WINNER OF THE 2013 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION WINNER OF THE 2013 DUFF COOPER PRIZE WINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2014 WINNER OF THE 2013 COSTA BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The story of Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, daredevil – and Fascist. In September 1919 Gabriele D’Annunzio, successful poet and occasional politician, declared himself Commandante of the city of Fiume in modern day Croatia. His intention – to establish a utopia based on his fascist and artistic ideals. It was the dramatic pinnacle to an outrageous career. Lucy Hughes-Hallett charts the controversial life of D’Annunzio, the debauched artist who became a national hero. His evolution from idealist Romantic to radical right-wing revolutionary is a political parable. Through his ideological journey, culminating in the failure of the Fiume endeavour, we witness the political turbulence of early 20th century Europe and the emergence of fascism. In ‘The Pike’, Hughes-Hallett addresses the cult of nationalism and the origins of political extremism – and at the centre of the book stands the charismatic D’Annunzio: a figure as deplorable as he is fascinating.

Straddling humour, trivia and sport, ‘Notorious’ brings together for the first time one hundred of the most potty sportsmen in history. From boxing to cycling, soccer to baseball, and most sports in between, here are the hard-men and the criminals, the psychos and the loonies, that make up the sporting madness hall of shame. Among the prime candidates for sporting lunacy in this book: Prinya Charoenpal, one of the most talented kick-boxers in the sport’s history, who wore make-up and pink nail polish, broke down when asked to strip for the weigh-in, pummelled the opponent who made the mistake of mocking her with a camp embrace, and who fought solely to get the money for a sex-change operation. Jack ‘Hacksaw’ Reynolds, the San Francisco 49-ers linebacker during the 80s, who once got plastered after losing a college game, went out to the car park with a hacksaw, and cut someone’s car in half. The Brazilian football star Edmundo, infamous on the pitch for beating up fans, referees and journalists, and making his name off it by crashing his truck and killing three people, and being arrested for force-feeding beer to a chimpanzee at his son’s birthday party. And there’s more. The rugby league hard-man with a predilection for sticking a rigid digit finger up opponents’ rears on the field of play; the baseball Hall of Famer who wielded his bat to beat up unsuspecting victims; the golfer hospitalised three times for alcohol poisoning, who came through two suicide attempts, three divorces, plus countless hotel room trashings and suspensions; the Irish jockey involved in an air rage incident who copped 110 hours of community service… And closer to home, the likes of Roy Keane, Alex Higgins, Vinnie Jones and Paul Gascoigne are also featured in this wildly captivating, and often shocking, collection of crazed sports celebrities.

LIVES THAT NEVER GROW OLD Part of a radical new series – edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Gilchrist’s ‘The Life of William Blake’ is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive. This was the first biography of William Blake ever written, at a time when the great visionary poet and painter was generally forgotten, ridiculed or dismissed as insane. Wonderfully vivid and outspoken (one chapter is entitled ‘Mad or Not Mad’), it was based on revealing interviews with many of Blake’s surviving friends. Blake conversed with spirits, saw angels in trees, and sunbathed naked with his wife ‘like Adam and Eve’. Gilchrist adds detailed de*ions of Blake’s beliefs and working methods, an account of his trial for high treason and fascinating evocations of the places in London, Kent and Sussex where he lived. The book ultimately transformed and enhanced Blake’s reputation.

A story of survival, transformation and love. In a beautiful and powerful memoir which mixes honest, personal revelation with literature, history, and inspirational self-help, Bel Mooney tells the story of her rescue dog, Bonnie, who in turn rescued Bel when her world fell apart with the all-too public break-up of her 35-year marriage. SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE really is a story of survival, and also one of love. This is an account of six years in Bel's life, from when she first acquired Bonnie from a rescue home, through Bel’s years of personal heartbreak and disappointment, and on to the happiness which she has now found in a new marriage and a new life, with the Maltese at her side all the way. This is a book about transformation and change, about picking yourself up and attacking life in the way that a small dog will go for the postman's trousers - and about celebrating life, much as your canine companion will always celebrate your return, even from the shortest trip. Beautifully engaging, entertaining, full of personal anecdotes and deeply moving, SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE will take the reader on an inspirational walk with one very small but very remarkable dog - a dog who became a symbol for all that is best about dogs, and about we humans too. Bel Mooney is a journalist with almost forty years' experience. Well-loved by millions for her advice columns, first for the Times and now in the Daily Mail, as well as countless programmes for radio and television, Bel takes the reader on a journey of discovery, in which she finds herself transformed into a dog-lover by one small and lively bundle of white fur, as well as telling her own gripping story.

