In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to the East Riding of Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated & lonely as she strives to adjust to the realities of married life. Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat hidden in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. & not long afterwards, while her husband is out, she is startled by a knock at her window. Outside is a young RAF pilot, waiting to come in. His name is Alec, & his powerful presence both disturbs & excites her. Her initial alarm soon fades, & they begin an intense affair. But nothing has prepared her for the truth about Alec`s life, nor the impact it will have on hers... ...

The Greater Journey focuses on the period between 1830 & 1900, when hundreds of Americans--many of them future household names like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, John Singer Sargent & Harriet Beecher Stowe--migrated to Paris. Mc Cullough shows first how the City of Light affected each of them in turn, & how they later moved back to America to help shape American art, medicine, writing, science, & politics in profound ways. The Greater Journey is filled with wonderful descriptions of the old Paris before it was re-made by Haussmann's grand boulevards, & of the city's great places, especially the Louvre, the Tuileries, & Notre Dame, which never failed to inspire visitors & expatriates. ...

Civilizations have been fighting each other for thousands of years. Some mighty civilizations have left few traces except descriptions of their greatest martial endeavours & some ancient conflicts remain unresolved today. The Greatest Battles in History is an authoritatively written & brilliantly illustrated reference work to the key wars & battles fought from ancient times up to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Arranged in chronological order from the early Middle Eastern conflicts such as Megiddo & Kadesh through to the Napoleonic Wars, each entry

Includes:: full-colour illustrations either maps or artworks as well as information boxes containing key facts & figures & a description of the context, the course of battle & the conflict`s aftermath. An easily accessible guide to more than 160 battles & campaigns, The Greatest Battles in History is essential reading for enthusiasts & general readers alike.

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From a creative crisis to a dissatisfied editor, & from a bizarre twist of fate to an untimely death, behind each unpublished book lies a unique & compelling story. One of the giants of modern literature, Ernest Hemingway, saw three years of work, including a novel & several short stories, vanish when his wife`s suitcase was stolen in the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Evelyn Waugh, on the other h&, burned the manuscript of his first novel & attempted to drown himself after a friend gave it a bad review. Covering an eclectic range of international authors, both living & dead, The Greatest Books You`ll Never Read unearths an alternative literary history that is fascinating & heartbreaking in equal measure. Each ill-fated book, from Karl Marx`s comic novel Scorpion & Felix to Stephenie Meyer`s Twilight spin-off Midnight Sun, is examined in an in-depth essay, with selected entries featuring manuscript extracts. Specially commissioned covers by acclaimed designers illustrate each entry, bringing to life these lost literary wonders. At once entertaining & enlightening, The Greatest Books You`ll Never Read will be loved by bookworms everywhere. ...

Before Pep Guardiola & before Jose Mourinho, there was Bela Guttmann: the first superstar football coach, & the man who paved the way for the celebrated coaches of the modern age. He was also a Holocaust survivor. In 1944, much of Europe had wanted Guttmanndead. He hid for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jewsin the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered. Later, he escaped from aslave labour camp before a planned deportation & almost certain death. Hisfather, sister & wider family were murdered. But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted Europe`s greatest sporting prize, the European Cup, a feat he repeated the following year. This biography spans two contrasting visions of Europe: one of barbarism andgenocide, & one of beauty, wonder & romance, of balmy evenings inmagnificent cities, where great players would stretch every sinew in a bid towin football`s holy grail. With dark forces rising once again in thatcontinent, the story of Bela Guttmann`s life asks the question: which visionwill triumph in our times? ...

Laying out Manhattan`s street grid & providing a rationale for the growth of New York was the city`s first great civic enterprise, not to mention a brazenly ambitious project & major milestone in the history of city planning. The grid created the physical conditions for business & society to flourish & embodied the drive & discipline for which the city would come to be known. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York celebrating the bicentennial of the Commissioners` 1811 Plan of Manhattan, this volume does more than memorialize such a visionary effort, it serves as an enduring reference full of rare images & information. The Greatest Grid shares the history of the Commissioners` plan, incorporating archival photos & illustrations, primary documents & testimony, & magnificent maps with essential analysis. The text, written by leading historians of New York City, follows the grid`s initial design, implementation, & evolution, & then speaks to its enduring influence.A foldout map, accompanied by explanatory notes, reproduces the Commissioners` original plan, & additional maps & prints chart the city`s pre-1811 irregular growth patterns & local precedent for the grid`s design. Constituting the first sustained examination of this subject, this text describes the social, political, & intellectual figures who were instrumental in remaking early New York, not in the image of old Europe but as a reflection of other American cities & a distinct New World sensibility. The grid reaffirmed old hierarchies while creating new opportunities for power & advancement, giving rise to the multicultural, highly networked landscape New Yorkers thrive in today. ...

A fabulously clever lift-the-flap, pop-up conceptual book about opposites. Ingenious paper engineering & gorgeous artwork combine to make possibly the most fun opposites book for ages 2-200. Tom Frost`s circus-themed illustrations make this pop-up, fold down, pull out book something very special indeed. ...

