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In Search of Robert Millar: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Britain’s Most Successful Tour de France Cyclist

The compelling story of Britain’s best-ever cyclist – one of the most enigmatic, complex and contradictory athletes in any sport – and the unravelling of the puzzle surrounding his sudden and dramatic disappearance.

In Stitches: The Highs And Lows Of Life As An A And E Doctor

The true story of an A&E doctor that became a huge word-of-mouth hit - now revised and updated.

In the Shadow of Papillon: Seven Years of Hell in Venezuela's Prison System

Following the collapse of his business and the loss of his home, Frank Kane made a catastrophic decision. In desperation, he agreed to smuggle cocaine out of Venezuela. Almost inevitably, he and his girlfriend, Sam, were caught.The price they paid was a ten-year sentence in the hell of the overcrowded Venezuelan prison system, notorious for corruption and abuse, and rife with weapons and gangs. At one point, Frank was held in the remote El Dorado prison, better known for being the one-time home of Henri Charrière, or Papillon. He witnessed countless murders as gang leaders fought for power, and he had to become as ruthless as his fellow inmates in order to survive. In an attempt to dull the reality of the horrendous conditions, he succumbed to drugs.After enduring years of systematic beatings by the guards and attempts on his life by inmates, Frank suffered more than one breakdown. He lost over four stone and was riddled with disease, but somehow he found the strength within himself to survive and was eventually released in 2004 after serving over seven years of his sentence. During the long walk back from hell, Frank decided to tell his story.

Innocent Traitor: A Novel Of Lady Jane Grey

Alison Weir, our pre-eminent popular historian, has now fulfilled a life's ambition to write historical fiction. She has chosen as her subject the bravest, most sympathetic and wronged heroine of Tudor England, Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a life in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Jane's astonishing and essentially tragic story was played out during one of the most momentous periods of English history. As a great-niece of Henry VIII, and the cousin of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, she grew up to realize that she could never throw off the chains of her destiny. Her honesty, intelligence and strength of character carry the reader through all the vicious twists of Tudor power politics, to her nine-day reign and its unbearably poignant conclusion.

Into the Abyss

Why do explorers put themselves in dangerous situations? And, once the worst possible situation occurs, how do they find the resources to survive?In answering these questions, Benedict Allen weaves a series of tales from his own experience as well as that of other explorers including Columbus, Cortez, Scott, Shakelton, Stanley, Livingstone and their modern counterparts: Joe Simpson and Ranulf Fiennes.

An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World

For the late Fuad I. Khuri, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that baffled his countrymen made them—and him—laugh. “When I tell them that ‘anthropology’ is my profession . . . they think I am either speaking a strange language or referring to a new medicine.” This profound appreciation for humor, especially in the contradictions inherent in the study of cultures, is a distinctive theme of An Invitation to Laughter, Khuri’s astute memoir of life as an anthropologist in the Middle East. A Christian Lebanese, Khuri offers up in this unusual autobiography both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in West Africa. Khuri entertains and informs with clever insights into such issues as the mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of the Arab world, the impact of Islam on West Africa, and the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and even offers a vision for a type of democracy that could succeed in the Middle East. In his life and work, as these astonishing essays make evident, Khuri demonstrated how the discipline of anthropology continues to make a difference in bridging dangerous divides.

An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World

For the late Fuad I. Khuri, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that baffled his countrymen made them—and him—laugh. “When I tell them that ‘anthropology’ is my profession . . . they think I am either speaking a strange language or referring to a new medicine.” This profound appreciation for humor, especially in the contradictions inherent in the study of cultures, is a distinctive theme of An Invitation to Laughter, Khuri’s astute memoir of life as an anthropologist in the Middle East. A Christian Lebanese, Khuri offers up in this unusual autobiography both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in West Africa. Khuri entertains and informs with clever insights into such issues as the mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of the Arab world, the impact of Islam on West Africa, and the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and even offers a vision for a type of democracy that could succeed in the Middle East. In his life and work, as these astonishing essays make evident, Khuri demonstrated how the discipline of anthropology continues to make a difference in bridging dangerous divides.

