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Barack Obama: The Making of a President
By Dawne Allette. 2009
"I was not born into money or status. I was born to a teenage mom in Hawaii, and my dad…
left us when I was two. But my family gave me love, they gave me education, and most of all they gave me hope..."Punctuated with his own words, this biography traces the people, places and experiences that made Barack Obama the powerful man he is today. His story takes us from Kenya to Hawaii and Indonesia to Chicago, embracing many cultures. It also reaches from the past to the present, with photographs of Obama growing up and a timeline of significant events in black history.Barack Obama's story of hope and determination culminates with an account of his historic Inauguration Day and his first 100 days in office.Areopagitica and Other Writings
By John Milton. 2014
John Milton was celebrated and denounced in his own time both as a poet and as a polemicist. Today he…
is remembered first and foremost for his poetry, but his great epic Paradise Lost was published very late in his life, in 1667, and in his own time most readers more readily recognised Milton as a writer of prose. This superbly annotated new book is an authoritative edition of Milton's major prose works, including Of Education, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the Divorce tracts, as well as the famous 1644 polemical tract on the opposing licensing and censorship, Areopagitica.The Aran Islands (Penguin Modern Classics)
By J. M. Synge. 1992
In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran…
Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas. Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, "If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then Aran, as an island off the west of Ireland, is still more so; it is Ireland raised to the power of two." Towards the end of the last century Irish nationalists came to identify the area as the country's uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture and spiritual values. It was for these reasons that Yeats suggested Synge visit the islands to record their way of life. The result is a passionate exploration of a triangle of contradictory relationships – between an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism, a physical environment of ascetic loveliness and savagely unpredictable moods, and Synge himself, formed by modern European thought but in love with the primitive.An Apology for Raymond Sebond
By Michel Montaigne. 1993
An Apology for Raymond Sebond is widely regarded as the greatest of Montaigne's essays: a supremely eloquent expression of Christian…
scepticism. An empassioned defence of Sebond's fifteenth-century treatise on natural theology, it was inspired by the deep crisis of personal melancholy that followed the death of Montaigne's own father in 1568, and explores contemporary Christianity in prose that is witty and frequently damning. As he searches for the true meaning of faith, Montaigne is heavily critical of the arrogant tendency of mankind to create God in its own image, and offers his personal reflections on the true role of man, the need to eschew personal arrogance, and the vital importance of faith if we are to understand our place in the universe. Wise, perceptive and remarkably informed, this is one of the true masterpieces of the essay form.An Apology for Idlers (Penguin Great Ideas)
By Robert Louis Stevenson. 2009
An irresistible invitation to reject the work ethic and enjoy life's simple pleasures (such as laughing, drinking and lying in…
the open air), Robert Louis Stevenson's witty and seminal essay on the joys of idleness is accompanied here by his writings on, among other things, growing old, visiting unpleasant places and the overwhelming experience of falling in love. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we areAmerican Interior: The Quixotic Journey of John Evans
By Gruff Rhys. 2014
American Interior is a psychedelic historical travelogue from Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys.In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from…
Snowdonia, Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was indeed, as widely believed, a tribe of Welsh-speaking native Americans still walking the great plains. In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more. American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts. Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.Against the Flow
By Tom Fort. 2010
'You have to be on your guard when you go back to special places. You may be able to locate…
them easily enough on the map, but maps tell only one story. Times change and places and people with them. The memory plays curious tricks, and things aren't always as you remember or expect.' Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car onto the ferry at Felixstowe, bound for all points east. Eastern Europe was still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare, blinking, injured, full of fears but importantly full of hope too. Things were different then. Czechoslovakia was still Czechoslovakia, Russia was the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had not formally dissolved. But what did exist then, as they do now, were the rivers: the nations' lifeblood. It was along and by these rivers that Fort travelled around Eastern Europe meeting its people and immersing himself in its culture.Since that trip though, much has changed and in more recent years around one million Poles have settled in Britain. Fort's local paper has a Polish edition, his supermarket has a full range of Polish bread, sausage and beer and an influx of Polish businesses opened in his town centre. And it's not just the Poles, his gym has a Lithuanian trainer and the woman who cuts his hair is from Hungary. As a tide of people began to leave Eastern Europe and settle in the UK, Tom Fort started to wonder about what they were leaving behind and whether the friends he had made all those years ago remained. And so he decided to make the journey again, travelling against the flow of the steady human stream to explore the once familiar places. As he did so, many began to return as the recession took hold of Western Europe. Tom was keen to find out what had changed and how the places, people and way of life had moved on and of course fit in a spot of fishing along the way.Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas
By Isaiah Berlin. 2013
Berlin's main theme in these essays is the importance in the history of ideas of dissenters whose thinking still challenges…
