Uproariously funny & staggeringly innovative travelogue of one man & his car, from London via St Tropez & Florence to Sicily, starting on a day when modern European civilisation seemed doomed. Having sworn off his drug-taking. Duncan Fallowell sets off on the day it is announced that disaster beckons for Western Europe. Peering eagerly through his sunglasses & with a wickedly accurate ear for the idiosyncrasies of the people he meets, he writes it all down before it is too late: from Banana man in Florence, his encounter with Mick Jagger in Paris to a ghastly revelation by a black lake in Sicily, pressing just about any other cultural & erotic button in between. ...

Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read ten of them before going to bed. This is the story of how they shaped his presidency. Together they reveal the diary of a nation. In To Obama, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews President Obama, the letter-writers themselves & the White House staff in the Office of Presidential Correspondence who were witness to the millions of pleas, rants, thank-yous & apologies that landed in the mailroom during the Obama years. There is Peggy, a patriotic grandmother who thinks the President is trying to lead the country into socialism & recommends that he read the Constitution; Bill, a lifelong Republican whose attitude towards immigration reform was transformed when he met a boy who escaped MS-13 gang leaders in El Salvador; Jordan, a seven-year-old about to be adopted, who wants to thank the President for keeping him safe; James, who on the morning after the 2016 election tells the President to start packing; & Dawn, who writes to say that he made it possible for a very jaded generation to begin to hope & believe in the good. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude & desperation, in their darkest times of need, with anger, fear & respect. To Obama is an intimate look at one man`s relationship with the American people, & at a time when empathy intersected with politics in the White House. ...

A brand new collection of remarkable travel tales from ` Silver Travellers`. Dervla Murphy travelling in Havana at the age of 74, Matthew Parris swimming the Thames at 60, & Colin Thubron climbing the last stronghold of the Assassins in his 60s are among the writers recounting their adventures, often defying expectations
- & the odds
- & going outside their comfort zone to take a less-travelled path in later life. Published with participation from the Silver Travel Advisor, this single volume brings together contributions
- some original, some previously published
- from independent-minded souls whose experiences have been entertaining, amusing, thrilling, & even a little irresponsible. Other contributors include Roger Bray, ` Green Goddess` Diana Moran & Hilary Bradt.



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Peter Fleming, brother of ” James Bond” author Ian Fleming, was one of the greatest adventurers & travel writers of the 20th century & author of several classic & bestselling books. This is the first paperback edition. It presents an exciting adventure that could never be made today
- it will appeal to all interested in the region. When in 1934 at the age of twenty-seven, Peter Fleming set out for the Far East, his ultimate goal was to return from China to India overland
- a journey he later described in the classic ” News from Tartary”. On his outward journey Fleming travelled through regions which remain some of the most remote & least-visited in Asia & which, soon after his journey, became closed entirely to westerners. From Moscow, through the Caucasus to the Caspian, on to Samarkand & Tashkent, skirting the edge of Outer Mongolia to Vladivostok & winding his way down to Peking, Fleming tells of people encountered, places explored & of ways of life that have since been lost through revolution, war & the passage of time. Along the way he kept a diary that he never intended to publish & that lay forgotten `in the box-room` of his mind for fifteen years.” To Peking” is an unassuming classic of travel literature. Subtle yet sparkling with intelligence & humour, simple yet beautifully told, it illuminates a world that travellers
- armchair or otherwise
- can only dream of today.



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One day in November 1994, Lawrence Levy received a phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs, whom he`d never met, offering him a job running Pixar, a little-known company that had already lost Jobs $50 million. With Pixar`s prospects looking bleak, it was with some trepidation that Levy accepted the position. After a few weeks he discovered that the situation was even worse than he`d imagined. Pixar`s advertising division just about broke even, its graphics software had few customers, its short films didn`t make any money &, on top of all that, Jobs was pushing to take the company public. Everything was riding on the studio`s first feature film, codenamed Toy Story, & even then it would have to be one of the most successful animated features of all time... Full of wisdom on bringing business & creativity together, & recounting the touching story of Levy`s enduring friendship with Jobs, To Pixar & Beyond is a fascinating insider`s account of one of Hollywood`s greatest success stories. ...

One night in 1974, a young Frenchman secretly
- & illegally
- rigged a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade

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Reading a story to another person creates a bond between two people. It is often assumed that reading aloud is only for children, but the practice was once a common pleasure for adults too. The time has come to rediscover it. This simple yet powerful action connects us with our friends, helps us centre ourselves in the present & lets us focus gently on what matters. To Read Aloud consists of 75 extracts of an average 1000 words each, from writers ranging from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Robert Macfarlane (alongside less familiar names). It is arranged under ten thematic chapters: Love, Loss, Lightness, Pleasure, Work, Nature, Change, Chaos, Wonder, & Coda: Delicacies for Discussion. A literary toolbox for well-being, To Read Aloud invites you to to take just ten minutes off, sit down with somebody you care about & share a passage of writing. ...

This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. ” The Catch-22 of dentistry”. (Stephen King). Joshua Ferris` dazzling new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is about the meaning of life, the certainty of death, & the importance of good oral hygiene. There`s nothing like a dental chair to remind a man that he`s alone in the world`. Paul O` Rourke
- dentist extraordinaire, reluctant New Yorker, avowed atheist, disaffected Red Sox fan, & a connoisseur of the afternoon mochaccino
- is a man out of touch with modern life. While his dental practice occupies his days, his nights are filled with darker thoughts, as he alternately marvels at & rails against the optimism of the rest of humanity. So it goes, until someone begins to impersonate Paul online. What began as an outrageous violation of privacy soon becomes something far more soul-frightening: the possibility that the virtual ` Paul` might be a better version of the man in the flesh...” Frenetic, very funny, it confirms Ferris as a rising star of American fiction”. (Mail on Sunday). ” Glorious...A very, very funny novel”. (BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review). ” Dismayingly funny in the way that only really serious books can be”. (Guardian). Joshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of Then We Came to the End (2007), which was nominated for the National Book Award & longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, & The Unnamed. In 2010 he was selected for the New Yorker`s prestigious `20 under 40` list. To Rise Again At A Decent Hour has been shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize 2014 & the Dylan Thomas Prize 2014. He lives in upstate New York.

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Aged eighteen, Tessa Dunlop went to post-Revolutionary Romania to work in an orphanage
- to do something remarkable to help her
...

This is the story of an institution in which courage in battle & bravery in death were a byword, from Nelson's death at Trafalgar to Commander Robert Scott's death in the icy wastes of Antarctica. It is also the story of a military force very different from any other, with a cast of individual personalities, from Sir Frances Drake & Captain James Cook to Charles Darwin & Sir Winston Churchill. But above all, the Royal Navy is part of the story of how one nation rose to global dominance without precedent & without equal, even today. But it also facilitated trade & communication with every other part of the planet. Thanks to its navy, the British Empire became the first truly global community, bound together by law, language, & commerce
- & by the 'hearts of oak' of British ships & sailors. It created the first balance of power in Europe & helped to free the Continent from a succession of dictators, from Philip II of Spain & Louis XIV of France to Napoleon & Hitler. It ended the African slave trade, opened the Pacific Rim to international commerce, & established the bonds that hold together today's world.
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