major stars to its bisexual subculture. The result is the answer to a long-standing mystery and a fascinating study of a place, and an industry, that has always let people reinvent themselves. ""Murder in Hollywood"" is more extraordinary than any crime fiction and as compelling as any suspense film.

Draws on previously unavailable sources to provide a provocative, intimate portrait of the private life of billionaire Howard Hughes, from his affairs with Hollywood stars to his possible involvement with Nixon and Watergate to his shocking death. Reprint. 50,000 first printing. (The basis for the Warner Bros. film, The Aviator, releasing December 2004, starring Leonardo di Caprio)

With Charles Higham, Katharine Hepburn first authorized a writer to interview her closest friends and colleagues about her career, life, and behind-the-scenes romantic involvements from Leland Hayward to Spencer Tracy. And she herself tells the deeply moving story of her twenty-five-year love affair with Tracy. Here is a vivid portrait of the most elegant, independent, and tempestuous star to grace the screen. Over a half million copies sold.

The updated biography of the Duchess of Windsor reveals all the dirtiest details of famous royal scandals, from Wallis Simpson's first marriage to a bisexual airman to her eventual feud with the Queen mother and all the extramarital affairs in between. Original.

This important new synthesis focuses on the social world of early mainland Southeast Asia.

Some claim the earliest bronze production in the world occurred in South-east Asia; others say it occurred elsewhere. This book presents the debate surrounding the Bronze Age in the Indochina region, providing a systematic and regional presentaton of the current state of knowledge. It illuminates the question of indigenous technological evolution, contrasted with influence from neighbouring civilisations - in this case Southern China. Higham suggests that the the adoption of metallurgy, copper and tin smelting took place in South-east Asia following a period of trading with China, which provided the exotic bronzes. Using a thematic approach, he provides an up-to-date account of the South-east Asian and Chinese Bronze Age, documenting evidence site by site. This is the first time these regions have integrated in research to provide an understanding of how and why their distinct cultures developed.Tracing developments right through to the Iron Age, Higham identifies the distinct regional developments that anticipate the transition into the first Southeast Asia states.

Jennie Jerome was a controversial American society girl and mother of Britain's most revered statesman, Winston Churchill. A single-minded and dynamic woman she was an early feminist, advocate of Irish independence, and, above all, was notorious for her promiscuity. Charles Higham draws from previously overlooked sources to provide much that is startlingly new about the remarkable and tempestuous life of Jennie Jerome. The book charts her luxurious New York upbringing, her eyebrow-raising entry into the British aristocracy through marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, her endless line of liaisons with men of vastly inferior years, and a very different sort of affair in the highest of high places - with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII (one of many kings and princes to win her affection). Passionately in love with life, expressive of her sexuality when women were supposed to hide it, beautiful and independent minded, Jennie Jerome was decades ahead of her time.

Howard Hughes was America's most famous playboy and rogue operator, an outlaw eccentric millionaire and hellraiser, 'I can buy any man' he once bragged, 'and have any woman.' And it was almost true.He stormed from bedroom to boardroom, from corporate bribary to Capitol Hill; his affairs with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis and many others were as brief as they were stormy. he was a deeply involved in Watergate and in the Cuban missile crisis. He burgled his own office records when tax authorities were after him. And, despite a mystrious illness, he wheeled and dealed to the last days of his life.

The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor reflects the results of a research programme conducted by Charles Higham over the last twenty years, highlighting much entirely new, and occasionally surprising, information and providing a distinct perspective on cultural change over two millennia. The book covers the background of environmental change, the adoption of rice farming, archaeogenetics, the adoption of copper-based metallurgy, the iron age and the origins of state formation.

The romance of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor has been called the greatest love story of the twentieth century. However with the first edition of this biography in 1988, highly acclaimed author Charles Higham used explosive secret intelligence files to reveal a far darker side to their forty-year relationship. Now the author has re-visited and updated his international bestseller, resulting in a fascinating, and at times shocking exposé of Wallis Simpson. New and disturbing revelations have come to light, adding to the now classic story of an illegitimate child from Baltimore who rose to become the mistress of the king of England and brought about his abdication. Wallis gained control of the Monarch through sexual techniques learned in China, but risked losing everything through a reckless, long-term affair with William Bullitt, US Ambassador to France. Newly released FBI files demonstrate, as no other source has done, the extent of the Duchess’s espionage activities and how she conspired against Britain in the interest of Hitler. This is an intimate and extraordinary account of the woman who very nearly became the Queen of England. 'An enthralling and jaw-dropping read' Sunday Express 'An excellent account of life, love and Roger Vivier shoes' Tatler 'A rattling read' Mail on Sunday

The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor reflects the results of a research programme conducted by Charles Higham over the last twenty years, highlighting much entirely new, and occasionally surprising, information and providing a distinct perspective on cultural change over two millennia. The book covers the background of environmental change, the adoption of rice farming, archaeogenetics, the adoption of copper-based metallurgy, the iron age and the origins of state formation.

A short history of the ancient civilization of Angkor, home to the spectacular temple of Angkor Wat.

"Charles Higham - rugby player, talented excavator and one of the great archaeologists of his generation - is an engaging raconteur. His fast-moving autobiography tells of the life well lived, of a world authority on Southeast Asia’s past. This is a fascinating and adventurous journey complete with academic debates, serious archaeology, its triumphs and minor disasters galore. Read this book if you aspire to be an archaeologist. It will inspire you to great deeds." - Brian Fagan, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of California, Santa Barbara. "Higham charts an archaeological Odyssey from Roman Britain via the Bronze Age stock-breeders of central Europe to prehistoric Thailand and the origins of Angkor. This complements a personal journey equally eventful, from a double first and rugby blue at Cambridge to building a university department in New Zealand. Here is a life laden with academic honours and the thrill of discovery on a series of digs that have transformed understanding of the human past in a hitherto-under-evaluated part of the ancient world." - Professor Norman Hammond, Senior Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. "Charles Higham presents a readable and often witty account of a golden age in archaeological excavation in Thailand, Neolithic to Iron Age, from his perspective as a fundamental contributor. A must-read for colleagues, students, and the interested public are like." - Emeritus Professor Peter Bellwood, Australian National University. In this unique memoir, Charles Higham, one of the great archaeologists of his generation, describes the inside story of how his many excavations have introduced Southeast Asia’s past to a worldwide audience. For over 50 years, he and his Thai colleagues have explored the arrival of early humans, the impact of the first farmers, the remarkable rise of social elites with the spread of metallurgy and the origins of civilisations. Once seen as a cultural backwater, Southeast Asia now takes centre stage in understanding the human past.

New discoveries and new investigative techniques since the first edition of this book was published in 2014, have opened up dramatic new insights into Southeast Asia's past. We now know that when the first modern humans reached this region at least 60.000 years ago, they encountered not two, but four different human species and interbred with at least one of them. New generation analyses of ancient DNA mean we can trace precisely the expansion southwards of the first rice farmers from the lowlands of the Yangtze River. Looking at early cultural expression, we can admire the world's oldest narrative art, where bird-headed humans hunt buffaloes. The swift rise of social elites coincided with the first evidence for trade in exotic bronzes, soon to be followed by local mining and casting, The opening of a Maritime Silk Road and resilient adaptation to climate change sowed the seeds of the first civilizations. From Myanmar to Cambodia, lasers have penetrated the jungle to map ancient, long abandoned cities. This new synthesis of nearly two million years of human endeavour is an essential introduction for all those interested in this fascinating region.