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Showing 101 - 120 of 13284 items
By John Lister-Kaye. 2004
Conservationist and naturalist John Lister-Kaye, founder of the Aigas Field Centre, writes about his life in the glens, the wildlife…
that surrounds him and the primeval magical exchange that takes place between man and nature once so central to ancient civilisations. He describes finding the ruined nineteenth-century estate that is to become Aigas, taking it over and turning it into a going concern as an Educational Centre, and his own personal motivation, following the Torrey Canyon oil spillage and natural disasters in the 1960s, to become a conservationist. Interspersed within the narrative detail are engaging and enlightening descriptions of flora and fauna. John Lister-Kaye carries the reader very effectively into the minute worlds he observes and backs up keen scrutiny with facts and figures.SONG OF THE ROLLING EARTH is a notably entertaining and enlightening addition to the canon of naturalist writing that includes Gavin Maxwell's RING OF BRIGHT WATER, Henry Williamson's TARKA THE OTTER and the works of Gerald Durrell.By Ramos Winter. 2013
Winter Ramos, one of the new faces on VH1's hit reality television show, Love and Hip Hop New York Season…
3 delivers a brazen and unabashed memoir of her life in the world of hip hop. In Game Over, Winter puts all of her emotions on the page leaving no experience, emotional abuse, or former lover uncovered. From her days as assistant to rapper, Fabolous and friend to, Jada Kiss, to appearing on Love and Hip Hop and being Creative Costume Designer for Flavor unit Films, Winter delivers a tell-all book on her famous ex-lovers and experiences in the music industry. As the chick that was always in the mix and cool with everyone, Winter was privy to the cray beyond the videos, private flights, and limos that the cameras caught for us. Her reality and theirs was no game. Game Over is Winter's cautionary tale for the next generation of young women who believe that the fabulous lives of celebrities unveiled in blogs and on reality television shows are all FIRE! Stay tuned, because this GAME is about to get real.By Adam Fairclough. 1990
Part of a series of biographies of statesmen and women who have shaped the modern world, this book concerns Martin…
Luther King, who from both the pulpit and from jail, inspired black Americans to defy white supremacy and in so doing, re-invigorated American democracy.By Nigel Barley. 2002
Sir James Brooke was an extraordinary 'eminent' Victorian, whose life was the stuff of legend.His curious career began in 1841…
when he was caught up in a war in Brunei which had started because a party of local Dayaks had refused to furl their umbrellas in the presence of the Sultan. Brooke was an opportunist who, with the Sultan's backing, made war on the Dayaks tribespeople and eventually found himself ruling over Sarawak - a kingdom the size of England - as a result. How he achieved it is a romantic, sometimes horrifying story. Brooke is someone that George Macdonald Fraser would scarcely dare to invent. Errol Flynn wanted to play him in a movie, seventy years after his death and his dynasty is remembered throughout South-East Asia.By Harry Pearson. 2008
This is a book about men and war. Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations…
of boys and men through toys, comics, games and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of British men who grew up playing with toy soldiers - refighting World War II - and then stopped growing up. Inspired by the photos of the gallant pilot uncles that decorated the wall above his father's model-making table, by Sergeant Hurricane, Action Man and Escape from Colditz, dressed in Clarks' commando shoes and with the Airfix Army in support, he battled in the fields and on the beaches, in his head and on the sitting-room floor and across his bedroom ceiling. And thirty years later he still is.ACHTUNG SCHWEINEHUND! is a celebration of those glory days, a boy's own story of the urge to play, to conquer - and to adopt very bad German accents, shouting 'Donner und Blitzen' at every opportunity. This is a tale of obsession, glue and plastic kits. It is the story of one boy's imaginary war and where it led him.By Grace Nichols. 1986
'There is something holy about Georgetown at dusk. The Atlantic curling the shoreline . . .' It is 1960 and…
the Walcotts are moving into the city from the village of Highdam. School headmaster Archie Walcott knows that he will miss the openness of pastureland; his wife, Clara, the women and their nourishing 'womantalk and roots magic; and Gem, their daughter, her loved jamoon and mango trees. Their move into the rough and tumble Charlestown neighbourhood couldn't have come at a worse time, for the serenity of the city is exploded by political upheavals in the country's struggle for independence. Undercover moves - CIA-backed and supported by Britain attempt to bring down the Marxist government. Along with the sweep of events - strikes, riots, and racial dashes - daily life in the Charlestown yard and beyond gathers its Own intensity, Archie's friend, Conrad, seeing and knowing all, moves with ease among the opposing groups, monocle to his eye, white mice in his pockets; through one terrible night the neighbourhood tenses as the Ramsammy's rum shop is threatened with burning; and Archie, troubled by the times, tries to keep a tight rein on his family. Young Gem, ever-watchful, responds with wonderment and curiosity to the new life around her. In this, her first adult novel, Grace Nichols richly and imaginatively evokes a world that was part of her own Guyanese childhood.By Margaret Mead. 1972
