A compelling & beautifully written memoir about dark & shameful family secrets, & one young Scottish woman`s pilgrimage to Australia to attempt to lay the past to rest. In 1837 Angus Mc Millan left the Scottish Highlands for the other side of the world. Cutting paths through the alien harshness of the Australian frontier, Mc Millan became a pioneer to be forever mythologised in the statues & landmarks that bore his name. He was also Cal Flyn`s great-great-great-uncle. Inspired by this glimmer of an ancestral greatness, Flyn followed in his footsteps to Australia, where her investigations forced her to confront dark & horrifying family secrets. She discovered that Mc Millan & his peers were responsible for a series of assaults on indigenous peoples so ferocious that the sites would ever after be synonymous with bloodshed: Skull Creek, Boney Point, Slaughterhouse Gully. Mc Millan too had a new name: the Butcher of Gippsl&. Driven to piece together his story & confront her own history, Flyn looks for answers: How could a man lauded for his generosity & integrity commit such terrible acts? How could a man who had witnessed the horror of Highlanders cleared from their lands then massacre & `clear` indigenous people on the other side of the world? How can whole societies come to be overlooked & forgotten? Should today`s generation atone for their ancestors` sins? Blending memoir, history & travel, ` Thicker Than Water` evokes the startlingly beautiful wilderness of the Highlands, the desolate bush of Victoria & the reverberations on one from the other. A tale of blood & bloodlines, it is a powerful, personal journey into dark family history, intergenerational grief & the inherited guilt that we all carry with us. ...

Cal Flyn was very proud when she discovered that her ancestor, Angus Mc Millan, had been a pioneer of colonial Australia. However, when she dug deeper, she began to question her pride. Mc Millan had not only cut tracks through the bush, but played a dark role in Australia`s bloody history. Angus Mc Millan had left the stark, windswept landscape of the Highlands in the 1830s blighted by the Clearances for the alien harshness of the Australian frontier & had since been mythologised as a great explorer. This tug of personal history & a glimmer of an ancestor`s greatness convinced Cal Flyn to investigate her great-great-great uncle`s story fully. So when she uncovered the tough Highlander`s involvement leading several horrific massacres of Aboriginal people, she realised that her family had played an iconic role in a most shameful chapter of Australia`s bloody history. Indeed, Angus Mc Millan was known by another name: ` The Butcher of Gippsland`. Driven to piece together his story & to confront her history, Cal decided to follow Angus`s route from Skye to rural Australia.` Thicker Than Water` evokes the startlingly beautiful wilderness of the Highlands, the seemingly empty bush of Victoria & the echoes & reverberations on one from the other. The expulsion & brutality that marked the Highland Clearances were re-enacted in Australia, & Flyn`s stunning prose prompts contemplation on the nature of the destruction of ways of life & the way in which one culture lays claim & asserts its weight over another. Delving into a dark period in Australian history with a novel`s immediate style, this book asks how whole societies can come to be overlooked, forgotten & shamed. ...

Topographic survey of France at 1:25, 000 in IGN`s excellent TOP25 / Série Bleue series. All the maps are GPS compatible, with a 1km UTM grid plus latitude & longitude lines at 5’ intervals. Contours are at 5m intervals except for mountainous areas where the maps have contours at 10m intervals, vividly enhanced by hill shading & graphics for rocky terrain. Colouring with graphics indicates different types of vegetation or land use (deciduous or coniferous forests, moors, orchards, vineyards, etc). PLEASE NOTE: coverage of France at this scale is currently being revised – the format & the presentation of each title are indicated by the letters at the end of its Sheet Reference number (e.g. 0416ET, 3531ETR, 1923SB, etc.)MAPS WITH FULL TOURIST OVERPRINT & AN ENGLISH MAP LEGEND: all TOP25 maps & the SB editions of Série Bleue have an overprint highlighting waymarked walking trails including long-distance GR routes &, where appropriate, ski routes. Symbols indicate campsites, gîtes d’etape, refuges, equestrian centres & other recreational facilities or sites, tourist information centres, cultural heritage, etc. Towns & locations of particular interest are highlighted.- ET or OT = single-sided TOP25 map covering approx. 29x 21 km / 18x 13 miles.- ETR or OTR = waterproof & tear resistant TOP25 map covering the same area as the corresponding ET or OT number, but double-sided, printed on a smaller size sheet with a good overlap between the sides.- SB = Série Bleue map with full tourist overprint; these maps, first introduced in summer 2014, each cover approx. 29x 24km / 18x 15 miles.SÉRIE BLEUE maps with numbers ending in E (Est) or O (Ouest): most editions now indicate the GR routes, but do not show any other tourist information. Map legend is in French only. Each map covers approx. 14x 20km / 9x 12 miles. ...