conventional wisdom - among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen and Sorel. With his unusual powers of imaginative re-creation, he brings to life original minds that swam against the current of their times, and in the process offers a powerful defence of variety in our visions of life. Roger Hausheer's introduction surveys Berlin's whole oeuvre, and the full bibliography of his pubication has been updated for this Pimlico edition.Afropean: Notes from Black Europe
By Johny Pitts. 2019
Winner of the Jhalak Prize'A revelation' Owen Jones'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness…
and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch A Guardian, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019 'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.'Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.Affirming: Letters 1975-1997
By Isaiah Berlin. 2015
‘IB was one of the great affirmers of our time.’ John Banville, New York Review of BooksThe title of this…
final volume of Isaiah Berlin’s letters is echoed by John Banville’s verdict in his review of its predecessor, Building: Letters 1960–75, which saw Berlin publish some of his most important work, and create, in Oxford’s Wolfson College, an institutional and architectural legacy. In the period covered by this new volume (1975–97) he consolidates his intellectual legacy with a series of essay collections. These generate many requests for clarification from his readers, and stimulate him to reaffirm and sometimes refine his ideas, throwing substantive new light on his thought as he grapples with human issues of enduring importance.Berlin’s comments on world affairs, especially the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the collapse of Communism, are characteristically acute. This is also the era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Iranian revolution, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, and wars in the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. Berlin scrutinises the leading politicians of the day, including Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev, and draws illuminating sketches of public figures, notably contrasting the personas of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrey Sakharov. He declines a peerage, is awarded the Agnelli Prize for ethics, campaigns against philistine architecture in London and Jerusalem, helps run the National Gallery and Covent Garden, and talks at length to his biographer. He reflects on the ideas for which he is famous – especially liberty and pluralism – and there is a generous leavening of the conversational brilliance for which he is also renowned, as he corresponds with friends about politics, the academic world, music and musicians, art and artists, and writers and their work, always displaying a Shakespearean fascination with the variety of humankind.Affirming is the crowning achievement both of Berlin’s epistolary life and of the widely acclaimed edition of his letters whose first volume appeared in 2004.Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England
By Stuart Maconie. 2009
Everyone talks about 'Middle England'. Sometimes they mean something bad, like a lynch mob of Daily Mail readers, and sometimes…
they mean something good, like a pint of ale in a sleepy Cotswold village in summer twilight. But just where and what is Middle England? Stuart Maconie didn't know either, so he packed his Thermos and sandwiches and set off to find out...Is Middle England about tradition and decency or closed minds and bigotry? Is it maypoles and evensong, or flooded market towns and binge drinkers in the park? And is Slough really as bad as Ricky Gervais and John Betjeman make out? From Shakespeare to JK Rowling, Vaughan Williams to Craig David, William Morris to B&Q, Stuart Maconie leads the expedition, with plenty of stop-offs for tea and scones, to discover the truth.Adventures in the Rocky Mountains (Great Journeys Ser.)
By Isabella Bird. 2007
Endlessly restless and endlessly curious, Isabella Bird (1831-1904) travelled the world looking for new experiences, but never more delightfully than…
in her pony-bound adventures in the Colorado Territory at a time when it was only notionally under the control of the American authorities. A vanished world of grizzly hunters, cowboys, isolated cabins and plagues of rattlesnakes is here beautifully brought back to life.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.100 Places That Made Britain
By Dave Musgrove. 2011
In 100, carefully selected places, BBC History Magazine editor Dave Musgrove takes us on an unforgettable historical tour through British…
history, from the Roman invasion to 1960s Liverpool. Musgrove has asked foremost British historians such as Dominic Sandbrook, to nominate the sites they believe to be the most important in our history, and has travelled to each place to provide a visitor's point of view alongside the captivating stories that make each one great.Covering the length and breadth of the British mainland and two thousand of years of history, 100 Places that Made Britain visits renowned sites such as the Tower of London and Runnymede, as well as less well-known places like Rushton Triangular Lodge in Northamptonshire - a three-sided, three-themed house built during the Reformation and designed to represent the Holy Trinity - and Jarrow, home of the first chronicler of Anglo-Saxon Britain, The Venerable Bede. Each essay adds another layer to our understanding of Britain's story, whether it be an advance in politics, religion, law or culture.Bringing the vast history of this small island to life, 100 Places that Made Britain is a captivating historical compendium that will have every reader criss-crossing the country to explore its myriad treasures.Young Trailblazers: The Book of Black Inventors and Scientists
By M. J. Fievre. 2021
Discover Incredible Inventions by Black People (Ages 8-12) #1 New Release in Children's Inventors Books Young Trailblazers: The Book of…
