Search results for ""Author Owen""

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a place that really existed, but it is long dead. By now, the word "Soviet" should be as meaningless as "Hapsburg". Yet it endures, as in the wave of "de-communisation" in Ukraine or the strange idea that the capitalist government in Russia is "Communist". But does the Soviet experience have anything to teach us today, or was it just an enormous cul-de-sac, a nuclear-armed reincarnation of the Russian Empire? This book tries to find out, through walking the towns and great cities of the USSR, in an itinerary that goes from the Baltic to Belarus, from Ukraine to the Urals, from the Caucasus to Central Asia, in places ranging from utopian colonies of the Twenties, to nuclear new towns of the Fifties, to gleaming new capitals of the 21st century. Ranging across eleven of the fifteen countries that once made up the Soviet Union, this book searches for the remnants of revolutions both distant and recent. and for the continuities with the Communist idea. Instead of a wistful journey through ruins, this is a Marxist Humanist account of how cities and their inhabitants have tried to cope both with the end of a socialist dream and the failure of capitalism to fulfil its own promises. In this patchwork of EU democracies, neoliberal dictatorships and Soviet nostalgic enclaves (often found in the same countries) we might just find the outlines of a way of building and living in cities that is a powerful alternative, both in the past and present.

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Fox hunting with Godfrey Bloom; lunching on expenses with Janice Atkinson;talking 'shock and awful' campaign tactics with Douglas Carswell - nothingis off the table when you're on the trail of UKlP's People's Army.Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 meets Louis Theroux, FollowingFarage recounts one hack's journey as he follows, drinks with, laughs atand even occasionally defends the phenomenon that is the United Kingdomlndependence Party as it prepares to march upon Westminster.With exclusive interviews and unfettered access to all the disgracedgenerals, trusty foot soldiers, deserters and dissenters who make up itsranks, Bennett delivers the inside scoop on what makes the People's Armytick - all the while making the transition from elbowed-out hanger-on tothe journalist Farage calls for an honest, post-election run-down of events.From the initial skirmishes and battle plans (the successful and thescuppered) to the explosive events of the battle for No. 10 itself -and the all-out civil war that broke out in its aftermath - FollowingFarage leaves no stone unturned, avenue untrod or pint undrunkin its quest for the truth about Britain's newest and mostcontroversial political force.

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From the grandiose histories of grand state building projects to the minutiae of street signs and corner pubs, from the rebuilding of capital cities to the provision of the humble public toilet, Clean Living in Difficult Circumstances argues for the city as a socialist project. Combining memoir, history, portraits of particular places and things, Hatherley argues for those who have tried to create and imagine a better modernity, both in terms of architecture, such as Zaha Hadid or Ian Nairn, in terms of the urban space, like Jane Jacobs or Marshall Berman, and the way we see the world more widely, like Mark Fisher or Adam Curtis. Together, these outline a vision of the city as both as a place of political argument and dispute, and as a space of everyday experience, one that we shape as much as it shapes us.

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London is conventionally seen as merely a combination of the financial centre in the City and the centre of governmental power in Westminster, a uniquely capitalist capital city. This book is about the third London - a social democratic twentieth-century metropolis, a pioneer in council housing, public enterprise, socialist design, radical local democracy and multiculturalism. If governmental power is embodied in the Palace of Westminster and financial power in the cluster of skyscrapers in the City, then this London is centred on the South Bank - County Hall, the Festival Hall, the National Theatre, Coin Street and City Hall. This book charts the development of this municipal power base under leaders from Herbert Morrison to Ken Livingstone, and its destruction in 1986, leaving a gap which has been only very inadequately filled by the Greater London Authority under Livingstone, Johnson and Khan. Rather than fashionable handwringing about the 'metropolitan elite', this book makes a case for London pride on the left, and an argument for reclaiming this history and using that pride as a weapon against a government of suburban landlords that ruthlessly exploits Londoners.

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The first of its kind, In Search of the Irish Wolfhound, takes a real in-depth look into the history and origins of the Irish wolfhound. Owen Dickey details his research into the origins of one of his favourite dog breeds and recounts stories of its loyalty, courage, and devotion. He answers the common questions and misconceptions related to the breed and whether the modern dog is the original breed revived or a more modern creation. The book features chapters which focus on the myths and legends and a description of the most important personages associated with the wolfdog from the third century to the nineteenth. Owen furthers his research, using only contemporary sources, both literary and artistic, to answer what the Irish wolfdog looked like in the past. Dickey leaves no stone unturned in In Search of the Irish Wolfhound. He takes a closer look into the legendary ancestors of the Irish wolfhound, one of the most famous dog breeds of the Middle Ag

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Russian expert OWEN MATTHEWS is the author of two highly praised works of non-fiction, Stalin's Children and An Impeccable Spy, and two acclaimed historical thrillers, Black Sun and Red Traitor. As a war correspondent, he covered conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Ukraine, and for ten years he was was Newsweek's Moscow bureau chief. He divides his time between Rome and Moscow.

