Search results for ""author sam"

'An unburdening, a witness statement and a thriller all at the same time ... electrifying.' The TimesI have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed some day. If I'm killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know.A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. A true-life thriller by one of Putin's Most Wanted.In November 2009, the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight police officers in a freezing cell in a Moscow prison. His crime? Testifying against Russian officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes.Red Notice is a searing exposé of the whitewash of this imprisonment and murder. The killing hasn't been investigated. It hasn't been punished. Bill Browder is still campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. This is his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through battles with ruthless oligarchs in turbulent post-Soviet Union Moscow, to the shadowy heart of the Kremlin.With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking political roller-coaster.__________________Reads like a classic thriller, with an everyman hero alone and in danger in a hostile foreign city ... but it's all true, and it's a story that needs to be told.' Lee Child'A shocking true-life thriller.' Tom Stoppard'A riveting account... it is a powerful story and Browder tells it skilfully.' The Washington Post

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In Saving Faith, David Mislin chronicles the transformative historical moment when Americans began to reimagine their nation as one strengthened by the diverse faiths of its peoples. Between 1875 and 1925, liberal Protestant leaders abandoned religious exclusivism and leveraged their considerable cultural influence to push others to do the same. This reorientation came about as an ever-growing group of Americans found their religious faith under attack on social, intellectual, and political fronts. A new generation of outspoken agnostics assailed the very foundation of belief, while noted intellectuals embraced novel spiritual practices and claimed that Protestant Christianity had outlived its usefulness.Faced with these grave challenges, Protestant clergy and their allies realized that the successful defense of religion against secularism required a defense of all religious traditions. They affirmed the social value—and ultimately the religious truth—of Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. They also came to view doubt and uncertainty as expressions of faith. Ultimately, the reexamination of religious difference paved the way for Protestant elites to reconsider ethnic, racial, and cultural difference. Using the manuscript collections and correspondence of leading American Protestants, as well the institutional records of various churches and religious organizations, Mislin offers insight into the historical constructions of faith and doubt, the interconnected relationship of secularism and pluralism, and the enormous influence of liberal Protestant thought on the political, cultural, and spiritual values of the twentieth-century United States.

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Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-center politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In his new book Ronald Dworkin insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious egalitarian constraints on that distribution. What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles--first, it is of equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her own life--to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues, Dworkin develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.

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'A sickly child not expected to survive, a chubby teenager and a binge-eating bride? The unlikely beginnings of a health and fitness legend.' Daily Express 'A story of glamour, success and achievement, mixed with vulnerability, near-despair and searing honesty.’ Rob Parsons OBE The doctor’s voice is sad but firm: ‘I’m very sorry, but I have to tell you that your little girl is unlikely to reach her 10th birthday.’ Years later, having defied the odds and become a teenager, the same girl discovers a medical report that tells her, to her horror, she is overweight. That was the moment the young Rosemary Conley decided to change her life. After leaving school at 15, training as a secretary and working as a Tupperware dealer, Rosemary started her own slimming classes in 1972 with an investment of just £8. In 1983 she published the first of 36 books that were to sell in their millions around the world, alongside millions more of her fitness videos, while also starring in her own TV shows on BBC and ITV. She became, in short, one of the most popular and successful diet and fitness experts the world has seen. But Rosemary’s life was not to be one of unbounded achievement and success. As well as the good times there were dark and distressing times, and here she tells of the sorrows and setbacks that were to come – as well as the joy she found, and still finds, in helping people live longer, healthier and happier lives.

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The sensational final instalment in comic legend Sue Townsend's hilarious and iconic Adrian Mole series'Effortlessly hilarious. Brilliant satire and tragedy' Times'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written - with apologies to Samuel Pepys, Bridget Jones and me' ADAM KAYRead as Adrian continues to struggle with his love life, endures a painfully awkward school play and contemplates the unsettling prospect of applying genital poultice . . .__________Sunday 1st JulyNO SMOKING DAY. A momentous day! Smoking in a public place or place of work is forbidden in England. Though if you are a prisoner, an MP or a member of the Royal Family you are exempt.Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well.The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian's nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent . . .This laugh-out-loud final chapter in Adrian's story will have you hooked from the first page as you discover what he gets up to next.__________'A tour de force by a comic genius and if it isn't the best book published this year, I'll eat my bookshelf' Daily Mail, Books of the Year'Hilarious. Comic gold' Sunday Times'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

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A revelatory look at how the NYPD has resisted change through strategic and selective community engagement. The past few years have seen Americans express passionate demands for police transformation. But even as discussion of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and body cameras has exploded, any changes to police procedures have only led to the same outcomes. Despite calls for increased accountability, police departments have successfully stonewalled change. In The Policing Machine, Tony Cheng reveals the stages of that resistance, offering a close look at the deep engagement strategies that NYPD precincts have developed with only subsets of the community in order to counter any truly meaningful, democratic oversight. Cheng spent nearly two years in an unprecedented effort to understand the who and how of police-community relationship building in New York City, documenting the many ways the police strategically distributed power and privilege within the community to increase their own public legitimacy without sacrificing their organizational independence. By setting up community councils that are conveniently run by police allies, handing out favors to local churches that will promote the police to their parishioners, and offering additional support to institutions friendly to the police, the NYPD, like police departments all over the country, cultivates political capital through a strategic politics that involves distributing public resources, offering regulatory leniency, and deploying coercive force. The fundamental challenge with police-community relationships, Cheng shows, is not to build them. It is that they already exist and are motivated by a machinery designed to stymie reform.

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'An excellent action-thriller' Daily Telegraph'The action never lets up for a moment' Daily Mail'Very entertaining' Guardian'An old-fashioned blockbuster...Conway writes with brio and ambition' Financial Times'The most incredible spy franchise since Ian Fleming’ Matthew Vaughn_____________________The globe-trotting spy thriller that inspired the upcoming action blockbuster Argylle , featuring a star-studded cast including Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Cena.One Russian magnate's dream of restoring a nation to greatness has set in motion a chain of events which will take the world to the brink of chaos. Only Frances Coffey, the CIA's most legendary spymaster, can prevent it. But to do so, she needs someone special.Enter Argylle. His life came to a crashing halt as a teenager. Since then he has been treading water, building barriers between himself and the world. Until one moment of compassion and brilliance will bring him to the attention of the most powerful woman in the secret world.Coffey knows all about Argylle's dark past. She knows it haunts him. But she also knows it may give him the skills to join the team going up against one of the most powerful men in the world. His crash course in espionage will take him from the jungles of Thailand to the boulevards of Monaco, from the monasteries of Mount Athos to a forgotten cavern buried deep in the mountains.It is a deathly rollercoaster ride that will either make him - or break him...