The autobiography of a pioneer, this is Margaret Mead's story of her life as a woman and as an anthropologist.…
An enduring cultural icon, she came to represent the new woman, successfully combining motherhood with career, and scholarship with concern for its role in the lives of ordinary people.By Waris Dirie. 2005
Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie was born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia.…
She told her story - enduring female circumcision at five years old; running away through the desert; being discovered by Terence Donovan and becoming a top fashion model - in her book, the worldwide bestseller, DESERT FLOWER. In DESERT DAWN she wrote about becoming a UN Special Ambassador against FGM (female genital mutilation) and returning to her family in Somalia. DESERT CHILDREN tells us how she and the journalist Corinna Milborn have investigated the practice of FGM in Europe - they estimate that up to 500,000 women and girls have undergone or are at risk of FGM. At the moment, France is the only European country in which offenders are convicted and no European country officially recognises the threat of genital mutilation as a reason for asylum. Here are the voices of women who have felt encouraged and emboldened by Waris Dirie's courage. They speak out for the first time and move us to action.By Michael Bloch. 1988
In this brilliant and authoritative work, based on their private correspondence and papers, Michael Bloch describes the feud which developed…
between the Duke of Windsor and the British royal establishment after the Abdication, the humiliations which were suffered by the ex-King and his wife, and the plots to ensure that they remained in exile.By Spike Mays. 2012
In a remote corner of rural Essex, when ploughs were drawn by heavy horses and children walked shoeless to school,…
young Spike Mays lived with his family in a two-up, two-down cottage, where there was no electricity, no bathroom, no running water and just a shared privy in the back yard. Beset by poverty, this was an England in the shadow of the Great War. In this bittersweet memoir Mays recreates the village, its travelling parson, local poacher and even the local drunkard. And in the bustling backstairs world of the squire's house where Spike served his apprenticeship we see a more privileged side to life. This warm and nostalgic portrait of a very different Essex opens a door to a distant past.By Paul Alexander. 1999
Since her suicide at age thirty, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) has been celebrated for her impeccable and ruthless poetry. Rough Magic…
probes the events of Plath's life, including her turbulent marriage to the poet Ted Hughes.By Melvin Juette, Ronald Berger. 2008
By Sam Roberts. 2009
In A Kind of Genius, Sam Roberts offers a window onto Herb Sturz's extraordinary life's work. Sturz began his long…
career in social entrepreneurship by reforming the bail system and founding the Vera Institute of Justice. He served as New York City's Deputy Mayor for Criminal Justice under Ed Koch and then as Chairman of the City Planning Commision. He moved on to establish affordable inner-city housing and programs for at-risk individuals. But Sturz has, to date, largely eschewed the public's eye.Roberts pays tribute to Sturz's inspirational legacy of accomplishment. His initiatives have consistently provided solutions to our most challenging problems. Here, for the first time, his astonishing story is told in full.By R. F. Delderfield. 1959
By Arnold Rampersad. 1997
The extraordinary life of Jackie Robinson is illuminated as never before in this full-scale biography by Arnold Rampersad, who was…
chosen by Jack's widow, Rachel, to tell her husband's story, and was given unprecedented access to his private papers.By Mark Ribowsky. 2009
By Kim Mulkey, Peter May. 2007
By Sarina Rowell. 2016
Not to be Rude is a painfully assembled collection of writing by Sarina Rowell from cult humour websites The Scrivener's…
Fancy and Imagined Slights. Here, all in one place, for the first and last time, she goes into bat for the unfairly maligned - thirtysomething, Nicole Kidman, fashion models and being 'childless by choice'; and goes into bat against the unfairly non-maligned - tapas restaurants, second-hand booksellers, live performances and Audrey Hepburn. If you loved the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, you won't love Not to be Rude, and will, furthermore, be demonstrating your own terrible taste. 'Pretty damned funny.' -TONY MARTIN (the comedian, not the cyclist)By H. L. Mencken. 1731
The first book on Nietzsche ever to appear in English, this examination by legendary journalist H. L. Mencken is still…
one of the most enlightening. Mencken wrote this book while still in his 20s, but his penchant for thoroughness was evident even at that young age--in preparation for writing this book, he read Nietzsche's works in their entirety, mostly in the original German. A brief biographical sketch is followed by clear and thorough explanations of Nietzsche's basic concepts and attitudes. Analyzed are Nietzsche's much-misunderstood concept of the superman, his concept of eternal recurrence, his rejection of Christianity, and his basic rationalism and materialism. Included are two essays on Nietzsche that appeared in Mencken's magazine The Smart Set subsequent to the publishing of the original edition of this book. Nearly a century after its original publication, this remains one of the clearest, most concise, and entertaining introductions to Nietzsche to date.