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The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life
￥66.22
A working father whose life no longer feels like his own discovers the transforming powers of great (and downright terrible) literature in this laugh-out-loud memoir. Andy Miller had a job he quite liked, a family he loved and no time at all for reading. Or so he kept telling himself. But, no matter how busy or tired he was, something kept niggling at him. Books. Books he’d always wanted to read. Books he’d said he’d read, when he hadn’t. Books that whispered the promise of escape from the 6.44 to London. And so, with the turn of a page, began a year of reading that was to transform Andy’s life completely. This book is Andy’s inspirational and very funny account of his expedition through literature: classic, cult and everything in-between. Crack the spine of your unread ‘Middlemarch’, discover what ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Moby-Dick’ have in common (everything, surprisingly) and knock yourself out with a new-found enthusiasm for Tolstoy, Douglas Adams and ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’. ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously’ is a reader’s odyssey and it begins with opening this book…
My Life As a Medium
￥73.58
The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format edition Betty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist. Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK. Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide. The hardback publication of her book produced a tremendous response from both the media and the general public and this A-format edition will bring her story to an even wider audience.
Cary Grant: A Class Apart (Text Only)
￥65.24
The ultimate biography of this ever-popular star and icon, from a young Cambridge don who has already made his name with a much praised biography of Marilyn Monroe. Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea. Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Cary Grant, he was a star for more than 30 years, in more than 70 movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that. He was a class apart. Cary Grant never explained how he came to play ‘Cary Grant’ so well. ‘Nobody is every truthful about his own life,’ he said. ‘There are always ambiguities.’ This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.
The Necklace: A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea
￥54.25
One day a woman of average means waltzes by a jewellery shop window and spots a ?20,000 diamond necklace. She can't get it out of her head. Eventually she gets the idea of sharing it with friends, persuading them to chip in a grand each to buy the necklace. This is the true story of 13 ordinary women, and one extraordinary adventure. The Necklace is the amazing true story of thirteen women who didn't want to give up on their dreams. They clubbed together to buy a gorgeous diamond necklace, agreeing that each of them would have it for four weeks at a time. They would meet every month to find out what the necklace (now dubbed 'Jewelia') had been up to. The club had some rules: if someone went to Paris, they got the necklace. At least once, everyone had to wear the necklace whilst making love. After two years, the necklace had been loaned out to nieces, grandmas, friends and granddaughters. It had been worn by brides and colleagues and sisters and friends. And when it was their turn for the necklace the women of Jewelia wore it for both the daily routines and special events of their lives, to teach school, to work in the farmer's market, to go fishing and skydiving. It started something. The Necklace is the story of how an object of desire became a catalyst for connection, friendship and more. It's like Calendar Girls, only maybe a bit more glamorous, glitzy and sparkling.
Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia
￥80.25
War-time love story set in Abyssinia, Eritrea and the Yemen 1935-1945. Amedeo Guillet is still alive and living in County Meath, Ireland. Khadija is lost. This is the story of Amedeo Guillet – an Italian calvary officer who was sent out to Abyssinia as part of Mussolini’s army to establish and command a troupe of 2,000 Spahis – or Arabic calvary. He met and fell in love with Khadija – a beautiful Ethiopian Muslim. Together they held up the British lorries heaving up the mountain road to Asmara and blew up the important Ponte Aosta. Eventually captured, Amedeo went on the run disguised as an Arab, eventually making it to Yemen, only to be thrown in jail. This is a rare view of the Second World War from an Italian perpective; particularly valuable are the chapters that tell the story of Italian resistance to the Nazis, and their subsequent withdrawal from Italy in 1943. There are few stories more cinemagraphic than this – Fascist Italy, his early years in Ethiopia commanding the Cossack-like Spahis, the brutal Abyssinian war waged by the Duce, Italian and British colonial rivalry; Amedeo led the last ever cavalry charge the British army faced (Eritrea 1941 – they were massacred by tanks and sub-machine guns), defeat and guerrilla warfare against the British; then flight, disguised as an Arab, imprisonment in the Yemen and a great love lost as he leaves his beloved Khadija behind to face her future alone and returns to Italy, to his fiancée and a career as a distinguished Italian diplomat and Arabist. Amedeo is still alive and living in County Meath, Ireland. Sebastian O’Kelly is a journalist for the Mail and Telegraph and has Amedeo’s full co-operation in writing this book. This is a very valuable and absolutely stunning story, beautifully told by O’Kelly.