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Master the Art of Trading is an accessible and engaging primer geared to help novice and established traders alike, equipping them to hit the ground running and to make an impact.Do you get confused between commodities and crypto? Do candlestick graphs make your eyes water? Have you ever wondered how psychology can give you an edge in the market? Master the Art of Trading is a new, comprehensive, up-to-the-minute primer that teaches readers all of this and more. Trading has never been more popular. From hobbyists to armchair investors to day-traders: in recent years we have seen a boom unlike anything before as people look to the markets, whether from home or the office. However without the right tools, training and techniques, these same people can often be a danger to themselves - and their pockets. In Master the Art of Trading trader, educator, and CEO of the wildly successful Mayfair Method, Lewis Daniels, offers a quick, easy, and comprehensive roadmap to trading. It explores the grand theories and behavioural economics underpinning the markets, from Elliot Wave Theory to Composite Man. It unpicks visual data, such as candlestick graphs and trend lines. It equips readers with the correct tools to make sense of the data and to make better trades. And it helps readers uncover their innate strengths, realise their propensity for risk, and discover what sort of trader they are - on order to optimise their behaviour to make them as effective as possible.

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THE THRILLING NEW KAY SCARPETTA MYSTERY FROM THE #1 GLOBAL BESTSELLER. SCARPETTA IS COMING TO THE SCREEN SOON, STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS'I'M STILL SEEING STARS . . . KAY SCARPETTA IS THE SAME GRUMPY, WONDERFUL, RIVETING PERSONALITY SHE'S ALWAYS BEEN AND SHE'S ONLY GETTING BETTER WITH TIME' JAMES PATTERSONMurder and mayhem. Scarpetta is back, and she's racing against the clock . . .Chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is the reluctant star witness in a sensational murder trial when she receives shocking news. The judge's sister has been found dead. At first glance, it appears to be a home invasion, but then why was nothing stolen, and why is the garden strewn with dead plants and insects?Although there is no apparent cause of death, Scarpetta recognizes tell-tale signs of the unthinkable, and she knows the worst is yet to come. The forensic pathologist finds herself pitted against a powerful force that returns her to the past, and her time to catch the killer is running out . . .'RIVETING' THE TIMES'CORNWELL'S ON BLISTERING FORM AND THIS ABSORBING THRILLER WILL KEEP YOU HOOKED' SUN'CORNWELL KNOWS HOW TO CRAFT A MEAN PAGE-TURNER AND LIVID IS NO EXCEPTION' TELEGRAPH'ONE OF THE BEST CRIME WRITERS WRITING TODAY' GUARDIAN'GRIPPING . . . SOUND THE KLAXON, DR KAY SCARPETTA IS BACK' HEAT'SCARPETTA'S 26TH OUTING AND THE PLOTTING REMAINS EVERY BIT AS FRESH AS WHEN WE WERE INTRODUCED TO HER' BELFAST TELEGRAPH'ASTONISHING . . . THIRTY YEARS ON, THERE'S STILL NO OTHER CRIME WRITER LIKE HER' SUNDAY TIMES

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'The cruelty and magnificence of Restoration London provides endless fascination . . . there's much to delight in this volume' The Times'Don Jordan's history captures the shifts [Charles II] engineered in trade and culture' NatureDuring the reign of Charles II, London was a city in flux. After years of civil war and political turmoil, England's capital became the centre for major advances in the sciences, the theatre, architecture, trade and ship-building that paved the way for the creation of the British Empire.At the heart of this activity was the King, whose return to power from exile in 1660 lit the fuse for an explosion in activity in all spheres of city life. London flourished, its wealth, vibrancy and success due to many figures famous today including Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys and John Dryden - and others whom history has overlooked until now.Throughout the quarter-century Charles was on the throne, London suffered several serious reverses: the plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666, and severe defeat in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which brought about notable economic decline. But thanks to the genius and resilience of the people of London, and the occasionally wavering stewardship of the King, the city rose from the ashes to become the economic capital of Europe.The King's City tells the gripping story of a city that defined a nation and birthed modern Britain - and how the vision of great individuals helped to build the richly diverse place we know today.

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The United States has been shaped by three sweeping political revolutions: Jefferson's "revolution of 1800," the Civil War, and the New Deal. Each of these upheavals concluded with lasting institutional and cultural adjustments that set the stage for a new phase of political and economic development. Are we on the verge of another upheaval, a "fourth revolution" that will reshape U.S. politics for decades to come? There are signs to suggest that we are. James Piereson describes the inevitable political turmoil that will overtake the United States in the next decade as a consequence of economic stagnation, the unsustainable growth of government, and the exhaustion of postwar arrangements that formerly underpinned American prosperity and power. The challenges of public debt, the retirement of the "baby boom" generation, and slow economic growth have reached a point where they require profound changes in the role of government in American life. At the same time, the widening gulf between the two political parties and the entrenched power of interest groups will make it difficult to negotiate the changes needed to renew the system. Shattered Consensus places this impending upheaval in historical context, reminding readers that Americans have faced and overcome similar trials in the past, in relatively brief but intense periods of political conflict. While others claim that the United States is in decline, Piereson argues that Americans will rise to the challenge of forming a new governing coalition that can guide the nation on a path of dynamism and prosperity.

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Both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are literary superstars, known around the world as the creators of Middle-earth and Narnia. But few of their readers and fans know about the important and complex friendship between Tolkien and his fellow Oxford academic C.S. Lewis. Without the persistent encouragement of his friend, Tolkien would never have completed The Lord of the Rings. This great tale, along with the connected matter of The Silmarillion, would have remained merely a private hobby. Likewise, all of Lewis' fiction, after the two met at Oxford University in 1926, bears the mark of Tolkien's influence, whether in names he used or in the creation of convincing fantasy worlds. They quickly discovered their affinity—a love of language and the imagination, a wide reading in northern myth and fairy tale, a desire to write stories themselves in both poetry and prose. The quality of their literary friendship invites comparisons with those of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Cowper and John Newton, and G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. Both Tolkien and Lewis were central figures in the informal Oxford literary circle, the Inklings. This book explores their lives, unfolding the extraordinary story of their complex friendship that lasted, with its ups and downs, until Lewis's death in 1963. Despite their differences—differences of temperament, spiritual emphasis, and view of their storytelling art—what united them was much stronger, a shared vision that continues to inspire their millions of readers throughout the world. †

