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Showing 101 - 120 of 18155 items
The Colliers are a pretty normal family: mum, dad, two kids, two dogs and two cats ... Oh, and a…
few wallabies, two lemurs, several owls, Ringo the bad-tempered crane and two cheeky, hand-reared meerkats named Wren and Rascal.THE MEERKATS OF SUMMER FARM is the remarkable story of a year at Axe Valley Bird and Animal Park, following the birth of the adorable young kits. In her charming and often hilarious memoir, Jayne Collier describes how these two playful and ever-curious creatures became the park's star attraction and - in spite of permanent damage to her kitchen floor and occasional (subterranean) breaks for freedom - found a permanent place in the family's heart.Dean Worcester’s Fantasy Islands brings to life one of the most significant (but under examined) figures in the history of U.…
S. colonialism in the Philippines. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Worcester, a scientist who had traveled twice to the Philippines on zoological expeditions, established himself as one of America’s leading experts on the Philippines. Over a fourteen-year career as a member of the U. S. colonial regime, Worcester devoted much of his time and energy to traveling among and photographing non-Christian minority groups in the Philippines. He amassed an archive of several thousand photographs taken by him or by government photographers. Worcester deployed those photographs in books, magazine articles, and lectures to promote his belief that the United States should maintain control of the Philippines for decades to come. While many historians have examined American colonial photography in the Philippines, this book is the first lengthy treatment of Worcester’s role in shaping American perceptions of the Philippines in the early twentieth century.By Maggie Smith-Bendell. 2009
Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived…
through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared. Eventually Maggie married a house-dweller and tried to settle for bricks and mortar, but she never lost the restless spirit, the deep love of the land and the gift for storytelling that were her Romani inheritance.Maggie's story is one of hardship and prejudice, but also, unforgettably, it recalls the glories of the travelling life, in the absolute safety of a loyal and loving family.By Barbara Fox. 2011
`In my dreams, I was always in some vast landscape on a long, straight road. Driving. Always driving.? Gwenda had…
always loved the open road, but her home town of Newcastle didn?t really offer the sort of adventure she longed for. So, in 1957, with friend and fellow nurse Pat in tow, she left the dismal British winter behind, and embarked on an amazing American adventure. After a year nursing in Cleveland, Gwenda, Pat and three new friends set off on a road trip around North America, driving in a rickety 1949 Ford. What follows is the charming true story of five remarkable young women. Over the course of eighteen months, the girls go to a 4th July rodeo, visit San Francisco and Las Vegas, learn to surf in Hawaii, spot movie stars in Hollywood and celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Wherever they go, the travelling nurses cause a sensation. This is a delightfully nostalgic memoir of friendship and the romance of the open road.As a 19-year old Black Watch conscript Tom Renouf's war began with some of the most vicious fighting of the…
conflict - against Himmler's fanatical 'Hitler Youth' SS Division. It ended with the capture of Himmler himself and Tom taking a trophy he still treasures - the Gestapo commander's watch.Seriously wounded and later decorated with a Military Medal for gallantry, Tom Renouf witnessed the death and maiming of countless of his teenage comrades and saw the survivors transformed into grizzled veterans. Tom Renouf draws on his own personal experiences - as well as his unique archive of interviews with veterans amassed over twenty years as secretary of the 51st Highland Division Veterans' Association - to paint a vivid picture of the Battle of Normandy, the liberation of Holland, the Battle of the Bulge and many more memorable WW2 events.By Thorstein Veblen. 1899
This scathing critique of America’s preoccupation with wealth and status in the Gilded Age continues to resonate more than a…
century after it was first published According to economist Thorstein Veblen, the leisure class produces nothing, contributes nothing, and creates nothing, yet exercises a peculiar control over American society. The shallowness of their interests—from fashion to sports to entertainment—endows the practice of “conspicuous consumption” with an undeserving air of respectability. Veblen deploys a razor sharp wit to expose the pretensions of the idle rich and their disastrous influence on the national character. From ruthless business practices to the plight of women in a male-dominated culture, The Theory of the Leisure Class tackles difficult subjects with sophisticated analysis and a vibrant literary style that influenced the work of authors including Edith Wharton, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. A must-read for students of American history and anyone concerned about economic inequality, Veblen’s classic treatise is timelier today than ever. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.By Theodore Roosevelt.
