In this ground-breaking & entertaining exploration of athletic success, award-winning writer David Epstein gets to the heart of the great nature vs. nurture debate, & explodes myths about how & why humans excel. Along the way, Epstein exposes the flaws in the so-called 10, 000-hour rule that states that rigorous practice from a young age is the only route to success. He shows why some skills that we imagine are innate are not
- like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball player
- & why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like the motivation to practice, might in fact have important genetic components. Throughout, The Sports Gene forces us to rethink the very nature of success.

...

TAKE A TRIP back in time more than 2, 500 years to the first ever Olympic Games
- then journey through hundreds of the most extraordinary
...

For home cooks, Stephen Harris, the chef at the UK`s 1 restaurant, The Sportsman, shares the age-old & modern techniques to perfect 50 British classics. From all appearances, The Sportsman, in Whitstable, Kent, is a standard English seaside pub. Following years of hard work, Stephen Harris has transformed this bucolic locale into an internationally acclaimed restaurant serving innovative regional cuisine that has earned it the top spot in Britain
- & a cult following around the world. The simple, stylish recipes in Harris`s debut cookbook epitomize all that`s great about British cooking, & showcase his pared-back style, while his personal writings & memorabilia provide rare insight into an extraordinary life.
...

Frank Bascombe has a younger girlfriend & a job as a sportswriter. To many men of his age, thirty-eight, this would be a cause for optimism, yet Frank feels the pull of his inner despair & especially of his recent losses
- his preferred career has ended, his wife has divorced him, & a tragic accident took his elder son. In the course of this Easter weekend, Frank will lose all the remnants of his familiar life, though he will emerge heroic with spirits soaring. This is a magnificent novel that propelled Richard Ford into the first rank of American writers.
...

The Spring Classics delves deeply into the rich stories of these great events with insightful text from L’Équipe’s top writers & hundreds of rare & newly restored photographs. With an encyclopedic embrace, The Spring Classics also celebrates the essential one-day races that round out the cycling year. These one-day races evoke spectacular superhuman efforts as riders devote body & soul to earn a place in cycling’s most glorious & meaningful history. One day at a time, The Spring Classics enshrines the races that reveal the soul of the sport: Liège-Bastogne-Liège: The Doyenne La Flèche Wallone: The Arrow Paris-Roubaix: The Hell of the North Tour of Flanders: The Diabolical Ronde Het Volk Ghent-Wevelgem Milan-San Remo: The Classicissima Amstel Gold Race Plus: Grand Prix of Frankfurt Clásica San Sebastián Championship of Zurich Bordeaux-Paris: The Derby of the Road Paris-Brussels Paris-Tours Tour of Lombardy: The Race of the Falling Leaves ...

`THE BEST TRUE SPY STORY I HAVE EVER READ` JOHN LE CARRE A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain`s greatest historians On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit & tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket. The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest & most extraordinary episodes in the history of espionage. In The Spy & the Traitor Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of betrayal, duplicity & raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever. ...

Beautiful 50th Anniversary special edition featuring archival material & with a special cover design Alec Leamas is tired. It`s the 1960s, he`s been out in the cold for years, spying in Berlin for his British masters, & has seen too many good agents murdered for their troubles. Now Control wants to bring him in at last
- but only after one final assignment. He must travel deep into the heart of Communist Germany & betray his country, a job that he will do with his usual cynical professionalism. But when George Smiley tries to help a young woman Leamas has befriended, Leamas` mission may prove to be the worst thing he could ever have done. In le Carre`s breakthrough work of 1963, the spy story is reborn as a gritty & terrible tale of men who are caught up in politics beyond their imagining. This 50th anniversary special edition features a wealth of original archival material, much of it from le Carre`s own files, & from the making of the original 1965 film adaptation. ” Superbly constructed, with an atmosphere of chilly hell”. (J.B. Priestley). ” The best spy story I have ever read”. (Graham Greene). ” The master storyteller.. .has lost none of his cunning”. (A. N. Wilson).”I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over & over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be”. (Malcolm Gladwell). ” One of those very rare novels that changes the way you look at the world. Unflinching, highly sophisticated, superb”. (William Boyd). John le Carre was born in 1931 & attended the universities of Bern & Oxford. He taught at Eton & served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For the last 50 years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London & Cornwall.
...

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Bleriot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin`s most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa & into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education. Recognising Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America`s vital secrets to help close the USSR`s yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms & laboratories of MIT
- Shumovsky`s destination soon became the unwitting finishing school for elite Russian spies. The USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to confront & defeat Nazi Germany. Then in an extraordinary feat that astonished the West, in 1947 American ingenuity & innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build & unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world. Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin`s fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his comm&. Appropriately codenamed BLERIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky`s espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every US aviation secret from his network of agents in factories & at top secret military research institutes. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin`s most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky`s life & character using information derived from American & Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple & Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes.
...

Few can say they`ve seen some of the most significant moments of the twentieth century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them. Born in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she travelled to Cuba where she met & fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate the Fidel. Torn by love & loyalty, she failed to slip him the lethal pills. Her life would take many more twists & turns
- including having a child with ex-dictator of Venezuela, Marcos Perez Jimenez; testifying about the John G Kennedy assassination; & becoming a party girl for the New York Mafia, as well as a police informant. Caught up in Cold War intrigue, espionage & conspiracy
- this is Marita`s incredible true story of a young girl, turned spy.

...

Izzy is really pleased to have been put in charge of the new girl at school. Matilde is French, & Izzy & her friends can`t wait to show her their den & its moth, & to help her avoid school dinners (also known as poison). But Matilde LOVES school dinners & even has seconds! & that`s when they know. Matilde is a spy & she has come to find out their secrets. They must stop her before it`s TOO LATE!!! ...