An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World

For the late Fuad I. Khuri, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that baffled his countrymen made them—and him—laugh. “When I tell them that ‘anthropology’ is my profession . . . they think I am either speaking a strange language or referring to a new medicine.” This profound appreciation for humor, especially in the contradictions inherent in the study of cultures, is a distinctive theme of An Invitation to Laughter, Khuri’s astute memoir of life as an anthropologist in the Middle East. A Christian Lebanese, Khuri offers up in this unusual autobiography both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in West Africa. Khuri entertains and informs with clever insights into such issues as the mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of the Arab world, the impact of Islam on West Africa, and the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and even offers a vision for a type of democracy that could succeed in the Middle East. In his life and work, as these astonishing essays make evident, Khuri demonstrated how the discipline of anthropology continues to make a difference in bridging dangerous divides.

The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam In Britain, What I Saw Inside And Why I Left

When I was sixteen I became an Islamic fundamentalist. Five years later, after much emotional turmoil, I rejected fundamentalist teachings and returned to normal life and my family. I tried to put my experiences behind me, but as the events of 7/7 unfolded it became clear to me that Islamist groups pose a threat to this country that we - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - do not yet understand. Why are young British Muslims becoming extremists? What are the risks of another home-grown terrorist attack on British soil? By describing my experiences inside these groups, the reasons I joined them and how, after leaving I recovered my faith and mind, I hope to explain the appeal of extremist thought, how fanatics penetrate Muslim communities and the truth behind their agenda of subverting the West and moderate Islam. Writing candidly about life after extremism, I illustrate the depth of the problem that now grips Muslim hearts and minds. I will lay bare what politicians and Muslim 'community leaders' do not want you to know. This is the first time an ex-member openly discusses life within radical Islamic organisations. This is my story.

It's in the Blood: My Life

As a Premiership, World Cup and Grand Slam winner, no one better embodies the charisma and the colour of English rugbys greatest era than Lawrence Dallaglio. He has some story to tell, not just of the formidable exploits on the field, but an extraordinary life off it. His only sister, Francesca, was the youngest to perish in the Marchioness disaster and her death at 19 remains the great sadness of his life. In addition to this and his much-talked about England exploits, he also led his club Wasps to the summit of European rugby, winning two Heineken Cups and three consecutive English Premiership titles. Full of drama, controversy and great sadness, Lawrence Dallaglios story the last of the great World Cup heroes is the one every rugby fan has been waiting to read.

It's OK to Miss the Bed on the First Jump

Charming and hilarious, IT'S OK TO MISS THE BED ON THE FIRST JUMP is more than a mere celebration of man's best friend. In this lighthearted and reflective exploration of how dogs have served as some of our most valuable and enlightened teachers, well-known and well-loved actor John O'Hurley (Seinfeld, Dancing with the Stars) shares lessons learned from his life with canine companions, including: Every 15 Minutes Is a New Day; When One Person Stops Petting You, Move On; and You're Only as Big as You Think You Are, to name a few. 'Dogs, after all, have pure hearts, trusting natures, a zest for living, noble characters, and an ability to take things in stride,' writes O'Hurley in the book's introduction. 'They can be counted on, and are pleasant companions. They know what's important, always. How many humans do you know about which you could say the same?' Both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, IT'S OK TO MISS THE BED ON THE FIRST JUMP is an ideal gift for the dog lover in your life.

James: Methodological Reassessments Of The Letter Of James (New Testament Guides #342)

James offers a concise and accessible introduction to a New Testament text, in this case aimed specifically at undergraduate-level students. John S. Kloppenborg introduces the reader to a series of critical issues bearing on the reading of James and provides a balanced presentation and assessment of the range of scholarly views, with guidance for further reading and research.

James Bond: The Authorised Biography

James Fenimore Cooper: The Later Years

A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early nineteenth century master of American popular fiction American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War romance. America’s first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be intimately engaged with the world. In this second volume of his definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter half of Cooper’s life, detailing a period of personal and political controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific literary creation. We hear of Cooper’s progressive views on race and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way for later novelists to make a living through their writing. Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of this underappreciated American literary icon.

Janacek (1914-1928): Tsar of the Forests

Volume 2 opens at the the outbreak of the First World War and at the time of Janácek's lowest ebb. Within two years, however, his fortunes were transformed by the Prague production of Jenufa This led to international fame and fortune and to the magnificent creative flowering in which the elderly composer wrote most of his best-known works. His personal life was affected by his public affair with Gabriela Horvátová and his friendship with Kamila Stösslová, whom he saw as the inspiration for many of his late works.

Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother

After a three-day romance Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome married into the British aristocracy, becoming Lady Randolph Churchill. At a time when women were afforded few freedoms, she was a behind-the-scenes political dynamo. However it was Jennies love life that marked her out, earning her the epithet more panther than woman. In other ways, Jennie was deeply loyal to her husband. When he was dying of syphilis she took him on a round-the-world trip to conceal his violence and mania. Her great project became her son, Winston, with whom she was entwined in an intense mutual dependency. Jennie died suddenly in 1921 and although Winston was not to become the nation's leader for another two decades, he had acquired from his mother an unshakeable faith in his destiny. With unprecedented access to private family correspondence, newly discovered archival material and interviews with Jennie's two surviving granddaughters, Anne Sebba draws a vivid and frank portrait of her subject. She repositions Jennie as a woman who refused to be cowed by her eras customary repression of women. Jennie Churchill was creative and passionate, determined to live life to the full.

Jesse James: Last Rebel Of The Civil War

At sixteen, Jesse James began his fighting career by killing Unionist neighbours on their doorsteps. In the bloodshed and bitterness that followed the South's surrender at Appomattox, Jesse and his fellow guerillas, with their gunfights and hold-ups, became part of the intensely brutal struggle by the White South against the racial egalitarianism and Federal power fostered by Reconstruction.In the first serious biography of Jesse James in forty years, T. J. Stiles paints a strikingly new and vivid portrait of the period before the American Civil War, during the conflict and its aftermath. With groundbreaking scholarship and dazzling reinterpretation, T. J. Stiles has refashioned one of the great legends of American history.

John Constable: A Kingdom of his Own

Born in 1776 in East Anglia near the river Stour, John Constable was destined for his father's business of milling and grain-shipping. But he was obdurately opposed to this and persuaded his family he should become an artist instead. In the same determined spirit, he wooed Maria Bicknell in the teeth of opposition from her formidable grandfather, and persisted in painting landscapes at a time when history paintings and portraits were the fashion. Sometimes sharp and sarcastic, and often depressed, Constable in fact possessed a warm gift for intimate friendship. This is revealed in his letters to John Dunthorne, village handyman and housepainter, and to his best friend and patron, archdeacon John Fisher, to whom he wrote: 'I have a kingdom of my own, both fertile and populous - my landscape and my children'. In recent times, after a period of relative ignominy, Constable's influence on British landscape painting has been re-acknowledged, he has been more widely exhibited and his reputation has been reestablished as one of the masters of his genre. This important and absorbing biography explores his life and work, and highlights the dramatic tension between the two.

John Donne: The Reformed Soul

John Donne's life story is inextricably tied up with the fabric of a society in the throes of religious persecution. His family had long been subject to the terror inflicted upon Catholics under the reign of Elizabeth I, and while his brother languished in prison, and his mother and uncles fled to exile in Europe, Donne was consumed by the question of his own faith and by trying to figure out what it is that connects human beings - and keeps them apart.In his biography of Donne, John Stubbs chronicles not only a long and bitter sectarian conflict, but also the love story of a young couple who broke the rules of their society, and paid the ultimate price.From the raucous streets of late sixteenth-century London to the personal and political intrigues of Donne's family and public life, from the horrors of the Reformation to the delight of Donne's poetry, John Stubbs' book is a vivid, dazzling biography of an extraordinary man, as well as a compelling portrait of England at a time of bewildering transformation..

John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand

A young activist and highly-educated Cambridge Union debater, Mill would become in time the highest-ranked English thinker of the nineteenth century, the author of the landmark essay On Liberty and one of the most passionate reformers and advocates of his revolutionary, opinionated age. As a journalist he fired off a weekly article on Irish land reform as the people of that nation starved, as an MP he introduced the first vote on women's suffrage, fought to preserve free-speech and opposed slavery, and, in his private life, pursued for two decades a love affair with another man's wife. To understand Mill and his contribution, Richard Reeves explores his life and work in tandem. His book is a riveting and authoritative biography of a man raised to promote happiness, whose life was spent in the pursuit of truth and liberty for all.

