Edition: Enlarged 1st Touchstone Ed
Publication date: 1997-01-01
Dewey code: 230.092
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.40
Review Letters and Papers from Prison / Pocket Books:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2004-08-16
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.23
Review A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer / HarperPerennial:Whether you like a good story, social history, computers, or are just nostalgic about Joe Lyons' "caffs", A Computer Called LEO is an appealing tale, illustrated with black and white photos, about the advent of the first computer. Georgina Ferry conjures up the image of some 300 female accounts clerks, clacking away continuously on their Burroughs mechanical calculators checking bills against takings for the 250 or so J Lyons & Co high street teashops in the 1930s. The manager of the accounting operation in pre-war times was a bright young man called John Simmons. According to Ferry, as Simmons surveyed the room "all he saw was a waste of human intelligence" and he began to dream of the day when machines would be invented capable of doing all this work automatically. Within 10 years he made the first stage in that dream a reality by persuading the board of Lyons that their company must become the first in the world to build its own electronic digital computer. A Computer Called LEO is the wonderful story of this one remarkable man's ambition and success in achieving it. Ferry interweaves LEO's story with the history of computing. British mathematicians have played an integral role in this development ever since the days of Charles Babbage (1792-1871). Like Simmons, Babbage had been interested in improved factory management. The ultimately tragic figure of Alan Turing and the wartime development of computers at Bletchley Park also figure in the lead up to LEO. [+]Development was delayed by World War II and Ferry expertly goes on to tell how, on November 29, 1951, LEO took over Bakery Valuations and became the first computer in the world to run a routine office job. But it wasn't until 1954 that LEO was judged reliable enough to finally take over from the clerks. By the following year, John Simmons had fulfilled his dream and was able to declare that "LEO leaves clerks free to use their brains to their own greater benefit and the service of the community". One needs to add that to Lyons & Co's great credit this was achieved without any compulsory redundancies; indeed employment increased. Britain led the world in computer development at the time and there was considerable potential for the turning of a cottage industry in to an international money-maker, but that required considerable investment. The end of Ferry's story of LEO tells of how Britain let an advantage slip from their grasp as US money, muscle, management and determination took over and IBM went on to win the day. -Douglas Palmer.
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2000-08
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.45
Review No Moon Tonight (Witness to War) / Goodall Publications Ltd:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-06-21
Dewey code: 325.32092
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.75
Review Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer / Flamingo:
Edition: 2
Publication date: 1998-06-29
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £9.95
Price: £5.90
Review We Landed by Moonlight: Secret Raf Landings in France 1940-1944 / Crecy Publishing:
Publication date: 2006-12-07
Dewey code: 940.475092
RRP: £14.99
Price: £8.79
Review Chavasse, Double VC / Pen & Sword Military:
Publication date: 2008-04-30
Dewey code: 947.0460922
RRP: £20.00
Price: £11.59
Review The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917 / Hambledon Continuum:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-02-05
Dewey code: 323
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.20
Review The Gate / Vintage:French ethnologist Francois Bizot's The Gate is a unique insight into the rise of the Khmer Rouge. In 1971 Bizot was studying ancient Buddhist traditions and living with his khmer partner and daughter in a small village in the environs of the Angkor temple complex. The Khmer Rouge was fighting a guerilla war in rural Cambodia and during a routine visit to a nearby temple, Bizot and his two khmer colleagues were captured by them and imprisoned deep in the jungle on suspicion of working for the CIA. On trial for his life, over the next three months Bizot developed a strong relationship with his captor, Comrade Douch, who would later become the Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator and commandant of the horrifying Tuol Sleng prison where thousands of captives were tortured prior to execution. The portrait Bizot gives of the young schoolteacher-turned revolutionary and their interaction is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. Finally freed after Douch had pleaded his case with the leadership, Bizot became the only western captive of the Khmer Rouge ever to be released alive, but his story does not end there. On his return to Phnom Penh, due to his fluency in khmer, he was appointed interpreter between the occupying forces and the remaining western nationals holed up in the French embassy. As the interlocutor at the eponymous gate, he relates with dreadful resignation the moment when the khmer nationals in the compound were ordered out by the Khmer Rouge forces for "resettlement". Bizot's is a touching and gripping account of one of the darkest moments in modern history and it is told with a unique voice. As a Cambodian resident, a lover of Cambodia and a fluent khmer speaker, Bizot shows an understanding of the prevailing mood in the country that other western commentators have failed to capture effectively, while as a western academic he is able to see the forces at work and how Cambodia fits into the bigger picture of South East Asian conflict. [+]What emerges is a tale of a land plunged into insanity and Bizot tells it like a eulogy for a dead friend and a confrontation of old demons. The Gate is a stunning book and a must for anyone interested in this grim period of Asian history. -Duncan Thomson.
Edition: Us
Publication date: 2008-02-28
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £7.01
Review An Extraordinary Life: Sir Edmund Hillary / Penguin:
Publication date: 2008-09-11
Dewey code: 941.081092
RRP: £35.00
Price: £32.42
Review The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby: Achievement, 1851-1869 v. 2 / OUP Oxford:
Creator: Peter Coyote
Publication date: 2008-11-06
Dewey code: 973.91092
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.98
Review Ringolevio: (A Life Played for Keeps) (New York Review Books Classics): (A Life Played for Keeps) (New York Review Books Classics) / The New York Review of Books, Inc:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2001-09-03
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £11.99
Price: £6.09
Review Queen Victoria: A Personal History / HarperCollins Publishers Ltd:Heir to the throne at the age of 11, queen at 18, mothering her own heirs at 21, and both a widow and a grandmother by the time she was 42, Queen Victoria's was an extraordinary life, even for a British monarch. Centuries collided in her life and times. She was a quaint survival of a medieval age-preserving the dynasty by marrying off her children and observing court ritual to the letter. But she was a thoroughly modern monarch too-she loved rail travel at high speed, had an unusually insouciant attitude towards religion, and despite her reputation for not being amused, she was, at least until Prince Albert's death, a woman to whom gaiety and mischief came naturally. Christopher Hibbert, the biographer and popular historian, has already produced a selection from Victoria's journals and letters. Now he has written a full biography, which is a light and enjoyable tour through a familiar landscape. But with 66 chapters in 500 pages there is not much space for depth. The world beyond Victoria's court and family life does not feature very much. And on the outstanding questions of her reign-for example, her relationship with John Brown, her unrealistic sense of her own constitutional position, or the remaking of the image of the monarchy which took place after 1870-the author's verdict is either missing or inconclusive. -Miles Taylor.
Publication date: 2007-03-01
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.24
Review Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism / Penguin:
Publication date: 2007-02-28
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.18
Review The Murder of Princess Diana / Metro Books,London:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2000-04-06
Dewey code: 940.547243094386
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.72
Review Commandant of Auschwitz (Age of Dictators 1920-1945) / Phoenix:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1983-10-27
Price: £9.99
Review The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year / Penguin Books Ltd:
Publication date: 2008-11-01
Dewey code: 194
RRP: £15.50
Price: £11.63
Review Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida / Columbia University Press:
Publication date: 2008-02-28
RRP: £1.99
Price: £0.01
Review East End Tales (Quick Reads) / Penguin:
Creator: Jon Lee Anderson
Edition: Reissue
Publication date: 2007-10-25
Dewey code: 910
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.29
Review The Marsh Arabs (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Publication date: 2005-03-03
Dewey code: 956.70443
RRP: £7.99
Price: £4.39
Review Weekend Warrior: A Territorial Soldier's War in Iraq / Mainstream Publishing:
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Models & Brands:
Letters and Papers from Prison, A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer, No Moon Tonight (Witness to War), Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, We Landed by Moonlight: Secret Raf Landings in France 1940-1944, Chavasse, Double VC, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917, The Gate, An Extraordinary Life: Sir Edmund Hillary, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby: Achievement, 1851-1869 v. 2, Ringolevio: (A Life Played for Keeps) (New York Review Books Classics): (A Life Played for Keeps) (New York Review Books Classics), Queen Victoria: A Personal History, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, The Murder of Princess Diana, Commandant of Auschwitz (Age of Dictators 1920-1945), The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, East End Tales (Quick Reads), The Marsh Arabs (Penguin Classics), Weekend Warrior: A Territorial Soldier's War in Iraq |