Black Inventors and Scientists is a fun new book for children that teaches kids about inventions by Black people that have impacted the world through their ingenuity and trailblazing innovation. From Black Inventors to Black Scientists. Take your child on an adventure and travel through time to meet famous black inventors who changed the game. Countdown to liftoff with Katherine Johnson, who helped pioneer U.S. crewed space missions. Safely cross the street with Garrett Morgan, who invented the traffic signal—or even sing your heart out with James West&’s invention of the microphone. All of these inventions by Black people have, in one way or another, shaped the past and present through trailblazing creativity and resilience; these stories are sure to inspire every child. Experience an array of rich Black history. In this book, there are Black scientists and Black inventors we all know, such as Lewis Howard Latimer and Sarah Boone. There are also dozens of Black trailblazers that we don&’t, all of whom have accomplished remarkable things in literature, entertainment, education, STEM, business, military and government services, politics and law, activism, sports, spirituality, and more. Inside this book of inventions by Black people, you&’ll find: A fun and engaging introduction to Black inventors for kids Essential Black history for kids to learn about Interesting fun facts and beautiful illustrations If you enjoyed Black Women in Science, Black Inventors, or Black Heroes, then you&’ll love Young Trailblazers.Discover Provence: A Shopping, Wine, Antiques, and Festivals Guide to the South of France
By Georgeanne Brennan. 2022
Visit the Most Popular Destinations in Provence, France#1 New Release in Flowers and Bed & BreakfastDiscover why Provence, France is…
the best place for your next wanderlust-fueled quest and lose yourself to sunny beaches, lush vineyards, and historic architecture.Take an unforgettable tour of this treasured southern region of France. Soon to be your favorite of all tour guide books, author Georgeanne Brennan uses her insider’s view to take you on the getaway of a lifetime. With engaging text and gorgeous photos, she paints the perfect picture of the many gems of Provence. Beauty abounds as you travel through the sunny Côte d’Azur to the mountains of Haute Provence; to lavender, poppy and wheat fields; through bustling markets; to fisherman-filled harbors; over vine-covered hills; and into ancient castle ruins.A guide for travelers, wine lovers, dreamers, and anyone interested in Provence, France.Discover Provence is also for those who want to be a part of something picturesque and historically significant. One of the most visited areas of the world, Southern France is famous for its beautiful views, flavorful foods, and opulent French wines. Turn the pages of Discover Provence to immerse yourself in this magical region.Inside this perfectly curated Provence book, you’ll find:Indispensable driving tips for stress free way-findingAn insightful guide to understanding French wineIntimate knowledge of Provence’s villages and their traditionsIf you enjoyed travel destination books such as A Year in Provence, Rick Steves France, or Adventures on the Wine Route, then you’ll love Discover Province.Language Myths
By Laurie Bauer. 1998
A unique collection of original essays by 21 of the world's leading linguists. The topics discussed focus on some of…
the most popular myths about language: The Media Are Ruining English; Children Can't Speak or Write Properly Anymore; America is Ruining the English Language. The tone is lively and entertaining throughout and there are cartoons from Doonesbury andThe Wizard of Id to illustrate some of the points. The book should have a wide readership not only amongst students who want to read leading linguists writing about popular misconceptions but also amongst the large number of people who enjoy reading about language in general.La Belle Saison
By Patricia Atkinson. 2005
How often have you eaten a mushroom that you picked yourself that morning? Or sat on a boat opening and…
eating oysters as you lift them from the sea? Or partaken of a seven course feast of game to celebrate the success of the chasse? When Patricia Atkinson - bestselling author of The Ripening Sun - first moved to France, her intention was simply to establish a vineyard. Over the years, however, she found herself becoming integrated into a way of life that, had she stayed in England, she would hardly have believed existed. Grounded in the rhythms of the land and the seasons, daily life in Patricia's south-western corner of France is dictated by a series of rituals and celebrations that we have long lost in our supermarket age.La Belle Saison is Patricia's eulogy to this way of life: a testament to the timelessness of the beautiful French countryside, the bounty of the land, and the generous-hearted French neighbours who showed Patricia that a simple life has many rewards. In France, every season is 'la belle saison', offering up its gifts to those willing to appreciate and look after the land.The Life of a Scilly Sergeant
By Colin Taylor. 2016
‘Policing is like this everywhere but not everywhere is Scilly’Meet Sergeant Colin Taylor, he has been a valuable member of…
the police force for over 20 years, 5 of which have been spent policing the ‘quiet’ Isles of Scilly, a group of islands off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula. Colin has made it his purpose to keep the streets of Scilly free from drunk anchor thieves, Balance Board riders and other culprits, mostly drunken, intent on breaking the law. This book is the first hand account of how he did it.Coupled with his increasingly popular ‘Isle of Scilly Police Force’ Facebook page, this book charts the day to day trials and tribulations of a small-island police officer, told in a perfectly humorous and affectionate way. This book is a fantastic read and Colin's antics are soon to be the feautre of a major ITV TV series.The Ladybird Book of London
By John Berry. 2011
The Ladybird Book of London is a gem from the Ladybird vintage archive. First published in 1961, this is a…
classic Ladybird hardback book, packed with information about Britain's capital. This new edition is exactly the same as the original, with a dust jacket and beautifully reproduced images. 'The story of London, her sights and history, is illustrated with twenty-four beautiful full-page pictures. Starting from Trafalgar Square this book takes you through famous streets to see historic buildings, to learn something of the story of Britain's famous capital. Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower, Guildhall and the City, Hampton Court and Kew Gardens, the Zoo and Madame Tussaud's - they are all here.'A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
By James Boswell, Samuel Johnson. 1984
Book by Samuel Johnson, published in 1775. The Journey was the result of a three-month trip to Scotland that Johnson…
took with James Boswell in 1773. It contains Johnson's descriptions of the customs, religion, education, trade, and agriculture of a society that was new to him. The account in Boswell's diary, published after Johnson's death as The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785), offers an intimate personal record of Johnson's behavior and conversation during the trip.