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Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror
By Pardis Mahdavi. 2023
The untold story of generations of Middle Eastern freedom fighters—horsewomen who safeguarded an ancient breed of Caspian horse—and their efforts…
to defend their homelands from the Taliban and others seeking to destroy them."A breathtaking book that revisits nearly one hundred years of Iranian history, highlighting the power and beauty of women who refuse to be subdued.&” ―Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of A Woven WorldBook of Queens reaches back centuries to the Persian Empire and a woman disguised as a man, facing an invading army, protected only by light armor and the stallion she sat astride. Mahdavi draws a thread from past to present: from her fearless Iranian grandmother, who guided survivors of domestic violence to independent mountain colonies in Afghanistan where the women, led by a general named Mina, became their country&’s first line of defense from marauding warlords. To the female warriors who helped train and breed the horses used by US Green Berets when they touched down in October 2001, with a mission but insufficient intelligence on the ground—women whose contributions were then forgotten. Pardis Mahdavi chases the legacy of Caspian horses and the women whose lives are saved by them, drawing on decades of research, newly-discovered diaries, and exclusive military sources. Among those intersecting stories is that of American Louise Firouz, who helped bring the breed back from the brink of extinction, connecting Virginia traders to British royals to the son of the Shah. Firouz&’s life is forever changed when she meets Mahdavi&’s own family, who run an unusual smuggling operation in addition to raising horses in a wild bid for freedom.Book of Queens is an epic tale of hidden women whose communal knowledge was instrumental in saving an animal as ancient as civilization, and who were the genesis of their own liberation.Churchill's Navigator
By Air Commodore John Mitchell, Sean Feast. 2010
An RAF pilot who flew around the world with Winston Churchill during World War II tells his story. An…
RAF Volunteer Reserve officer, John Mitchell was mobilized on the outbreak of war—and just missed going to join a Battle Squadron in France where he would have undoubtedly been killed. Instead, he was posted to No. 58 Squadron flying Whitleys, surviving a tour of operations in 1940–41 that included ditching in the North Sea. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, he was sent to the US, becoming involved in the development of the first navigation training simulators with the famous Link Trainer factory. There, he was awarded the US Legion of Merit, signed by Harry S. Truman. Then, returning to the UK in 1942, he was personally selected to join the crew of Winston Churchill&’s private aircraft, one of the early prototype Avro Yorks called Ascalon. For two years he navigated Churchill to conferences around the world—from North Africa to Italy, the Middle East to Moscow, including the famous Teheran and Yalta conferences. He also flew &“General Lyon&” (aka His Majesty George VI) on several occasions. After the war, he enjoyed an eventful career as an air attaché, including an intelligence posting to Moscow, and was senior navigation officer for the long range exercises over the Pole in the converted Lincoln, Aries III. His is an exceptional story, told with wit and verve to military aviation historian Sean Feast, who adds authoritative and informed insights.Windswept & Interesting: My Autobiography
By Billy Connolly. 2021
In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting…
life.Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy's life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician - a 'rambling man' - with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart.As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken - willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy 'glam-rock' stage appearance - wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots - only added to his appeal.It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson's chat show in 1975 - and one outrageous story in particular - that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy's pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too - for over 50 years, in fact - until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson's Disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings... and writing.Windswept and Interesting is Billy's story in his own words. It is joyfully funny - stuffed full of hard-earned wisdom as well as countless digressions on fishing, farting and the joys of dancing naked. It is an unforgettable, life-affirming story of a true comedy legend.'I didn't know I was Windswept and Interesting until somebody told me. It was a friend who was startlingly exotic himself. He'd just come back from Kashmir and was all billowy shirt and Indian beads. I had long hair and a beard and was swishing around in electric blue flairs.He said: "Look at you - all windswept and interesting!"I just said: "Exactly!"After that, I simply had to maintain my reputation...'Shelter on the Journey: Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Migration
