Fifty years ago Gavin Maxwell went to live in an abandoned house on a shingle beach on the west coast of Scotl&. A haven for wildlife
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In Italy`s impoverished south, choices are limited. Rules & traditions are more powerful than the lives of individuals, & young Italians who stand on the right side of the law still find themselves on the frontline. In ` The Opposite of Death`, Maria is a seventeen-year-old widow before she has even made it to the altar; her fiance enlisted & died in Afghanistan to avoid a life controlled by the mafia. In ` The Ring`, a tale of bloody vengeance, a young woman comes to visit from the north, bringing with her ignorance & prejudice. Two women at separate poles of experience. Roberto Saviano has become a symbol of a whole generation of lost young Italians; these stories demonstrate once more the commitment to truth & justice that made Gomorrah such an exceptionally brave book. ...

Few people have had as great an impact on Bath as Brunel. He changed the face of the city & brought the coaching trade
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” The Rings of Saturn” begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Bungay, Sebald`s own story becomes the conductor of evocations of people & cultures past & present: of Chateaubri&, Thomas Browne, Swinburne & Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls & silkworms. The result is an intricately patterned & haunting book on the transience of all things human. ...

For most people giving up the day job & moving to a beautiful area of France & living off the vines is an impossible but delicious dream. In 1990, Patricia Atkinson & her husband decided to sell up in Britain & emigrate to the Dordogne. Their idea was to buy a house with a few vines attached & employ someone to tend to the wine while they earned their living with some financial consultancy work. There followed a series of disasters: the stock market crashed leaving their small holding as their sole source of income; the first red wine harvest turned to vinegar; & Patricia`s husband returned to Britain, unable to cope with the stress. He never returned. Patricia Atkinson, whose only knowledge of wine up to that moment was `that it came from a bottle` & who had not a word of French, was left to salvage their life savings form the vineyards. What follows is a remarkable story of struggle & transformation whereby her tiny 4 hectare plot has become a major estate of 21 hectares, where her Clos d` Yvigne wines have won awards & been adopted by wine merchants throughout the world & where she has been hailed as a superstar by UK wine writers. ...

This is a story studded with extraordinary achievements & historic moments, from the building of the pyramids & the conquest of Nubia, through Akhenaten`s religious revolution, the power & beauty of Nefertiti, the glory of Tutankhamun`s burial chamber, & the ruthlessness of Ramesses, to Alexander the Great`s invasion, & Cleopatra`s fatal entanglement with Rome. As the world`s first nation-state, the history of Ancient Egypt is above all the story of the attempt to unite a disparate realm & defend it against hostile forces from within & without. Combining grand narrative sweep with detailed knowledge of hieroglyphs & the iconography of power, Toby Wilkinson reveals Ancient Egypt in all its complexity. ...

Paul Kennedy`s classic naval history, now updated with a new introduction by the author This acclaimed book traces Britain`s rise & fall as a sea power from the Tudors to the present day. Challenging the traditional view that the British are natural `sons of the waves`, he suggests instead that the country`s fortunes as a significant maritime force have always been bound up with its economic growth. In doing so, he contributes significantly to the centuries-long debate between `continental` & `maritime` schools of strategy over Britain`s policy in times of war. Setting British naval history within a framework of national, international, economic, political & strategic considerations, he offers a fresh approach to one of the central questions in British history. A new introduction extends his analysis into the twenty-first century & reflects on current American & Chinese ambitions for naval mastery. ` Excellent & stimulating` Correlli Barnett ` The first scholar to have set the sweep of British Naval history against the background of economic history` Michael Howard, Sunday Times ` By far the best study that has ever been done on the subject.. .a sparkling & apt"ation on practically every page` Daniel A. Baugh, International History Review ` The best single-volume study of Britain & her naval past now available to us` Jon Sumida, Journal of Modern History ...

The crisis of 2008 ended the illusion of a golden era in which many people imagined that prosperity & political calm would continue to spread indefinitely. In a world now racked by slowing growth & mounting unrest, how can we discern which nations will thrive & which will fail? Shaped by prize-winning author Ruchir Sharma`s twenty-five years travelling the world, The Rise & Fall of Nations rethinks economics as a practical art. By narrowing down the thousands of factors that can shape a country`s future, it spells out ten clear rules for identifying the next big winners & losers in the global economy. Each rule looks at a nation`s political, economic, & social conditions in real time to filter out the hype & noise. ` People Matters` shows how slow population growth is eroding economic growth, & ranks nations by how well they respond. The `circle of life` describes the way cycles of political complacency & revolt fuel economic booms & bust. Amid growing tensions over inequality, ` Good Billionaires, Bad Billionaires` demonstrates how billionaire lists yield clues to which economies are most or least threatened by extreme wealth. In a period when the world is struggling with trillions of dollars in new debt, the ` Kiss of Debt` explains which nations are most likely to avert this threat or buckle under it. Together, the ten rules are instructive for anyone who wants to know which nations are most likely to rise or fall in our own time. The final chapter takes the reader on a surprising world tour of the likely winners & losers in the near future. Enlivened by Sharma`s encounters with presidents, tycoons, & villagers from Rio to Beijing, this book is a pioneering field guide to understanding our impermanent world. ...

From the acclaimed author of Britain`s War Machine & The Shock of the Old, a bold reassessment of Britain`s twentieth century. It is usual to see the United Kingdom as an island of continuity in an otherwise convulsed & unstable Europe; its political history a smooth sequence of administrations, from building a welfare state to coping with decline. Nobody would dream of writing the history of Germany, say, or the Soviet Union in this way. David Edgerton`s major new history breaks out of the confines of traditional British national history to redefine what it was to British, & to reveal an unfamiliar place, subject to huge disruptions. This was not simply because of the world wars & global economic transformations, but in its very nature. Until the 1940s the United Kingdom was, Edgerton argues, an exceptional place: liberal, capitalist & anti-nationalist, at the heart of a European & global web of trade & influence. Then, as its global position collapsed, it became, for the first time & only briefly, a real, successful nation, with shared goals, horizons & industry, before reinventing itself again in the 1970s as part of the European Union & as the host for international capital, no longer capable of being a nation. Packed with surprising examples & arguments, The Rise & Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history which takes business & warfare seriously, & which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country & its future. ...

66 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today, Dr. Steve Brusatte, one of the leading scientists of a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs ruled the earth for 150 million years. The world of the dinosaurs has fascinated on book & screen for decades
- from early science fiction classics like The Lost World, to Godzilla terrorizing the streets of Tokyo, & the monsters of Jurassic Park. But what if we got it wrong? In The Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs, top dinosaur expert Brusatte, tells the real story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet. Using the fossil clues that have been gathered using state of the art technology, Brusatte follows these magnificent creatures from their beginnings in the Early Triassic period, through the Jurassic period to their final days in the Cretaceous & the legacy that they left behind. Along the way, Brusatte introduces us to modern day dinosaur hunters & gives an insight into what it`s like to be a paleontologist. The Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs is full of thrilling accounts of some of his personal discoveries, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex, & feathered raptor dinosaurs preserved in lava from China. At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200, 000 years & we are already talking about planetary extinction, The Rise & Fall of the Dinosaurs is a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures who ruled the earth before us.
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