Biography

"Bartolo tells us about rescuing everyone he can, burying those he cannot, and saving their stories as if they were his own. This is a personal, urgent and universal book" GLORIA STEINEM"An urgent, wrenching dispatch from the frontline of the defining crisis of our times . . . Bartolo is at once the saviour and the coroner to boatload after boatload of migrants who risk everything to cross the deadly seas. It is also a damning indictment of the broader, collective indifference of humankind to both the drowned and the saved" PHILIP GOUREVITCH"Dr Pietro Bartolo has seen more suffering and death in his career than any one man should have to witness" Amnesty International"Through Bartolo we understand that it is impossible to do nothing in the face of such great human need" Vanity FairIt is common to think of the refugee crisis as a recent phenomenon, but Dr Pietro Bartolo, who runs the clinic on the Italian island of Lampedusa, has been caring for its victims - both the living and the dead - for a quarter of a century.Situated some 200 km off Italy's Southern coast, Lampedusa has hit the world headlines in recent years as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants hoping to make a new life in Europe.The shipwrecks began in 1992. Before the Arab Spring, they came from Africa, but now they come from across the Arab world as well. And the death toll is staggering. On Christmas Eve, 1996, 286 bodies were recovered; on the night of October 3, 2003, 366 out of 500 migrants died after a shipwreck nearby.For the past twenty-five years, Doctor Bartolo has been rescuing, welcoming, helping, and providing medical assistance to those who survived. But, above all, he has been listening to them. Tales of pain and hope, stories of those who didn't make it, who died at sea, their bodies washed up on shore; stories of those who lost their loved ones, of babies that never had a chance to be born.SHORTLISTED FOR THE ITALIAN PROSE TRANSLATION AWARD (IPTA)Translated from the Italian by Chenxin Jiang

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Kath Williams was a trade unionist, and a communist, before taking on the mantle of feminist after World War II. With a trade unionist ex-husband who was elected to Federal Politics opposing her left wing campaigns, Kath emerged as a feisty and quietly determined woman. Her campaign of conviction was the major force behind the achievement of equal pay for women.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY PRIZE THE SUNDAY TIMES NO.2 BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BMA PRESIDENT’S AWARD 2017 An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons, recalling some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he’s worked on. Grim Reaper sits on the heart surgeon’s shoulder. A slip of the hand and life ebbs away. The balance between life and death is so delicate, and the heart surgeon walks that rope between the two. In the operating room there is no time for doubt. It is flesh, blood, rib-retractors and pumping the vital organ with your bare hand to squeeze the life back into it. An off-day can have dire consequences – this job has a steep learning curve, and the cost is measured in human life. Cardiac surgery is not for the faint of heart. Professor Stephen Westaby took chances and pushed the boundaries of heart surgery. He saved hundreds of lives over the course of a thirty-five year career and now, in his astounding memoir, Westaby details some of his most remarkable and poignant cases – such as the baby who had suffered multiple heart attacks by six months old, a woman who lived the nightmare of locked-in syndrome, and a man whose life was powered by a battery for eight years. A powerful, important and incredibly moving book, Fragile Lives offers an exceptional insight into the exhilarating and sometimes tragic world of heart surgery, and how it feels to hold someone’s life in your hands.

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In 1941 air gunner Sergeant Jack Newton’s Wellington is hit by flak on his first bombing raid over Germany. Miraculously, the skipper makes an emergency landing on a German-occupied Belgian airfield, narrowly avoiding Antwerp Cathedral. Having torched the plane, the crew give the unsuspecting Germans the slip and are hidden by the Resistance. Hoping to make it to the coast and back across the Channel, the airmen are surprised when the 23-year-old female leader of the Comete Escape Line, Andree de Jongh – codenamed Dedee – has other plans for them. Full of terrifying and humorous moments, this is the story of the epic journey of the first British airman to escape occupied Europe during the Second World War.