The firsthand account of the life of adventurer, scholar, war hero, and twenty-sixth president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt.There…
must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living. Here, in his own words, Theodore Roosevelt recounts his remarkable journey from a childhood plagued with illnesses to the US presidency and beyond. With candor and vivid detail, this personal account describes a life guided by a restless intelligence, a love for adventure, and an unflagging duty to his country. Roosevelt sheds light on his wide array of roles, from New York police commissioner, where he waged a battle against corruption, to cattle rancher in the Dakotas to assistant secretary of the US Navy under William McKinley to leader of the legendary Rough Riders at the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, when he led the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry to victory in the Battle of San Juan Hill. These extraordinary accomplishments earned Roosevelt national fame and set the stage for his ascent to the White House. As twenty-sixth president of the United States, he ushered in the Progressive Era with his domestic policies, such as the Square Deal, and trust-busting of monopolies, such as Standard Oil. He was a war hero, scholar, statesman, adventurer, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography provides unique insight into the truly remarkable life of one of America’s most beloved presidents. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.By John Edgar. 2012
Every Aucklander of a certain age knows that we should have listened to Mayor Robbie back in the 1970s' -…
Labour Party MP Phil Twyford. But who was he? And why is he still relevant today? From a working class Jewish boy in Sheffield to long serving Mayor of Auckland (1959-1980), Sir Dove-Myer Robinson's life followed an unusual path. A slight, bespectacled man whose tiny stature was offset by a booming voice and massive ego, he was a natural political campaigner. Associated with a host of local and national causes, he became Auckland's most recognisable spokesperson. He joined political causes and challenged convention. He fought for our current waste water treatment process, against French nuclear testing, and an integrated Auckland transport system and city. Though his political career was outstanding and memorable, his personal life was a hot bed of gossip. Four wives, one 20 years his junior, and a very public divorce during one of his terms meant he was never far from the headlines. In this book we look at both his personal life and his outstanding political career, which affected not only the future of Auckland, but the future of New Zealand.By Brigid Keenan. 2006
When Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan married the love of her life in the late Sixties, little idea did…
she have of the rollercoaster journey they would make around the world together - with most things going horribly awry while being obliged to keep the straightest face and put their best feet forward. For he was a diplomat - and Brigid found herself the smiling face of the European Union in locales ranging from Kazakhstan to Trinidad. Finding herself miserable for the first time in a career into which many would have long ago thrown the towel, she found herself asking (during a farewell party for the Papal Nuncio): was it worth it? As this stream of it-really-happened-to-me stories shows, it most certainly was - if only for our vicarious bewilderment at how exactly you throw a buffet dinner during a public mourning period in Syria, remain viable as a fashion journalist when taste-wise you are three seasons out of it and geographically a world away, make people believe that there are actually terrible things going on in paradise, be a good mother and save some of the finest architecture in Damascus and Brussels from demolition - seemingly all simultaneously.By Jane Miller. 2011
Ever since I have inhabited old age, I have looked and listened, mostly in vain, for news of what it…
is like for others who inhabit it too. Naturally, I'm interested in its well-known depredations, the physical and mental ones that people in their forties and fifties so publicly dread. And who would not delight in the theatrical props of old age - the pills and sticks, the shrieking hearing aids and the tricks for countering the loss of names and threads and glasses. But that's not all. I have a fond hope that in old age there may be new kinds of time and of pleasure, perhaps even new kinds of vitality, and that, though we forget and muddle and fail to hear things, there may be moments when we truly understand what's going on for the first time. But then I've always been a late developer.'Deeply thoughtful, wry and resilient, this fascinating and absorbing book about growing older is a life-enhancing look at what all of us - if we are lucky - can aspire to.After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family. But, while scraping a living as a…