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Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic' continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition. Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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Owen Davey returns with a new addition to his About Animals series, this time digging into the wondrous world of frogs! Did you know that there are over 4,000 known species of frog? Some are bigger than your dinner plate, while others are small enough to sit on your fingernail, and in between is about every colour and size you can imagine! Leap into this fascinating illustrated guide to the most diverse amphibians in the world, from the lumbering common toad to the beautiful but deadly poison dart frog.

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*As seen in The New York Times and MarthaStewart.com "It’s time to rebuild meadows wherever we can. . . Owen Wormser explains why, and how to do this, with oodles of highly readable, ecologically sound advice."—Douglas W. Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope Landscape designer Owen Wormser explains how to replace the deadscape we call lawn with low-maintenance, eco-friendly meadows. In this second edition of his award-winning book, he includes photos of meadows in progress plus more ways to cultivate your own organic meadow. This how-to book on growing your own wildflowers and native grasses is also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty. In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. It is garden landscaping that is beautiful, all year round. Meadows establish wildlife and pollinator habitats, are low-maintenance and low-cost, have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate extremes, and can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than any manicured lawn. Wormser describes how to plant an organic meadow garden or traditional meadow, that’s right for your site. His book includes guidance on: Preparing your site Designing your meadow Planting without using synthetic chemicals Growing 21 starter native grasses and wildflowers, including butterfly weed, smooth blue aster, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, blue grama grass, switchgrass, and many more Building support in neighborhoods where a tidy lawn is the standard. He also shares 28 color photos that highlight the multitude of ways you can cultivate your own organic meadow. To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building, Wormser draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared him for his work.

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A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks “A beautiful production: a typographic and calligraphic treat as treasurable as a rare magical text itself. Almost every page is filled with wonder.”—Suzi Feay, The Spectator Grimoires, textbooks of magic and occult knowledge, have existed through the ages alongside other magic and religious texts in part because of the need to create a physical record of magical phenomena, but also to enact magic through spells and rituals. To understand the history of these texts is to understand the influence of the major religions, the development of early science, the cultural influence of print, the growth of literacy, the social impact of colonialism, and the expansion of esoteric cultures across the oceans. In more than two hundred color illustrations from ancient times to the present, renowned scholar Owen Davies examines little-studied artistic qualities of grimoires, revealing a unique world of design and imagination. The book takes a global approach, considering Egyptian and Greek papyri, ancient Chinese bamboo scripts, South American pulp prints, and Japanese demon encyclopedias, among other examples. This book will enchant readers interested in the history of magic and science, as well as in book and manuscript history.

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Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023 *A Telegraph Book of the Year* A Times Best Book of Summer 2023 *Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards* An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War – and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia itself – at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core.

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The Poetry Book Society Winter Wild Card 2021. In February 2020, ventilated tetraplegic poet Owen Lowery and his wife, Jayne, were travelling to Scotland when their vehicle aquaplaned, spun round on the motorway, hit a barrier, flipped over the barrier and rolled over several times, before coming to rest on its side in a field. Having barely survived, Lowery emerged into a world transformed by the coronavirus, one in which life and death had moved closer. During his months of recovery from three brain bleeds, a shattered right arm, multiple seizures and pulmonary bleeding, Lowery returned to writing poems, many of which address the strangeness, the disorientation, of his situation and that of the world in general. Lowery wrote these poems amidst reports of Government and health initiatives that suggested potential utilitarian sacrifices of 'the vulnerable'. Completed shortly before his death in May 2021, the fear and loss of the vulnerable and the voiceless haunt many of the poems. In the 'Crash Wake' sequence, Lowery adopted a twelve-line form. Twelve lines was as long as he could manage to sustain a poem at the time, due to repercussions from his head injury. The form also allowed him to take what Keith Douglas called 'extrospective' snapshots of the new environment in which he found himself: streets empty of people, an Italian village cut off by the army, a train in India killing migrant workers in their sleep. Recovery, nature and love fill the gaps in this changed world. Lowery's final book appreciates afresh landscape and wildlife, family and marriage, the importance and fragility of life.