Charles Darwin`s masterpiece, ” On the Origin of Species”, shook society to its core on publication in 1859. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke but he would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century & a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists & indeed theologians, yet millions of people continue to question its veracity. In ” The Greatest Show on Earth” Richard Dawkins takes on creationists, including followers of ` Intelligent Design` & all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection. Like a detective arriving on the scene of a crime, he sifts through fascinating layers of scientific facts & disciplines to build a cast-iron case: from the living examples of natural selection in birds & insects; the `time clocks` of trees & radioactive dating that calibrate a timescale for evolution; the fossil record & the traces of our earliest ancestors; to confirmation from molecular biology & genetics. All of this, & much more, bears witness to the truth of evolution.” The Greatest Show on Earth” comes at a critical time: systematic opposition to the fact of evolution is now flourishing as never before, especially in America. In Britain & elsewhere in the world, teachers witness insidious attempts to undermine the status of science in their classrooms. Richard Dawkins provides unequivocal evidence that boldly & comprehensively rebuts such nonsense. At the same time he shares with us his palpable love of the natural world & the essential role that science plays in its interpretation. Written with elegance, wit & passion, it is hard-hitting, absorbing & totally convincing. ...

` Probably the most readable, exciting & authoritative writer on science we have. A new Lawrence Krauss book always goes to the top of the curious mind`s wish list.` Stephen Fry ”I loved the fight scenes & the sex scenes were excellent.” (Eric Idle) ` In the span of a century, physics progressed from skepticism that atoms were real to equations so precise we can predict properties of subatomic particles to the tenth decimal place. Lawrence Krauss rightly places this achievement among the greatest of all stories, & his book-at once engaging, poetic & scholarly-tells the story with a scientist`s penetrating insight & a writer`s masterly craft.` (Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, & Director, Center for Theoretical Physics, Columbia University) ” Unlike some very clever scientists, Lawrence Krauss is not content to bask on the Mount Olympus of modern physics. A great educator as well as a great physicist, he wants to pull others up the rarefied heights to join him. But unlike some science educators, he doesn`t dumb down. In Einstein`s words, he makes it `as simple as possible but no simpler.`” (Richard Dawkins, author of The Magic of Reality) ” In every debate I`ve done with theologians & religious believers their knock-out final argument always comes in the form of two questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? & Why are we here? The presumption is that if science provides no answers then there must be a God. But God or no, we still want answers. In A Universe From Nothing Lawrence Krauss, one of the biggest thinkers of our time, addressed the first question with verve, & in The Greatest Story Ever Told he tackles the second with elegance. Both volumes should be placed in hotel rooms across America, in the drawer next to the Gideon Bible.” (Michael Shermer, Publisher Skeptic magazine, columnist Scientific American, Presidential Fellow Chapman University, author The Moral Arc.) ”A Homeric tale of science, history, & philosophy revealing how we learned so much about the universe & its tiniest parts.” (Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate, 1979 in physics) ” The Greatest Story Ever Told-So Far ranges from Galileo to the LHC & beyond. It`s accessible, illuminating, & surprising-an ideal guide for anyone interested in understanding our accidental universe.” (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction) ” College students, hippies, squares, Christians, Muslims, democrats, republicans, libertarians, theists, even atheists-all of us-sit around BS-ing like: ` So, how did all this, I mean everything, all of us, the whole universe, you know, man, everything, how did this all get here?` While we were doing that, Lawrence Krauss & people like him were doing the work to figure it out. Then Krauss wrote this great book about it. ` Wow, man, you mean, like we`re getting closer to really knowing? I guess we`ll have to go back to talking about politics & sex.`” (Penn Jillette, author of Presto!) ” Discovering the bedrock nature of physical reality ranks as one of humanity`s greatest collective achievements. This book gives a fine account of the main ideas & how they emerged. Krauss is himself close to the field, & can offer insights into the personalities who have led the key advances. A practiced & skilled writer, he succeeds in making the physics `as simple as possible but no simpler.` I don`t know a better book on this subject.” (Martin Rees, author of Just Six Numbers) ” It is an exhilarating experience to be led through this fascinating story, from Galileo to the Standard Model & the Higgs boson & beyond, with lucid detail & insight, illuminating vividly not only the achievements themselves but also the joy of creative thought & discovery, enriched with vignettes of the remarkable individuals who paved the way. It amply demonstrates that the discovery that `nature really follows the simple & elegant rules intuited by the 20th- & 21st-century versions of P ...

`A great educator as well as a great physicistâ ` Richard Dawkins In the beginning there was light but more than this, there was gravity. After that, all hell broke loose... This is how the story of the greatest intellectual adventure in history should be introduced
- how humanity reached its current understanding of the universe, one that is far removed from the realm of everyday experience. Krauss connects the world we know with the invisible world all around us, which is removed from intuition & direct sensation. He explains our current understanding of nature & the struggle to construct the greatest theoretical edifice ever assembled, the Standard Model of Particle Physics -- & then to understand its implications for our existence. Writing in the critically acclaimed style of A Universe from Nothing, Krauss celebrates the beauty & wonders of the natural world & details our place within it & how this shapes our understanding of it. Krauss makes this story accessible through profiles of the scientists responsible for these advances, & clear explanations of their discoveries. Krauss takes us on a tour of science & the brilliant personalities who shaped it, often against political & religious indoctrination, enduring persecution & ostracism. Krauss creates a captivating blend of research & narrative to invite us into the lives & minds of these figures, creating a landmark work of scientific history.
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