Title search results
Showing 101 - 120 of 105085 items
Somebody someday: Somebody Someday
By Robbie Williams. 2001
Singer Robbie Williams takes fans behind the scenes of his 2001 tour, revealing both the mechanics of the pop machine…
and the story of his own life. Getting his start in the boy band Take That, Williams had a shaky start to his solo career but eventually struck big with the song "Angels". He talks candidly about himself, revealing a far more mature individual than the egotistical womanizer image perpetrated by the tabloids. 2001.Slow death by rubber duck: how the toxic chemistry of everyday life affects our health
By Rick Smith, Bruce Lourie, Sarah Dopp. 2009
To prove that the most dangerous pollution comes from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces, Smith and Lourie ingested…
and inhaled these items for one week. They expose the miscreant corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the weak-kneed government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people across the globe; they also describe the extent to which we are poisoned, from the simple household dust that is polluting our blood to the toxins in our urine that are created by run-of-the-mill shampoos and toothpaste. c2009.Skinheads, fur traders, and DJs: an adventure through the 1970s
By Kim Clarke Champniss. 2017
The true story of a precocious, pop-loving teenager who, in the early 1970s, went from London's discotheques to the Canadian…
sub-arctic to work for the Hudson's Bay Company. His job? Buying furs and helping run the trading post in the settlement of Eskimo Point, Northwest Territories (population: 750). That young man was Kim Clarke Champniss, who would later become a VJ on MuchMusic. His extraordinary adventures unfolded in a chain of "On the Road" experiences across Canada that led him to Vancouver, where he became a nightclub DJ at the height of the disco craze. His mind-boggling journey, from London to the far Canadian North to the spotlight, is the stuff of music and TV legends. Kim brings his incredible knowledge of music and pop culture and the history of disco music, weaving them into this wild story of his exciting and uniquely crazy 1970s. 2017.Simplexity: why simple things become complex (and how complex things can be made simple)
By Jeffrey Kluger. 2008
Frustrated by the traffic on narrow bridges? Stunned by the number of buttons on a remote control? Saddened by the…
lack of basic medical care in the developing world? Kluger makes the modern world comprehensible, analyzing social and technological systems to reveal that things that seem complicated can be preposterously simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex. c2008.Sir Ernest MacMillan: the importance of being Canadian
By Ezra Schabas. 1994
A biography of the famous Canadian conductor, composer, and organist, Sir Ernest MacMillan. MacMillan conducted the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from…
1931-1956, and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir from 1942-1957. Schabas traces MacMillan's continued commitment to his country and music throughout his life. c1994.Signor Marconi's magic box: how an amateur inventor defied scientists and began the radio revolution
By Gavin Weightman. 2003
On a winter's evening in the East End of London in 1896, an unassuming young Italian gave the first public…
demonstration of a device he had created in the attic of his family home near Bologna. It consisted of two wooden boxes, one of which could apparently transmit messages to the other. Many of those in the audience suspected that they were witnessing a mere conjuring trick. None can have guessed that Signor Marconi's magic box would be regarded as the most remarkable invention of the nineteenth century, and that he himself would become one of the most famous men in the world. 2003.Shostakovich: a life remembered
By Elizabeth Wilson. 1994
A documentary biography of the great twentieth-century Russian composer. Presents reminiscences of some seventy contemporaries arranged chronologically and supplemented with…
research. Focuses on the social and political circumstances behind the creation and performance of Shostakovich's works. Recounts the Stalinist purges of 1936 and 1948, when artists were censured and arrested. 1994.Shout!: the true story of the Beatles
By Philip Norman. 1981
From the early days as ruffian teens riding the skiffle wave in the port town of Liverpool to presiding over…
the rise (and fall) of a global entertainment empire, Norman details the history of the Beatles, became one of the most famous bands in the world. 1981.Shenfan
By William Hinton. 1983
Shirley: an appreciation of the life of Shirley Bassey
By Muriel Burgess. 1999
Shirley Bassey has sold more records than any other British female singer, but the personal tragedies that have fuelled the…
emotionalism of her songs have not been revealed. This biography covers her poverty-stricken childhood, her pregnancy at 16, her marriages and affairs, and her alcoholism. 1999.She has her mother's laugh: the powers, perversions, and potential of heredity
By Carl Zimmer. 2018
Presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part…
in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities. But, Zimmer writes, "Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are--our appearance, our height, our penchants--in inconceivably subtle ways." Heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors--using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates--but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity really is. 2018.Set the boy free: the autobiography
By Johnny Marr. 2016
The memoirs of the legendary guitarist and cofounder of seminal British band The Smiths recalls his childhood in working-class Manchester,…
his early collaborations with Stephen Morrissey, the ideological differences that triggered his departure and his influential solo career. 2016.Shakey: Neil Young's biography
By Jimmy McDonough. 2002
Life and times of rock musician Neil Young, who was born in Canada in 1945 and developed both polio and…
epilepsy as a child. Focuses on the years between 1966 and 1979, when the songwriter-guitarist worked with such influential bands as Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Explicit strong language. c2002.Sergei Prokofiev: a biography
By Harlow Loomis Robinson. 1987
This biography of the Russian composer draws extensively on sources previously unavailable to the English-speaking audience. The author relates Prokofiev's…
life to greater political and cultural currents, while trying to encourage greater appreciation of Prokofiev's music. 1987.Seven wonders of the industrial world
By Deborah Cadbury. 2004
Deborah Cadbury explores the history behind the epic monuments that spanned the industrial revolution from Brunel's extraordinary Great Eastern, the…
Titanic of its day that joined the two ends of the empire, to the Panama Canal, that linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans half a century later. 2004.Sea of slaughter
By Farley Mowat. 1984
Mowat examines the extermination and mass reduction of wildlife in North America, from the 16th century to the present. He…
reserves most of his wrath for the federal government which takes so long to act against the slaughter.Secret ingredients: the brave new world of industrial farming
By Stuart Laidlaw. 2003
A vivid portrait of what modern industrial farming is, what it is doing to the environment, to farmers, to the…
plants and livestock we eat, and to us as consumers and as citizens. The author takes us from the dairy farms of Pennsylvania to Canada's prairie wheatfields, from the tomato greenhouses of southern Ontario to the potato fields of P.E.I. All along the way, he shows us food's secret ingredient - its hidden costs. 2003.Scar tissue
By Larry Sloman, Anthony Kiedis. 2005
In 'Scar Tissue' Anthony Kiedis, the charismatic and highly articulate frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recounts his remarkable…
life story, and the history of the band. It is the story of a man who almost destroyed himself and the band that helped him rebuild his life. Includes sex and strong language. 2005.Secrets of the mummies: uncovering the bodies of ancient Egyptians (An I was there book)
By Shelley Tanaka, Peter Brand. 1999
Four mummies, from a mighty pharaoh to a poor weaver, are studied scientifically to reveal the lives and times of…
these three-thousand-year-old people. Also describes embalming and mummification, life in ancient Egypt, and the scientific techniques now used to study mummies. Grades 3-6. 1999.Seeds of man: an experience lived and dreamed
By Woody Guthrie. 1976
Autobiography that mixes fact and fantasy of the legendary writer of folk songs and his search for a lost silver…
and gold mine in the big bend country of southern Texas. c1976.