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This book is a comprehensive introduction to the Sikh faith. Ideal for those with little knowledge of the religion, it will give you a clear understanding of what Sikh's believe, and how they practise their faith. Covering all aspects, from the history of Sikhism, to Sikh ethics, to the practicalities of living a Sikh life, learn what it means to be Sikh today. NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.TEST YOURSELFTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of psychology.FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBERQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

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A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A whodunnit political page-turner' Melissa Benn, New Statesman 'The best political book I have read for a long while' Rod Liddle, The Spectator From the No.1 bestselling author of The Establishment, an urgent analysis of where the Left - and Britain - goes nextWe live in an age of upheaval. The global crisis of Covid-19 has laid bare the deep social and economic inequalities which were the toxic legacy of austerity. These revolutionary times are an opportunity for a radical rethink of Britain as we know it, as the politically impossible suddenly becomes imaginable. And yet, the Left's last attempt to upend the established order and transform millions of lives came to a crashing halt on 12th December 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its worst electoral defeat since 1935. In This Land, Owen Jones provides an insider's honest and unflinching appraisal of a movement: how it promised to change everything, why it went so badly wrong, where this failure leaves its values and ideas, and where the Left goes next in the new world we find ourselves in.He takes us on a compelling, page-turning journey through a tumultuous decade in British politics, gaining unprecedented access to key figures across the political spectrum. It is a tale of high hopes and hubris, dysfunction and disillusionment. There is, Jones urges, no future for any progressive project that does not face up to and learn from its errors. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past.'An absorbing, nuanced account of the making of electoral disaster' Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian

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Introduced and selected by the poet-presenter Owen Sheers, A Poet's Guide to Britain is a major poetry anthology in its own right.Owen Sheers passionately believes that poems, and particularly poems of place, not only affect us as individuals, but can have the power to mark and define a collective experience - our identities, our country, and our land. Under the headings of six varieties of British landscape - London and Cities, Villages and Towns, Mountains and Moorland, Islands, Woods and Forest, and Coast and Sea - he has collected poems that evoke qualities of the land, city and sea and have become part of the way we see these landscapes. The anthology follows a similar format to the BBC series, while also supplementing the poems included in the programme with his own personal favourites.

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Meet monsters from around the world in this stunning pop-up book. From Owen Davey, the award-winning illustrator of My First Pop-Up Dinosaurs, comes a second striking pop-up treasury. Discover a world of extraordinary beasts, where Cyclops storm in Ancient Greece and the fearsome Ushi-Oni haunts the coast of Japan. Open the pages to unleash 15 incredible pop-up monsters ... if you DARE!

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Monkeys, monkeys, monkeys! Haven't you ever wondered about our simian friends and wonder what makes them so special? With over 250 species inhabiting our planet, this book explores the many different types of monkeys from the smallest Pygmy Marmoset to the largest Mandrill, and provides all the facts you wanted to know and more. Discover where monkeys come from, how they swing from tree to tree, and why they fight and play with each other. After reading this beautifully illustrated book, you'll soon be raving mad about monkeys!

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Between March and May 1871, the Parisian Communards fought for a revolutionary alternative to the status quo grounded in a vision of internationalism, radical democracy and economic justice for the working masses that cut across national borders. The eventual defeat and bloody suppression of the Commune resonated far beyond Paris. In Britain, the Commune provoked widespread and fierce condemnation, while its defenders constituted a small, but vocal, minority. The Commune evoked long-standing fears about the continental ‘spectre’ of revolution, not least because the Communards’ seizure of power represented an embryonic alternative to the bourgeois social order. This book examines how a heterogeneous group of authors in Britain responded to the Commune. In doing so, it provides the first full-length critical study of the reception and representation of the Commune in Britain during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, showing how discussions of the Commune functioned as a screen to project hope and fear, serving as a warning for some and an example to others. Writers considered in the book include John Ruskin, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Margaret Oliphant, George Gissing, Henry James, William Morris, Alfred Austin and H.G. Wells. As the book shows, many, but not all, of these writers responded to the Commune with literary strategies that sought to stabilize bourgeois subjectivity in the wake of the traumatic shock of a revolutionary event. The book extends critical understanding of the Commune’s cultural afterlives and explores the relationship between literature and revolution.

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When we become new creations in Christ Jesus, our primary identity is in Christ,' observes Owen Hylton. Born into a black West Indian family, but living primarily in a white British world, he never felt entirely accepted in either place. 'Realizing that my identity was first and foremost in Christ was incredibly releasing,' he admits. Crossing the divide and embracing diversity is at the very heart of God's plan and purpose for his church. But in order to do this, we need to be aware of some of the reasons why people have stayed apart: our histories and prejudices, our lack of awareness and appreciation of one another. Owen defines sin as the greatest problem of humankind, separating us from God and setting us at odds with one another. The cross is ultimately a place of forgiveness and reconciliation. As new creations in Christ Jesus, forgiven and restored, we can confidently and joyfully celebrate our oneness, whatever our colour, status, gender or nationality.