Best Loved Hymns and Readings
￥100.06
An indispensable combination of 200 best loved hymns, poems and readings for every occasion, and ideal for personal reflection. Complete with a brief introduction to each piece and its author, this book is a wonderful personal reference and devotional guide. From Away in a Manger to God Save the Queen, and the famous Bible passage on love, 1 Corinthians 13, to Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar, it has passages suitable for every occasion, and has all you need to plan a baptism, a wedding or, should the need arise, a funeral.
Bigger than Hitler – Better than Christ
￥73.58
In this electrifying autobiography, Rik stands naked in front of his vast legions of fans and disciples and invites them to take communion with the blood he has spilled for them during his thirty year war on show business. He invented alternative comedy with The Young Ones, he brought down the Thatcher administration with The New Statesman and he changed the face of global culture with his masterpiece Bottom. Not only was his number one single ‘Living Doll’ the saviour of rock 'n' roll but he also rescued the British film industry with the vast revenues created by his legendary movie Drop Dead Fred. In 1998, he survived an assassination attempt and spent five days in a coma before he literally came back from the dead. Having completed countless phenomenal feature films, TV series, live extravaganzas and radio voice-overs since then, Rik Mayall is now poised on the brink of a whole new epoch-shattering revolution. For the first time ever, Rik reveals in print the deep inner truth behind his gargantuan ascent to the pinnacle of international light entertainment – the mental hospitals he has broken out of, the television executives he has assaulted, the drugs he has definitely not taken, the charities he has bankrupted, the countless pregnancies he has engendered, and so much more.
Billy Connolly
￥68.57
The inside story of the one of the most successful British stand-up comedians, as told by the person best qualified to reveal all about the man behind the comic, his wife of over 20 years – Pamela Stephenson. Once in a lifetime, there strides upon the stage someone who can truly be called a legend. Such a person is the inimitable, timeless genius who is Billy Connolly. His effortlessly wicked whimsy has entranced, enthralled – and split the sides of – thousands upon thousands of adoring audiences. And when he isn't doing that…he's turning in award-winning performances on film and television. He's the man who needs no introduction, and yet he is the ultimate enigma. From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over. How did this happen, who is the real Billy Connolly? Only one person can answer that question: his wife, Pamela Stephenson. Pamela’s writing combines the very personal with a frank objectivity that makes for a compelling, moving and hugely entertaining biography. This is the real Billy Connolly. This genre-defining book is now released as an ebook for a new generation of comedy fans, with a new Foreword from the author. Pamela’s vision of Billy is as true now as it ever was – as groundbreaking, as moving and as laugh-out-loud funny – and here she brings the book fully into its context, as one of the most influential biographies ever written.
C. S. Lewis: A Biography
￥82.01
This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the brilliant, prolific writer, C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis was a deeply complex man, capable of inspiring both great devotion and great hostility. This acclaimed biography charts the progress of the clever child from the ‘Little End Room’ of his Ulster childhood and adult life, exploring Lewis’s unwilling conversion to Christianity, the genesis of his writing, and the web of his relationships.