Jolly Green Giant

David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir will be packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. It is the story of how a city boy, brought up in the middle of London, went for a trip into the countryside one day, an event which was to transform his life by setting in motion the amazing love of nature which would make famous this larger-than-life character. In his infectious style he illumines on, amongst other things, the fact that his father, the manager of a branch of Boots, had to grease his hair straight - because in those days managers of Boots weren't allowed to have curly hair! Then there was the time he and his brother discovered an exploded bomb, kept in the garden shed - and then accidentally blew off the front of the house with it. He reveals his secret passion is ballet dancing - and how his mother only found out about it when she saw him on stage at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon. His career as an academic, then author, broadcaster, consultant and television personality, spans 35 years and his main passion - campaigning for the environment - have led to many adventures including his being twice imprisoned in the Third World.

Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How A Gang Of Geeks Beat The Odds And Stormed Las Vegas

A magnet for bullies at school, Jon Finkel grew up heckled and hazed until he discovered the trading-card game Magic: The Gathering. As Magic exploded from nerdy obsession into the mainstream, the teenage Finkel emerged as its first world champion. The young shark - now known to his friends and rivals as Jonny Magic - moved on to storm poker rooms, from the underground clubs of New York City to high-stakes tables online, until he landed on the largest card counting blackjack team in the country, taking Vegas for millions and becoming one of the biggest players in town. Finally, they took on the biggest game of all - the World Series of Poker...

Journals Vol II

The first volume of John Fowles's Journals ended with him achieving international literary renown after the publication of The Collector and The Magus, and leaving London behind to live in a remote house near Lyme Regis. This final volume charts the rewards and struggles of his continuing literary career, but at the same time reveals the often reluctant celebrity behind the outward success. Enjoying a reputation as one of the world's leading novelists, Fowles wins enormous wealth, kudos and attention, has the satisfaction of seeing The French Lieutenant's Woman turned into a highly acclaimed Hollywood film, but none the less comes to regard his fame with deep ambivalence. It cannot repair the growing strains between himself and his wife Elizabeth, who does not share his taste for rural isolation, nor can it cure the disenchantment he feels for an increasingly materialist society. This concluding volume of the Journals marks a writer's continuing quest for wisdom and self-understanding.

Kazantzakis, Volume 1: Politics of the Spirit

"No author who lives in Greece," writes Peter Bien, "can avoid politics." This first volume of his major intellectual biography of Nikos Kazantzakis approaches the distinguished--and controversial--writer by describing his struggle with political questions that were in reality aspects of a fervent religious search. Beginning with Kazantzakis's early career in fin-de-siècle Paris and his discovery of William James, Nietzsche, and Bergson, the book continues by describing his experiments with communism in turbulent Greece, his visits to Soviet Russia, and the publication of his epic Odyssey in 1938. Bien demonstrates that politics and religion cannot be separated in Kazantzakis's development. His major concern was personal salvation, but the method he employed to win that salvation was political engagement. Did deliverance lie in nationalism? Communism? Fascism? He eventually rejected each of these possible solutions as morally appalling. Abused by both left and right, he insisted on an "eschatological politics" of spiritual fulfillment. This compelling biography will be essential reading for Kazantzakis scholars and for a wide audience of those who already admire the Greek author's work. In addition, it will provide an introduction to the first three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have yet to enjoy such passionate and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ. This first volume provides an introduction to the initial three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have enjoyed such vibrant and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ.

Kazantzakis, Volume 1: Politics of the Spirit

"No author who lives in Greece," writes Peter Bien, "can avoid politics." This first volume of his major intellectual biography of Nikos Kazantzakis approaches the distinguished--and controversial--writer by describing his struggle with political questions that were in reality aspects of a fervent religious search. Beginning with Kazantzakis's early career in fin-de-siècle Paris and his discovery of William James, Nietzsche, and Bergson, the book continues by describing his experiments with communism in turbulent Greece, his visits to Soviet Russia, and the publication of his epic Odyssey in 1938. Bien demonstrates that politics and religion cannot be separated in Kazantzakis's development. His major concern was personal salvation, but the method he employed to win that salvation was political engagement. Did deliverance lie in nationalism? Communism? Fascism? He eventually rejected each of these possible solutions as morally appalling. Abused by both left and right, he insisted on an "eschatological politics" of spiritual fulfillment. This compelling biography will be essential reading for Kazantzakis scholars and for a wide audience of those who already admire the Greek author's work. In addition, it will provide an introduction to the first three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have yet to enjoy such passionate and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ. This first volume provides an introduction to the initial three decades of Kazantzakis's career for those who have enjoyed such vibrant and stirring novels as Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, and The Last Temptation of Christ.