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The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe
by Andrew WheatcroftIn 1683, two empires - the Ottoman, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg dynasty in Vienna - came face to face in the culmination of a 250-year power struggle: the Great Siege of Vienna. Within the city walls the choice of resistance over surrender to the largest army ever assembled by the Turks created an all-or-nothing scenario: every last survivor would be enslaved or ruthlessly slaughtered. The Turks had set their sights on taking Vienna, the city they had long called 'The Golden Apple' since their first siege of the city in 1529. Both sides remained resolute, sustained by hatred of their age-old enemy, certain that their victory would be won by the grace of God.Eastern invaders had always threatened the West: Huns, Mongols, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and many others. The Western fears of the East were vivid and powerful and, in their new eyes, the Turks always appeared the sole aggressors. Andrew Wheatcroft's extraordinary book shows that this belief is a grievous oversimplification: during the 400 year struggle for domination, the West took the offensive just as often as the East. As modern Turkey seeks to re-orient its relationship with Europe, a new generation of politicians is exploiting the residual fears and tensions between East and West to hamper this change. The Enemy at the Gate provides a timely and masterful account of this most complex and epic of conflicts.
Strange Music
by Laura FishIn Laura Fish's ambitious and captivating novel, three very different women struggle for freedom. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning is confined to bed, chafing against the restriction of her doctors and writing poetry and fretful letters, at her family's Jamaican estate Kaydia, the Creole housekeeper, tries to protect her daughter from their predatory master; and a recently freed black slave, Sheba, mourns the loss of her lover. As Elizabeth, a passionate abolitionist, struggles to come to terms with the source of her wealth and privilege both Sheba and Kydia fight to escape a tragic past which seems ever-present. The resulting novel is an extraordinary evocation of the dark side of the nineteenth-century that is both horrifying and ultimately redeeming.
Dear Mr Bigelow: A Transatlantic Friendship
by Frances WoodsfordDear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting collection of weekly letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Public Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower in New York. Frances Woodsford and Paul Bigelow never met, yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline. We follow Frances's trials with her ghastly boss Mr Bond; the hilarious weekly Civil Defence Classes as the Cold War advances; her attempts to shake off an unwanted suitor, and life at home with her mother and her charming ne'er-do-well brother. Sparked with comic genius, the letters provide a unique insight into post-war England and the growth of an extraordinary friendship.
The Kingdom of Light
by Giulio Leoni Shaun WhitesideFor fans of Dan Brown’s Inferno, a sensational Italian thriller starring Dante Alighieri as lead detective.Florence, August 1300. On the banks of the river Arno, a war galley is found with the entire crew dead inside. Dante Alighieri, Prior to the City, suspects poison but the only clue is a mysterious mechanical device. Dante suspects that the damaged device is the work of al-Jazari, the legendary Persian inventor. But others are also after the instrument and will stop at nothing to lay their hands on it...When Dante returns to Florence to work on his magnum opus, the Divine Comedy, he discovers that the renegade monk, Brinando, is stirring up trouble and recruiting Florentines for a new crusade to liberate the Holy Land. Is this disturbing new development somehow linked to the deaths of the galley crew?
The Railway Man: A True Story Of War, Remembrance And Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions Ser. #0)
by Eric LomaxDuring the Second World War Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio.Left emotionally scarred and unable to form normal relationships, Lomax suffered for years until, with the help of his wife, Patti Lomax, and of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came terms with what happened. Fifty years after the terrible events, he was able to meet one of his tormentors. The Railway Man is a story of innocence betrayed, and of survival and courage in the face of horror.