Branson
￥80.25
The sensational critical biography of this phenomenal entrepreneur and his business practices – fully updated to cover Branson’s recent ventures. No British tycoon is more popular, few claim to be richer and none has masterminded a more recognisable brand than Richard Branson. What is behind the success of the buccaneering balloonist, the tabloids’ favourite celebrity nude, the ‘grinning jumper’ and the scourge of corporate goliaths? Helped by eyewitness accounts of more than 250 people with direct experience of Branson, Tom Bower has a uncovered a different tale to the one so eagerly promoted by Virgin’s publicists. Here is the full story of Branson: his businesses, his friendships, his ambition, his law-breaking, his drug-taking, his bullying. From the cockpit of a balloon in the clouds to the centre of Branson’s operations in his Holland Park home this book is an intimate scrutiny of exactly how Richard Branson created himself and sold himself. Tom Bower’s biography reveals Branson to be a single-minded profiteer who, while occasionally generous to others, has a fixed purpose to enhance his family’s wealth in secret off-shore trust funds. Instead of a glittering saint, Branson emerges as a devious actor, proud of plucking for his own profit the good ideas of others. From his quest to acquire the license for the National Lottery to his plans to launch space tourism with Virgin Galactic, this fully updated edition follows Branson’s enterprises and investments up to the recent, failed bid for Northern Rock.
Madness: A Bipolar Life (Text Only)
￥72.30
A searing, unflinching and deeply moving account of Marya Hornbacher’s personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. From the age of six, Marya Hornbacher knew that something was terribly wrong with her, manifesting itself in anorexia and bulimia which she documented in her bestselling memoir ‘Wasted’. But it was only eighteen years later that she learned the true underlying reason for her distress: bipolar disorder. In this new, equally raw and frank account, Marya Hornbacher tells the story of her ongoing battle with this most pervasive and devastating of mental illnesses; how, as she puts it, ‘it crept over me like a vine, sending out tentative shoots in my childhood, taking deeper root in my adolescence, growing stronger in my early adulthood, eventually covering my body and face until I was unrecognizable, trapped, immobilized’. She recounts the soaring highs and obliterating lows of her condition; the savage moodswings and impossible strains it placed on her relationships; the physical danger it has occasionally put her in; the endless cycle of illness and recovery. She also tackles the paradoxical aspects of bipolar disorder – how it has been the drive behind some of her most creative work – and the reality of a life lived in limbo, ‘caught between the world of the mad and the world of the sane’. Yet for all the torment it documents, this is a book about survival, about living day to day with bipolar disorder – the constant round of therapy and medication – and managing it. As well as her own highly personal story, the book includes interviews with family, spouses and friends of sufferers, the people who help their loved ones carry on. Visceral and inspiring, lyrical and sometimes even funny, ‘Madness’ will take its place alongside other classics of the genre such as ‘An Unquiet Mind’ and ‘Girl, Interrupted’.
Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope (Text Only)
￥192.67
The dramatic story of Lady Hester Stanhope – a wilful beauty turned bohemian adventurer – who left England as a young woman, unashamedly enjoyed a string of lovers and established her own exotic fiefdom in the Lebanese mountains where she died in 1839. Ambitious, daring and uncompromising, Lady Hester Stanhope was never cut out for a conventional life. Born into an illustrious political dynasty, she played society hostess for her uncle, William Pitt the Younger. After his death, she struck out for unchartered territory, setting sail with her lover for the Mediterranean and Constantinople – turning her back on England, as events would transpire, forever. It was in the Middle East, however, that she found her destiny. As the greatest female traveller of her age, she was the first western woman to cross the Syrian desert, where she was hailed by the Bedouin as their ‘Star of the Morning’. From her labyrinthine fortress in the mountains of Lebanon, where she established what amounted to her own fiefdom, she exerted a canny influence over the region's devious politics. Hers was a life of adventure and intrigue – yet in the years following her death her remarkable story has been largely dismissed, reworked by the Victorians into a cautionary tale for young women with wayward tendencies. This captivating biography, drawing on fresh research from three continents, resurrects Hester as the complex, courageous and fearless woman she was, bringing to life her hidden loves, friendships and ambitions. More than a mere traveller, here was a woman whose aspirations led her straight to the heart of the shadowy race for influence between the great powers of the nineteenth century – a world of shifting alliances, double agents, romance, intrigue and murder. Above all, Lady Hester Stanhope was a woman driven by her desire to make a mark on the world, whose search for love and spiritual meaning in a war-torn Middle East provide an illuminating and moving parallel for our time.
