Cleopatra: A Life

Product Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and--after his murder--three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
Review
CLEOPATRA has been featured in the following "Best of 2010" lists:


Seattle Times's Best Biographies of 2010


The New York Times Book Review Top 10 Books of the Year


New York Times Notable Books of 2010

Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten Books of 2010


Time Magazine Top Nonfiction


The New Yorker's 2010 favorites


Los Angeles Times Top Nonfiction

NPR's Alan Cheuse Best Books of Winter

Bloomberg Top Nonfiction


The Week Magazine Top Books of 2010


Obit Mag's Best Biographies of 2010

Apple's Best Books of 2010


Washington Post's Best Books of 2010


Kirkus's Best Biographies of 2010


Boston Globe's Best Books of 2010


Washington Examiner's Best Books of 2010


The Daily Beast's Top 5 Nonfiction Books of 2010


San Francisco Chronicle's Top 10 Books of 2010


Entertainment Weekly's Best Nonfiction of 2010


The Philadelphia Inquirer's Best Books of 2010
About the Author
Stacy Schiff is the author
of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize;
Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in New York City.