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Latkes. Gnocchi. Aligot. Knishes. Samosas. Munini-imo. Poutine. Potatoes—consumed globally at a rate of about 68 pounds per capita each year—are the stars of some of the world’s most beloved dishes. Perhaps this is why most of us tend to underestimate the humble tuber—it’s so familiar that we forget its full potato potential.Enter The Potatopia Cookbook, a collection of more than 75 creative potato recipes from Allen Dikker, the CEO and founder of Potatopia, the fast-casual all-potato restaurant that has been featured by the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Eater.com, among others.While the cookbook includes some traditional potato dishes like gnocchi and shepherd’s pie, most recipes are innovative creations that reimagine the world’s most popular vegetable. Ever thought to make lasagna with paper-thin potato slices instead of noodles? Or prepare truffles with mashed potatoes? Find it all in The Potatopia Cookbook alongside detailed descriptions of potato varieties, potato history, and potato preparation and storage tips.As an added bonus to their popularity, potatoes are naturally gluten-free and—when prepared simply—very nutritious. Along with being fat-, sodium-, and cholesterol-free, potatoes are packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. As he did with Potatopia’s menu, Dikker highlights these benefits in the cookbook by focusing on recipes that skip the fat in favor of keeping it healthy. The result is a hearty, wholesome celebration of all things potato.

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A dark comedy about putting yourself in unexpected places, reaching for your dreams, and believing in second chances. Thirtysomething Page was content with her life in New York City—until it went to the dogs. Unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend of four years and fired from her art gallery job in the same week, she flees to Washington, DC, and moves in with her big brother. She hopes the new setting and familial comfort will help her finally find her bearings. What Page finds instead is an unlikely refuge: a park for the neighborhood’s poshest pooches, and a quirky pack of companionable dog-run regulars who become fast friends. Both four-legged and two-, these new allies offer Page a world of possibilities. The woman who hit rock bottom now has dreams: of having her own business, getting her own place, and even wilder ones about the ruggedly handsome owner of a vineyard and two equally fetching Bernese mountain dogs. Unleashed from all that once held her back, Page finds everything might be falling into place. But just when she thinks her life is headed in the right direction, the road takes a sharp turn to show her just how unpredictable second chances can be. Will Page get her happily ever after? Is there even such a thing? Witty, smartly funny, and modernly romantic, Happily Whatever After shows us all that sometimes imperfect can still be good enough.

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Nancy’s sailing trip to Vermont turns into a hunt for a ghostly saboteur’s lost treasure in the twenty-fourth book in the Nancy Drew Diaries, a fresh approach to a classic series.When a family friend, Grace, opens a sailing club on Lake Champlain at the former site of the Gemstone Islands Resort, Nancy, Bess, and George are invited to enjoy a few days of boating before the club’s official grand opening. But when they arrive, they learn there have been some strange things happening on the property, from missing items to holes dug all over the yard. Is someone trying to sabotage the club, and could it have anything to do with the fire that destroyed the old resort twenty years ago? As Nancy tries to pry information from the tight-lipped locals, all clues lead back to Captain Richard Stone, the enigmatic Revolutionary War–era pirate whose tavern once stood on the same site as the resort and sailing club. Legend has it that Captain Stone’s ghost still haunts the property, guarding the treasure he buried there. But it isn’t a ghost that punches a hole in Nancy’s sailboat, leaving her and the girls to sink in the middle of the lake when an unexpected summer storm rolls in. Unraveling the mystery of Captain Stone’s treasure will be the key to finding out who’s been sabotaging Grace’s club. But first, Nancy and her friends will have to make it back to shore in one piece…

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Nancy’s sailing trip to Vermont turns into a hunt for a ghostly saboteur’s lost treasure in the twenty-fourth book in the Nancy Drew Diaries, a fresh approach to a classic series.When a family friend, Grace, opens a sailing club on Lake Champlain at the former site of the Gemstone Islands Resort, Nancy, Bess, and George are invited to enjoy a few days of boating before the club’s official grand opening. But when they arrive, they learn there have been some strange things happening on the property, from missing items to holes dug all over the yard. Is someone trying to sabotage the club, and could it have anything to do with the fire that destroyed the old resort twenty years ago? As Nancy tries to pry information from the tight-lipped locals, all clues lead back to Captain Richard Stone, the enigmatic Revolutionary War–era pirate whose tavern once stood on the same site as the resort and sailing club. Legend has it that Captain Stone’s ghost still haunts the property, guarding the treasure he buried there. But it isn’t a ghost that punches a hole in Nancy’s sailboat, leaving her and the girls to sink in the middle of the lake when an unexpected summer storm rolls in. Unraveling the mystery of Captain Stone’s treasure will be the key to finding out who’s been sabotaging Grace’s club. But first, Nancy and her friends will have to make it back to shore in one piece…

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Ten years after Alex and Aaron Stowe brought peace to Quill and Artimé, their younger twin sisters journey beyond Artimé in the sixth novel in the New York Times bestselling sequel series to The Unwanteds, which Kirkus Reviews called “The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter.”As the greatest army ever assembled in the seven islands flies to the land of the dragons, everyone’s mind is haunted by the same thought: Thisbe Stowe betrayed them all. Thisbe struggles to regain the trust of her brother Aaron and the people of Artimé after one crucial mistake forces her to abandon her intricate plan against the Revinir. Aaron is devastated by Thisbe’s actions and refuses to hear her explanation, feeling a sense of responsibility for the wrong she’s done mixed with his own deep regret and fears over his dark history. Complicating things are Thisbe’s conflicted feelings about the Revinir, leaving her wondering if she allowed herself to get too close to the dragon-woman…and if she really is more evil than good after all. Risking everything they’d fought for since first being declared Unwanted, the people, creatures, and statues of Artimé and their allies make a final desperate attempt to take down the Revinir and bring peace to their world. But is the Revinir too powerful to defeat? And...will the Artiméans ever find out what’s behind that last secret door?

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In the nineteenth century the War Office showed little interest in developing large heavy artillery for its land forces, preferring instead to equip its warships with the biggest guns. Private initiatives to mount a gun on a railway truck pulled by a steam engine were demonstrated before military chiefs in the Southern Counties, but not taken up. However, the development of longer-range guns, weighing up to 250 tons, to smash through the massive armies and trench systems on the Western Front in 1916, led to a rethink. The only way to move these monsters about quickly in countryside thick with mud was to mount them on specially built railway trucks towed by locomotives. The railway guns were to be put on little-used country lines where they could fire on beaches, road junctions and harbours. The locations and cooperation given by the independent railway companies is explained, as are the difficulties of using the same lines for war and civilian traffic. The First World War also saw the emergence of large training camps for railway men. When the war ended most railway guns were dismantled and lost in ordnance depots.The Army Council was uncertain about artillery needs in a future war, so training, and development stopped. This book largely concentrates on the realities of the time, the type of gun, the locomotives, artillery targets, locations, and what it was like when firing took place. It is fully illustrated with pictures, maps and plans covering different aspects of railway guns their locomotives and equipment.