Kandahar Cockney: A Tale of Two Worlds
￥72.99
The remarkable and touching story of a singular friendship between the author (an affluent Western correspondent) and his Pashtun interpreter who meet in an Afghan war-zone and resume their friendship when Mir becomes an asylum seeker in London’s East End. In the spring of 1997, James Fergusson, a young freelance British correspondent, encounters a local Pashtun interpreter named Mir in rebel-controlled Afghanistan. They soon become firm friends, with Mir an invaluable guide not only to the battle zone, but to the country's complex politics, culture and traditions. Not long after James’s return home, Mir and his family are forced to flee Afghanistan, fearing for their lives. When Mir arrives in London seeking asylum, it is to James that he turns for help. Now their roles reverse: the guided becomes the guide as James introduces Mir to the bewildering customs of the infidel West. Yet in many ways it is Mir who remains the guide – this time to a side of his own homeland that James had never noticed or engaged with before. He discovers whole communities of Afghans scattered throughout London, and the shadow economy in which asylum seekers are forced to work. He accompanies Mir through the labyrinthine asylum system, with its endless round of tribunals, appeals, delays and disappointments; and introduces him to the important things in life like Tesco’s, bank holiday weekends and the seaside. James Fergusson’s moving and remarkable portrait of a singular friendship gives a human face to one of the most tangled and emotive issues of our time. Powerfully evoking the no-man's land between the Third and the First Worlds, between Islam and the West, ‘Kandahar Cockney’ also places a very contemporary story in a greater historical context, showing how surprisingly enduring the legacy of Britain’s colonial era really is.
Elon Musk
￥95.11
South African born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it. He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey Junior. The personal tale of Musk’s life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school, and abused by his father. In the midst of these rough conditions, and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties. He started a pair of huge dot-com successes, including PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk was forced out as CEO and so began his lost years in which he decided to go it alone and baffled friends by investing his fortune in rockets and electric cars. Meanwhile Musk’s marriage disintegrated as his technological obsessions took over his life ... Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of the present and the future, and for the past twelve months, he has been shadowed by tech reporter, Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping our Future is an important, exciting and intelligent account of the real-life Iron Man.
Behind Closed Doors
￥265.87
Although the subject of federally mandated Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) has been extensively debated, we actually do not know much about what takes place when they convene. The story of how IRBs work today is a story about their past as well as their present, and Behind Closed Doors is the first book to meld firsthand observations of IRB meetings with the history of how rules for the treatment of human subjects were formalized in the United States in the decades after World War II.?Drawing on extensive archival sources, Laura Stark reconstructs the daily lives of scientists, lawyers, administrators, and research subjects working-and "e;warring"e;-on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, where they first wrote the rules for the treatment of human subjects. Stark argues that the model of group deliberation that gradually crystallized during this period reflected contemporary legal and medical conceptions of what it meant to be human, what political rights human subjects deserved, and which stakeholders were best suited to decide. She then explains how the historical contingencies that shaped rules for the treatment of human subjects in the postwar era guide decision making today-within hospitals, universities, health departments, and other institutions in the United States and across the globe. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Behind Closed Doors will be essential reading for sociologists and historians of science and medicine, as well as policy makers and IRB administrators.
African American Writers and Classical Tradition
￥241.33
Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of "e;classic"e; writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.
Crucibles of Black Empowerment
￥288.41
The term "e;community organizer"e; was deployed repeatedly against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a way to paint him as an inexperienced politician unfit for the presidency. The implication was that the job of a community organizer wasn't a serious one, and that it certainly wasn't on the list of credentials needed for a presidential?resume.?In reality, community organizers have played key roles in the political lives of American cities for decades, perhaps never more so than during the 1970s in Chicago, where African Americans laid the groundwork for further empowerment as they organized against segregation, discrimination, and lack of equal access to schools, housing, and jobs.In?Crucibles of Black Empowerment, Jeffrey Helgeson recounts the rise of African American political power and activism from the 1930s onward, revealing how it was achieved through community building. His book tells stories of the housewives who organized their neighbors, building tradesmen who used connections with federal officials to create opportunities in a deeply discriminatory employment sector, and the social workers, personnel managers, and journalists who carved out positions in the white-collar workforce. ?Looking closely at black liberal politics at the neighborhood level in Chicago, Helgeson explains how black Chicagoans built the networks that eventually would overthrow the city's seemingly invincible political machine.
