No leader of modern times was more unique & more uniquely national than Charles de Gaulle. As founder & first President of the Fifth Republic, General de Gaulle saw himself `carrying France on my shoulders`. When he first emerged on to the world stage in 1940, his insistence that he spoke for his nation might well have appeared impossibly arrogant for a recently promoted junior general who had never been elected to anything. But he personified many of the traits of his country which fascinate the rest of the world
- its pride in itself, its intransigence, its historical & cultural heritage & its quasi-religious belief in the state. Le General, as he became known from 1940 on, appeared as if carved from a single monumental block, but was, in fact, extremely complex, a man with deep personal feelings & recurrent mood swings, devoted to his family & often seeking reassurance from those around him. Though insisting on discipline & loyalty from others, he was a great rebel. A grand visionary with a vast geo-political grasp & elephantine memory, he was also a supreme tactician with a taste for secrecy & the ability to out-flank opponents. This is a magisterial, sweeping biography of one of the great leaders of the twentieth century & of the country with which he so identified himself. Written with terrific verve & narrative skill, & yet rigorous & detailed, it brings alive as never before the private man as well as the public leader through exhaustive research & astute analysis.
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New publication from UK Chamber of Shipping & Hill Dickinson LLP
- released in July 2018. This publication provides guidance to
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In his younger days, Simon Bolivar swept the Spanish back to Europe, liberating South America with his youthful vitality. But lonely, embittered & sickly at the age of forty-six, his power has dwindled, coups abound & it's time for The Liberator to send himself into the exile of retirement. Wending his way down the Magdalena River towards the Caribbean with his faithful servant, Jose Palacios, Bolivar's journey is hindered by his own reluctance to let his power go. Despite the assassination attempts, jeering & humiliation he encounters, his fear of fading into the shadows keeps him clinging to the man he used to be. ...

Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country`s dead. Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, & their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror & guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task. As they descend from the callous trivialities of their gruesome business, past & present, to suffering self-disgust, the author gives us glimpses of the lives of the people whose graves they are unearthing. ...

The Genius in the Design is the true story of the great rivalry between two extraordinary men, the seventeenth-century architects Gianlorenzo Bernini & Francesco Borromini, & how their antagonism changed the city of Rome & created the Baroque. Talented, driven, & ambitious, each man spent his career trying to outdo the other to become the greatest architect of his time. Each, in his turn, succeeded, only to be brought down by the machinations of the other. In the end, one became the most lionized artist of his time & died a rich, happy family man. The other, consumed by internal demons, committed suicide. This book is the story of their hostility. Part history, part biography, part adventure story, The Genius in the Design is narrative non-fiction that reads like a novel & brings to vivid life the struggle between two giants of architecture, so different in outlook, so similar in purpose. ...

Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates & even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence. Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight. In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds & how it came about. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research
- the distant laboratories of Barbados & New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom & the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy & the warming mountains of central Virginia & the western states
- Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent. Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark`s nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30, 000 seeds over dozens of square miles & remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds & thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2, 000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; the well-known pigeon, which knows where it`s going, even thousands of miles from familiar territory; & the New Caledonian crow, an impressive bird that makes its own tools. But beyond highlighting how birds use their unique genius in technical ways, Ackerman points out the impressive social smarts of birds. They deceive & manipulate. They eavesdrop. They display a strong sense of fairness. They give gifts. They play keep-away & tug-of-war. They tease. They share. They cultivate social networks. They vie for status. They kiss to console one another. They teach their young. They blackmail their parents. They alert one another to danger. They summon witnesses to the death of a peer. They may even grieve. This elegant scientific investigation & travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science. Ackerman delivers an extraordinary story that will both give readers a new appreciation for the exceptional talents of birds, & let them discover what birds can reveal about our changing world.

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Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates & even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence. Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight. In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds & how it came about. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research
- the distant laboratories of Barbados & New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom & the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy & the warming mountains of central Virginia & the western states
- Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent. Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark`s nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30, 000 seeds over dozens of square miles & remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds & thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2, 000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; the well-known pigeon, which knows where it`s going, even thousands of miles from familiar territory; & the New Caledonian crow, an impressive bird that makes its own tools. But beyond highlighting how birds use their unique genius in technical ways, Ackerman points out the impressive social smarts of birds. They deceive & manipulate. They eavesdrop. They display a strong sense of fairness. They give gifts. They play keep-away & tug-of-war. They tease. They share. They cultivate social networks. They vie for status. They kiss to console one another. They teach their young. They blackmail their parents. They alert one another to danger. They summon witnesses to the death of a peer. They may even grieve. This elegant scientific investigation & travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science. Ackerman delivers an extraordinary story that will both give readers a new appreciation for the exceptional talents of birds & let them discover what birds can reveal about our changing world.

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Katie & Giancarlo embarked on a two year-long journey to discover the different methods of conserving food, from smoking fish in Scotland to drying chillies in Sri Lanka, & this book collects their favourite recipes & invaluable advice on equipment, timings & ingredients. Covering Italian cured charcuterie inspired by Giancarlo`s family recipes, jams & chutneys evoking Katie`s memories of cooking with her mother to pickling, fermenting, freezing & pressure canning they combine traditional tried-&-tested methods with a thoroughly modern perspective. ...

A funny, fantastically entertaining debut novel, in the spirit of Wodehouse & Monty Python, about a famous poet who inadvertently sells his wife to the devil--then recruits a band of adventurers to rescue her. When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they`re broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught & contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the Devil -- the polite ” Gentleman” of the title -- who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: the Devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson. But when the party`s over & Vivien has disappeared, the poet concludes in horror that he must have inadvertently sold his wife to the dark lord. Newly in love with Vivien, Savage plans a rescue mission to Hell that

Includes:: Simmons, the butler; Tompkins, the bookseller; Ashley Lancaster, swashbuckling Buddhist; Will Kensington, inventor of a flying machine; & Savage`s spirited kid sister, Lizzie, freshly booted from boarding school for a ”dalliance.” Throughout, his cousin`s quibbling footnotes to the text push the story into comedy nirvana. Lionel & his friends encounter trapdoors, duels, anarchist-fearing bobbies, the social pressure of not knowing enough about art history, & the poisonous wit of his poetical archenemy. Fresh, action-packed & very, very funny, The Gentleman is a giddy farce that recalls the masterful confections of P.G. Wodehouse & Herge`s beautifully detailed Tintin adventures. From the Hardcover edition.”

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