Throughout history cities have been at the center of warfare from sieges to street-fighting from peace-keeping to coups de mains. Sun Tzu admonished his readers of The Art of War that the lowest realization of warfare was to attack a fortified city. Indeed although strategists have advised against it across the millennia armies & generals have been forced nonetheless to attack & defend cities & victory has required that they do it well. In Concrete Hell Louis Di Marco has provided a masterful study of the brutal realities of urban warfare of what it means to seize & hold a city literally block by block. Such a study could not be more timely. We live in an increasingly urbanizing world a military unprepared for urban operations is unprepared for tomorrow. Di Marco masterfully studies the successes & failures of past battles in order to provide lessons for todays tacticians. ...

Written when Engels was only twenty-four & inspired in particular by his time living amongst the poor in Manchester this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian Engl&. Engels paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in the new industrial towns & for miners & agricultural workers
- depicting overcrowded housing abject poverty child labour sexual exploitation dirt & drunkenness
- in a savage indictment of the greed of the bourgeoisie. His fascinating later preface written for the first English edition of 1892 & included here brought the story up to date in the light of forty years further refelection. A masterpiece of committed reporting & an impassioned call to arms this is one of the great pioneering works of social history.

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With university behind her Emily Stanton finds herself on the threshold of life. Introduced to a Scottish engineer the exoticism of his life in Paris beckons & she leaves her family home in 1920s Melbourne to become his wife. But far from providing answers her conventional marriage awakens in her an ardent desire to find a reason for living beyond that of simply wife & mother. This desire leads her to flirt with risk passion & unorthodox friendships & carries her to Tunisia on a journey of self-questioning & intellectual reawakening. Conditions of Faith is both a provocative romance & an elegant meditation on a timeless dilemma. Impetuous yet entirely sympathetic Emily Stanton like Henry James Isabel Archer is in search of a reason for living in a society where motherhood is deemed reason enough. This mesmerising & thought-provoking story of dreams obsessions & destiny will hold you in thrall. ...

The crackle of a tannoy breaks a pregnant silence...and for one moment as the barrage of shell & artillery pauses music washes over the city of Leningrad. The defiant symphony of Leningrads famous son the composer Shostakovich infiltrates ruined homes & businesses echoing in the empty streets & perhaps even beyond the besieged walls to the very heart of the German forces. But this is not the story of Shostakovich. This is the story of a man caught in the white heat of obsession. A man who inspired an entire city much less a ragged orchestra of half-starved musicians to an act of resistance & hope in a time of war. Karl Eliasberg. The Conductor. ...

In the shadow of a war that rages through Europe brothers Calum & Neil work to gather pine cones in the grounds of a Scottish estate. When Calum releases two mutilated rabbits from a snare he comes face to face with Duror the gamekeeper. In retaliation in the depths of the wood Duror lays a trap for the cone-gatherers. Under a bright blue sky Neil prophesises that forces of evil will encroach upon the harmony of their lives. It is a prophecy that comes true when Duror commits an act so brutal it destroys all sense of humanity in the once thriving wood. Powerful & unforgettable The Cone-Gatherers is a novel about the good & the bad in human nature
- & of our propensity for both.
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This city is famous for its gamblers prostitutes exhibitionists anti-Christs alcoholics sodomites drug addicts fetishists onanists pornographers frauds jades litterbugs & lesbians.. .dont make the mistake of bothering me. Ignatius J. Reilly: fat flatulent eloquent & almost unemployable. By the standards of ordinary folk he is pretty much unhinged too. But is he bothered by this? No. For this misanthropic crusader against an America fallen into vice & ignorance has a mission: to rescue a naked female philosopher in distress. & he has a pirate costume & hot-dog cart to do it with... ...

BPP Learning Media is proud to be the official publisher for CTH. Our CTH Study Guides provide the perfect tailor-made learning resource for the CTH examinations & are also a useful source of reference & information for those planning a career in the hospitality & tourism industries ...

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran Attars great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism an esoteric system concerned with the search for truth through God it describes the consequences of the conference of the birds of the world when they meet to begin the search for their ideal king the Simorgh bird. On hearing that to find him they must undertake an arduous journey the birds soon express their reservations to their leader the hoopoe. With eloquence & insight however the hoopoe calms their fears using a series of riddling parables to provide guidance in the search for spiritual truth. By turns witty & profound The Conference of the Birds transforms deep belief into magnificent poetry. ...

An innocent man is days from execution. Only a guilty man can save him. Travis Boyette is a murderer. In 1998 in the small East Texas city of Sloan he abducted raped & strangled a popular high-school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found then watched & waited as police & prosecutors arrested Donte Drumm a local football star with no connection to the crime. Tried convicted & sentenced Drumm was sentto death row: his fate had been decided. Nine years later Donte Drumm is four days from execution. Over 400 miles away in Kansas Travis faces a fate of his own: an inoperable brain tumour will soon deliver the end. Reflecting on his miserable life he decides to do whats right. After years of silence he is ready to confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers judges & politicians that theyre about to execute an innocent man? ...

When 12-year-old Katherine Howard comes to live in the Duchess of Norfolks household poor relation Cat Tilney is deeply suspicious. The two girls couldnt be more different: Cat watchful & ambitious; Katherine interested only in clothes & boys. Their companions are in thrall to Katherine but its Cat in whom Katherine confides & despite herself Cat is drawn to her. Summoned to court at 17 Katherine leaves Cat in the company of her ex-lover Francis & the two begin their own much more serious love affair. Within months the king has set aside his Dutch wife Anne for Katherine. The future seems assured for the new queen & her maid-in-waiting although Cat would feel more confident if Katherine hadnt embarked on an affair with one of the kings favoured attendants Thomas Culpeper. However for a blissful year & a half it seems that Katherine can have everything she wants. But then allegations are made about her girlhood love affairs. Desperately frightened Katherine recounts a version of events which implicates Francis but which Cat knows to be a lie. With Francis in the Tower Cat alone knows the whole truth of Queen Katherine Howard
- but if she tells Katherine will die.
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