And there goes Juantorena down the back straight opening his legs & showing his class" is one of the best-known sporting faux pas ever uttered by a commentator. Said in total innocence by Ron Pickering as Alberto Juantorena pulled away from the chasing pack on the way to a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games it has made it into comic commentary folklore & is the inspiration for this collection of hilarious sports"es. Whether it is a confused cliche mixed metaphor a sports person stating the ridiculously obvious or a babbled banter of a post-match interview this magnificent collection of sporting"es celebrates the glorious slip-ups of sports stars & commentators. Every imaginable sport is featured as are many famous sporting greats proving that nobody is immune to the occasional gormless gaff." ...

Susan Jeffers has helped millions of people throughout the world overcome their fears heal their relationships & move forward in life with complete confidence & love. In Opening Our Hearts To Men she shares her own experiences & offers wisdom insights & practical advice on how to feel good about yourself & your relationships. Opening Our Hearts To Men is a book for every woman who wants to bring more love into her life. It will help you if: Your relationship is not working out in the way you had hoped. You want to develop greater intimacy in your relationships; You find it difficult to form lasting relationships with men; You are feeling lonely & unloved ...

A century can be understood in many ways
- in terms of its inventions its crimes or its art. In Opening Skinners Box Lauren Slater
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Pogue is a wonderful teacher... He can teach anybody." --Gay Talese bestselling author of Honor Thy Father " Scott Speck is a great communicator of classical music... Concert audiences & readers alike cant help getting caught up in the joy of his subject." --David Styers American Symphony Orchestra League Opera is weird. Everybody wears makeup & sings all the time. Even when theyre singing your language which is rare you still cant understand the words. Women play men men play women & 45--year--olds play teenagers. All the main characters seem to get killed off. & when somebody dies he takes ten minutes to sing about it. Yet for all its weirdness an operatic experience is an experience in breathtaking beauty. When you hear a soprano float a soft high C or a tenor singing a love song or a full--throated chorus in the climax of a scenes dramatic finale you cant help getting goosebumps. Want to experience all that beauty for yourself but dont know where to begin? Opera For Dummies is an excellent place to start. Written by an acclaimed conductor & a musical director this friendly guide tells you what you need to know to: * Understand opera from the Baroque & Roman periods through today * Interpret characters orchestra chorus & other players * Understand whats happening both on stage & off * Choose the best seats * Identify famous operas * Build a great collection of opera recordings * Locate opera sites & chat groups online Whether youre interested in attending a live opera want to build a collection of recordings or just want to be able to talk about opera intelligently Opera For Dummies is for you. Among other things youll explore: * The words the music & the people who sing it * The history of opera & the lives of the great composers * Going to the opera including tips for getting tickets preparing for the opera dressing for the opera & more * Musical & theatrical conventions used in opera * In--depth synopses of the worlds most beloved operas On the bonus CD youll find: * More than 60 minutes of music compiled especially for the book * A multimedia piece for PC or MAC Wonder what it is about opera that can make a grown person cry like a baby? Find out in Opera For Dummies." ...

Claire Seymour examines ways in which Brittens operas explored & articulated the inherent ambiguity & latent sexuality of music particularly song & suggests that they may illustrate his search for a public voice which would embody communicate & perhaps resolve his private beliefs & anxieties. She demonstrates how the delicate balance between private & public communication & the tension between art as self-expression & art as moral resolution were key concerns in Brittens music. Analyses of Brittens operas from Paul Bunyan to Death in Venice the three Church Parables & several of the childrens operas offer evidence that for Britten opera was the natural medium through which to explore express & paradoxically repress his private concerns. ...

Operation Barbarossa the German invasion of the Soviet Union began the largest & most costly campaign in military history. Its failure was a key turning point of the Second World War. The operation was planned as a Blitzkrieg to win Germany its Lebensraum in the east & the summer of 1941 is well-known for the German armys unprecedented victories & advances. Yet the German Blitzkrieg depended almost entirely upon the motorised Panzer groups particularly those of Army Group Centre. Using archival records in this 2009 book David Stahel presents a history of Germanys summer campaign from the perspective of the two largest & most powerful Panzer groups on the Eastern front. Stahels research provides a fundamental reassessment of Germanys war against the Soviet Union highlighting the prodigious internal problems of the vital Panzer forces & revealing that their demise in the earliest phase of the war undermined the whole German invasion. ...

