The Czech Reader brings together more than 150 primary texts & illustrations to convey the dramatic history of the Czechs, from the emergence of the Czech state in the tenth century, through the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 & the Czech Republic in 1993, into the twenty-first century. The Slav-speaking Czechs have lived for more than a millennium surrounded on three sides by German-speaking people. The Czechs have preserved their language, traditions, & customs, despite their incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Third Reich, & the Eastern Bloc. Organized chronologically, the selections in The Czech Reader include the letter to the Czech people written by the religious reformer & national hero Jan Hus in 1415, & Charter 77, the founding document of an influential anticommunist initiative launched in 1977 in reaction to the arrest of the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock b&. There is a speech given in 1941 by Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi official & Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia & Moravia, as well as one written by Vaclav Havel in 1984 for an occasion abroad, but read by the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard, since Havel, the dissident playwright & future national leader, was not allowed to leave Czechoslovakia. Among the songs, poems, folklore, fiction, plays, paintings, & photographs of monuments & architectural landmarks are ” Let Us Rejoice, ” the most famous chorus from Bedrich Smetana`s comic opera The Bartered Bride; a letter the composer Antonin Dvorak sent from New York, where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in the 1890s; a story by Franz Kafka; & an excerpt from Milan Kundera`s The Joke. Intended for travellers, students, & scholars alike, The Czech Reader is a rich introduction to the turbulent history & resilient culture of the Czech people. ...

The Czechs, in the Xenophobe guide series; consisting of a range of pocket-sized guides which take a humorous & irreverent approach to a wide range of world cultures. Each guide explores the characteristics of a country’s people in a series of dedicated sections, encompassing nationalism & identity, behaviour, manners, character, obsessions, beliefs & values, leisure & pleasure, culture, custom & tradition, business, systems, health & hygiene, crime & punishment, government & bureaucracy, conversation & gestures & language. Written in a wholly irreverent style, Xenophobes guides attempt to forewarn readers of the main stereotypes & foibles that are associated with individual nationalities. ...

This powerful study chronicles the evolution of the invasion plan & culminates in a day-by-day account of the landings by sea & by air on the Normandy beaches, followed by the grim six-week struggle to break through the German defences. An important feature is the space devoted to the German point of view, based on the latest archival research, & the organization of the French Resistance in northern & western France. At the heart of the book are 71 maps in full colour, many drawing in detail on those used by the Allies in 1944. Specially commissioned reconstruction drawings & contemporary photographs help bring the beaches & bocage of Normandy to life. ...

June 6, 1944. The Allies land in Normandy. Recalling first the build-up to D-Day, this guide goes on to describe the German defenses confronting the assault forces. Then, sector by sector, it gives a lively account of operations on each of the beaches. Each time the units & soldier involved are presented, along with the action taking them to their objectives of the day. This will enable visitors to locate & see all the major D-Day sights with the help of this accurate & lively text backed up with numerous maps & sketches, & present day photographs matched up with some of those taken by war correspondents. ...

Now entering its seventeenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa`s leading literary prize, & is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere. This collection brings together the five 2016 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the Caine Prize Writers` Workshop, taking place April 2016. ...

