Taking a unique look at one of the most acclaimed & best-loved poets, Robert Burns, A Very Peculiar History provides a fascinating insight into the life & times of Scotland`s national poet. We learn about his romantic, tragic life, his journey from underdog to celebrity & about his family & childhood. With much reference to his most famous works, Fiona Macdonald explores his profound, passionate poetry, as well as his use of the Scots language & his inspirations & influences. Featuring quirky stories & entertaining trivia throughout, find out what makes Burns so captivating, to Scottish people first & foremost, but also to countless millions around the globe. Fact boxes, a full glossary & index make the book both fun & informative to use. The text is enlivened with black-&-white line drawings & full-colour endpapers. ...

In this year of Homecoming, Nicolson Maps have produced a map of Scotland that marks over 150 places of interest & significance associated with Robert Burns, &

Includes:: a chronological timeline of his life & work. The Robert Burns map actually consists of three maps: one of Scotland as a whole, as well as more detailed maps of Ayrshire & Dumphries & Galloway. Each map has clear, easy to read road mapping that shows all major & minor roads, tracks railway lines & stations, disused railways & ferry links. Places of interest & locations associated with Robert Burns are clearly depicted on the map, as are visitor information centres, parking, airports & peaks with height in meters. Natural features depicted on the maps include woodland areas, mud, beaches & dunes, as well a built up-areas. Each map is accompanied by an index to the main Burns places of interest.

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Robert Capa (1913-1954), one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century & a founding member of the Magnum photographic agency, had the mind of a passionate & committed journalist & the eye of an artist. His lifework, consisting of more than 70, 000 negative frames, constitutes an unparalleled documentation of a crucial twenty-two-year period (1932-1954) encompassing some of the most catastrophic & dramatic events of the last century. This book represents the most definitive selection of Robert Capa`s work ever published, a collection of 937 photographs selected by Capa`s brother, Cornell Capa (himself a noted Life photographer), & his biographer, Richard Whelan, who meticulously re-examined all of Robert Capa`s contact sheets to compile this master set of images. This book opens with a biographical introduction illustrated with rare photographs of Capa, & closes with a chronology of his life. The main body of the book presents this definitive collection of 937 of Robert Capa`s most important pictures. The photographs, arranged in chronological order & accompanied by commentaries & identifying captions, constitute an in-depth survey of Robert Capa`s finest work over the entire course of his career. The pictures reveal the dramatic shifts in location & subject matter that Capa experienced from day to day, representing the trajectory of his life
- from war-torn Spain to Picasso on a sunny beach in France; from carousing with Ernest Hemingway in London to Capa`s historic images of the Allied landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy in 1944. The book design groups together pictures that constitute a story
- for example, the Popular Front rallies in Paris in 1936, or the U.S. Army`s entry into Sicily in 1943
- in order to maintain the original coherence of the work. Embodying the spirit of his photographs, Robert Capa`s life itself was adventurous, romantic, & tragic. Born in Hungary in 1913, he hoped to become a journalist but was forced to flee to Berlin at the age of seventeen because of his leftist political sympathies. When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Capa fled to Paris, the city that would become his home on & off for most of his life. It was there that he met Andre Kertesz, who became a mentor to Capa & introduced him to the extraordinary potential of the 35mm Leica camera as a tool for reportage. Capa also met two other photographers during his early years in Paris: Henri Cartier-Bresson & David ” Chim” Szymin, with whom he founded Magnum, the co-operative photo agency, in 1947 along with George Rodger & William Vandivert. For the rest of his life, Capa would devote much of his time to guiding the operations of the Magnum offices in Paris & New York. Throughout the 1930s & World War II, Capa was present at many of the twentieth century`s defining events & moments. His first assignment came in 1932, when he was working as a darkroom assistant at Delphot, the important Berlin photo agency. The agency`s director, recognizing Capa`s talent, lent him a camera & sent him to Copenhagen to photograph exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky giving a speech to Danish students. From there, Robert Capa went on to photograph the Spanish Civil War, when he made his famous ” Falling Soldier” picture showing a Republican soldier collapsing just after being shot. Capa reported on the increasing political tensions in Europe in the mid-1930s, including the Popular Front demonstrations in France, & on the presidential elections in Mexico in 1940 before being accredited by the U.S. Army as a war correspondent for Life. After documenting Londoners` stalwart survival of the Blitz, he went on to cover battles on many of the major fronts in North Africa, Sicily, mainland Italy, France, & Germany. In one of his most famous assignments, Capa landed with the first wave of American troops on Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Wading into the frigid water behind amphibious tanks, & dodging machine gun & rifle bullets, Capa shot 36 exposures before his hands were shaking so badly that he could not insert another roll into the camera. In an ironic twist of fate, a Life darkroom attendant damaged all but eleven of Capa`s negatives. After the war, he did various stories for travel magazines & worked on writing projects with friends such as John Steinbeck & the noted journalist Theodore H. White. He also went to Israel several times to document the conflict & co-operation in the founding of the new nation. Capa`s last assignment would be a trip to Vietnam to cover the French Indochina War: he was killed when he accidentally stepped on a Vietminh antipersonnel mine in the countryside on May 25, 1954. Though perpetually broke, Capa lived a glamorous life
- through a combination of charm, luck, & talent (and an uncontrollable penchant for gambling), he frequented a wealthy circle of celebrities & cultural figures. He fell in love with Ingrid Bergman; was friends with Ernest Hemingway, the director John Huston, & other writers & directors; spent many an afternoon at the racetracks, & enjoyed all-night poker games. Seen together, however, the pictures in this book transcend the specific situations they portray to stand as timeless images of the human condition at its most terrible & inspiring; they are monuments to the strength of the human spirit.