By Priscilla Solano. 2024
Migration journeys are arduous, with migrants tormented by risk, abuse, threats, and xenophobia. Shelters, staffed by humanitarian workers and volunteers,…
provide safe spaces for those in transit. Shelter on the Journey examines how these sites, often faith-based civil society associations, create solidarity and help politicize migrants, giving them a sense of themselves as an empowered, rights-holding people. Solano, who volunteered at shelters in Mexico, chronicles the activity in three of the nearly 100 shelters along a unique humanitarian trail that many Central Americans take to reach the United States. She outlines the constraints faced by these sites and their potential to create social transformation and considers how and why migration security is currently framed and managed as both a criminal and humanitarian issue. Shelter on the Journey explores the politics of the shelters, their social world, and the dynamics of charity and solidarity, as well as the need for humanitarian assistance and advocacy for dignified and free transit migration.Multimodal Methods in Anthropology
By Samuel Gerald Collins, Matthew S. Durington. 2024
Multimodal Methods in Anthropology develops several goals simultaneously. First, it is an introduction to the ways that multimodality might work…
for students and practitioners of anthropology, using multiple examples from the authors’ research and from the field. Second, the book carefully examines the ethics of a multimodal project, including the ways in which multimodality challenges and reproduces “digital divides.” Finally, the book is a theoretical introduction that repositions the history of anthropology along axes of multimodality and reframes many of the essential questions in anthropology alongside collaboration and access. Each chapter introduces new methods and techniques, frames the ethical considerations, and contextualizes the method in the work of other anthropologists. Multimodal Methods in Anthropology takes both students and practitioners through historical and contemporary sites of multimodality and introduces the methodological and theoretical challenges of multimodal anthropology in a digital world. Like multimodality itself, readers will come away with new ideas and new perspectives on established ideas, together with the tools to make them part of their practice. It is an ideal text for a variety of methods-based courses in anthropology and qualitative research at both the undergraduate and the graduate level.When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
By Paula J. Giddings. 1878
“History at its best—clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject”—Toni MorrisonAcclaimed by writers…
Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, Paula Giddings’s When and Where I Enter is not only an eloquent testament to the unsung contributions of individual women to our nation, but to the collective activism which elevated the race and women’s movements that define our times. From Ida B. Wells to the first black Presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm; from the anti-lynching movement to the struggle for suffrage and equal protection under the law; Giddings tells the stories of black women who transcended the dual discrimination of race and gender—and whose legacy inspires our own generation. Forty years after the passing of the Voting Rights Act, when phrases like “affirmative action” and “wrongful imprisonment” are rallying cries, Giddings words resonate now more than ever.Girls Like Us
By Rachel Lloyd. 2011
"Powerfully raw, deeply moving, and utterly authentic. Rachel Lloyd has turned a personal atrocity into triumph and is nothing less…
than a true hero.... Never again will you look at young girls on the street as one of 'those' women—you will only see little girls that are girls just like us." —Demi Moore, actress and activist With the power and verity of First They Killed My Father and A Long Way Gone, Rachel Lloyd’s riveting survivor story is the true tale of her hard-won escape from the commercial sex industry and her bold founding of GEMS, New York City’s Girls Education and Mentoring Service, to help countless other young girls escape "the life." Lloyd’s unflinchingly honest memoir is a powerful and unforgettable story of inhuman abuse, enduring hope, and the promise of redemption.Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown
By Tony Brown. 1995
PBS television commentator and syndicated radio talk-show host Tony Brown has been called an "out-of-the-box thinker" and, less delicately, and…
