Invented in 1788, the panorama reached the height of its popularity at the time of the 1900 Universal Exhibition. Vast circular canvases installed in purpose-built rotundas were designed to be viewed from centrally placed platforms & attracted an admiring public. The aim was to produce a perfect illusion. Thus the relationship between viewer & ”reality” underwent a profound mutation, opening up a new logic according to which the world was transformed into a spectacle & images substituted for direct experience. This illustrated text examines the wide variety of panoramas in both the Old & New Worlds. Included among views of cities are Robert Baker`s ” View of Edinburgh” & Karl Friedrich Schinkel`s ” View of Palermo”, as well as depictions of Paris, Moscow, Jerusalem & Lima. Among historical themes, ” The History of the Century” & ” Battle of Moscow” proved especially popular. The author expands his subject to encompass the sister formats of diorama & cineorama. ...

Brian Blessed has a lifelong love of animals & over the years has rescued cats & dogs, horses & ponies, & even a very ungrateful fighting cock. All were characters in their own right, such as Jessie, a dog left languishing for a year at the local RSPCA, who ruled the entire household with a rod of iron, when she wasn`t out harassing the local vicar. Then there was Bodger, an abused terrier cross breed, who was nursed back to health by Brian & his wife, & Peppone, a stray cat & notorious thief, who was responsible for a crime epidemic in the Bagshot area. Most of all there was Misty, a soul mate & the first Jack Russell Brian met who didn`t take an instant dislike to him. Over the years Brian has encountered more exotic animals too, from Kali the black panther who had free run of his kitchen & the gentle boa constrictor Bo Bo who went for walks with him in Richmond Park to the female gorillas who found him incredibly attractive. Written with all of Brian`s ebullience, The Panther in My Kitchen is a laugh-out-loud, life-affirming book about the joy animals bring & why we should care for them. ...

What could be more simple than a pan`ino? Take some bread & butter, slice it through the middle & fill it. Seen in this way, the sandwich is almost an ”anti-cuisine”, a nomadic shortcut that allows for speed & little thought. But when Alessandro Frassica thinks about his pan`ino, he considers it in a different way, not as a shortcut, but as an instrument for telling stories, creating layers of tales right there between the bread & its butter. Because even if the sandwich is simple, it is not necessarily so easy to create. Alessandro searches for ingredients, & in the raw foods he finds people: producers of pecorino cheese from Benevento, anchovies from Cetara, `nduja spicy salami from Calabria. Then he studies the combinations, the consistencies & the temperature, because a pan`ino is not just a random object; savoury must be complemented by sweet; tapenade softens & provides moisture; bread should be warmed but not dried; thus the sandwich becomes a simple way of saying many excellent things, including finding a complexity of flavours that can thrill in just one bite. ...

From the publisher of Graeme Macrae Burnet`s His Bloody Project, the first in a new series of distinctive, standalone crime stories, each with a literary bent. In 1950s London, a literary agent finds fame when he secretly steals a young woman`s brilliant novel manuscript & publishes it under his own name, Lewis Carson. Two days after their meeting, the woman is found strangled on Peckham Rye Common: did Lewis purloin the manuscript as an act of callous opportunism, or as the spoils of a calculated murder? ...

Ken Liu has published almost 100 short stories & won nearly every genre award in existence. Here, he has selected his 15 favourite stories, including The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (Finalist for Hugo, Nebula, & Sturgeon Awards), Mono No Aware (Hugo Award winner), The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species (Nebula & Sturgeon award finalists), & the most awarded story in Science Fiction & Fantasy history, The Paper Menagerie
- the only story ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, & World Fantasy awards.
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As he gets older, Inspector Montalbano is plagued by existential questions. But he doesn`t have much time to wax philosophical before the gruesome murder of a man
- shot in the face at point-blank range with his pants down
- commands his attention. Add two evasive, beautiful women as prime suspects, dirty cocaine, dead politicians, mysterious computer codes, & a series of threatening letters, & things soon get very complicated at the police headquarters in Vigata.

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The Paper Time Machine is a book that will change the way you think about the past. It contains 124 historical black-&-white photographs, reconstructed in colour & introduced by Wolfgang Wild
- creator & curator of the Retronaut website. The site has become a global phenomenon, collecting images that collapse the distance between the past & present & tear a hole in our map of time. The Paper Time Machine goes even further. Early photographic technology lacked a crucial ingredient
- colour. As early as the invention of the medium, skilled artisans applied colour to photographs by h&, attempting to convey the vibrancy & immediacy of life in vivid detail. In most cases this was crude & unconvincing. Until now. The time-bending images in The Paper Time Machine have been painstakingly restored & rendered in full & accurate colour by Jordan Lloyd of Dynamichrome, a company that has taken the craft of colour reconstruction to a new level. Each element of every photograph has been researched & colour-checked for historical authenticity. Behold American child labourers from the early twentieth century, alongside the construction of the Statue of Liberty. Marvel at crisp photographs from the Crimean War in 1855, balanced with never-before-seen pictures from the Walt Disney archive. As the layers of colour build up, the effect is disorientingly real & the decades & centuries fall away. It is as though we are standing at the original photographer`s elbow. This is a landmark photographic book
- a collection of historical `remixes` that exist alongside the original photographs but draw out qualities, textures & details that have hitherto remained hidden. Let The Paper Time Machine transport you. It is as close to time travel as we are ever likely to get.


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In the spirit of Alvin Toffler`s Future Shock, a social critique of our obsession with choice, & how it contributes to anxiety, dissatisfaction & regret. This paperback

Includes:: a new preface from the author. Whether we`re buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401 (k), everyday decisions-both big & small-have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options & greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, & it can make you blame yourself for any & all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, & perpetual stress. &, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice-the hallmark of individual freedom & self-determination that we so cherish-becomes detrimental to our psychological & emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, & anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice-from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, & individual needs-has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, & busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important & ignore the rest, & ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

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What motivated the 16th century explorers? The question is a vexed one the world over. To this day, a troubled folkloric status hangs about the better-known names. Many of the Tudor explorers set sail from the South West peninsula. Morpurgo, with his own deep connections to the Dorset coast, unearths the stories behind little-known key figures Stephen Borough & John Davis, & their brilliant navigational teacher, John Dee, inventor of the `paradoxall compass`. Morpurgo dramatises an episode in Drake`s circumnavigation during which the Golden Hind was stranded on a rock off Celebes, Indonesia. What altercation occurred between Drake & the ship`s chaplain, Francis Fletcher, during those terrifying twenty hours? Morpurgo makes a compelling argument for what was really at the heart of that disagreement, & its present-day repercussions. He argues that the Tudor navigators & their stories may hold the key to how we should approach the current environmental crisis. This is the Age of Discovery as you`ve never heard it before. ...

A brilliantly funny, gripping novel from a born storyteller, The Parent Agency is an epic wish-fulfilment adventure for every child
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