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Mount Everest is known to everyone - but what of the person after whom it was named? This book traces the life and profession of that person, George Everest. In particular, it covers his life dedicated to surveying in India during the first half of the 19th century. George Everest went to India at the tender age of 16 but within a few years was leading survey parties into the remotest areas of the subcontinent. His particluar passion was geodesy - the determination of the size and shape of the earth - and he soon ecame Superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. In addition, he spent many years as Surveyor General of India. This book draws heavily on original correspondence archived in India, offering a good flavour of his character both as a person and as a manager. Everest was a surveyor, linguist, engineer, astronomer and religious philosopher, but in the pursuit of his goals he did not suffer fools gladly. It was recorded that he was so indefatigable that his contemporaries were accustomed to speak of him as "Neverrest". The book provides insight inot the life of a remarkable man and shows why the earth's highest peak now bears his name.

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Campfire conversations with Alfred Russel Wallace on people and nature based on his travel in the Malay archipelago: the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise. Part travelogue, part biography, this book charts the discoveries of the famous naturalist/explorer Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Born in 1823, Wallace devoted much of his time to fieldwork, first in the Amazon and then in Asia. During his travels he identified what is now known as the Wallace Line, which divides the flora and fauna of Asia from that which was hitherto a combination of both Australian and Asian origin. He is, of course, notable for independently developing the theory of evolution due to natural selection (but was perhaps deliberately sidelined by Darwin). He was a voracious collector - he trapped, skinned, and pickled 125,660 specimens, including 212 new species of birds and 900 new species of beetles during his long and productive life.

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When Bombardier Stanley Warren first painted the Changi Murals in Luke's Chapel, Roberts Barracks, Singapore in 1942, his fellow prisoners knew so little about him that they made up their own 'myths' about the mysterious painter. This carefully researched account reveals the truth behind the man and his murals. It follows Stanley Warren's journey through World War II: from soldier, to prisoner of war, and his return to civillian life. It also tells of his remarkable, long-standing relationship with the murals - from when he was seriously ill as he began to paint the first of the five murals to how he was identified in 1959 as the lost artist of Changi, and how he returned twice to Singapore to restore the paintings. With over 70 illustrations, including full colour reproductions of the Changi Murals, archival photographs, sketches and maps.

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Tsenhor was born about 550 bce in the city of Thebes (Karnak). She died some sixty years later, having lived through the reigns of Amasis II, Psamtik III, Cambyses II, Darius I and perhaps even Psamtik IV. By carefully retracing the events of her life as they are recorded in papyri now kept in museums in London, Paris, Turin, and Vienna, the author creates the image of a proud and independent businesswoman who made her own decisions in life. If Tsenhor were alive today she would be wearing jeans, drive a pick-up, and enjoy a beer with the boys. She clearly was her own boss, and one assumes that this happened with the full support of her second husband Psenese, who fathered two of her children. She married him when she was in her mid-thirties. Like her father and husband, Tsenhor could be hired to bring offerings to the dead in the necropolis on the west bank of the Nile. For a fee of course, and that is how her family acquired high-quality farm land on more than one occasion. But Tsenhor also did other business on her own, such as buying a slave and co-financing the reconstruction of a house that she owned together with Psenese. She seems in many ways to have been a liberated woman, some 2,500 years before the concept was invented.Embedded in the history of the first Persian occupation of Egypt, and using many sources dealing with ordinary women from the Old Kingdom up to and including the Coptic era, this book aims to forever change the general view on women in ancient Egypt, which is far too often based on the lives of Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra.

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In 1909, the largest department store in London's West End, designed and built from scratch, opened in Oxford Street in a glorious burst of publicity. The mastermind behind the façade was American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge: maverick businessman, risk-taker, dandy and one of the greatest showmen the retail world has ever known. His talents were to create the seduction of shopping, and as his success and fame grew, so did his glittering lifestyle: mansions, yachts, gambling, racehorses - and mistresses. From the glamour of Edwardian England, through the turmoil of the Great War and the heady excesses of the 1920s and beyond, Selfridges Department Store was 'a theatre with the curtain going up at 9 o'clock each morning'. Mr Selfridge reveals the captivating story of the rise and fall of the man who revolutionised the way we shop. 'Lively and entertaining' Sunday Telegraph 'Will change your view of shopping forever' Vogue 'Harry Selfridge revolutionised the way we shop ... fascinating' Daily Mail

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40 or 50 families control the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Their interests range from banking to property, from shipping to sugar, from vice to gambling. 13 of the 50 richest families in the world are in South East Asia yet they are largely unknown outside confined business circles. Often this is because they control the press and television as well as everything else. How do they do it? What are their secrets? And is it good news or bad for the places where they operate? Joe Studwell explosively lifts the lid on a world of staggering secrecy and shows that the little most people know is almost entirely wrong.