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Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662-1736) is considered one of Britain's greatest architects. He was involved in the grandest architectural projects of his age and today is best known for his London churches - six idiosyncratic edifices of white Portland stone that remain standing today, proud and tall in the otherwise radically changed cityscape. Until comparatively recently, however, Hawksmoor was thought to be, at best, a second-rate talent: merely Sir Christopher Wren's slightly odd apprentice, or the practically minded assistant to Sir John Vanbrugh. This book brings to life the dramatic story of Hawksmoor's resurrection from the margins of history.Charting Hawksmoor's career and the decline of his reputation, Owen Hopkins offers fresh interpretations of many of his famous works - notably his three East End churches - and shows how over their history Hawksmoor's buildings have been ignored, abused, altered, recovered and celebrated. Hopkins also charts how, as Hawksmoor returned to prominenceduring the twentieth century, his work caught the eye of observers as diverse as T. S.Eliot, James Stirling, Robert Venturi and, most famously, Peter Ackroyd, whose novel Hawksmoor (1985) popularized 12 the mythical association of his work with the occult. Meanwhile, passionate campaigns were mounted to save and restore Hawksmoor's churches, reflecting the strange hold his architecture can have over observers. There is surely no other body of work in British architectural history with the same capacity to intrigue and inspire, perplex and provoke as Hawksmoor's has done for nearly three centuries.

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Investigation of unjustly neglected opera. Hans Pfitzner's `musical legend' Palestrina is considered in the German-speaking countries to be one of the supreme masterpieces of music, and yet it is all but unknown elsewhere. The opera, first performed in 1917, tells the story of the composer Palestrina, his struggle to compose following the death of his wife and in the face of anti-musical decrees from the Church, and his eventual composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli, which, it is said, wasdictated to him by angles and reconciled the Church to contrapuntal music. The story, set against the historical background of the Council of Trent, is an allegory of the individual artist in society, as well as a statement of Pfitzner's own beliefs about the musical climate of his time. Toller discusses the music and the dramatic structure, and presents a comprehensive introduction to the background material in the many diverse fields encompassed by the opera. OWEN TOLLER is Head of Mathematics at Merchant Taylor's School; he is a member of the London Symphony Chorus and sings with a number of other groups. His interest in Pfitzner began when he sang in the first British performance of Palestrina, a semi-professional production by Abbey Opera in London in 1979.

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The surprising story of the wine industry’s role in the rise of French Algeria and the fall of empire.“We owe to wine a blessing far more precious than gold: the peopling of Algeria with Frenchmen,” stated agriculturist Pierre Berthault in the early 1930s. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Europeans had displaced Algerians from the colony’s best agricultural land and planted grapevines. Soon enough, wine was the primary export of a region whose mostly Muslim inhabitants didn’t drink alcohol.Settlers made fortunes while drawing large numbers of Algerians into salaried work for the first time. But the success of Algerian wine resulted in friction with French producers, challenging the traditional view that imperial possessions should complement, not compete with, the metropole. By the middle of the twentieth century, amid the fight for independence, Algerians had come to see the rows of vines as an especially hated symbol of French domination. After the war, Algerians had to decide how far they would go to undo the transformations the colonists had wrought—including the world’s fourth-biggest wine industry. Owen White examines Algeria’s experiment with nationalized wine production in worker-run vineyards, the pressures that resulted in the failure of that experiment, and the eventual uprooting of most of the country’s vines.With a special focus on individual experiences of empire, from the wealthiest Europeans to the poorest laborers in the fields, The Blood of the Colony shows the central role of wine in the economic life of French Algeria and in its settler culture. White makes clear that the industry left a long-term mark on the development of the nation.

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Resistance opens in 1944, as the women of a small Welsh farming community wake one morning to find that their husbands have gone. Soon after that a German patrol arrives in their valley. In his hugely anticipated debut novel, Owen Sheers has produced a beautifully imagined and powerfully moving story of love and loss.