"equal opportunity ass kicker." Those who attempt to pigeonhole him do so at their own peril. This journalist, media commentator, self-help advocate, entrepreneur, public speaker, film director, and author is a hard man to pin a label on -- and an even more difficult man to fool.In Black Lies, White Lies, Tony Brown does what few high-profile African Americans have done before: He dares to challenge the lies of both Black and White leaders, and he dares to tell the truth. He attacks White racism and Black self-victimization with equal vehemence. He condemns integration as a disastrous policy, not for just Blacks but for the entire country. And he confronts the Black Talented Tenth, White liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, demagogues, and racists on all sides for their self-serving lies, their failures, and their lack of vision.But Tony Brown does not simply slash and burn. He also offers farsighted, workable solutions to America's problems. He provides a blueprint for American renewal bases on his belief that although we may not have come to this country on the same ship, we are all now in the same boat.Fourteen: My year of darkness, and the light that followed
By Shannon Molloy. 2020
Optioned for a major film and adapted to the stage, Fourteen is this generation&’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age…
memoir about a young man&’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school. This is a story about my fourteenth year of life as a gay kid at an all-boys rugby-mad Catholic school in regional Queensland. It was a year in which I started to discover who I was, and deeply hated what was revealed. It was a year in which I had my first crush and first devastating heartbreak. It was a year of torment, bullying and betrayal – not just at the hands of my peers, but by adults who were meant to protect me. And it was a year that almost ended tragically. I found solace in writing and my budding journalism; in a close-knit group of friends, all growing up too quickly together; and in the fierce protection of family and a mother&’s unconditional love. These were moments of light and hilarity that kept me going. As much as Fourteen is a chronicle of the enormous struggle and adversity I endured, and the shocking consequences of it all, it&’s also a tale of survival. Because I did survive.Longlisted for the 2021 ABIA Biography Book of the Year &‘Teenagers should read this book, parents should read this book. Human beings, above all, should read this book.&’ Rick Morton, bestselling author of One Hundred Years of Dirt &‘I love this book … a beautifully written account of a young man struggling with his sexuality, overcoming shocking abuse and finding his way to pride.&’ Peter FitzSimons, bestselling author &‘Shannon is unflinching in recounting the horror, but he is also funny, empathetic and, above all, full of courage.&’ Bridie Jabour, author of The Way Things Should Be &‘A slice of life as experienced quite recently in the &“lucky country&”.&’ The Hon Michael Kirby, AC CMG &‘Shannon's bitter struggle is painfully recognisable and happening in playgrounds around the world. But he not only triumphs, he relives his past using his best weapon: beautiful words.&’ Australian Women&’s Weekly &‘A stunning memoir about heartbreak and acceptance … a unique, hilarious and bittersweet insight into the heart of a boy, the courage of survival, and the fierce love of a mother.&’ Frances Whiting, Courier Mail &‘Australia hasn&’t changed all that much from what Shannon describes in Fourteen. Marriage equality isn&’t the end; there is still such a long way to go, and books like this are an important part of that journey.&’ FIVE STARS. Good Reading &‘Intensely raw and incredibly moving.&’ OUTinPerth 'A book in which many will undoubtably see themselves and take solace' The AgeYes Sister, No Sister: My Life as a Trainee Nurse in 1950s Yorkshire
By Jennifer Craig. 2011
'What is your name?' she asks, staring at me.'Jennifer Ross.''Jennifer Ross, Sister. Well, Nurse Ross, you are dressed in the…
uniform of a nurse from the Leeds General Infirmary. Such a uniform is not worn with a cardigan. Take it off at once.''Yes Sister.' I can feel my face turn red.A trainee nurse in the 1950s had a lot to bear. In Jennifer Craig's enchanting memoir, we meet these warm-hearted yet naïve young girls as they get to grips with strict discipline, long hours and bodily fluids. But we also see the camaraderie that develops in evening study sessions, sneaked trips to the cinema and mischievous escapades with the young trainee doctors. The harsh conditions prove too much for some girls, but the opportunity to help her patients in their time of need is too much of a pull for Jenny. As she commits to her vocation and knuckles down to her exams, she is determined that when she reaches the heights of Ward Sister herself she will not become the frightening matron that struck fear into her student heart ...Rich in period detail, and told with a good dose of Yorkshire humour, Yes Sister, No Sister is a life-affirming true story of a life long past.Yeah, But Where Are You Really From?: A story of overcoming the odds
By Marguerite Penrose. 2022
'An engrossing, urgent, and entertaining read. I couldn't put it down' Roddy Doyle______Marguerite Penrose's is an extraordinary story of making…