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The compelling personal story of a teenage girl who stood against her family's faith to convert to Christianity and who gave up everything in her flight from religious persecution. In 2009 the story broke in national media of a teenage girl who had run away from her Ohio home, claiming that her Muslim father had threatened to kill her for refusing to renounce her Christian faith. Her parents denied the charges and fought to have her returned home, but she became a ward of the state, placed into foster care until she was emancipated at age 18. Today that girl is a young woman still living in an undisclosed location, still convinced her life is under threat, and still passionate about following Jesus, despite the risks. Teens and young adults will be moved by Rifqa's story of standing up to religious persecution, literally giving up everything to follow her faith.

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I can confirm that should you ever find yourself on stage playing the bass guitar with three left hands, it is usually the one in the middle that is the real one. The other two are probably phantoms. Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands tells the story of one of the most revered British bands of the 1980s: Spacemen 3. As the decade turned and acid house hit the mainstream, the band imploded spectacularly, going their separate ways just as they were on the cusp of breakthrough success. Here, Will Carruthers tells the story of his time in a wholly dysfunctional yet hugely influential band, in one of the funniest and most memorable music memoirs.

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The follow up to My Family and Other Animals and the second book in The Corfu Trilogy, the beloved books that inspired ITV's television series The Durrells.In this second collection of tales concerning the Durrell family on the island of Corfu, young Gerry continues to be captivated by the fascinating flora and fauna of their adopted home - much to the bemusement and upset of his long suffering siblings and mother.Whether it's lamp fishing by night or roving the countryside with his mentor Theodore, Gerry encounters intoxicated hedgehogs, tarantulas, dung beetles, water spiders and other animals, some of which become the family's very unwanted pets.'A wild and amusing chronicle' Daily Express'This book, an evocation of a budding naturalist's life as a boy on Corfu, will delight many readers, even those who can't stand spiders...' Evening Standard'Delightful, charming, funny' The Times

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Our house was a single-fronted cottage in the slum area of Carlton. There were no distinctive features to differentiate it from most of the small cottages ... Zelda D'Aprano, a working-class woman at the forefront of the Women's Liberation Movement in Australia, shows in her autobiography the same raw spirit she evidenced when chaining herself to the Commonwealth Building in Melbourne to protest unequal pay on 21 October 1969. The life of a remarkable woman who often battled alone for what women today take for granted. Zelda is a moving, down-to-earth recounting of the past, an insightful criticism of how society is structured and reminds us of the exuberance of the Women's Liberation Movement.

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In The Kinfolk Entrepreneur, author Nathan Williams introduces readers to 40 creative business owners around the globe, offering an inspiring, in-depth look behind the scenes of their lives and their companies. Pairing insightful interviews with striking images of these men and women and their workspaces, The Kinfolk Entrepreneur makes business personal. The book profiles both budding and experienced entrepreneurs across a broad range of industries (from fashion designers to hoteliers) in cities across the globe (from Copenhagen to Dubai). Readers will learn how today's industry leaders handle both their successes and failures, achieve work-life balance, find motivation in the face of adversity, and so much more. (The book jacket was updated in May 2022; some customers may receive an earlier version of the jacket.)

