Publication date: 2008-07-07
RRP: £25.00
Price: £13.99
Review Hadrian: Empire and Conflict / British Museum Press:
Publication date: 2008-05-15
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.80
Review Fusiliers: How the British Army Lost America but Learned to Fight / Faber and Faber:
Creator: Klara Glowceska
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-03-28
Dewey code: 960
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.75
Review The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life / Penguin Books Ltd:Polish writer and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski may be in the twilight of a golden career spanning more than 40 years but The Shadow of the Sun, an alternative record of his experiences of Africa and its stupefying white heat, is perhaps his finest hour. This for a writer who, to echo the sentiments of Michael Ignatieff, has turned reportage into literature. Drawn to the Developing World through an impoverished wartime upbringing, Kapuscinski arrived in Ghana in 1957 and was on hand to witness the tumultuous years in which colonial Africa was dismantled, resulting in born-again countries ripe for ransacking by despots. From the glare of Accra airport which greets him on first arrival, to the Tanzanian night of the final pages, he crosses savannah, desert and city by foot, road and train, searching out the two most important, yet inconstant commodities on the continent: shade and water. Threatened by an Egyptian cobra, cursed with cerebral malaria and tuberculosis, plagued by black cockroaches the size of small turtles, Kapuscinski intermingles the immediate and the reflective in 29 satisfyingly fragmented vignettes, encompassing historical narratives and personal experience across a host of countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Liberia. While acknowledging European colonial culpability, he refuses to rinse his words in guilt. The Shadow of the Sun is reminiscent of Gianni Celati's Adventures in Africa, employing similarly symphonic atmospherics that can bear poetic witness to both the tragic history of Rwanda and the Ngubi beetle, which toils in the desert to produce the sweat it drinks to survive. As much about the plastic water container as the warlord and preferring the African shanty town to the Manhattan skyscraper as a monument to human achievement, what Kapuscinski, the author of Shah of Shahs describes is not Africa, which he claims does not exist except geographically but a distillation of life itself, through its religiosity, its trees, the frightening abundance of youth, sun that "curdles the blood" and terrorising, ruling armies that fall in a day. The first in a projected trilogy pulling together Africa, Central America and Asia, The Shadow of the Sun is an exceptional and humbling work of imagination and experience by a writer intent on liberating truths from fact. -David Vincent.
Publication date: 2008-08-07
RRP: £30.00
Price: £17.82
Review Hitler / Allen Lane:Is there anything fresh to be said about Hitler? He is an icon, maybe the icon, of the 20th century. He was a failed artist with Wagnerian fantasies, a slob who could not get up in the morning, but he exposed the frailties of modern civilisation in a way that should still make us giddy. How? Was it his doing, or German society's? Professor Ian Kershaw has produced a work of definitive scholarship that will be the standard for years to come. It was badly needed; since Alan Bullock's 1952 classic Hitler: A Study In Tyranny and Joachim Fest's Hitler (originally published in 1973) there has been much valuable research, all of which Kershaw seems to have read (there are 200 pages of notes). Add to this the media (and, by extension, public) fascination with the nature of evil, and a resurgent interest in right-wing groups, and this book becomes long overdue. Kershaw deals rigorously with the bones of his subject's life. He has no truck with psychological padding, and calmly demolishes most of the quasi-facts that have sprung up-if in doubt, he allows space within the chronology. His description of the path to the Chancellorship, which was always more messy than messianic, is painful to behold but gripping to follow, and concludes in 1936 with Hitler at the height of his "Hubris". This is an important study of the character of power, as clearly written as it is intellectually engaging. -David Vincent.
Edition: 37th Jaico Impression 2007
Publication date: 2007-11-21
Dewey code: 943
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.47
Review Mein Kampf / Jaico Publishing House:
Publication date: 2008-08-28
RRP: £25.00
Price: £13.48
Review Ettie: The Intimate Life And Dauntless Spirit Of Lady Desborough: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
Creator: Suzie Fleming
Publication date: 2006-11-16
Dewey code: 305
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.50
Review Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49' / Profile Books Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1997-04-05
Dewey code: 508.8
RRP: £3.99
Price: £2.07
Review The Voyage of the "Beagle" (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) / Wordsworth Editions Ltd:
Publication date: 2008-04-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £17.99
Price: £9.74
Review Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant / The Penguin Group (SA) (Pty) Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1995-08
Dewey code: 818.303
RRP: £2.25
Price: £0.01
Review Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift) / Dover Publications Inc.:
Publication date: 2007-06-04
RRP: £7.99
Price: £0.08
Review Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy / Bloomsbury Publishing PLC:
Publication date: 2008-08-14
Dewey code: 796.3330968
RRP: £13.36
Price: £7.94
Review Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation / Penguin Press:
Publication date: 2008-07-03
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.04
Review The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street / Penguin Books Ltd:
Authors
- Nikki Sixx
- Tommy Lee
- Neil Strauss
- Mick Mars
- Vince Neil
Publication date: 2002-07-04
Dewey code: 782.421660922
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.02
Review The Dirt - Motley Crue: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band / ReganBooks,U.S.:
Edition: Reissue
Publication date: 1991-09-30
Dewey code: 959.70434
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.16
Review Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills / Atlantic Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2003-06-05
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.59
Review Homage to Catalonia (Penguin Modern Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2001-03-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.90
Review Elizabeth / Vintage:The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess; Elizabeth I holds a unique place in the English imagination as one of the nation's most powerful, charismatic and successful monarchs. Elizabeth is usually imagined as the icy, untouchable figure memorably recreated on screen by Bette Davis and Judi Dench, but that vision of Elizabeth ignores the turbulent years of her early life, from her birth as the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in 1533, until her accession to the throne in 1558 following the death of her sister Mary. It is these early years which are the subject of David Starkey's fascinating Elizabeth I, written to accompany his television series about the life of Elizabeth. Starkey argues that in her first 25 years Elizabeth "had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and ever extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England, and bastard and disinherited; the nominated successor to the throne and an accused traitor on the verge of execution; showered with lands and houses and a prisoner in the Tower". He draws on his skills as a respected Tudor historian to produce a deft account of the religious, political and dynastic maelstrom of mid-16th century England that reads "like a historical thriller". The book carefully picks its way through the finer points of contemporary religious conflict and the peculiarities of Tudor court ceremony, whilst also exploring the formation of Elizabeth's character in relation to a murdered mother, a charismatic father, a tortured sister, and a predatory guardian. Highly readable and written with verve and pace, this is a fascinating account of the young Elizabeth. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2008-06-04
RRP: £20.00
Price: £11.56
Review Snowdon: The Biography / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
Publication date: 2008-02-28
Dewey code: 940.5475410922
RRP: £20.00
Price: £9.86
Review Sisters In Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2005-07-01
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £8.99
Price: £2.99
Review My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism / Pan Books:
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Models & Brands:
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, Fusiliers: How the British Army Lost America but Learned to Fight, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life, Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ettie: The Intimate Life And Dauntless Spirit Of Lady Desborough: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough, Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49', The Voyage of the "Beagle" (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature), Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift), Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, The Dirt - Motley Crue: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills, Homage to Catalonia (Penguin Modern Classics), Elizabeth, Snowdon: The Biography, Sisters In Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story, My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism |
