Publication date: 2003-05-22
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.14
Review Persepolis: The Story of an Iranian Childhood / Jonathan Cape Ltd:Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is an exemplary autobiographical graphic novel, in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's classic Maus. Set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, it follows the young Satrapi, the six-year-old daughter of two committed and well-to-do Marxists. As she grows up, she witness first-hand the effects that the revolution and the war with Iraq have on her home, family and school. The main strength of Persepolis is its ability to make the political personal. Told through the eyes of a child (as reflected in Satrapi's simplistic yet expressive black-and-white artwork), the story shows how young Marjane learns about her family history and how it is entwined with the history of Iran, and watches her liberal parents cope with a fundamentalist regime that gets increasingly rigid as it gains more power. Outspoken and intelligent, Marjane chafes at Iran's increasingly conservative interpretation of Islamic law, especially as she grows into a bright and independent teenager. Throughout she remains a hugely likeable young woman. Persepolis gives the reader a snapshot of daily life in a country struggling with an internal cultural revolution and a bloody war, but within an intensely personal context. It's a very human history, beautifully and sympathetically told. -Robert Burrow.
Authors
- Notker The Stammerer
- Einhard
Publication date: 2008-07-31
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.18
Review Two Lives of Charlemagne: The Life of Charlemagne; Charlemagne (Penguin Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Edition: New ed
Publication date: 2003-06
Dewey code: 940.5318092
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.99
Review I Escaped from Auschwitz / Barricade Books Inc.,U.S.:
Publication date: 2004-02-19
Dewey code: 947.0460222
RRP: £20.00
Price: £13.20
Review The Camera and the Tsars: The Romanov Family in Photographs / The History Press Ltd:
Edition: 1
Publication date: 2008-10-17
Dewey code: 364.1552092
RRP: £12.00
Price: £7.12
Review Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning) / Chicago University Press:
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-05-27
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.13
Review Simon Weston: Moving on / Portrait:
Creator: Alison Weir
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2006-09-01
Dewey code: 942.044092
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.99
Review Elizabeth: England's Slandered Queen: The Slandered Queen (England's Forgotten Queens) / The History Press LTD:
Edition: First
Publication date: 2008-08-22
RRP: £17.99
Price: £10.21
Review Golda Meir: The Iron Lady of the Middle East: The First Woman Prime Minister in the West / Gibson Square Books Ltd:
Edition: New ed of 2 Revised ed
Publication date: 1999-03-01
Dewey code: 759.5
RRP: £22.95
Price: £14.41
Review Canaletto / Phaidon Press Ltd:
Publication date: 1993-12-09
Dewey code: 639.97961
RRP: £6.99
Price: £5.44
Review The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness / Houghton Mifflin (Trade):
Publication date: 2008-04-30
Dewey code: 947.0460922
RRP: £20.00
Price: £11.60
Review The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917 / Hambledon Continuum:
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2005-11-29
Dewey code: 978.020922
RRP: £10.05
Price: £5.55
Review Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men / Forge:
Authors
- Gottlob Herbert Bidermann
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2001-09-30
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £15.50
Price: £7.65
Review In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front (Modern War Studies) / University Press of Kansas:
Publication date: 1999-01-21
RRP: £20.00
Price: £25.00
Review Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:The terrible tale of the Holocaust is mitigated in some tiny part by a few stories of grace and heroism; of these moments of reprieve, the story of Oscar Schindler is perhaps the best known. The inaction of foreign bureaucracies scared of offending Germany and precipitating conflict is well-known; less famous are the details of how many German Jews were procured exit visas and did survive. Frank Foley was the British passport officer in Berlin, and would have none of the nonsense of his superiors; he endlessly bent the rules and found pretexts for getting people out. This was all the more remarkable because he was also running a major intelligence operation, acquiring details of most of Germany's military research and development that were eventually crucial to Allied victory. The double bluff whereby he concealed his spying operations through known and active hostility to the regime was both ingenious and let him do what he was morally drawn to. Foley also had a crucial role in frustrating various schemes of the Stalinist Comintern, acquiring double agents who, for example, prevented a pro-Russian coup in Brazil. Foley-The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews is a fascinating story, efficiently rather than memorably told. -Roz Kavaney.
Creator: John Yardley
Edition: Reprint
Publication date: 2005-04-28
Dewey code: 938.07
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.10
Review The History of Alexander (Classics) / Penguin Classics:
Creator: Betsy Wing
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 1993-06-01
Dewey code: 940.5344
RRP: £11.99
Price: £9.51
Review Outwitting the Gestapo / University of Nebraska Press:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-09-06
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.01
Review Once in a House on Fire / Picador:Given her start in life, it is all the more remarkable that Andrea Ashworth should have turned out to be an Oxford graduate with such a compelling memoir under her belt. Her father died when she was five, her mother was left, poor and isolated in 70s, depressed Manchester to bring up Andrea and her younger sister singlehandedly. Along comes a physically abusive stepfather who sets about dragging the young family into the pits of despair, petty crime and sordid poverty. But Ashworth writes an enchanting story that blends social history (the 70s are rendered with an acute eye for detail) with poetic intensity. She turns a child's uncomprehending gaze on the domestic horrors of working- class life when it is dominated by a vicious man and drunken, self-pitying mother. We know, as we listen with Andrea, that her mother has decided to leave her man when she puts Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" on the turntable. Unfortunately, we know, too, that she was kidding herself when said man comes home and twirls her round the front room to the sound of Motown disco. We know, because Ashworth makes us re-live her childhood by dint of her astonishing gift for storytelling. -Lilian Pizzichini.
Edition: 1st American Ed
Publication date: 2007-11-13
Dewey code: 941.081092
RRP: £19.10
Price: £11.27
Review American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill / W. W. Norton & Co.:
Publication date: 2006-11-03
Dewey code: 281.9092
RRP: £16.99
Price: £9.57
Review Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr / John Wiley & Sons:
Edition: 1st Touchstone Ed
Publication date: 1996-11-26
Dewey code: 973.7092
Price: £13.45
Review Lincoln / Pocket Books:
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Models & Brands:
Persepolis: The Story of an Iranian Childhood, Two Lives of Charlemagne: The Life of Charlemagne; Charlemagne (Penguin Classics), I Escaped from Auschwitz, The Camera and the Tsars: The Romanov Family in Photographs, Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning), Simon Weston: Moving on, Elizabeth: England's Slandered Queen: The Slandered Queen (England's Forgotten Queens), Golda Meir: The Iron Lady of the Middle East: The First Woman Prime Minister in the West, Canaletto, The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917, Give Your Heart to the Hawks: A Tribute to the Mountain Men, In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front (Modern War Studies), Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews, The History of Alexander (Classics), Outwitting the Gestapo, Once in a House on Fire, American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr, Lincoln |