Manchester United and the Forgotten Victims of Munich A moving story of how a legendary football team was lost to tragedy - and how this disaster irrevocably altered the lives of the survivors and the bereaved families, and ultimately brought shame on the biggest football club in the world. The Manchester United team Matt Busby had built in the fifties from the club's successful youth policy seemed destined to dominate football for many years. Such was the power of the 'Busby Babes' that they seemed invincible. The average age of the side which won the Championship in 1955-56 was just 22, the youngest ever to achieve such a feat. A year later, when they were Champions again, nothing, it seemed, would prevent this gifted young team from reigning for the next decade. But then came 6 February 1958, the day that eight Manchester United players died on a German airfield in the 'Munich Air Disaster' - a date to be forever etched in the annals of sporting tragedy. Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman, Tommy Taylor, Roger Byrne...the names were already enshrined in legend before the air crash, but Munich in many ways earned them immortality. They have never grown old. Jeff Connor traces the rise of the greatest Manchester United side of all time, alongside a vibrant portrait of England in the 1950s, but he also paints a dark picture of a club that enriched itself on the myth of Munich while neglecting the families of the dead and the surviving players. The repercussions and the toll the disaster took on so many linger to the present day. Drawing on extensive interviews with the Munich victims and players of that era, The Lost Babes is the definitive account of British football's golden age, a poignant story of the protracted effects of loss and a remorseless dissection of the how the richest football club in the world turned its back on its own players and their families.

Lives that Never Grow Old Part of a radical new series –edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Johnson’s book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive. When he first came to London, young Samuel Johnson was befriended by the flamboyant poet, playwright and blackmailer, Richard Savage. Walking the backstreets at night, he learned Savage’s extraordinary story – supposedly persecuted by a ‘cruel mother’, sentenced to death for a murder in a brothel, appointed Volunteer Poet Laureate to the Queen, and finally broken and outcast. With this moving and intimate account, Johnson created a brilliant black comedy of 18th-century Grub Street which revolutionised English biography by its psychological realism. Yet Savage’s destructive charm and delusions of grandeur sometimes even threatened to entangle Johnson himself.

‘Lives that Never Grow Old’ is a wonderful series– edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive. Zélide lived in her father’s moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764. The rest of Zélide’s story was unknown until the brilliant young Boswell scholar Geoffrey Scott pieced it together from her intimate letters and essays. Subsequent affairs with a cynical cavalry officer, a celebrated but vacillating writer (aptly named Benjamin Constant), and a thoroughly reliable music master, took her eventually to another fairytale mansion in Switzerland. This tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a ‘belle-esprit’ is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written.