Stiffed: Betrayal of the Modern Man
by Susan FaludiWith the publication of Backlash, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi became a world-renowned authority on the gender war, and 'backlash' in the gender sense became a household word. Stiffed picks up where Backlash left off. It seeks to understand male behaviour in order to close the chasm between the sexes, and asks the all important question - why? Why are men so fearful and aggressive in the face of women's independence? Why is a little liberation seen as too much? What is it that men really fear, and why? Where other theorists have looked at The Woman Question, Faludi shows us that we shold really focus on The Man Question; at the end of the millennium, it is men who are in crisis. With her sharp historical sense, meticulous documentation and lively, probling reportage, and wi th a remarkable empathy, she argues that men as well as women are at the mercy of social forces distorting their lives. She takes us on a journey through the modern masculine landscape, with unexpected revelations along the way - from the shuttered shipyards to the mass lay-offs of the defence industries, from Hollywood action heroes to gang-torn street, from militia men to Promise Keepers, praying husband s to male port actors.
Kamikaze: History's Greatest Naval Disaster
by James DelgadoAfter finally achieving what had eluded even his grandfather Genghis Khan - the conquest of China - and inheriting the world's largest navy, Khubilai Khan set his sights on Japan. He commanded an immense armada, the largest fleet the world had ever seen and his success seemed assured. The Japanese were vastly outnumbered and facing certain death, but they prayed to their gods for survival and the very next day Khan's entire armada were destroyed by a 'divine wind', the kamikaze.The legend of the kamikaze has endured for centuries, and was revived as a Japanese national legend during the Second World War, culminating in the suicide bombers they sent to attack the Allies, but the truth has remained a mystery. Only now, after decades of painstaking research and underwater excavation can leading marine archaeologist James Delgado reveal the truth of what really happened to Khubilia Khan's fleet.
China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation
by XinranChina Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernization, Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary 'double-gun woman', Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a female general, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and more- those whose voices, as Xinran says, 'will help our future understand our past'.
Metroland (Panorama De Narrativas Ser. #Vol. 163)
by Julian BarnesA special edition of Julian Barnes’s first novel with an introduction from the author and previously unseen archive material.Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school, they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland: the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher calls home. Longing for real life to begin, Christopher makes for Paris in time for les événements of 1968, only to miss it all in a haze of sex, French theatre and first love. And before long he finds himself drawn inevitably back to Metroland and the very life he was trying to escape...This special edition contains unseen archive material including letters from early fans such as Philip Larkin and Dodie Smith, contemporary reviews, a deleted scene from the original manuscript as well as an introduction from the author.
Redeeming Features: A Memoir
by Nicky HaslamNicky Haslam has always been at the centre of things wherever he is - at parties, opening nights, royal weddings - and has stories to tell of crossing paths, and more, with the cultural icons of our time: Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon, Diana Cooper, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe to name but a few. Redeeming Features is an exuberantly told and stunningly crafted memoir: a compelling and wholly singular document of our times.
Pitt the Elder: Man of War
by Edward PearceThis remarkable book opens at the dawn of the British Empire - with the great sea battle at Quiberon Bay where French ships, intended for the 1759 invasion of Britain, are chased, caught and defeated by a fleet commanded by Admiral Sir Edward Hawke. In this momentous victory Britain effectively settled the outcome of the Seven Years' War and established itself as the world's dominant imperial power.At the heart of the conflict with France was William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham and Britain's future Prime Minister. Weaving together military history and political biography Edward Pearce provides a portrait of the man 'with an eye like a diamond' - a man who had close ties with the slave trade and who preached war and British supremacy on a world stage. Alongside detailed descriptions of battles in Europe and North America we follow Pitt's career as a politician - one that was closely intertwined with General James Wolfe at Quebec; American independence; the slow mind of George III and the quick one of the rake and outsider John Wilkes.Edward Pearce scrutinises the real man at the heart of the historical events and mystique surrounding the legacy of Pitt the Elder, to present a rounded and masterful portrait of arguably the most powerful minister ever to guide Britain's foreign policy and of an age which marked a new epoch in history, when the balance of power in Europe and the world was set for almost two centuries.
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love
by Xinran Nicky HarmanTen chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women and their lost daughters. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned. Personal, immediate, full of sorrow but also full of hope, this books sends a heart-rending message to Chinese girls who have been adopted to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten.