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'One of the most sought-after tenors with the stamina and heft for Wagner and the ardent warmth for Italian opera'New York TimesJonas Kaufmann is a phenomenon. With his musicality, his vocal technique and his expressive powers - to say nothing of his matinée-idol good looks - he is widely regarded as the greatest tenor of today. Thomas Voigt's intimate biography, written in collaboration with Kaufmann, reflects on the singer's artistic development in recent years; his work in the recording studio; his relationship to Verdi and Wagner; the sacrifices of success; and much more. It gives unparalleled insight into the world of one of the most captivating opera singers of the international stage.WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PLÁCIDO DOMINGO, ANJA HARTEROS, ANTONIO PAPPANO AND MANY MORE'Mr Voigt's journalistic credentials are impeccable ... Mr Kaufmann goes into detail on the physical demands of his art; he speaks eloquently on the fear to which all singers are prone'The Economist

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The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibbitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - here comes to the stage.James Atlas takes us back to his childhood in suburban Chicago, where he fell in love with literature and, early on, found in himself the impulse to study writers' lives. We meet Richard Ellmann, the great biographer of James Joyce and Atlas's professor during a transformative year at Oxford. We get to know the author's first subject, the "self-doomed" poet Delmore Schwartz; a bygone cast of intellectuals such as Edmund Wilson and Dwight Macdonald (the "tall trees," as Mary McCarthy described them, cut down now, Atlas writes, by the "merciless pruning of mortality"); and, of course, the elusive Bellow, "a metaphysician of the ordinary." Atlas revisits the lives and work of the classical biographers: the Renaissance writers of what were then called "lives," Samuel Johnson and the "meshugenah" Boswell, among them. In what amounts to a pocket history of his own literary generation, Atlas celebrates the luminaries of contemporary literature and the labor of those who hope to catch a glimpse of one of them - "as fleeting as a familiar face swallowed up in a crowd."

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I came here looking for some kind of happiness. I think it might be the cleverest thing I have ever done.One heartbroken winter, Jennifer decides to act on her dream of moving to a tiny Greek island - because life is too short not to reach out for what makes us happy.Funny, romantic and full of surprising twists, Falling in Honey is a story about relationships, tzatziki, adventures, swimming, Greek dancing, starfish... and a bumpy but beautiful journey into Mediterranean sunshine.

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At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the life of a petty tyrant in an obscure corner of the Ottoman Empire became the stuff of legend. What propelled this cold-blooded archetype of Oriental despotism, grandly known as the Lion of Ioannina and the Balkan Napoleon, into the consciousness of Western rulers and the general public? This book charts the rise of Ali Pasha from brigand leader to a player in world affairs and, ultimately, to a gruesome end. Ali exploited the internal weakness of the Ottoman Empire to carve out his own de facto state in Albania and Western Greece. Although a ruthless tyrant guilty of cruel atrocities, his lavish court became an attraction to Western travellers, most famously Lord Byron, and his military prowess led Britain, Russia and France to seek his alliance during the Napoleonic Wars. His activities undermined the Sultan's authority and helped bring about the Greek War of Independence. Quentin and Eugenia Russell describe his remarkable life and military career as well as the enigmatic legacy he bequeathed in his homeland both as a nationalist hero and a tyrant, and further afield as inspiration for writers and artists of the Romantic movement.

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Nevil Shute was a writer whose books were frequently looked down on by literary critics and yet when he died in 1960 he was one of the best selling novelists of his day. Today, books such as A Town Like Alice and On the Beach continue to attract new generations of fans. However there was more to Shute than his books, a great deal more. Richard Thorn explores Shute’s personal and professional life, drawing from extensive research carried out using archives and sources in the UK, USA and Australia. Nevil Shute Norway began his professional life as an aeronautical engineer working on the outskirts of London for the newly established de Havilland Aircraft Company. He quickly went on to play a key role in Britain’s ill-fated and final airship programme, before co-founding an aircraft manufacturing company at the height of an economic depression. All the while, using the pseudonym Nevil Shute, he spent his time writing for relaxation in the evenings. After the Second World War, he flew a single-engined aeroplane to Australia and back in search for new material for his novels. Fascinated by the new world that he had seen, the novelist sold up and moved his family to Australia, buying a farm in a small town on the outskirts of Melbourne. For the remainder of his life, Australia was his home and the inspiration for many of his best-loved novels. Shute tells the story of the life and times of an extraordinary man who made a significant contribution to twentieth century popular literature. This book will appeal to fans of Shute’s work, those interested in his background and personal life or to readers interested in the early years of the aviation industry in Britain.