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With a foreword by Jane Goodall, this moving memoir follows a successful journalist and filmmaker who felt like something was missing in her life as she finds her purpose in advocacy for the Asian elephants in her childhood home town of Kerala, India."The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma GandhiElephants are self-aware, conscious beings. They can feel and grieve the loss of both elephants and humans. But despite all empathy that elephants shower on humans, we continue to inflict pain and suffering on these caring, sentient beings.In 2013 Sangita Iyer visited her childhood home of Kerala, India. Over 700 Asian elephants live in Kerala, owned by individuals and temples that force them to perform in lengthy, crowded, noisy festivals, abusing and shackling these animals they claim to revere for tourists and money.When Sangita found herself in the presence of these divine creatures and witnessed their suffering first hand, she felt a deep connection to their pain. She too had been shackled and broken for too long-to her patriarchal upbringing in India, to the many "me too" moments in her work life that were swept under the rug, to the silence. Now she would speak out for the elephants and for herself. And she would heal alongside them.This sparked the creation of her award winning documentary of the same name and a new purpose in this life for both Sangita and the elephants.

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For nearly twenty-five years, Mildred Council--better known by her nickname, Mama Dip--has nourished thousands of hungry folks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a much-loved community institution that has gained loyal fans and customers from all walks of life, from New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne to former Tar Heel basketball player Michael Jordan. Mama Dip's Kitchen showcases the same down-home, wholesome, everyday Southern cooking for which its namesake restaurant is celebrated. The book features more than 250 recipes for such favorites as old-fashioned chicken pie, country-style pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh corn casserole, poundcake, and banana pudding. Chapters cover breads and breakfast dishes; poultry, fish, and seafood; beef, pork, and lamb; vegetables and salads; and desserts, beverages, and party dishes. The book opens with a charming introductory essay, a savory reflection on a life in cooking that also reveals the story behind Council's nickname. It is both a graceful reminiscence of a country childhood and the inspiring story of a woman determined to make her own way in the larger world. |Mildred Council presents more than 260 recipes from her Chapel Hill restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, one of N.C.'s most popular spots for comfort food, southern style (or downhome Southern food). She also shares the secrets of her famous ""dump"" cooking and offers a graceful essay about her lifelong adventures with food.

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In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais's in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha's Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. A little more than two miles down a poorly marked one-lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack--it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond--well-stocked with oysters and crab for foraged dinners--the house faced the ocean and the sky, and though it was eventually replaced by a sturdier structure, the ethos remained the same: no heat, no TV, and no telephone. Instead, there were countless hours at the beach, meals cooked and savored with friends, nights talking under the stars, until in 2014, the house was sold. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais's charming, evocative memoir of this house, and of the Vineyard itself--from the history of the island and its famous visitors to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. But more than that, this is an elegy for a special place. Many of us have one place that anchors our most powerful memories. For Blais, it was the Vineyard house--a retreat and a dependable pleasure that also measured changes in her family. As children were born and grew up, as loved ones aged and passed away, the house was a constant. And now, the house lives on in the hearts of those who cherished it, signifying endless summer.

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"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian intellectuals for their indifference to the issues of ownership. A Public Empire refutes this widely shared conventional wisdom and analyzes the emergence of Russian property regimes from the time of Catherine the Great through World War I and the revolutions of 1917. Most importantly, A Public Empire shows the emergence of the new practices of owning "public things" in imperial Russia and the attempts of Russian intellectuals to reconcile the security of property with the ideals of the common good. The book analyzes how the belief that certain objects--rivers, forests, minerals, historical monuments, icons, and Russian literary classics--should accede to some kind of public status developed in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professional experts and liberal politicians advocated for a property reform that aimed at exempting public things from private ownership, while the tsars and the imperial government employed the rhetoric of protecting the sanctity of private property and resisted attempts at its limitation. Exploring the Russian ways of thinking about property, A Public Empire looks at problems of state reform and the formation of civil society, which, as the book argues, should be rethought as a process of constructing "the public" through the reform of property rights.

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This collection of leading scholars presents reflections on both wisdom as a general concept throughout history and cultures, as well as the contested nature of the category of Wisdom Literature. The first half of the collection explores wisdom more generally with essays on its relationship to skill, epistemology, virtue, theology, and order. Wisdom is examined in a number of different contexts, such as historically in the Hebrew Bible and its related cultures, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as in Patristic and Rabbinic interpretation. Additionally, wisdom is examined in its continuing relevance in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought, as well as from feminist, environmental, and other contextual perspectives. The second half of the volume considers "Wisdom Literature" as a category. Scholars address its relation to the Solomonic Collection, its social setting, literary genres, chronological development, and theology. Wisdom Literature's relation to other biblical literature (law, history, prophecy, apocalyptic, and the broad question of "Wisdom influence") is then discussed before separate chapters on the texts commonly associated with the category. Contributors take a variety of approaches to the current debates surrounding the viability and value of Wisdom Literature as a category and its proper relationship to the concept of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Though the organization of the volume highlights the independence of wisdom as concept from "Wisdom Literature" as a category, seeking to counter the lack of attention given to this question in the traditional approach, the inclusion of both topics together in the same volume reflects their continued interconnection. As such, this handbook both represents the current state of Wisdom scholarship and sets the stage for future developments.

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In Nothing Like a Dame, theater journalist Eddie Shapiro opens a jewelry box full of glittering surprises, through in-depth conversations with twenty leading women of Broadway. He carefully selected Tony Award-winning stars who have spent the majority of their careers in theater, leaving aside those who have moved on or occasionally drop back in. The women he interviewed spent endless hours with him, discussing their careers, offering insights into the iconic shows, changes on Broadway over the last century, and the art (and thrill) of taking the stage night after night. Chita Rivera describes the experience of starring in musicals in each of the last seven decades; Audra McDonald gives her thoughts on the work that went into the five Tony Awards she won before turning forty-one; and Carol Channing reflects on how she has revisited the same starring role generation after generation, and its effects on her career. Here too is Sutton Foster, who contemplates her breakout success in an age when stars working predominately in theater are increasingly rare. Each of these conversations is guided by Shapiro's expert knowledge of these women's careers, Broadway lore, and the details of famous (and infamous) musicals. He also includes dozens of photographs of these players in their best-known roles. This fascinating collection reveals the artistic genius and human experience of the women who have made Broadway musicals more popular than ever -- a must for anyone who loves the theater.