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Kevin Poulsen exhacker az elmúlt tíz évben az egyik legjobb oknyomozó újságíróvá vált a cyberb?n?zés területén. A Kingpin az els? alkalom, hogy egyedülálló szakértelmét és kapcsolatait k?nyv formájában is élvezhetjük. A macska–egér harc t?rténetének lebilincsel? leírása eddig példátlan bepillantást enged a 21. századi szervezett b?n?zés legjellemz?bb formájába. A cyber-alvilágban futót?zként terjedt a hír: valaki – egy briliáns és vakmer? szélhámos – átvette az uralmat egy online b?n?z?i hálózat felett, amely dollármilliókat szivattyúzott ki az amerikai gazdaságból. Az FBI azonnal titkos akciót indított, hogy az új nagyf?n?k nyomára bukkanjon. ?gyn?kségek a világ minden tájáról beépített emberek és kett?s ügyn?k?k tucatjait állították csatasorba. A cyber-zsaruk együttes er?vel számos gyanútlan hackert csaltak t?rbe, legfontosabb célpontjuknak azonban megvan az a nyugtalanító tulajdonsága, hogy lépten-nyomon kiszagolja besúgóikat, és átlát a terveiken. A létez? legvalószín?tlenebb b?n?z?t keresték: egy hippi értékrendjével és egy f?gonosz kett?s személyiségével felruházott zseniális programozót. ?lvonalbeli fehérkalapos hackerként Max ?Vision” Butler egyfajta celeb volt a programozói berkekben, aki még az FBI-nak is dolgozott tanácsadóként. ?m feketekalapos ?Icemanként” az adathalászok világában kihagyhatatlan lehet?séget látott, amivel próbára tehette rendkívüli képességeit. Országszerte ezer meg ezer számítógépbe hatolt be, és t?bb millió hitelkártyaadatot lopott el. K?nny?szerrel felt?rte hackertársai gépét is, és az orruk el?l csaklizta el csalással szerzett javaikat. Egy sima beszéd? szélhámossal kar?ltve hatalmas b?nszervezetet hozott létre. ?s ezt éveken át képes volt látszólag büntetlenül fenntartani, mik?zben riválisainak folyamatosan ott volt a nyakán a rend?rség. Ahogy figyelte a folytonos civakodást a csalók besúgók fert?zte k?z?sségben, és látta módszereik hatástalanságát is, épp e b?n?z?i k?r?k m?k?désképtelenségében kezdte meglátni a végs? kihívást: magához ragadja az irányítást, kijavítja a hibákat, és úgy fogja irányítani a dolgokat, ahogy kell – még akkor is, ha ezzel a saját homlokára fest célkeresztet. Bár a t?rténet voltaképpen egy b?n?z? figyelemre méltó felemelkedésér?l és a rendfenntartó er?k hajtóvadászatáról szól, a Kingpin feltárja egy titokban zajló b?n?zési hullám bels? m?k?dését, amely t?bb millió amerikai életére van hatással. A k?nyv lapjai bepillantást engednek az online csalás hatalmas szupermarketjeibe, ahol halmokban állnak a hitelkártyaszámok, a hamis csekkek, a felt?rt bankszámlák, a titkos ?postaládák” és a hamis útlevelek. Képet kapunk a hackelés módszereir?l – a b?ngész? biztonsági réseinek kihasználásától, az adathalászaton át a trójai vírusokig, s?t még azon is túl –, amelyeket ezek a csalók mindennapi munkájuk során alkalmaznak, valamint nyomon k?vethetjük a bonyolult utat, amelyet bejárva a lopott adatokból dollármilliók lesznek. Poulsen mind rend?r?kkel, mind pedig b?n?z?kkel ápolt figyelemre méltó kapcsolatrendszerének k?sz?nhet?en beléphetünk a csendes, elszánt fegyverkezési versenybe, amelyet a rendfenntartó er?k a mai napig folytatnak a csalók ellen. A Kingpin végs? soron egy megd?bbent? erej? és széles látók?r? utazás az alvilágba, ahol hétk?znapi amerikai tinédzserek gyilkos orosz maffiózókkal dolgoznak együtt, és ahol egy egyszer? wifi-kapcsolat t?bb millió dollár érték? aranyat eredményezhet.

Megtalált álmok

Pszichológia mindenkinek 3.

Csak a csillagok

N? az ablakban

A medve és a csalogány

Európa furcsa halála

Rosszfiúk ?zsiában

Tábort?z

Az id? gyermekei

Meg van írva a csillagokban

Naplemente a Central Parkban

In this exhilarating one-hundred-page companion novella to the New York Times bestselling I Am Number Four series, Mark James is on the run—and on the wrong side of the law—but he'll do whatever it takes to save Sarah Hart and help the Garde.A sequel to I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Return to Paradise, this novella picks up with Mark racing to Dulce, New Mexico, evading capture from both the Mogadorians and the FBI. On the road, his mysterious new ally—a fellow blogger from They Walk Among Us who Mark knows only by the screen name GUARD—sends him a care package to help in his quest to find Sarah. Inside is a stack of cash, high-tech equipment, and some seriously advanced weaponry, all begging Mark to once again ask the question: Just who exactly is this guyAs Mark gets closer to tracking down Sarah, he also gets closer to discovering the identity of this enigmatic figure who seems to know so much about the Loric. When the truth about GUARD is finally revealed, nothing will ever be the same.