(Discusses the life and mysterious disappearance of the Sw...)
Discusses the life and mysterious disappearance of the Swedish diplomat who is credited with saving the lives of Hungarian Jews during World War II.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670749249/?tag=2022091-20
1981
(The vivid recollections of participants heighten an accou...)
The vivid recollections of participants heighten an account of the harrowing journey of 500 Jews from Czechoslovakia to Palestine, a journey lasting four years and involving hunger, shipwreck, and internment.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671501569/?tag=2022091-20
1985
(Profiles the life and rollicking times of the man who bec...)
Profiles the life and rollicking times of the man who became the Emperor Napoleon III, detailing his improbable rise, his theatrical politics, and the numerous liasons that made him the most scandalous ruler of the day.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312018274/?tag=2022091-20
1988
(This book centres on Stanley, a man who was ‘a bully, a b...)
This book centres on Stanley, a man who was ‘a bully, a braggart, a hypocrite, and a liar’ and, at his best, was ‘steadfast, brave, enduring, resourceful, and an inspired leader'.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OTFSF36/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(Winston Churchill thought he was a military genius; other...)
Winston Churchill thought he was a military genius; others considered him greatly overrated; a few even thought him mad. Almost sixty years after his death at age forty-four in an airplane crash, Orde Wingate remains perhaps the most controversial of all World War II commanders.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375500618/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of ...)
Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of Egypt in 1940 and the surrender of Axis forces in 1943, profiling such figures as the "Desert Fox," Lieutenant General Montgomery, and Hungarian adventurer Laszlo Almasy.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670030406/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of ...)
Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of Egypt in 1940 and the surrender of Axis forces in 1943, profiling such figures as the "Desert Fox," Lieutenant General Montgomery, and Hungarian adventurer Laszlo Almasy.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142003948/?tag=2022091-20
2004
John Bierman was born on the 26th of January, 1929 in the East End of London to Ukrainian Jewish parents. His father, an antiques dealer, beat a hasty exit, and his mother, who ran a dress shop, paid attention to her son only when in funds.
John Bierman attended 16 different schools in London, he had a sound basic education, and could recite long passages of poetry.
In 1954, Bierman took off for Canada, where he worked on several papers. Back in England, he became a Fleet Street sub-editor on the Mirror and the Express, rising rapidly to the Express backbench, where senior subeditors called the shots. In 1960, Bierman was headhunted by the Aga Khan to found and edit the Nation, in Nairobi. Those four years were among his happiest professionally.
Bierman next moved to the Caribbean as a managing editor. In the mid-1960s, he returned to England to work for the BBC. Here he worked as a television correspondent, covering such hot-spots as Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, and in 1971 he reported on the war between India and Pakistan. Back in the United Kingdom in 1972, Bierman and his crew were covering what they thought would be an unspectacular demonstration in Londonderry when violence broke out between demonstrators and British soldiers. Now known as Bloody Sunday, the deadly incident was recorded on film only by Bierman and his colleagues because other crews lost their cameras to water cannons.
Next, the journalist went to Iran, but was thrown out by the Shah after filming an unflattering documentary of the government there. In 1974, he found himself assigned to the conflict in Cyprus. Becoming enamored by the island, even in wartime, he would return to live there in 1991 after his retirement. Over the years, Bierman gained extensive knowledge of other peoples and countries that he would later draw upon for his acclaimed books.
Among his publications are “Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust” that was written in 1981, “Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley” in 1990. One of Bierman's books “The Heart's Grown Brutal”, a thriller set in Northern Ireland - was written in 1998 under the pseudonym David Brewster. He co-wrote “Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion” in 1999, and “The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy: The Real English Patient” in 2005. At the time of his death, he was writing a novel.
Bierman achieved a remarkable career as an international correspondent for the BBC during conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Ireland. His big stories as a BBC TV reporter included a 13-minute, mainly ad-libbed, report from Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 (which won a Cannes TV Festival award), the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. His book about Raoul Wallenberg that was written in 1981 received international recognition.
(Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of ...)
2004(Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of ...)
2002(Profiles the life and rollicking times of the man who bec...)
1988(The vivid recollections of participants heighten an accou...)
1985(This book centres on Stanley, a man who was ‘a bully, a b...)
1990(Discusses the life and mysterious disappearance of the Sw...)
1981(Winston Churchill thought he was a military genius; other...)
1999Quotations: "Working, in the sense of writing books, I shall do until I drop because it is my life".
John Bierman was fast, fluent, accurate and - beneath a forbidding carapace - a widely read and civilised man.
Quotes from others about the person
A colleague recalls: "John was a great editor - driving, dynamic, young, assured, foul-mouthed, contemptuous of settlers, frightened of nobody, a marvellous design man and an elegant writer."
John Bierman was married twice. During the Indo-Pakistan war, he met Hilary Brown, a Canadian journalist. Five years later, she became Bierman's second wife. He had two daughters and a son from his first marriage, which ended in divorce and Jonathan, from the second one.