Interanimations
￥288.41
In this latest book, renowned philosopher and scholar Robert B. Pippin offers the thought-provoking argument that the study of historical figures is not only an interpretation and explication of their views, but can be understood as a form of philosophy itself. In doing so, he reconceives philosophical scholarship as a kind of network of philosophical interanimations, one in which major positions in the history of philosophy, when they are themselves properly understood within their own historical context, form philosophy's lingua franca. Examining a number of philosophers to explore the nature of this interanimation, he presents an illuminating assortment of especially thoughtful examples of historical commentary that powerfully enact philosophy.After opening up his territory with an initial discussion of contemporary revisionist readings of Kant's moral theory, Pippin sets his sights on his main objects of interest: Hegel and Nietzsche. Through them, however, he offers what few others could: an astonishing synthesis of an immense and diverse set of thinkers and traditions. Deploying an almost dialogical, conversational approach, he pursues patterns of thought that both shape and, importantly, connect the major traditions: neo-Aristotelian, analytic, continental, and postmodern, bringing the likes of Heidegger, Honneth, MacIntyre, McDowell, Brandom, Strauss, Williams, and A iA ek-not to mention Hegel and Nietzsche- into the same philosophical conversation.By means of these case studies, Pippin mounts an impressive argument about a relatively under discussed issue in professional philosophy-the bearing of work in the history of philosophy on philosophy itself-and thereby he argues for the controversial thesis that no strict separation between the domains is defensible.
Reinventing Public Education
￥288.41
A heated debate is raging over our nation's public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education?altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes.Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction.In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met.While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America's schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.
Internationalization of Palace Wars
￥282.53
How does globalization workFocusing on Latin America, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth show that exports of expertise and ideals from the United States to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have played a crucial role in transforming their state forms and economies since World War II.Based on more than 300 extensive interviews with major players in governments, foundations, law firms, universities, and think tanks, Dezalay and Garth examine both the production of northern exports such as neoliberal economics and international human rights law and the ways they are received south of the United States. They find that the content of what is exported and how it fares are profoundly shaped by domestic struggles for power and influence-"e;palace wars"e;-in the nations involved. For instance, challenges to the eastern intellectual establishment influenced the Reagan-era export of University of Chicago-style neoliberal economics to Chile, where it enjoyed a warm reception from Pinochet and his allies because they could use it to discredit the previous regime.Innovative and sophisticated, The Internationalization of Palace Wars offers much needed concrete information about the transnational processes that shape our world.
Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe
￥265.87
Frozen mammals of the Ice Age, preserved for millennia in the tundra, have been a source of fascination and mystery since their first discovery over two centuries ago. These mummies, their ecology, and their preservation are the subject of this compelling book by paleontologist Dale Guthrie. The 1979 find of a frozen, extinct steppe bison in an Alaskan gold mine allowed him to undertake the first scientific excavation of an Ice Age mummy in North America and to test theories about these enigmatic frozen fauna.The 36,000-year-old bison mummy, coated with blue mineral crystals, was dubbed "e;Blue Babe."e; Guthrie conveys the excitement of its excavation and shows how he made use of evidence from living animals, other Pleistocene mummies, Paleolithic art, and geological data. With photographs and scores?of detailed drawings, he takes the reader through the excavation and subsequent detective work, analyzing the animal's carcass and its surroundings, the circumstances of its death, its appearance in life, the landscape it inhabited, and the processes of preservation by freezing. His examination shows that Blue Babe died in early winter, falling prey to lions that inhabited the Arctic during the Pleistocene era.Guthrie uses information gleaned from his study of Blue Babe to provide a broad picture of bison evolutionary history and ecology, including speculations on the interactions of bison and Ice Age peoples. His de*ion of the Mammoth Steppe as a cold, dry, grassy plain is based on an entirely new way of reading the fossil record.