a great life from complicated beginnings. Marguerite was born in a Dublin mother-and-baby home in 1974, the daughter of an Irish mother and a Zambian father. Severe scoliosis indicated a future of difficult medical procedures. She was a little girl who needed a break. And she got it at three when she was fostered - and later adopted - by a young couple, Mick and Noeline, and acquired a mam, dad, sister, Ciara, and loving extended family. Growing up, Marguerite's appearance was occasionally remarked on by strangers, but it wasn't until her teens that she understood that her skin colour was a provocation for some. The progressive city that she knew was revealed to have an unpleasant undercurrent. So, she became an expert in shaping her life around anything that marked her out as 'different'.Marguerite's story is one of facing some big questions - Who am I? How do I live in world made for people with bodies different to mine? Why does anyone care about my skin colour? - with intelligence, humour, courage and common-sense. She writes about coming to terms with the circumstances of her birth and, like so many in her position, looking for answers. About navigating the world as an active woman with a disability. About what it means to be both Irish and Black, particularly at a moment when the conversation is becoming mainstream in Ireland and she is thinking about it in new ways herself. Mostly, she writes about embracing life in a spirit of openness and positivity.Yeah, But Where Are You Really From? is a captivating, wise and inspiring memoir by a truly remarkable woman.___________'Beautiful, moving, tender and informative' SINÉAD MORIARTY'Wonderful' MIRIAM O'CALLAGHANWomen Who Did: Stories by Men and Women, 1890-1914
By Angelique Richardson. 2005
"A lady? decidedly. Fast? perhaps. Original? undoubtedly. Worth knowing? rather." Daring and dynamic, the 'new woman' came to represent the…
very spirit of the age. The stories in this anthology take up this phenomenon and examine society throughthe eyes of the new woman, as she encountered new choices in marriage, motherhood, work and love.Women Who Did charts a rebellion that was social, sexual and literary. It tells the stories of competing voices - of the men and women who entered into the fray of the fin de siècle, and were not afraid to confront, challenge or delight in the irrepressible New, in an irrepressibly new form, the short story.Woman's Hour: Words from Wise, Witty and Wonderful Women
By Alison Maloney. 2017
For the last 70 years, the guests of Woman’s Hour have been entertaining listeners with their compelling combination of wit,…
warmth, insight and humour. Woman’s Hour has interviewed many of the biggest female names from entertainment, politics, the arts and beyond.Words from Wise, Witty and Wonderful Women is a collection of quotes and extracts from 70 years of the Woman’s Hour archive, featuring some of the most memorable guests to appear on the programme, from Doris Lessing to Nora Ephron, Hilary Clinton to J.K. Rowling, and Bette Davis to Meryl Streep. Charting the social and political revolution that has taken place in women’s lives over the past 70 years, as well as the perennial aspects of female life, such as love, family, relationships, the workplace, sex, ageing, and food, this delightful book shares fascinating insights and sage advice from the wise and wonderful women that have graced the Woman’s Hour airwaves over the decades.If there's one thing that everyone has an opinion about it's how to bring up a child - especially your…
child. Kate Konopicky found herself an embattled mother, knowing that however hard she worked everything was wrong. If she went back to full-time employment she was neglecting her child. If she stayed at home the child would be clingy and shy. So, she became a combination of teacher, nurse, nutritionist, psychologist, entertainer and mind reader. She didn't get weekends off and never phoned in sick when she wanted a lie-in. The boss was illogical, demanding, incapable of undertaking the simplest task. Yes, we've all had jobs like that but at least we got paid for them. Kate Konopicky is an anarchic voice in the face of regimented parenting books. With brilliant humour, she'll make you believe you're not a failure when your fairy cakes don't rise, and you'll slowly come to realise that you may not be perfect but that you are doing your best.'A wildly irreverent look at the parenting game. This riotous look back over her first five years of motherhood will come as a relief to imperfect parents everywhere - in other words, to all parents.' You MagazineWitchcraft: A Ladybird Expert Book (The Ladybird Expert Series #36)
By Suzannah Lipscomb. 2018
Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Witchcraft is a clear, simple and entertaining introduction to the magical myths that…
have coloured the popular imagination for centuries. Written by celebrated historian and broadcaster Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, Witchcraft explores the moment in history when witches were perceived to be especially dangerous: the famous witch hunts between 1450 and 1750.Written by the leading lights and most outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.The Wilderness Family
By Kobie Kruger. 2001
When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of…
the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives.Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.Who Wants It?