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Because of the importance of Robert Frank`s The Americans; because he turned to filmmaking in 1959, the same year the book appeared in the United States; & because he made very different kinds of pictures when he returned to still photography in the 1970s, most of Frank`s American work of the 1950s is poorly known. This book, based on the important Frank collection at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, is the first to focus on that work. Its careful sequence of 131 plates integrates twenty-two photographs from The Americans with more than 100 unknown or unfamiliar images to chart the major themes & pictorial strategies of Frank`s work in the United States in the 1950s. Peter Galois` text presents a thorough reconsideration of Frank`s first photographic career & examines in detail how he used the full range of photography`s vital 35mm vocabulary to reclaim the mediums artistic tradition from the hegemony of the magazines. ...

A beautiful collection of timeless classics for a new generation, featuring three of the best-loved children's titles. Meet unforgettable characters in The Jungle Book & follow man-cub Mowgli's adventures with the Wolf Pack as he faces up to his life-long enemy, Shere Khan. Go on a swashbuckling journey in search of buried treasure with young Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island & see how Mr Toad leads his companions from one escapade to the next in The Wind in the Willows, until he finally realises the value of true friendship. ...

A sensual Calvinist, a Tory radical, a consumptive celebrant of action, a Passionate Scot who chose to live anywhere but Scotl&. Not for nothing was Robert Louis Stevenson the author of ” Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde”. The greatest of Scottish novelists, Stevenson lived a life as extraordinary & as absorbing as his books. But it was a life tormented by an autocratic father, recurring illness, the prudery of the Victorian reading public &, most of all, the stresses imposed on him by his wife & stepchildren. This powerful new study is published to mark the centenery of Stevenson`s death at the age of forty-four. ...

Almost every adult & child is familiar with his Treasure Isl&, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson lived out his last years on an equally remote isl&, which was squabbled over by colonial powers much as Captain Flint`s treasure was contested by the mongrel crew of the Hispaniola. In 1890 Stevenson settled in Upolu, an island in Samoa, after two years sailing round the South Pacific. He was given a Samoan name & became a fierce critic of the interference of Germany, Britain & the U.S.A. in Samoan affairs
- a stance that earned him Oscar Wilde`s sneers, & brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office, who regarded him as a menace & even threatened him with expulsion from the isl&. Joseph Farrell`s pioneering study of Stevenson`s twilight years stands apart from previous biographies by giving as much weight to the Samoa & the Samoans
- their culture, their manners, their history
- as to the life & work of the man himself. For it is only by examining the full complexity of Samoa & the political situation it faced as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, that Stevenson`s lasting & generous contribution to its cause can be appreciated.


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Jason Bourne is in Moscow to attend the wedding of his old friend & fellow spymaster General Boris Karpov. But amid the celebrations, the General has an important message to deliver to Bourne
- `a lifeline, ` he says, `for the end of the world`. Before Bourne can decipher this enigmatic warning, Karpov`s wedding ends in chaos & bloodshed. Bourne discovers that the Russian has betrayed the Kremlin to forewarn him of the crippling disaster about to engulf the world. Bourne has just four days to discover the nature of the catastrophe & halt it. To get to the truth, Bourne must first track down an infamous & elusive arms dealer
- a man both he & Karpov have been hunting for years. With the clock ticking, Bourne follows a labyrinthine path that weaves from the underbelly of Moscow to the pyramids of Egypt & the war-torn border between Syria & Turkey as he races to stop a world-threatening conspiracy in its tracks.

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Jason Bourne is on the run. His old friend, General Boris Karpov, is dead. But Karpov, once head of the feared FSB, lives on in the cyber weapon he devised before his death, capable of penetrating the heart of America`s final defense: nuclear launch codes. Both the NSA & Meme LLC, a black off-site cyber opertion, believe Bourne has taken over the enterprise, & a kill team is sent to terminate him for committing treason against the US. Flushed from cover, hunted by assassins, wounded & nearly killed, Bourne is forced to join forces with his bitterest enemy, a Somali magus named Keyre, whose terrorist organization Bourne once decimated. Now Keyre is more powerful than ever & he might help Bourne, but to what end? From the Greek island of Skyros to Somalia & the underbelly of Moscow, Bourne must unravel the mystery of Boris Karpov`s last legacy, a weaponized code that may very well bring about the unthinkable: a violent end to America. ...

Robert Polidori is known for his large format photographs of habitats & rooms saturated with the traces of human intervention. In EYE & I, he turns the lens around to reveal the portraits of people he has encountered in his work of over thirty years photographing around the world, particularly in the Middle East & India. These instantaneous portraits of mutual recognition reveal the photographed subject & the photographer intersecting with each other in a fleeting gaze of mutual regard. Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 & lives in New York City. His work has been the subject of exhibitions in New York, London, Brazil, Montreal, among other places. He received the World Press Photo Award in 1997, the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in 1999 & 2000, & Communication Arts awards in 2007 & 2008. In 2006, Polidoris series of photographs of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His bestselling books Havana (2003), Zones of Exclusion Pripyat & Chernobyl (2003), After the Flood (2006), Parcours Museologique Revisite (2009) & Some Points in Between... Up Till Now (2010) are published by Steidl. ...