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From Frederick Law Olmsted to Richard Neutra, Michelle Obama to our neighbors, Americans throughout history have revealed something of themselves - their personalities, desires, and beliefs - in the gardens they create. Monticello's gardens helped Jefferson reconcile his conflicted feelings about slavery - and take his mind off his increasing debt. Edith Wharton's gardens made her feel more European and superior to her wealthy but insufficiently sophisticated countrymen. Martha Stewart's how-to instructions helped bring Americans back into their gardens, while at the same time stoking and exploiting our anxieties about social class. Melding biography, history, and cultural commentary in a one-of-a-kind narrative, "American Eden" presents a dynamic, sweeping look at this country's landscapes and the visionaries behind them. "American Eden" offers an inclusive definition of the garden, considering intentional landscapes that range from domestic kitchen gardens to city parks and national parks, suburban backyards and golf courses, public plazas and Manhattan's High Line park, reclaimed from freight train tracks. And it exposes the overlap between garden-making and painting, literature, and especially architecture-the garden's inseparable sibling-to reveal the deep interconnections between the arts and their most inspired practitioners. Beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white images, "American Eden" is at once a different kind of garden book and a different kind of American history, one that offers a compelling, untold story-a saga that mirrors and illuminates our nation's invention, and constant reinvention, of itself.

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This book celebrates binocular vision by presenting illustrations that require two eyes to see the effects of cooperation and competition between them. Pictures are flat but by printing them in different colours and viewing them through similarly coloured filters (included with the hardcover book) they are brought to life either in stereoscopic depth or in rivalry with one another. They are called anaglyphs and all those in the book display the ways in which the eyes interact. Thus, the reader is an integral element in the book and not all readers will see the same things. The history, science and art of binocular vision can be experienced in ways that are not usually available to us and with images made specifically for this book. The study of vision with two eyes was transformed by the invention of stereoscopes in the early 19th century. Anaglyphs are simple forms of stereoscopes that have three possible outcomes from viewing them – with each eye alone to see the monocular images, with both eyes to see them in stereoscopic depth or rivalry, or without the red/cyan glasses where they can have an appeal independent of the binocularity they encompass. Through the binocular pictures and the words that accompany them there will be an appreciation of just how remarkable the processes are that yield binocular singleness and depth. Moreover, the opportunities for expressing these processes are explored with many examples of truly binocular art.

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To the impartial observer Britain does not appear to have any mountains. Yet the British invented the sport of mountain climbing and for two periods in history British climbers led the world in the pursuit of this beautiful and dangerous obsession. Unjustifiable Risk is the story of the social, economic and cultural conditions that gave rise to the sport, and the achievements and motives of the scientists and poets, parsons and anarchists, villains and judges, ascetics and drunks that have shaped its development over the past two hundred years. The history of climbing inevitably reflects the wider changes that have occurred in British society, including class, gender, nationalism and war, but the sport has also contributed to changing social attitudes to nature and beauty, heroism and death. Over the years, increasing wealth, leisure and mobility have gradually transformed climbing from an activity undertaken by an eccentric and privileged minority into a sub-division of the leisure and tourist industry, while competition, improved technology and information, and increasing specialisation have helped to create climbs of unimaginable difficulty at the leading edge of the sport. But while much has changed, even more has remained the same. Today's climbers would be instantly recognisable to their Victorian predecessors, with their desire to escape from the crowded complexity of urban society and willingness to take "unjustifiable" risk in pursuit of beauty, adventure and self-fulfilment. Unjustifiable Risk was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker prize in 2011.

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This is a revised and updated edition of the highly successful first and second editions. In the intervening period the procedures used in the description of soils and rocks have continued to develop and evolve and this new edition incorporates changes in the international standards EN ISO 14688 and 14689 and those resulting in the national standard, BS 5930:2015 and the 2020 amendment thereof. Close comparison is also made with US practice in description (ASTM D2488) and classification (ASTM D2487). Significant changes in rock description are included – the reintroduction of the Approaches 1 to 5 for rock weathering; Approach 1 for description and Approaches 2 to 5 (Rock Weathering Working Party) for classification when appropriate and helpful. Also covered is the reintroduction of the 12.5 MPa boundary and the term moderately weak in rock strength description: a significant boundary in design in rock. The book continues to provide invaluable practical guidance in carrying out engineering geological logging of soil and rock samples and exposures in the field. The systematic and codified approach is laid out in detail to ensure the defined descriptors are used in a consistent format, rendering mistakes less likely and the necessary communication from field to design more successful. The procedures, techniques and tips within this book continue to serve and guide young practitioners learning their craft, but also their seniors and mentors, including responsible experts who sign off the logs and report on behalf of their company. More than ever, the need to be aware of current practices in order in order to avoid costly mistakes is paramount.

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A collection of five extraordinary plays exploring and reflecting contemporary life across the Near East and North Africa. In Withdrawal by Mohammad Al Attar (Syria), Ahmad and Nour rent a flat so that they can spend time together away from their families, but is having a space to themselves going to solve all their problems? In 603 by Imad Farajin (Palestine), four Palestinian men share a cramped prison cell listening to the buses come and go outside. Will the next bus be the one to take them home? In Damage by Kamal Khalladi (Morocco), three weeks after Youssef and Sana’a’s wedding, Youssef accepts a military peacekeeping expedition in the Congo. Will either of them be the same people when he returns? In The House by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon), Nadia wants to remain in the house she grew up in. For her sister, Reem, it is filled with painful memories. Are their differences over the future of the house irreconcilable? In Egyptian Products by Laila Soliman (Egypt), Hadia is an independent woman in Cairo. Gasir is a painfully awkward lab assistant with attachment issues over his dead mother. Is he really her knight in shining armour? In 2007 the Royal Court Theatre’s International Department and the British Council embarked on an ambitious project working with twenty-one writers from across the Near East and North Africa. Seven of the resultant plays received rehearsed readings at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2008. This volume, introduced by Laila Hourani of the British Council, collects five of these unique new voices, each posing different but equally urgent questions.

