A high-school dropout who worked as a respected professor of physics and an army deserter who served with distinction as a priest, a surgeon, a schoolteacher and a psychiatrist. An Englishman christened Archibald and a black American born hundreds of miles from the nearest teepee, both of whom were revered as Red Indian heroes. Several men who were in fact women - and who fought as soldiers, or worked as doctors or craftsmen when such professions were closed to their sex. And the pretender to the Russian throne who, despite actually being a fugitive monk, became Tsar and ruled rather well, until he met a very grisly end.