The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq & Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in northern Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage & insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes-ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth & examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), & Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity & the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity. The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke & Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. & it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause-not a result-of global instability. ...

Above an eerie realm of endless snow covered spires... Each step appears increasingly impossible. Disorientation & fatigue make the climber's head swim & the body threaten to collapse. For Greg Child it happened at 8, 000 meters on an all-out alpine-style climb marked by tragic loss.

In this spellbinding chronicle, Greg Child takes us step by nerve-shattering step through the world's most remote regions
- as he cracks the death zone above 26, 000 feet, & attacks by fair means the world's most perilous pinnacles. From Child's assault on Gasherbrum IV to a season of tragedy & carnage on K2, Thin Air is more than one man's story
- it is an intimate portrait of mountains & those who climb them: what bonds clients together & what separates them, & what the mountains teach us all about life -- & death...

...

You come across the shell of a ruined house. It could be anywhere in southern Europe where people once lived & then moved away because there was no work to hold them there. You might find things scattered in the empty rooms: a bread oven, a broken spade, earthenware jars that still hold the pungent scent of olive oil; even clothes left hanging in a cupboard, a silent clock on a shelf, a picture cut from a newspaper pinned on a wall. The house is remote, but it is surrounded by a tracery of thin paths. One path goes steeply down to a village; others zigzag their way to scattered huts & stone shelters, to caves where you could hide in times of danger & to unexpected lookout points from where you could watch the approach of animals or human intruders. Julia Blackburn & her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger speaking no Italian, but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village. They began to tell her stories that made the landscape come alive, repopulating it with their vivid memories. Until quite recently most of them had been mezzadri, half-people who were trapped in an archaic feudal system & owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had
- even a pretty wife or daughter. They were eager to talk about the old way of life & about how everything changed with the eruption of the Second World War. This village was at the heart of the conflict between the fascists & the partisans, so they learnt a lot about death & fear & hunger & how men & women could hide like foxes in the mountains. ` Write it down for us, ` they said, `because otherwise it will all be lost.` Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places; it is also a celebration of the humour & determination of the human spirit.
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In 1997 Andy Cave climbed the north face of Changabang in the Himalayas & attained something most climbers dream of but at a huge cost: the harrowing process claimed the life of his friend & climbing partner. This trauma prompted him to examine his relationship with the mountains & confront the question of whether he would ever have the courage to face such a challenge on them again. Thin White Line tracks Cave as he tackles some of the severest challenges that modern Alpinism holds in an attempt to steel his resolve & find his answers. ...

Thin White Line is the sequel to Learning to Breathe, Andy Cave's bestselling debut & winner of both the prestigious Boardman Tasker Prize & the Adventure Travel Award at the Banff International Festival. In 1997, Andy Cave returned from the Himalayas, having climbed the stupendous north face of Changabang but losing his friend & climbing partner in the process. Traumatized by the savage ordeal, he must examine his relationship with the mountains that have defined his life so far. Will he have the courage to undertake such a challenge again? Does he want to? Thin White Line charts his struggle towards finding an answer. It is as much a journey into the mind of an extreme mountaineer as it is into the wild landscapes through which he travels. In a nail-biting narrative set in Patagonia, Norway & Alaska, Cave tackles the severest challenges modern Alpinism can pose. Juxtaposed with the stark beauty of the environment are the colourful characters populating his stories, from the adventurers around him, past & present, to the pioneer aviators who get him & his kind to those impossibly remote places. He vividly recreates the joy & despair of climbing, building the book to a desperate finale that lays bare the fragility of our carefully constructed convictions. ...

From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If?
- the man who created xkcd & explained the laws of science with cartoons
- comes

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From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If?
- the man who created xkcd & explained the laws of science with cartoons
- comes

...