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From a personal obsession with film, to an unorthodox mentorship with the legendary Pauline Kael, to establishing himself with the upstart Entertainment Weekly, Movie Freak is the memoir by veteran film critic Owen Gleiberman that will speak to anyone whose life has been changed by a great film. What molds a critic? Perhaps it takes parents willing to buy nine-year-old Gleiberman drive-in tickets for Rosemary's Baby. Like millions of us, Gleiberman loves movies and in this frank and funny memoir he not only reveals the details of how he became a critic but attempts to show why we find cinema so defining as a society. As one of the premiere tastemakers for more than three decades, Gleiberman, a self-confessed movie freak, explains why he, and so many others, equate film with life. Readers will revel in the juicy details of the behind-the-scenes life of a critic and cheer as he lifts the curtain on life along the red carpet.

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Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration. Death. Confusion. In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the United States created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century, epidemics swept through American cities and towns, killing thousands. Physicians of all stripes offered conflicting answers to the cholera puzzle, ineffectively responding with opiates, bleeding, quarantines, and all manner of remedies, before the identity of the dreaded infection was consolidated under the germ theory of disease some sixty years later. These cholera outbreaks raised fundamental questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the still-new American Medical Association. In "Knowledge in the Time of Cholera", Owen Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centering his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners and bringing to life the battle to control public understanding of disease, professional power, and democratic governance in nineteenth-century America.

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Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023 *A Telegraph Book of the Year* A Times Best Book of Summer 2023 *Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards* An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War – and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia itself – at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core.

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Wise and funny, touching and true, What We’re Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown up. We’re teaching our sons about money; about heartbreak, and mountains, and philosophy. We’re teaching them about the big bang and the abominable snowman and what happens when you get struck by lightning. We’re teaching them about the toughness of single mothers, and the importance of having friends who’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself, and the difference between zombies and vampires. We’re teaching them about sex, although everyone would be a lot happier if the subject had never come up… Meet the married Dads, the divorced Dads, the widowed Dads and the gay Dads; the gamblers, the firemen, the bankers, the nurses, the soldiers and the milkmen. They’re trying to guide their sons through the foothills of childhood into the bewildering uplands of adulthood. But it’s hard to know if they’re doing it right. Or what their sons’ mothers think… Wise and funny, touching and true, What We’re Teaching Our Sons is for anyone who has ever wondered how to be a grown up.

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Acclaimed author Richard Tood has a bad case of writer's block. When his publisher sends an attractive young editor to help him with his latest book, the inevitable happens. This chance meeting changes everyone's lives – in ways they never expected. But Richard's troubles are only beginning. Hearing voices in your head is rarely a good thing, and having an assassin walk into your life whenever he wants, is definitely bad news. Will Richard be able to get his head straightened out before things run away from him completely? A remarkable portrait of a modern midlife crisis, which combines the best aspects of historical and psychological fiction, THE GARFIELD CONSPIRACY is a superb novel by a major new voice in Irish fiction.

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'Paganism' is an evocative word that, even today, conjures up deep-seated emotions and prejudices. Until recently, it was primarily a derogatory term used by Christians to describe the non-Christian cultures confronted and vanquished by their Churches. For some it evokes images of sacrifice and barbaric behaviour, while for others it symbolises a peace-loving, nature-worshipping spiritual relationship with the earth. This Very Short Introduction explores the meaning of paganism - through a chronological overview of the attitudes towards its practices and beliefs - from the ancient world through to the present day. Owen Davies largely looks at paganism through the eyes of the Christian world, and how, over the centuries, notions and representations of its nature were shaped by religious conflict, power struggles, colonialism, and scholarship. Despite the expansion of Christianity and Islam, Pagan cultures continue to exist around the world, whilst in the West new formations of paganism constitute one of the fastest-growing religions. Focussing on paganism in Europe, but exploring the nature of paganism globally, Davies looks at how Europeans discovered new cultures through colonial expansion, missionary work, and anthropological study. Contemporary social paganism can be a liberating and social force, and the idea of a global Pagan theology is now on the religious map. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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One of Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Books of 2019A compelling new thriller for fans of CJ Box and David Baldacci.Jess Winslow is a former US Marine struggling to adjust to civilian life after the horrors of Afghanistan. All she has in the world is her black and white pitbull mix, Lucy.Mason Burke trained Lucy for the service animal program while serving fifteen years in prison. Lucy helped keep him sane; now he'll stop at nothing to keep her safe.So when a corrupt deputy sheriff takes Lucy hostage over a package Jess's late husband allegedly stole, newly-released Mason promises to help.But saving Lucy and finding the package is only the start. Soon Mason and Jess are caught up in someone else's private war. Will they be able to trust each other and face their demons in time to save themselves?Deception Cove is a gripping story of survival and redemption set against the beautiful and dangerous coastline of the Pacific Northwest.

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