The British surrealist painter & writer Ithell Colquhoun recalls episodes from her travels in Ireland as a young woman turning her back on the modern world & setting out across the unruly Irish countryside. Here, among the holy wells, monasteries & tumuli, she finds a canvas on which her sensibility & animist beliefs can freely express themselves. Her style is beguiling, her voice sincere, & through her unique perceptions we discover a land that is fiercely alive & compelling. It is a place where the wind cries, the stones tell old tales & the mountains watch over the roads & those who travel on them. By intuiting the eerie magic of Irel&, Colquhoun casts her own spell. She offers up a land of myth & legend, stripped of its modern signs, at the same time offering herself to the reader in this portrait of the artist as a young woman. ...

On 20 August 1980 Reinhold Messner reached the summit of Everest
- alone & without the use of oxygen. This is an account of his
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The Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park to house the treasures of the world for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It became a microcosm of Victorian life, industry & leisure, reflecting every aspect of its age. Designed by Joseph Paxton as a temporary structure its success meant that when it closed it was moved to Sydenham & rebuilt. ”...widely regarded as the most authoritative book written about the history of the famous glass Crystal Palace.. .” Kentish Times ...

For students, travellers, & all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, “ The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics” is an invaluable introduction to this marvellous & controversial country. Cuba is often perceived in starkly black & white terms
- either as the site of one of Latin America’s most successful revolutions or as the bastion of the world’s last communist regime. “ The Cuba Reader” multiplies perspectives on the nation many times over, presenting more than one hundred selections about Cuba’s history, culture, & politics. Beginning with the first written account of the isl&, penned by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the selections assembled here track Cuban history from the colonial period through the ascendancy of Fidel Castro to the present.“ The Cuba Reader”, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr & Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, combines songs, paintings, photographs, poems, short stories, speeches, cartoons, government reports & proclamations, & pieces by historians, journalists, & others. Most of these are by Cubans, & many appear for the first time in English. The writings & speeches of José Martí, Fernando Ortiz, Fidel Castro, Alejo Carpentier, Che Guevera, & Reinaldo Arenas appear alongside the testimonies of slaves, prostitutes, doctors, travelers, & activists. Some selections examine health, education, Catholicism, & santería; others celebrate Cuba’s vibrant dance, music, film, & literary cultures. The pieces are grouped into chronological sections. Each section & individual selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editors. The volume presents a number of pieces about twentieth-century Cuba, including the events leading up to & following Castro’s January 1959 announcement of revolution. It provides a look at Cuba in relation to the rest of the world: the effect of its revolution on Latin America & the Caribbean, its alliance with the Soviet Union from the 1960s until the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, & its tumultuous relationship with the United States. “ The Cuba Reader” also describes life in the periodo especial following the cut-off of Soviet aid & the tightening of the U.S. embargo. It is a highly readable book; do not be put off by the sheer size of it.“ What a beautiful journey through five hundred years of Cuban history, culture, & politics! The Cuba Reader is a sumptuous medley of poetry, song, speeches, interviews, & vignettes from novels new & old. You’ll hear the voices of santeros & sugar workers, prostitutes & politicos, revolutionaries & reporters, dissidents & dancers. It’s the next best thing to being in Cuba, so sit back with a mojito & enjoy the masterfully guided tour.” _ Medea Benjamin_, activist & cofounder of _ Global Exchange_” The Cuba Reader offers a splendid overview of the Cuban experience, past & present, through a dazzling array of points of view. The voices of participants & observers & perspectives on the extraordinary & the commonplace
- with imagery conveyed by way of photography & poetry, through the lyric of music & the nuance of the novel
- make for a compelling collection of material. The very fullness of its vision makes [this book] an indispensable book for courses
- of every academic discipline
- on Cuba.”, _ Louis A. Pérez, Jr._, author of “ On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, & Culture”




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` Nelson De Mille is a true master` Dan Brown Strap in for the ride of a lifetime with the blistering new novel from America`s greatest living thriller writer, Nelson De Mille. Daniel ` Mac` Mac Cormick has a good life. Aged thirty-five & a decorated US Army veteran, he whiles away his life in stunning Key West, Florida, running a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat The Maine. A ladies` man & rule-breaker, Mac has it all
- apart from the money to hold on to his beloved boat. Then Mac is approached by a hotshot Miami lawyer called Carlos with an apparently irresistable offer: a fee of $2 million to run the boat into Havana & smuggle out $60 million from a stash hidden from the Castro government
- cash once owned by the family of a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega. With the political ` Cuban Thaw` underway, it`s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash. But Mac knows if he accepts this job, he`ll walk away rich...or not at all. Punchy, witty & rammed with action, legendary international 1 bestseller Nelson De Mille once more shows he`s a true master of the genre.

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When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, & calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. Strike is a war veteran
- wounded both physically & psychologically
- & his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get
- & the closer he gets to terrible danger.. .A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London
- from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho
- The Cuckoo's Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is a classic crime novel in the tradition of P. D. James & Ruth Rendell, & marks the beginning of a unique series of mysteries.




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When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, & calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. Strike is a war veteran
- wounded both physically & psychologically
- & his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model`s complex world, the darker things get
- & the closer he gets to terrible danger.. .A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London
- from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho
- The Cuckoo`s Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.




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Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, & calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. Strike is a war veteran
- wounded both physically & psychologically
- & his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model`s complex world, the darker things get
- & the closer he gets to terrible danger... A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London
- from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho
- The Cuckoo`s Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.




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So Just who is the Fixie rider? It`s the buzz question that a lot of people want to know right now. If we`re to believe some, then the Fixie rider is a horribly spoilt late twenty something male of affluent background. He`s never been required to grow up & spends all of his pocket money on cool toys & fads in a never ending effort to be trendy. Cynics would say that the Fixie rider is a myth in the process of being invented by those people who want to sell stuff to rich kids; ie the brands. Through contemporary observation & the collaboration of those on the inside from Taiwan to New York, Brick Lane to Tokyo, 42x 12 gives a unique insight into whats going on at ground level. ...

Acclaimed by the Daily Mail as `definitive & harrowing`, this is the final volume of ` The People`s Trilogy`, begun by the Samuel Johnson prize-winning Mao`s Great Famine. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 & 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation & eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalist elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. But the Chairman also used the Cultural Revolution to turn on his colleagues, some of them longstanding comrades-in-arms, subjecting them to public humiliation, imprisonment & torture. Young students formed Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semi-automatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. When the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the marked & hollow out the party`s ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. In-depth interviews & archival research at last give voice to the people & the complex choices they faced, undermining the picture of conformity that is often understood to have characterised the last years of Mao`s regime. By demonstrating that decollectivisation from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges & entrenched fear, Frank Dikotter casts China`s most tumultuous era in a wholly new light. Written with unprecedented access to previously classified party documents from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, this third chapter in Frank Dikotter`s extraordinarily lucid & ground-breaking ` People`s Trilogy` is a devastating reassessment of the history of the People`s Republic of China. ...