Emily Vole makes headline news in the first weeks of her life when she is found in an abandoned hatbox in Stansted Airport. Then only a few years later her neighbour Mrs String dies leaving Emily a mysterious inheritance: an old shop a small bunch of golden keys & a cat called Fidget. It's the beginning of an adventure of a lifetime as the old Fairy Detective Agency comes back to life. It is up to Emily to reopen the shop & recall the fairies to duty. Together they must embark on their first mystery & do battle with their great fairy-snatching enemy Harpella. ...

The story of the photographic intelligence work undertaken from a country house at Medmenham Buckinghamshire is one of the great lost stories of the Second World War. At its peak in 1944 almost 2 000 British & American men & women worked at the top-secret Danesfield House interpreting photographs
- the majority stereoscopic so they could be viewed in 3D
- to unlock secrets of German military activity & weapons development. Millions of aerial photographs were taken by Allied pilots flying unarmed modified Spitfires & Mosquitos on missions over Nazi Europe. It was said that an aircraft could land the photographs be developed & initial interpretation completed within two hours
- marking the culmination of years of experiments in aerial intelligence techniques. Their finest hour began in 1943 during the planning stages of the Allied invasion of Europe when Douglas Kendall who masterminded the interpretation work at Medmenham led the hunt for Hitler's secret weapons. Operation Crossbow would grow from a handful of photographic interpreters to the creation of a h&-picked team & came to involve interpreters from across the Medmenham spectrum including the team of aircraft specialists led by the redoubtable Constance Babington Smith. In November that year whilst analysing photographs of Peenemunde in northern Germany they spotted a small stunted aircraft on a ramp. This intelligence breakthrough linked the Nazi research station with a growing network of sites in northern France where ramps were being constructed aligned not only with London but targets throughout southern Britain. Through the combined skill & dedication of the Crossbow team & the heroism of the Allied pilots throughout late 1943 & 1944 V-weapon launch sites were located & through countermeasures destroyed saving hundreds of thousands of lives & changing the course of the war. Operation Crossbow is a wonderful story of human endeavour & derring-do told for the first time.


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Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was part of a secret detachment of the US Army known as the ' Jedi Knights'. In Operation Dark Heart" he reveals for the first time & in amazing detail the otherwise secret world of black operations & clandestine intelligence plots conducted by the Western allies in an alien terrain against often undefinable enemies. This book is a gripping & compulsive insight into the espionage world & into a complex labyrinth of agencies that do not like to share secrets. It is also the true & moving story of a twenty-first-century warrior." ...

* An in-depth study of the biggest SAS-led external battle of the Rhodesian bush war Startling in its innovation & daringly suicidal Operation Dingo was not only the Fireforce concept writ large but the prototype for all the major Rhodesian airborne attacks on the external bases of Rhodesian African nationalist insurgents in the neighbouring territories of Mozambique & Zambia until such operations ceased in late 1979. Fireforce as a military concept is a 'vertical envelopment' of the enemy with the 20mm cannon being the principle weapon of attack mounted in an Alouette III K-Car flown by the air force commander with the army commander on board directing his ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette III troop-carrying gunships & latterly Bell ' Hueys' in 1979) & parachuted from DC-3 Dakotas. In support would be propeller-driven ground-attack aircraft & on call would be Canberra bombers Hawker Hunter & Vampire jets. On 23 November 1977 the Rhodesian Air Force & 184 SAS & Rhodesian Light Infantry paratroopers attacked 10 000 Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army cadres based at ' New Farm' Chimoio 90 kilometres inside Mozambique. Two days later the same force attacked 4 000 guerrillas at Tembue another ZANLA base over 200 kilometres inside Mozambique north of Tete on the Zambezi River. Estimates of ZANLA losses vary wildly; however a figure exceeding 6 000 casualties is realistic. The Rhodesians suffered two dead eight wounded & lost one aircraft. It would produce the biggest SAS-led external battle of the Rhodesian bush war. ...