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Evading the wrath of company lawyers zealously protecting their franchise, Robert Antoni’s novel, written partially in film-script form, pays fan-fiction homage to that famous simian brand, whilst at the same time deconstructing the saga for what it has to say about race in the film and in American society. Austin Stoker – a character based on a real-life Trinidadian actor in Hollywood – is shooting the sequel to Assault of the Civilization of the Simians in his old age, the Hollywood film that launched his moderately successful acting career. But Stoker, drinking back-home Trinidadian remedies but not taking his prescribed dementia medicine, finds separating reality from fiction to be an increasingly difficult task.Intercut with this film script and the often funny backstory of the ageing actors’ lives is a moving novella about Austin’s mother, Madeleine, a servant in a rich French Creole house in Trinidad in the 1940s, and her affair with Austin’s white father, Barto, a colonial narrative that is in its own way as much about a vanishing fantasy life as the world of Hollywood.There’s still another layer, which readers of Antoni’s Bocas prize-winning As Flies to Whatless Boys will anticipate with pleasure: the presence of wickedly comic metatextual authorial notes and commentary. Cut Guavas is written in a spirit of fun that nevertheless makes serious points about race in the New World imagination. A master storyteller, Antoni combines its multiple strands in a way that feels both effortless and seamless.

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Global social inequality has declined over the past 100 years and the gap between different parts of the world, measured by average lifespan, has narrowed. The internal gap between wealthy and poor in the western world has likewise reduced, from the 1930s to the 1970s, although not in a linear way. The 1980s represented a turning point in developed countries, as the top 0.1% of income earners accumulated extraordinary riches. This new trend did not subside with the financial crisis of 2008, but expanded to less developed areas of the world; indeed, long-term significant reduction of poverty is now considered vulnerable. Inequality of income and its associated impacts has triggered a passionate debate between those who maintain that an unequal accumulation of richness is crucial for economic and social progress and those who believe that it does not encourage investment and that it prevents increased demand, thus negatively affecting the economy. This contributed volume sets out to study social inequality in Portuguese-speaking countries, thus providing diversification of experience across different continents. The purpose is to identify major economic, historical and cultural developments in terms of education, health, life-cycle, gender, ethnic, and religious relations. The current realities of migration are also addressed, since they raise the issue of ethnic integration. This is the first published work to address inequality in a cross-continent yet same language perspective, and presents a striking advance in the global study of inequality.

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Saudi Arabia and Iraq have a shared history, as both friends and enemies at one and the same time, and their growth as modern nation-states must be understood in that joint context. This book establishes a new narrative and timeline for bilateral relations between the two countries, while examining the work of other Arab and Western scholars, in order to excavate the biases underlying so much previous work on this topic. In doing so, it proposes a new way of looking at state formation and boundaries in the Middle East, by showing how the interactions of regional neighbors left an indelible imprint on the domestic politics of one another. The two different visions for managing the border that Saudi Arabia and Iraq developed in the 1920s generated mistrust on both sides, leading to a gradual process of estrangement that lasted through the 1950s and beyond. Ibn Saud made strenuous efforts to preserve the socio-economic ties that united the communities of southern Iraq with the Najd and, in turn, those efforts helped encourage a wave of Sunni Arab migrants from Iraq who helped build the Saudi state. Iraqi politicians and clerics attempted to use the issue of Ikhwan raids as a rallying cry for promoting their political agendas, thereby contributing to a growing sectarian discourse and undermining the nationalist rhetoric of the 1920 Revolution. The two countries had a remarkable and long-lasting impact on one another, even as they drifted farther and farther apart through mutual fear and suspicion.

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In theory, the Internet allows all brands to market internationally. But in practice, most companies struggle to compete outside their home market. Written from a marketing practitioner's perspective, International Brand Strategy evens the playing field with clear, actionable techniques to guide any organization going through the process. This book helps companies build sales in foreign markets, but just as important it helps them thrive by maintaining price integrity and building brand equity at the same time. With the guidance provided in International Brand Strategy companies hit the ground running in foreign markets. This provides a competitive advantage from day one, empowers companies to avoid costly mistakes, and saves months of trial and error. The book lays out a unique methodology for managing brands abroad that can be implemented for any product in any market. These methods have proven their value for companies large and small across six continents. The book guides readers with pragmatic models and a wealth of examples from global companies such as Target Canada, Unilever and Apple. International Brand Strategy was written for those who are planning to enter a new market and for those who are already there but wish to improve their brand's performance. It helps the reader recognize some of the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them, provides practical tips to understand the dynamics of price, product and value from a foreign buyer's perspective, and defines a conceptual framework to assess and improve brand equity at home and abroad.

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So here it is... The perfect gift for music lovers of all ages, The Official Christmas No. 1 Singles Book is jam-packed with facts, figures and photos to get your toes tapping along to the sounds of seven decades of festive chart-toppers. Have you ever wondered how many Christmas number ones actually have the word 'Christmas' in their title? Or how many TV talent-show winners have claimed the festive top spot? Do you know which artist has racked up the most Christmas number ones? Or which single is the biggest-selling seasonal chart-topper of all time? Can you name the only song to have topped the Christmas chart twice by two different artists? Or the only artist to have been Christmas number one twice with the same song? The answers to all these questions - plus many more - can be found in this exclusive festive companion, published in conjunction with the Official Charts Company. With a fully illustrated double-page spread for every year since the UK singles chart began in 1952, Michael Mulligan's fun and authoritative journey through the Christmas archives will delight curious browsers and dedicated pop nerds alike. Featuring top-ten countdowns, fascinating trivia about the highest-charting Christmas singles and plenty of entertaining infographics, this is the ideal family stocking-filler, celebrating all that is wonderful, whimsical and unpredictable about the festive season's most hotly contested musical event.

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This timely book presents a wide range of quantitative methods, including complex network analysis and econometric modelling, to illustrate how the Internet both follows, and at the same time challenges, more traditional geographies.Emmanouil Tranos explores the spatiality of the Internet, its physical infrastructure, and the geographic and socio-economic factors that shape its spatial distribution. He shows that although the Internet is a technical system with strong topological attributes, an almost 'hidden' spatial dimension also exists. The scattering of Internet Backbone Networks across European city-regions is compared with the aviation network in order to better understand the topology of the digital infrastructure. Finally, a causality analysis demonstrates the significant positive effect of the Internet infrastructure in the economic development of regions characterized by high absorptive capacity.This book will prove a highly fascinating read for those with an interest in Internet geographies, ICTs, regional development and infrastructure, digital economy, network analysis, and regional science. Practitioners working on local and regional development, as well as those focusing on ICTs, digital economy and smart cities, will also find this book to be an invaluable reference tool.Contents: Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Fundamentals of the Internet Infrastructure: A Cross-discipline Review 3. Methodology and Research Framework 4. The Network Nature of the Internet Infrastructure 5. Internet Backbone and Aviation Networks: A Comparative Study 6. An Explanatory Analysis of the (Unequal) Distribution of the Internet Backbone Networks 7. Internet Infrastructure and Regional Economic Development: A Causality Analysis 8. Conclusions References Index

