The first fully annotated edition of Raymond Chandler`s 1939 classic The Big Sleep, with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem & hundreds of illuminating notes & photographs alongside the full text, is an essential addition to any crime fiction fan`s library.A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler`s The Big Sleep helped to define a genre & remains one of the most celebrated & stylish novels of the twentieth century. Now, this comprehensive annotated edition offers a fascinating look behind the scenes of the novel, bringing the gritty & seductive world of Chandler`s iconic private eye Philip Marlowe into full color. Notes on the historical context of Chandler`s Los Angeles; excerpts from the author`s personal letters & source texts; explorations of the issues of gender, sexuality, & race that permeate the story; & important interpretations & clarifications enrich the reader`s understanding & situate the novel within the tradition of crime fiction that Chandler both built upon & made new. ...

Topographic survey of Catalonia at 1:50, 000 from the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, with vivid presentation of the terrain & an overprint for long-distance GR hiking trails. The series provides an excellent alternative to the much smaller sheets in the civilian or military surveys produced for the whole of Spain. The Catalan 50K series has not only a much larger area per sheet (each map covers one comarca, an administrative division of a province) than the maps from the national surveys, but also has more colourful, elegant & clear cartography with contours at 20m intervals, hill shading & fine graphics to portray the relief, vegetation types & landmarks. Most maps also have more tourist-related information, with an overprint highlighting long-distance GR trails & the Via Verde routes. Mountain refuges are marked & a range symbols indicate various places of interest including historical monuments, sport & recreational facilities, etc. Four different types of interesting locations are highlighted: picturesque towns or villages, individual isolated building or monuments, natural sites, & hydrographic features such as waterfalls. The maps have a 5km UTM grid, with latitude & longitude values shown for the map corners. Map legend is in Catalan only. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

Longer! Higher! Steeper! The sequel to the bestselling 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs is packed with another century of stunning ...

James Ciment, in his enthralling history Another America, shows that the settlers struggled to balance their high ideals with their prejudices. On the steamy shores of West Africa, they re-created the only social order they knew, that of an antebellum Dixie, with themselves as the master caste, ruling over a native population that outnumbered them twenty to one. They built plantations, held elegant dances, & worked to protect their fragile independence from the predations of foreign powers. Meanwhile, they fought, abused, & even helped to enslave the native Liberians. The persecuted became the persecutors
- until a lowly native sergeant murdered their president in 1980, ending 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule & inaugurating a quarter century of civil war. Riven by caste, committed to commerce, practicing democratic & Christian ideals haphazardly, the Americo-Liberians created a history that is, to a surprising degree, the mirror image of our own.
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Another America is the first book to present rare & seldom-seen maps made by Native Americans. These maps, which lay little known & little studied for the last three hundred years, open a window on the North American continent as it was understood & experienced by its original inhabitants. With meticulous research, this book brings to life the people, the places, & events of this Native American history. Each map is the focal point for a narrative on the traditions & experiences of the people involved with its creation. The historical & cultural context of the maps is used to illuminate the web of human, animal, natural, & spiritual relationships that shaped the Native American world. The maps record the efficiency of their oral traditions & the fullness with which the land was named, understood, & inhabited. They add a new depth of time to the North American landscape, & are a testament to human endurance & survival. ...

Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race & liberal America in the 1960s. Set in Greenwhich Village, Harlem & France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott & the friends who search for an understanding of his life & death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. ...

Saturday, November 23rd, 2013. It was just another day in America; an unremarkable Saturday on which ten children & teens were killed by gunfire. The youngest was nine; the oldest was nineteen. White, Black & Latino, they fell in suburbs, hamlets & ghettos. None made the national news. There was no outrage about their passing. It was just another day in the death of America, where on a daily average
- seven children & teens are killed by guns. Younge picked this day at random, searched for their families & tells their stories. The nine-year-old opened the door & was shot in the head by his mother`s ex-boyfriend. The eleven-year-old was killed by his friend at a sleep over in rural Michigan. The eighteen-year-old gang member, on Chicago`s South Side, was shot in a stairwell just days after being released from prison. Through ten moving chapters
- one for each child
- Younge explores the way these children lived & lost their short lives. He finds out who they were, who they wanted to be, the environments they inhabited, & what this might tell us about society at large. What emerges is a searing portrait of childhood & youth in contemporary America.


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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE, THE JHALAK PRIZE, & THE BREAD & ROSES AWARD. Saturday, 23rd November 2013. It was just another day in America. & as befits an unremarkable day, ten children & teens were killed by gunfire. Far from being considered newsworthy, these everyday fatalities are simply a banal fact. The youngest was nine; the oldest nineteen. None made the news. There was no outrage at their passing. It was simply a day like any other day. Gary Younge picked it at random, searched for the families of these children & here, tells their stories. Another Day in the Death of America explores the way these children lived & lost their short lives, offering a searing portrait of the vulnerability of youth in contemporary America. ...

It`s 1975 & in Luanda, the capital of Angola, an apocalyptic atmosphere prevails as the Portuguese residents hurriedly desert the city. Determined to cover events as four hundred years of colonial rule come to an end, Kapuscinski hitched a lift on one of the last Portuguese military aircraft flying to Angola. There he discovered the terrifying spectacle of a civil war whithin the war for national independence: a murderous, messy struggle in which many of the participants can scarcely tell one another apart. Shot through with wit & irony, Kapuscinsky`s superb account vividly conveys the heat, confusion, fear & unrelenting tension of a country tragically divided by its new freedom. & he demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe & to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions. ...

Lacking even the most basic mechanical knowhow, Tim Moore sets out to cross Trumpland USA in an original Model T Ford. Armed only with a fan belt made from cotton, wooden wheels & a trunkload of ‘wise-ass Limey liberal gumption’, his route takes him exclusively through Donald-voting counties, meeting the everyday folks who voted red along the way. He meets a people defined by extraordinary generosity, willing to shift heaven & earth to keep him on the road. & yet, this is clearly a nation in conflict with itself: citizens ‘tooling up’ in reaction to ever-increasing security fears; a healthcare system creaking to support sugar-loaded soda lovers; a disintegrating rust belt all but forgotten by the warring media & political classes. With his trademark blend of slapstick humour, affable insight & butt-clenching peril, Tim Moore invites us on an unforgettable road trip through Trump’s America. Buckle up! ...