charwoman in a rundown north London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the Forest. But even in the 1950s they lacked heating or running water, and money was tight. Food was begged, borrowed or home-grown, and their clothes were hand-me-downs. It was a primitive life of hard work on the land, struggling to make ends meet, and finding strength in the embrace of a loving family.By Patricia Heaton. 2002
“The really important things in life are your family and friends. And what will people say about you at your…
funeral—that you won an Emmy once, or that you were a good person, kind and generous? Well, as for me, I hope it's the latter. And the fact that I recently commissioned an Emmy-shaped coffin just eliminates the need for anyone to bring it up. ” Everybody knows that Patricia Heaton plays the hilarious, wise, and tempestuous married-with-kids everywoman onEverybody Loves Raymond. What they might not know is that in real life she is married, has four boys under eight years old, and is just as funny offscreen as on. Motherhood and Hollywoodis Patricia Heaton’s humorous and poignant collection of essays on life, love, marriage, child-rearing, show business, having parents, being a parent, spousal rage, surviving fame, success, and the shame of underarm flab. She is warm, witty, and refreshingly irreverent. Heaton grew up in suburban Cleveland, one of five children of devout Roman Catholic parents. Her father was a noted sportswriter forThe Plain Dealer; her mother died suddenly and unexpectedly when Heaton was twelve. Love, fast food, and an unflagging sense of humor held the clan together and propelled Patricia on a showbiz career that began with hilariously nightmarish struggles in New York, eventually leading to a triumphant move to Los Angeles. InMotherhood and Hollywood, Patricia Heaton pours out her heart and minces no words. She’s taking all prisoners for cookies and a glass of Jack Daniel’s and diet ginger ale. Laughter ensues.By Juliet Peel. 2009
Michael Bublé is an international singing sensation. Since his debut in 2003, he has sold 18 million albums, won numerous…
awards (including a Grammy), reached the top 10 in the UK charts with his first album, 'Michael Bublé', and the top 50 of the Billboard 200 album charts for the same CD. His second album, 'It's Time', was more successful still, debuting at number 4 in the UK charts, and his song 'Home' was a UK number one. His performances and concerts worldwide have been sell outs, while he has cultivated a huge and loyal fanbase. Of Italian origin, and born into a family of fishermen in Canada, Michael was heavily influenced by his grandfather, whom he credited with introducing him to the kind of music he would make his own - Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dean Martin and Elvis, to name but a few. His popularity continues to grow, and this comprehensive and definitive biography charts his fascinating and phenomenal success story.By Shirley Williams. 2010
The role of women in our society has changed out of all recognition. But it has changed least in the…
House of Commons. I want to describe those changes and the resistances to them through the magnifying glass of my own life, a life that coincides with our turbulent post-war history.'Shirley Williams was born to politics. As well as being influenced by her mother, Vera Brittian, her father George Caitlin, a leading political scientist, encouraged his daughter to have high ambitions for herself - including daring to climb the bookshelves in his library. Elected as MP for Hitchin in 1964, she was a member of the Wilson and Callaghan governments and was also the Secretary of State for Education. As one of the 'Gang of Four' Shirley Williams famously broke away from the Labour Party to found the SDP in 1981 and later supported its merger with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats. CLIMBING THE BOOKSHELVES is the voice of strong and passionate woman of luminous intelligence.By Salman Khurshid. 2016
An authoritative forthright and thought-provoking narrative that attempts to analyse why the Congress lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections…
and also focuses on the fluctuating fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party and other political parties besides dealing with crucial issues having a bearing on the country s future As a former minister who has held important portfolios in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government Salman Khurshid has witnessed crucial behind-the-scenes developments that have had a profound impact on the destiny of the nation Beginning with the reasons for the rout of the Congress in 2014 including the series of scams that sealed its fate he goes on to point out that the party has the ability to bounce back given the many setbacks that have affected the Narendra Modi Government at the Centre as well as some BJP-ruled states and the Aam Aadmi Party Government in Delhi The author next highlights the role of the media which he feels was largely instrumental in ensuring the Congress s defeat He nevertheless acknowledges that of late the fourth estate has not spared the governments in power at the Centre and in the BJP-ruled states and has exposed the chinks in their armour the growing brazenness of the right-wing forces the Lalit Modi fallout and the Vyapam-related incidents Thereafter Salman Khurshid turns the spotlight on a range of significant and highly relevant topics such as international relations with an emphasis on Pakistan and the USA the Election Commission s role communalism minority affairs especially the problems affecting the Muslims the judiciary and its overreach the Nirbhaya tragedy and corruption and its impact with a cameo on the Anna Hazare movement Here is an insider s perspective that is not only incisive and insightful but also vital for understanding the recent events in the political arena and their far-reaching ramificationsBy Nahal Tajadod. 2011
A wry and humorous account of the author's quest to get her Iranian passport renewed. She embarks on a bizarre…
and circuitous journey, meeting a colourful cast of characters along the way: two photographers who specialise in Islamic portraits, a forensic surgeon who trades in human organs, a madam who wants to send prostitutes to Dubai and a grandmother who offers a live chicken to an implacable official.Tehran, Lipstick and Loopholes is a fascinating look at the constraints and contradictions of contemporary life in Tehran from the author's unique standpoint of being both a native of Iran and a foreigner.By Nicholas Murray. 2012
The poetry that emerged from the trenches of WWI is a remarkable body of work, at once political manifesto and…
literary beacon for the twentieth century. In this passionate recreation of the lives of the greatest poets to come out of the conflict, Nicholas Murray brilliantly reveals the men themselves as well as the struggle of the artist to live fully and to bear witness in the annihilating squalor of battle.Bringing into sharp focus the human detail of each life, using journals, letters and literary archives, Murray brings to life the men's indissoluble comradeship, their complex sexual mores and their extraordinary courage. Poignant, vivid and unfailingly intelligent, Nicholas Murray's study offers new and finely tuned insight into the - often devastatingly brief - lives of a remarkable generation of men.Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and…
desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground. But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never had a new pair of shoes or a shop-bought doll. And most terrible of all, like her sister before her, at fourteen little Poll had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces.By Judy Cook, Angela Levin. 2009
Judy Huxtable, a beautiful Swinging Sixties model and actress, met and fell in love with Peter Cook in 1967. They…
were together during the memorable hit shows 'Behind the Fridge' and 'Derek and Clive', divorcing in 1989. Being intimate with Peter meant that Judy was inevitably close to Peter's comic partner, Dudley Moore, and they all formed an extraordinary bond. She was in a unique position to observe the special relationship that Peter and Dud shared, and the rivalry that existed between them.In LOVING PETER, Judy gives a perceptive and poignant account of the Peter Cook that only she knew. She writes with a mix of humour, insight and sadness about one of the funniest, most enigmatic and troubled men on the planet. She describes what he was like as a husband, performer, friend, father and man and gives an inside view of what really made him tick; why he seemed to want to destroy those he loved the most; how he succumbed to the destructive forces of drink and drugs; and how he and Dudley really got on.By Linda Grant. 2006
The further away anyone was from that block of Ben Yehuda street, the easier it seemed to find a solution…
to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, that stubborn mess in the centre of the Middle East and the more I studied these solutions, the more I thought that they depended for their implementation on a population of table football men, painted in the colours of the two teams: blue and white for the Israelis, green, red and black for the Palestinians. All the international community had to do was to twist the levers and the little players would kick and swing and send the ball into the net, to victory' One block of a Tel Aviv street is the starting point for Linda Grant's exploration of the inner dynamics of Israelis - not the government and its policies, but the people themselves, in all their variety. Iraqi shop-keepers, Teenage soldiers, Mob bosses, Tunisian-born settlers, Russian scientists, and the father of the child victim of a suicide bomber are some of the people she meets.