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After in-depth research of the circumstances of that fateful night, investigative writer and former journalist Noel Botham finally reveals what he alleges to be the truth - Princess Diana fell victim to a ruthlessly executed assassination. Twenty years later, the tragedy still shapes Britain as we know it today. How could the Establishment betray the trust of a whole nation? How was the killing executed? Was there really another car in the tunnel at the time of the crash? Reporting from the innermost sanctums of British intelligence and royalty, Botham reveals shocking answers to what he claims is one of the UK's most successfully kept secrets. As Botham affirms, The Murder of Princess Diana firmly lays to rest the outdated theory that Diana's death was a mere accident, and finally gives the people of Britain the explanation they deserve.

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This acclaimed account by author of the bestselling author of Irrationailty of his own manic depression remains unique in its honesty and perception. As an eminent psychologist who suffered a severe mental breaskdown. Stuart Sutherland was ideally placed to provide an original and insightful description of his illness and often bizarre consequences. In the second part of Breakdown, Sutherland describes and assesses the various forms of therapy and drug treatments available to sufferers of manic depression and analyses the origins of mental illness. Essentail reading for anyone affected by or interested in mental illness.

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A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. Throughout this period she kept a diary of personal reflections on, and observations of, this historic time. Because of the outspoken views she published in print and online, Yazbek quickly attracted the attention and fury of the regime, vicious rumours started to spread about her disloyalty to the homeland and the Alawite community to which she belongs. The lyrical narrative describes her struggle to protect herself and her young daughter, even as her activism propels her into a horrifying labyrinth of insecurity after she is forced into living on the run and detained multiple times, excluded from the Alawite community and renounced by her family, her hometown and even her childhood friends. With rare empathy and journalistic prowess Samar Yazbek compiled oral testimonies from ordinary Syrians all over the country. Filled with snapshots of exhilarating hope and horrifying atrocities, she offers us a wholly unique perspective on the Syrian uprising. Hers is a modest yet powerful testament to the strength and commitment of countless unnamed Syrians who have united to fight for their freedom. These diaries will inspire all those who read them, and challenge the world to look anew at the trials and tribulations of the Syrian uprising.

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Hilarious true story of Knightsbridge vet Michael Morton and the animals and owners in his care.

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This book tells the tragic story of William De Lancey, who became one of the first professional staff officers in the British Army, worked for Wellington throughout the Penisular War, and was his chief-of-staff at the Battle of Waterloo.

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Kenneth Allsop was a writer, journalist and broadcaster who in the 1960s and early 70s became one of Britain's first television celebrities. Voted the 'fifth most handsome man in the world', he enjoyed the high life of fast cars, jazz and smart London parties, moving among the nation's glitterati from the arts, media and politics. But he was also an accomplished naturalist and a passionate conservationist who fought fiercely to hold back mounting threats to Britain's wildlife and landscapes. He played a key role in raising the public's concern for the environment long before the advent of the UK's now-powerful green movement. Keeping the Barbarians at Bay focuses on the last few years of Allsop's short life, when he escaped London to live in a seventeenth- century watermill in the secret, crumpled landscape of West Dorset. The book describes how the threat of oil and gas exploration in this protected area of outstanding natural beauty forced him to become an environmental activist, and how his grassroots campaigning led him to the BBC's first environmentalist TV series Down to Earth, and to a radical 'green' column in The Sunday Times. Not surprisingly, he made powerful enemies in government and big business, at a time when there were few other environmental champions to lend him support. Using his unpublished diaries and papers, Keeping the Barbarians at Bay reveals the inside story of Allsop's struggles on three fronts: with 'the barbarians'; with the constant physical pain from his amputated right leg; and with his despair at the huge environmental challenges facing the planet. In the end, they were battles he could not win, and in May 1973 he took his own life at the tragically early age of 53.

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