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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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With turquoise waters, dreamlike islands, and pristine rainforests, Belize is a sensory feast. Dive in with Moon Belize. Inside you'll find:*Flexible itineraries, from the weeklong best of Belize to three weeks exploring the whole country *Strategic advice for water sports lovers, foodies, wildlife enthusiasts, and more, plus suggestions for supporting local businesses and exploring ethically and sustainably*The top outdoor adventures: Hike rainforests filled with medicinal trees and howler monkeys, snorkel the second-largest coral reef in the world, go spelunking in ancient underground caves, or hop through the vibrant cayes*Unique experiences and can't-miss highlights: Canoe to a farmers market to sample fresh pupusas and cashew wine, and cool off beneath the waterfalls. Marvel at Mayan archaeological sites or experience a traditional homestay in Punta Gorda. Relax on the beach all day, and spend your night dancing barefoot in the sand to the sound of Garifuna drums*Honest advice on when to go, what to pack, and where to stay, from Belize expert Lebawit Lily Girma*Full-colour photos and detailed maps throughout*Essential background on the landscape, climate, wildlife, and culture, plus handy phrases in Kriol, Garifuna, and Q'eqchi' Mayan*Helpful recommendations for health and safety, travelling solo, and suggestions for LGBTQ visitors, travellers with disabilities, and seniorsExperience the best of Belize with Moon's expert tips and local insight.Looking to expand your trip? Try Moon Yucatán Peninsula or Moon Costa Rica.

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As public schools in low income areas fell into disrepair and failed to meet the needs of disadvantaged and minority students, charter schools offered an alternative. These schools were born out of the idea that low income families should be allowed to choose where their children went to school, just the same as high income families. If the public school in the community was unsatisfactory, shouldn't they be allowed to seek out an alternative? The alternatives are surprisingly effective. Charter schools located in low income black and Latinx communities achieve results surpassing both traditional public schools in their areas, and also, in many cases, public schools in more affluent neighbourhoods. In Charter Schools and Their Enemies, celebrated conservative intellectual Thomas Sowell explores the surprising success of this model and the surprising backlash that threatens to dismantle it.Instead of being celebrated for their successes, charter schools are caught in political crosscurrents. In addition to uncovering the success of the charter school movement, Sowell pays careful attention to its adversaries to understand how these schools became such a contentious issue and why the controversy rages on. Teachers' unions, fearful of their hold over government-funded education, fund political candidates to oppose the charter school movement. Liberal educators also oppose charter schools, Sowell argues, because they believe that the school system should indoctrinate the young in progressive politics.Deeply researched and amply documented, Charter Schools and Their Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with debates over education in America.

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A Los Angeles Times Best Seller A 2020 NPR Best Book of the Year Is there life after baseball? Starting from this simple question, The Wax Pack ends up with something much bigger and unexpected—a meditation on the loss of innocence and the gift of impermanence, for both Brad Balukjian and the former ballplayers he tracked down. To get a truly random sample of players, Balukjian followed this wildly absurd but fun-as-hell premise: he took a single pack of baseball cards from 1986 (the first year he collected cards), opened it, chewed the nearly thirty-year-old gum inside, gagged, and then embarked on a quest to find all the players in the pack. On Balukjian’s trip in the summer of 2015, he spanned 11,341 miles through thirty states in forty-eight days. Actively engaging with his subjects, he took a hitting lesson from Rance Mulliniks, watched kung fu movies with Garry Templeton, and went to the zoo with Don Carman. In the process of finding all the players but one, he discovered an astonishing range of experiences and untold stories in their post-baseball lives. While crisscrossing the country, Balukjian retraced his own past, reconnecting with lost loves and coming to terms with his lifelong battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Alternately elegiac and uplifting, The Wax Pack is part baseball nostalgia, part road trip travelogue, and all heart, a reminder that greatness is not found in the stats on the backs of baseball cards but in the personal stories of the men on the front of them.

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Winner, LGBT Studies Lammy Award presented by Lambda Literary Neither queer theory nor queer activism has fully reckoned with the role of race in the emergence of the modern gay subject. In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Pérez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer histories—the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy— Pérez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence. Describing an enduring homonationalism dating to the “birth” of the homosexual in the late 19th century, Pérez considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized, but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Anne Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—Pérez proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism. A Taste for Brown Bodies argues that practices and subjectivities that we understand historically as forms of homosexuality have been regulated and normalized as an extension of the US nation-state, laying bare the tacit, if complex, participation of gay modernity within US imperialism.

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An intimate look at gay and bisexual daddies and their younger partners Over the past several years the term “daddy” has increased in popularity. Although the term has existed for centuries, its meaning has changed over time, and today can refer to desirable older men. In the Western world, same-sex male couples are far more likely to have large age gaps than other types of partnerships, and Daddies of a Different Kind analyzes the stories of gay and bisexual daddies and asks why younger men are interested in older men for sex and relationships. Based on interviews with self-described daddies and young adult men in relationships with older men, Tony Silva uncovers why it is more common for gay and bisexual men to have large age gaps in relationships than heterosexuals or LGBTQ women. These stories reveal that queer relationships with large age gaps are not consistent with a sugar daddy/gold digger stereotype. Instead, daddies mentor younger adult men and transmit knowledge intergenerationally, including how to navigate homophobia, access gay communities, and have fulfilling sex. Silva shows that demographic research understates the commonality of age-gap pairings among gay and bisexual men, and illustrates how daddies shape gay and bisexual communities both culturally and sexually. A fascinating read, Daddies of a Different Kind breaks many commonly held stereotypes about gay and bisexual life.

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Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time, however, many dismiss TV’s portrayal of LGBT characters and issues as “gay for pay”—that is, apolitical and exploitative programming created simply for profit. In The New Gay for Pay, Julia Himberg moves beyond both of these positions to investigate the complex and multifaceted ways that television production participates in constructing sexuality, sexual identities and communities, and sexual politics.Himberg examines the production stories behind explicitly LGBT narratives and characters, studying how industry workers themselves negotiate processes of TV development, production, marketing, and distribution. She interviews workers whose views are rarely heard, including market researchers, public relations experts, media advocacy workers, political campaigners designing strategies for TV messaging, and corporate social responsibility department officers, as well as network executives and producers. Thoroughly analyzing their comments in the light of four key issues—visibility, advocacy, diversity, and equality—Himberg reveals how the practices and belief systems of industry workers generate the conceptions of LGBT sexuality and political change that are portrayed on television. This original approach complicates and broadens our notions about who makes media; how those practitioners operate within media conglomerates; and, perhaps most important, how they contribute to commonsense ideas about sexuality.