By Chris Henderson, Colin Ward. 2012
Chris Henderson formed the Chelsea Headhunters – who later earned a reputation as the most dangerous fans in Britain -…
as well as the band Combat 84 who, with their punk attitude and uncut, Orwellian lyrics, represented the antithesis of middle-class England. After the jailing of Stephen 'Hickey' Hickmott, Henderson organised a gang of Chelsea fans who travelled to matches by luxury coach with the aim of causing havoc and destruction. They were finally arrested and their subsequent trial was meant to be the crowning glory of Thatcher's campaign to vanquish hooliganism. Instead, the dramatic collapse of the case sounded the death knell for all the undercover police operations and mass indiscriminate arrests that had been ordered by the authorities to squash the activities of Henderson and others.The 'Ministry' continued to pursue Henderson and prior to the 2002 World Cup, he and Hickmott were named as the two leaders planning hooligan and criminal acts for the tournament in South Korea and Japan, which culminated in Henderson being arrested and refused entry to Japan for the England v. Argentina match.Told in Henderson's exact words, this is the dramatic story of an era of music and football, when how you looked counted as much as how you performed. With its depiction of events surrounding South Korea/Japan 2002, Who Wants It? also shows how the scourge of hooliganism continues to blight the beautiful game today.Whispering Back: Tales From A Stable in the English Countryside
By Adam Goodfellow, Nicole Golding. 2003
Adam Goodfellow and Nicole Golding run a stable in the Cotswolds and specialise in curing problem horses. It's never an…
easy task, and often requires changing the habits of the owner as much as the horse. The pair have travelled a long way to get where they are today - but they've been united by a common passion. After a chance meeting with Monty Roberts, they gave up everything to live out their dreams and show that it's possible for ordinary people to become 'horse whisperers'. Their world is extraordinary, particularly through their unusual methods of teaching, and as you meet the cast of characters, both animals and humans, that surround them, you'll find it impossible not to be won over by their life.Where Have I Gone?
By Pauline Quirke. 2012
Pauline Quirke was a skinny child, a slim teenager, a curvy woman, then - according to her bathroom scales (curse…
them) - just plain fat. Yes, the 'F' word. Tipping the scales at nearly 20 stone, with creaking knees and a dodgy ankle to boot, at the beginning of 2011 Pauline had reached a crisis point. Something had to change, and fast. It was never going to be an easy ride, but with her trademark warmth and sense of humour, Pauline recounts the highs and lows of the rollercoaster year in which she whips herself, and her life, into shape - with a fair few tales from her celebrated forty-year acting career thrown into the bargain. She reveals all: from the strain of working long hours away from home on one of Britain's most popular soaps to renewing her wedding vows and reuniting with her Birds of a Feather co-stars; from battling the bulge and facing the naysayers to rediscovering the joys of airline travel . . . without a seatbelt extension.Honest and revealing, Where Have I Gone? is brimming with brilliantly funny anecdotes and truly moving moments. So put your feet up and join Pauline as she embarks on the most incredible year of her life.A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Cambridge Texts In The History Of Political Thought Ser.)
By Mary Wollstonecraft. 1986
'She is alive and active - we hear her voice and trace her influence even now' Virginia WoolfWriting in an…
age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity, and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecraft's work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrage - one critic called her 'a hyena in petticoats' - yet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.