A man, a bike & the open road. What could be simpler? Certainly not the Tour de France, the annual travelling circus which for more than a century has been the ultimate test of sporting endurance. There's been pain. There's been joy. There's been death. There's been derring-do of mythic proportions. There's been cheating. There've been drugs. There've always been drugs. & there's always been the Daily Telegraph. On the peaks of Mont Ventoux, Alpe D' Huez & Col du Galibier, in amongst the picnicking, partying crowds, whizzing through London in 2007's wondrous opening stage, dropping in & out of the peloton, the Telegraph has been there for every turn of the wheel. The book features eyewitness accounts of cycling greats Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain & Lance Armstrong, along with details of the contest's darker side
- including the 1967 death of Tom Simpson & the stain of doping. Boasting contemporary, firsthand reports from leading cycling correspondents including J.B Wadley, David Saunders & Phil Liggett, this book captures the full drama of the tour. Chris Boardman & David Millar provide views from the saddle; James Cracknell swaps his boat for a bike on a pre-race reconnaissance mission; Paul Hayward catalogues the 1998 ' Tour of Shame'; while Brendan Gallagher eulogises the colossi who bestrode the race, & searches for their modern-day successors. Together, they chronicle the greatest show on two wheels. Martin Smith was formerly assistant sports editor & sports writer at the Daily Telegraph, where he worked for more than twenty years. An enthusiastic cyclist in his youth, he graduated to the less arduous four wheels as soon as he was able.
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Dal is to India what pasta is to Italy. Cheap to produce, highly nutritional, suitable for long storage & capable of being cooked in a basic pot on an open fire, dal has been providing nourishment to millions of Indians for millennia. It truly is a pan-Indian dish consumed by rich & poor alike. It is high protein & has practically no sugar
- in fact it is known as `poor man`s meat` in India
- hence doctors now include this as an essential item in a diet for diabetics. Dal is a genuinely impressive dish of infinite variety
- there are at least 50 recipes for this humble food. There are multiple ways of cooking it, wide-ranging seasonings are used & there are diverse supplements to serve with it. Over the centuries Indian cooks became innovative & with locally available ingredients they dished out dal to satisfy a regional palate. In the process they also invented new dishes using dal lentils such as kedgeree (khichari
- a risotto made with lentil), dosas (pancakes mixed with lentil flower), vadas (lentil cakes), dhokla (baked lentil cakes), papadam (dried lentil snack) & pakoras (fritters dipped in lentil batter).



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A special edition of The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill reissued with a bright retro design to celebrate Pan`s 70th anniversary. On 17 May 1943, nearly 350 million tons of water crashed into the valleys of the Ruhr when the Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron breached the giant Moehne & Eder Dams with colossal `blockbuster` bombs. The Dam Busters tells the story of the raid & the squadron of fearless airmen who carried it through. Again & again, the crews of 617 Squadron Bomber Command used their flying skills, their tremendous courage & Barnes Wallis` highly accurate bouncing bombs to deal devastating blows to Nazi Germany. One of the most daring true stories to emerge from the Second World War, Paul Brickhill`s The Dam Busters inspired the famous 1955 film starring Michael Redgrave & Richard Todd. ...

Think about the most wretched day of your life. Maybe it was when someone you loved died, or when you were badly hurt in an accident, or a day when you were so terrified you could scarcely bear it. No imagine 4, 000 of those days in one big chunk. In 1978, Warren Fellows was convicted in Thailand of heroin trafficking & was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Damage Done is his story of an unthinkable nightmare in a place where sewer rats & cockroaches are the only nutritious food, & where the worst punishment is the khun deo
- solitary confinement, Thai style. Fellows was certainly guilty of his crime, but he endured & survived human-rights abuses beyond imagination. This is not his plea for forgiveness, nor his denial of guilt; it is the story of an ordeal that no one would wish on their worst enemy. It is an essential read: heartbreaking, fascinating & impossible to put down.
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The earliest & most influential expeditions of the man now considered to be the greatest living explorer. The Danakil Diary is the account of two journeys Thesiger made into the Danakil country in Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, in 1930-34 at the age of 24
- which, today, he still regards as the most dangerous he undertook. It was an extraordinary journey & a remarkable achievement. Thesiger succeeded in penetrating country that had wiped out two Italian expeditions & an Egyptian army before him, discovered what happened to the Awash River (one of the area`s last geographical mysteries to be solved) & managed to survive amongst the Danakil tribesmen, to whom a man`s status depended on the number of men he had killed & castrated. Besides giving early proof of Thesiger`s descriptive genius
- with his portrayal of the beautiful, savage landscapes, & their varied wildlife
- The Danakil Diary reveals youthful evidence of his fierce motivation & uncompromising will, which are familiar hallmarks of his sixty years of travel among primitive peoples in some of the harshest & remotest areas of the world.


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