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Explores the lives of over 600 Jewish physicians and pharmacists in medieval Muslim lands Offers a unique insight into the life of Jewish physicians and pharmacists, their families and communities in medieval Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Sicily and Andalusia Shows how Jewish practitioners participated in community leadership, in hospitals and in the courts of the Muslim rulers Analyses the biographical data to provide information on the relationships among Jews, Muslims and Christians, and between the common people and the elite Includes 6 maps, 29 family trees of key dynasties and 10 tables of main periods and dynasties, main Muslim rulers, practitioners serving in courts and hospitals, converts to Islam, Karaite and Samaritan practitioners This book collects and analyses the available biographical data on Jewish medical practitioners in the Muslim world from the 9th to the 16th century. The biographies are based mainly on information gathered from the wealth of primary sources found in the Cairo Geniza (letters, commercial documents, court orders, lists of donors) and Muslim Arabic sources (biographical dictionaries, historical and geographical literature). The practitioners come from various socio-economic strata and lived in urban as well as rural locations in Muslim countries. Both the biographies and the accompanying discussion shed light on various views and aspects of the medicine practised in this period by Muslim, Jews and Christians, as well as issues such as professional, daily and personal lives; successes and failures; families; Jewish communities; and inter-religious affairs.

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An ambitious revisionist history of naturalization as a creative mechanism for national expansion.Before borders determined who belonged in a country and who did not, lawyers and judges devised a legal fiction called naturalization to bypass the idea of feudal allegiance and integrate new subjects into their nations. At the same time, writers of prose fiction were attempting to undo centuries of rules about who could—and who could not—be a subject of literature. In Before Borders, Stephanie DeGooyer reconstructs how prose and legal fictions came together in the eighteenth century to dramatically reimagine national belonging through naturalization. The bureaucratic procedure of naturalization today was once a radically fictional way to create new citizens and literary subjects.Through early modern court proceedings, the philosophy of John Locke, and the novels of Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne, Maria Edgeworth, and Mary Shelley, DeGooyer follows how naturalization evolved in England against the backdrop of imperial expansion. Political and philosophical proponents of naturalization argued that granting foreigners full political and civil rights would not only attract newcomers but also better attach them to English soil. However, it would take a new literary form—the novel—to fully realize this liberal vision of immigration. Together, these experiments in law and literature laid the groundwork for an alternative vision of subjecthood in England and its territories.Reading eighteenth-century legal and prose fiction, DeGooyer draws attention to an overlooked period of immigration history and compels readers to reconsider the creative potential of naturalization.

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In sixty-eight years, Valeria has never minced her words. Harrumphing through her isolated little village deep in the Hungarian steppes, she clutches her shopping basket like a battering ram and leaves nothing uncriticised - flaccid vegetables at the market; idle farmers carousing in Ibolya's Nonstop Tavern; that gauche chimpanzee of a mayor and his flashy, leggy wife; people who whistle. But one day, her spinster's heart is struck by an unlikely arrow: the village potter, with his decisive hands and solid gaze. Valeria finds herself suddenly dressing in florals and touching her hair, and what's more, smiling at people in the street. The potter makes her the most beautiful vase she has ever seen. The farmers buy a celebratory round. The problem with all this is that Ibolya (herself at least fifty-eight) has been romancing the potter for months and vows to win him back. And then there's Ferenc, the sugar beet farmer, red-headed and married but all the same hopelessly in love with Ibolya. Meanwhile the mayor has his own problems, mostly involving foreign investors and a non-existent railway. And then a roving chimney sweep arrives in the village, to make a quick buck and bring some good luck - or perhaps bad luck; no one can really decide. All anyone knows is, there's never been such a hullabaloo, which just goes to show it's never too late to try something new.

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How to Read the Victorian Novel provides a unique introduction to the genre. Using examples from the classics, like The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, and Middlemarch, it demonstrates just how unfamiliar their familiarity is. The book attempts to break free of the sense that the Victorian novel is somehow old fashioned, moralizing, and formally careless by emphasizing the complexity, difficulty, and rare pleasures of the Victorian writers’ strenuous efforts both to entertain and to teach; to create serious “art” and to appeal to wide audiences; to respond both to the demands of publishing and also to their own rich imaginative engagement with a world heading into modernity at full speed. Broad in its scope, the text surveys a wide variety of literary types and explores the cultural and historical developments of the novel form itself. The book also poses a series of “big questions” pertaining to money, capitalism, industry, race, gender, and, at the same time, to formal issues, such as plotting, perspective, and realist representation. In addition, it locates the qualities that give to the great variety of Victorian novels a “family resemblance,” the material conditions of their production, their tendency to multiply plots, their obsession with class and money, their problematic handling of gender questions, and their commitment to realist representation. How to Read the Victorian Novel challenges our comfortable expectations of the genre in order to explore intensively a burgeoning and changing literary form which mirrors a burgeoning and changing society.

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'The perfect sinisterly magical escape' Stephanie GarberCaraval meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this deliciously dark young adult fantasy about a girl who makes a deal with a magical secret society to enter a potentially deadly competition for the chance to avenge her mother's death.Ever since a vampire murdered her mother, Ava has been determined to get revenge. This all-encompassing drive has given her the fuel she needed to survive foster home after foster home. But it's been ten years since anyone's seen a vampire, and Ava has lost hope that she'll ever find one . . . until she stumbles across a hidden magic show where she witnesses impossible illusions. The magicians may not be the bloodsuckers she's hunting, but Ava is convinced something supernatural is at play, so she sneaks backstage and catches them in acts they can't explain. But they've been waiting for her. The magicians reveal they're part of an ancient secret society with true magic, and Ava has the same power in her blood that they do. If she joins them, they promise to teach her the skills she needs to hunt vampires and avenge her mother. But there's a catch: if she wants to keep the power they offer, she needs to prove she's worthy of it. And to do so, she must put on the performance of her life in a sinister and dangerous competition where illusion and reality blur, and the stakes are deadly.

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'Highly recommended' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This book was absolutely fantastic! I couldn't put it down' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This is one of the best thrillers I've read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"This riveting, original, and powerful mother-daughter story kept me glued to the pages." Colleen Hoover"Filled with buried secrets and jaw-dropping deception, Sarah Pekkanen's GONE TONIGHT is a page-turning thriller about a mother-daughter you won't soon forget." Harlan CobenCatherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it's been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening. Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother's past or background. But when Ruth's desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth's carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception. No one can know Ruth's history. There is a reason why Ruth kept them moving every few years, and why she was ready--in a moment's notice--to be gone in the night. But danger is closing in. Is it coming from the outside, from Ruth's past? Is Ruth reaching a breaking point? Or is the danger coming from the darkness that may live in Catherine, herself?More praise for GONE TONIGHT"Captivating from beginning to end." - Samantha Downing

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