Today astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making face transplants limb transplants & a host of other previously undreamed of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of selfless men working tirelessly in the pursuit of medical advancement. Instead its a bloodstained tale of blunders arrogance mishap & murder. In trying to keep us alive surgeons have all too often killed us off & life-saving solutions have often come from the most surprising places. Accompanying a BBC series Blood & Guts is an incredible story of stolen corpses medical fraud lobotomized patients
- & every now & then courageous advances that have saved the lives of millions around the world. You may think twice before going under the knife...
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Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects. This brief witty & unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death. Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery doctors disease hospitals laboratories & the human body) in a way that is both frightening & elating. Startlingly illustrated A Short History of Medicine" is the ideal present for anyone who is keenly aware of their own mortality & wants to do something about it. It is also a wonderful memorial to one of Penguin's greatest historians." ...

When journalist Michael Wilde is commissioned to write a feature about a remote research station deep in the frozen beauty of Antarctica he is prepared for some extraordinary sights. But on a diving expedition in the polar sea he comes across something so extraordinary to be almost unbelievable
- a man & woman chained together deep in the ice. The doomed lovers are brought to the surface but as the ice begins to thaw the scientists discover the unusual contents of the bottles buried behind the pair & realise they are all in terrible danger...
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Assault Regiment Wotan the elite band of men whom Kuno von Dodenburg had led so often to victory had been mercilessly cut down in the forests of the Ardennes. Only Sergeant-Major Schulze remained to lead the battered war weary survivors of Hitlers famed SS through the secret pass over the snow-locked Vertes Mountains in the Fuhrers desperate plan to save Budapest from the Soviet armies. Every single one of them knew that it was the plan of a madman & every man knew that whatever the cost it had to succeed. ...

Summer 1816. A house party on the shores of Lake Geneva. Mary Shelley & her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley along with Mary's half-sister Claire & the infamous Lord Byron take part in a challenge to see who can write the most horrifying story. Mary creates one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time but how did this monstrous horror flow from the pen of a 21-year-old English woman? First staged in 1984 & revived several times since Liz Lochhead tells the story of Frankenstein's creation as if set in a ghostly nursery. Using flashbacks & the rich poetic language for which she has become admired Lochhead weaves a spider's web of connections between Mary's own tragic life & that of her literary monster. ...

A far-reaching history of terrorism across the world from its beginnings to the modern day from the highly acclaimed author of Sacred Causes & Earthly Powers. The paperback edition will be updated to cover recent events -- including the recent terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 & the continued military clash in Gaza in early 2009. Basing his study on a wide range of sources & key players from the world of terrorism Burleigh explains & defines the meaning of terrorism & marks its progression from its hard-to-trace beginnings to the modern day. Burleigh takes us from the origins of terrorism in the Irish Republican Brotherhood -- the precursors of the IRA -- on to look at Tsarist Russia where the intelligentsia launched attacks on organs of state & left-wing fighting against Fascism & Nazism in the 1970s & 1980s in western Germany & Italy. But such nationalist terrrorism has in turn been eclipsed by international jihadist violence largely driven by widespread resentment of the successful societes of the West. Burleigh explores the background & the milieu of people engaged in careers of political violence & examines their various mindsets as revealed by their actions rather than their words. He makes clear that the West has considerable resources to comprehend & combat terrorism & shows how history enables us to see how terrrorism can be effectively contained & countered -- if only by avoiding some of the major mistakes of the past. An unrivalled study that sheds an insightful new light on a plight that threatens to affect the world at large for many years to come Blood & Rage establishes Michael Burleigh as one of the most original learned & important historians of our time. ...

The War of the Roses turned England upside down. Between 1455 & 1485 four kings lost their thrones more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block & thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. Yet almost nothing is known about the thoughts & feelings of the people who lived through this bloody conflict. Almost nothing but not quite. As they made their way in a disintegrating world a Norfolk family called the Pastons were writing letters
- about politics about business about shopping about love & about each other. Using these letters the oldest surviving family correspondence in English Helen Castor traces the extraordinary history of the Paston family across three generations. Blood & Roses tells the dramatic moving & intensely human story of how one family survived one of the most tempestuous periods in English history.
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On 6 June 2004 Frank Gardner & cameraman Simon Cumbers were in a suburb of Riyadh filming a report on Al-Qaeda when they were confronted by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was brought down by shots in the shoulder & leg. As he lay bleeding in the street a figure stood over him & pumped four more bullets into him at point blank range... Against all the odds Frank Gardner survived & this is his remarkable account of the agonizing journey he has taken
- from being shot & left for dead to where he is today partly paralysed but alive. It is a journey that really began 25 years earlier when a chance meeting with explorer Wilfred Thesiger inspired what would become a lifelong passion for the Arab world. This would take him throughout the Middle East & eventually lead to his becoming a BBC journalist. & in the wake of the events of 9/11 this passion sent him on the journey that came to dominate
- & nearly end
- his life: his coverage of Al-Qaeda. Honest moving & inspiring his story
- now updated for this paperback edition
- reveals a deep understanding of the Islamic world & offers a compelling analysis of the on-going ' War on Terror' & what it means in these uncertain times.




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In this two-book sequence author James Swallow brings the Blood Angels Chapter to life. In an epic story of heroism corruption & betrayal battle-brothers Rafen & Arkio find themselves pitted against each other in a battle for the very soul of the Chapter. When Brother Arkio claims to be a reincarnation of Sanguinius the Blood Angels spiritual father the message is clear: follow me or die. Rafen kneels before Arkio & swears an oath of devotion
- but the words are ashes in his mouth & in his heart he knows that he & his brother will have a reckoning that only one of them will survive...
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The bets are on whodunnit when a body is found at the bookies.. . Jude has never been averse to a bit of a flutter; her friend Carole on the other hand thinks that the local betting shop is a den of iniquity. But when Jude stumbles upon the body of Polish immigrant Tadeusz Jankowski -- the race is on to find his killer. The odds arent looking good. No one seems to know anything about the mysterious Tadek -- even his sister cant shed any light on what he was doing in Fethering. Who was the anonymous woman in the bookies who seems to have vanished? Why was Tadek interested in the local university? & who is the Fifi Tadek spoke of with his dying breath? As they question the local residents Carol finds an unexpected friend in an inveterate gambler & Jude finds herself in potentially more trouble than she can handle with a lecherous & charming drama professor. In this race there can only be one winner but with no leads & several suspects in the running will our lady detectives be pipped at the post by a cold & calculating killer? ...