Savage Lands
by Clare ClarkIt is 1704 and, in the swamps of Louisiana, France is clinging on to its new colony with less than two hundred men. Into this hostile land comes Elisabeth Savaret, one of twenty-three women sent from Paris to marry men they have never met. With little expectation of happiness, Elisabeth is stunned to find herself falling passionately in love with her husband, infrantryman Jean-Claude Babelon. But Babelon is a dangerous man to love. Witness to Elisabeth's devotion is another of his acolytes, Auguste, a young boy despatched to act as a go-between with the 'redskins'. When both Elisabeth and Auguste find their love challenged by Babelon's duplicity, the consequences are devastating.Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.
Nothing But the Truth: Selected Dispatches
by Anna Politkovskaya Dr Arch TaitFrom the author of the internationally acclaimed Putin's Russia and A Russian Diary.Until her murder in October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya wrote for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, winning international fame for her reporting on the Chechen wars and, more generally, on Russian politics and state corruption. Nothing But the Truth is a definitive collection of Anna Politkovskaya's best writings: a lasting and inspiring book from one fo the greatest reporters of our age.
Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir
by Fatima BhuttoIn September 1996, a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father Murtaza was murdered, along with six of his associates. In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima's aunt, and the woman she had publically accused of ordering her father's murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi.It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best known political dynasties.Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of a family of rich feudal landlords - the proud descendents of a warrior caste - who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan. It is an epic tale full of the romance and legend of feudal life, the glamour and licence of the international political elite and ultimately, the tragedy of four generations of a family defined by a political idealism that would destroy them.The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father's murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country's volatile political establishment.It is the history of a nation from Partition through the struggle with India over Kashmir, the Cold War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan up to the post 9/11 'War on Terror'. It is also a book about a daughter's love for her father and her search to uncover, and to understand, the truth of his life and death. It is a book about a family and nation riven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, written by one who has lived it, in the heart of the storm.Songs of Blood and Sword is a book of international significance by a young woman who has already established herself as a brave and passionate campaigner.
An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain: or Sixty Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always
by John O'FarrellFollowing his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?' An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain informs, elucidates and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945; leaving the Twenty-First Century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight.
The Lassa Ward: One Man's Fight Against One Of The World's Deadliest Diseases
by Ross DonaldsonIn the summer of 2003, a perilous helicopter descent delivered Ross Donaldson, an American medical student in his twenties, into Sierra Leone. With abundant schooling but little practical experience, Ross wanted to save the world. Little did he know that by the end of his journey, it would be he who would need rescue.With rebels fighting just across the border in Liberia, humanitarian need quickly swept Ross southward towards makeshift refugee camps and the heart of danger. There, he had his first terrifying encounter with the highly contagious Lassa Virus. Working on the Lassa Fever Ward, he was wholly unprepared for what he would find, and for twist of fate that saw him running the facility alone, with only a handful of untrained nurses to help him.Based on his personal journal, this gripping memoir details the time Ross spent on the Lassa Ward, and his own battle with a potentially fatal illness. It is a real-life thriller that not only tells the adventure-packed tale of a modern-day hero, but also bears witness to a people in need, and the struggle of those who risk their daily comforts, and even their lives, to help them.
Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe (Queenship and Power)
by Helen Matheson-Pollock Joanne Paul Catherine FletcherThe discourse of political counsel in early modern Europe depended on the participation of men, as both counsellors and counselled. Women were often thought too irrational or imprudent to give or receive political advice—but they did in unprecedented numbers, as this volume shows. These essays trace the relationship between queenship and counsel through over three hundred years of history. Case studies span Europe, from Sweden and Poland-Lithuania via the Habsburg territories to England and France, and feature queens regnant, consort and regent, including Elizabeth I of England, Catherine Jagiellon of Sweden, Catherine de’ Medici and Anna of Denmark. They draw on a variety of innovative sources to recover evidence of queenly counsel, from treatises and letters to poetry, masques and architecture. For scholars of history, politics and literature in early modern Europe, this book enriches our understanding of royal women as political actors.
Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe (Queenship and Power)
by Helen Matheson-Pollock Joanne Paul Catherine FletcherThe discourse of political counsel in early modern Europe depended on the participation of men, as both counsellors and counselled. Women were often thought too irrational or imprudent to give or receive political advice—but they did in unprecedented numbers, as this volume shows. These essays trace the relationship between queenship and counsel through over three hundred years of history. Case studies span Europe, from Sweden and Poland-Lithuania via the Habsburg territories to England and France, and feature queens regnant, consort and regent, including Elizabeth I of England, Catherine Jagiellon of Sweden, Catherine de’ Medici and Anna of Denmark. They draw on a variety of innovative sources to recover evidence of queenly counsel, from treatises and letters to poetry, masques and architecture. For scholars of history, politics and literature in early modern Europe, this book enriches our understanding of royal women as political actors.
Lost Ecstasy: Its Decline and Transformation in Religion (Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism)
by June McDanielThis book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.
Lost Ecstasy: Its Decline and Transformation in Religion (Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism)
by June McDanielThis book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.
Man Down
by Marine Mark OrmondMark Ormrod was a 'gravel belly', a 'bootneck' marine who loved being in the heart of the action when things kicked off, and he relished the prospect of a tour of duty in Afghanistan. And then the unthinkable happened.In one heartstopping moment Mark's life was brutally shattered when a landmine tore off both his legs and his right arm. The catastrophic injuries he sustained and the shocking truth behind the doctors' battle to save him are all described in graphic detail in this remarkable memoir. So too is the story of how, on the brink of despair, Mark began the greatest battle of his life - to walk again and, using state-of-the-art 'bionic' legs, to stand shoulder to shoulder with his comrades to receive his campaign medal. It was a battle he had to win if he was to rebuild his life.Told with brutal honesty, Man Down is a moving, action-packed account of courage and comradeship, of life on the frontline and the terrible legacy of war. It is a story of true grit you will never forget.
Village Teacher
by Jack SheffieldThe fourth installment of the hilarious Ragley-on-the-Forest village school seriesIt's 1980: recession and unemployment have hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole country is wondering Who Shot JR?As Jack returns for his fourth year at Ragley-on-the Forest School, there's a definite chill in the air. Village schools are being closed down all over the place - will his be one of them?As school life continues - Vera, the school secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled electric typewriter, Ruby celebrates ten years as the school cleaner, and the village panto throws up some unusual problems - Jack wonders what the future holds...'Wry observation and heartwarming humour in equal measure' Alan Titchmarsh
Thirteen Years Later: (The Danilov Quintet 2) (The Danilov Quintet #2)
by Jasper KentAleksandr made a silent promise to the Lord. God would deliver him - would deliver Russia - and he would make Russia into the country that the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from the destruction that wasteth at noonday, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness - the terror by night...1825, and Russia has been at peace for a decade. Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is calm. The French have been defeated, as have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside - and then against - all those years before. His duty is still to his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but today the enemy is merely human.But Aleksandr knows he can never be at peace. He is well aware of the uprising fomenting within his own army, but his true fear is of something far more terrible - something that threatens to bring damnation down upon him, his family and his country. Aleksandr cannot forget a promise: a promise sealed in blood ... and broken a hundred years before.Now the victim of the Romanovs' betrayal has returned to demand what is his. The knowledge chills Aleksandr's very soul. And for Aleksei, it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later...
The Courtesan and the Samurai: The Shogun Quartet, Book 3
by Lesley Downer1868. In Japan's exotic pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love ...Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure-quarters.There she is forced to become a courtesan.Yozo, brave, loyal and a brilliant swordsman, is pledged to the embattled shogun. He sails to the frozen north to join his rebel comrades for a desperate last stand. Defeated, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law - the Yoshiwara.There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives ...