Search results for ""forge""
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Identity of Nations
What is national identity? What are the main challenges posed to national identity by the strengthening of regional identities and the growth of cultural diversity? How is right-wing nationalism connected to the desire to preserve a traditional image of national identity? Can we forge a new kind of national identity that responds to the challenges of globalization and other deep-seated changes? In this important new book, Montserrat Guibernau answers these and other compelling questions about the future of national identity. For Guibernau, the nation-states traditional project to unify its otherwise diverse population by generating a shared sense of national identity among them was always contested, and was accomplished with various degrees of success in Europe and North America. Such processes involved the cultural and linguistic homogenization of an otherwise diverse citizenry and were pursued by different means according to the specific contexts within which they were applied. At present, the impact of strong structural socio-political and economic transformations has resulted in greater challenges being posed to the idea that all citizens of a state should share a homogeneous national identity. Diversity is increasing, and plans for further European integration contain the potential to generate significant tensions, casting greater doubt on the classical concept of national identity. As a result, we are faced with a set of new dilemmas concerning the way in which national identity is constructed and defined. The book offers a theoretical as well as a comparative approach, with case studies involving Austria, Britain, Canada and Spain, as well as the European Union and the United States of America. The Identity of Nations will be essential reading for advanced students and professional scholars in sociology, politics and international relations.
£55.00
Princeton University Press The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa - Revised and Expanded Edition
The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, who died at the age of 88, has been internationally acclaimed as a giant of world cinema. Rashomon, which won both the Venice Film Festival's grand prize and an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, helped ignite Western interest in the Japanese cinema. Seven Samurai and Yojimbo remain enormously popular both in Japan and abroad. In this newly revised and expanded edition of his study of Kurosawa's films, Stephen Prince provides two new chapters that examine Kurosawa's remaining films, placing him in the context of cinema history. Prince also discusses how Kurosawa furnished a template for some well-known Hollywood directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Providing a new and comprehensive look at this master filmmaker, The Warrior's Camera probes the complex visual structure of Kurosawa's work. The book shows how Kurosawa attempted to symbolize on film a course of national development for post-war Japan, and it traces the ways that he tied his social visions to a dynamic system of visual and narrative forms. The author analyzes Kurosawa's entire career and places the films in context by drawing on the director's autobiography--a fascinating work that presents Kurosawa as a Kurosawa character and the story of his life as the kind of spiritual odyssey witnessed so often in his films. After examining the development of Kurosawa's visual style in his early work, The Warrior's Camera explains how he used this style in subsequent films to forge a politically committed model of filmmaking. It then demonstrates how the collapse of Kurosawa's efforts to participate as a filmmaker in the tasks of social reconstruction led to the very different cinematic style evident in his most recent films, works of pessimism that view the world as resistant to change.
£40.50
Harvard University Press Out of the Ordinary: How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again
From a major British political thinker and activist, a passionate case that both the left and right have lost their faith in ordinary people and must learn to find it again.This is an age of polarization. It’s us vs. them. The battle lines are clear, and compromise is surrender.As Out of the Ordinary reminds us, we have been here before. From the 1920s to the 1950s, in a world transformed by revolution and war, extreme ideologies of left and right fueled utopian hopes and dystopian fears. In response, Marc Stears writes, a group of British writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers showed a way out. These men and women, including J. B. Priestley, George Orwell, Barbara Jones, Dylan Thomas, Laurie Lee, and Bill Brandt, had no formal connection to one another. But they each worked to forge a politics that resisted the empty idealisms and totalizing abstractions of their time. Instead they were convinced that people going about their daily lives possess all the insight, virtue, and determination required to build a good society. In poems, novels, essays, films, paintings, and photographs, they gave witness to everyday people’s ability to overcome the supposedly insoluble contradictions between tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, rights and duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservatism and radicalism. It was this humble vision that animated the great Festival of Britain in 1951 and put everyday citizens at the heart of a new vision of national regeneration.A leading political theorist and a veteran of British politics, Stears writes with unusual passion and clarity about the achievements of these apostles of the ordinary. They helped Britain through an age of crisis. Their ideas might do so again, in the United Kingdom and beyond.
£32.36
Cornerstone Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist
It is said that asphyxiation brings on a state of hallucinatory intoxication...in which case the 71 year old artist who lay in his sprawling Provencal villa died happy. In the early afternoon of Monday 4 October 1999, wracked with Parkinson's, and unable to paint because of a fall in which he had broken his wrist, Bernard Buffet calmly placed a plastic bag over his head, taped it tight around his neck and patiently waited the few minutes it took for death to arrive. Bernard Buffet:The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist tells the remarkable story of a French figurative painter who tasted unprecedented critical and commercial success at an age when his contemporaries were still at art school. Then, with almost equal suddenness the fruits of fame turned sour and he found himself an outcast. Scarred with the contagion of immense commercial success no leper was more untouchable. He was the first artist of the television age and the jet age and his role in creating the idea of a post-war France is not to be underestimated. As the first of the so-called Fabulous Five (Francoise Sagan, Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot and Yves Saint Laurent) he was a leader of the cultural revolution that seemed to forge a new France from the shattered remains of a discredited and demoralized country. Rich in incident Buffet’s remarkable story of bisexual love affairs, betrayal, vendettas lasting half a century, shattered reputations, alcoholism, and drug abuse, is played out against the backdrop of the beau monde of the 1950s and 1960s in locations as diverse as St Tropez, Japan, Paris, Dallas, St Petersburg and New York, before coming to its miserable conclusion alone in his studio.
£12.99
New Harbinger Publications Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Daily Practices to Honor Your Emotions and Live with Confidence
From the author of the self-help hit, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, this essential guide offers daily, practical ways to help you heal the invisible wounds caused by immature parents, nurture self-awareness, trust your emotions, improve relationships, and stop putting others' needs ahead of your own.If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you probably still struggle with anger, sadness, resentment, or shame. As a child, your emotional needs were not met, your feelings were dismissed, and you likely took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent's behavior. Somewhere along the way, you lost your sense of self. And without this strong sense of self, you may feel like your own well-being isn't valuable.In this compassionate guide-written just for you, not them-you'll find tips and tools to help you set boundaries with others, honor and validate your emotions, and thrive in the face of life's challenges. You'll discover how to protect yourself from hurtful behavior, stop making excuses for others' limitations, forge healthier relationships, and feel more confident in your life. Most importantly, you'll learn how to stop putting others' needs before your own, and manage daily stressors with competence, clarity, and optimism.Self-care means honoring and respecting the self. But when you grow up with emotionally immature parents, you are taught that setting limits is selfish and uncaring. You are taught to seek approval instead of authenticity in relationships. And you are taught that empathy and emotional awareness are liabilities, rather than assets. But there's another way to go through life-one in which you can take care of yourself, first and foremost.Let this book guide you toward a new way of being.
£15.99
Monthly Review Press,U.S. The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920 -1940
Most people in the United States have been trained to recognize fascism in movements such as Germany’s Third Reich or Italy’s National Fascist Party, where charismatic demagogues manipulate incensed, vengeful masses. We rarely think of fascism as linked to the essence of monopoly-finance capitalism, operating under the guise of American free-enterprise. But, as Michael Joseph Roberto argues, this is exactly where fascism’s embryonic forms began gestating in the United States, during the so-called prosperous 1920s and the Great Depression of the following decade. Drawing from a range of authors who wrote during the 1930s and early 1940s, Roberto examines how the driving force of American fascism comes, not from reactionary movements below, but from the top, namely, Big Business and the power of finance capital. More subtle than its earlier European counterparts, writes Roberto, fascist America’s racist, top-down quashing of individual liberties masqueraded as “real democracy,” “upholding the Constitution,” and the pressure to be “100 Percent American.” The Coming of the American Behemoth is intended as a primer, to forge much-needed discourse on the nature of fascism, and its particular forms within the United States. The book focuses on the role of the capital-labor relationship during the period between the two World Wars, when the United States became the epicenter of the world-capitalist system. Concentrating on specific processes, which he characterizes as terrorist and non-terrorist alike, Roberto argues that the interwar period was a fertile time for the incubation of a protean form of tyranny – a fascist behemoth in the making, whose emergence has been ignored or dismissed by mainstream historians. This book is a necessity for anyone who fears America tipping ever closer, in this era of Trump, to full-blown fascism.
£18.99
Coach House Books The Eyelid
In Greater America, with sleep under siege, this lucid and prophetic novel of ideas depicts the end of human reverie. An unnamed, unemployed, dream-prone narrator finds himself following Chevauchet, diplomat of Onirica, a foreign republic of dreams, to resist a prohibition on sleep in near-future Greater America. On a mission to combat the state-sponsored drugging of citizens with uppers for greater productivity, they traverse an eerie landscape in an everlasting autumn, able to see inside other people’s nightmares and dreams. As Comprehensive Illusion – a social media-like entity that hijacks creativity – overtakes the masses, Chevauchet, the old radical, weakens and disappears, leaving our narrator to take up Chevauchet's dictum that "daydreaming is directly subversive” and forge ahead on his own. In slippery, exhilarating, and erudite prose, The Eyelid revels in the camaraderie of free thinking that can only happen on the lam, aiming to rescue a species that can no longer dream. "S. D. Chrostowska's The Eyelid is a brilliant, visionary satire on the digital mindscape of twenty-first-century late capitalism embodied in the new global state of Greater America. Insomnia is in; dreams are seditious; sleep is outlawed. Lulled by false fantasies projected by Artificial Intelligence (CI in the book), video games, and media collaborators, humans drug themselves to stay awake so they can slave through the now standard twenty-hour work days. Witty, oracular, Surreal, trenchant, politically astute, and often hilarious, The Eyelid is a throwback to the classics of the genre, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Samuel Butler's Erewhon. We are turning into a race of sleep-deprived automatons, Chrostowska warns, increasingly unable to mount political opposition or even dream a different future." —Douglas Glover
£12.99
Bonnier Books Ltd A Better Me: This is Gary Barlow as honest, heartfelt and more open than ever before
The Sunday Times Number One BestsellerGary Barlow is one of the most successful British musicians and songwriters of all time, but fifteen years ago, as he himself admits, he hit rock bottom - he was out of shape, out of work and depressed. Faced with an underperforming solo career, tireless media taunts and the other cruel twists of fate, Gary turned to food. For nine years, he struggled with his weight and went on every diet imaginable before eventually asking a doctor what the 'cure' for obesity was. That was when he realised that he would have to change his life dramatically. So how did he go from an obese, out-of-work pop star to becoming a hugely successful superstar of music and TV, as well an accomplished musical songwriter and producer who is full of vitality, fitter, happier and more successful than ever before?In this extraordinarily honest memoir, Gary tells of his journey back to professional success, as well as mental and physical health. A Better Me is a remarkably frank account of Gary's life as he battled with his demons, endured personal tragedy, and staged one of the most thrilling professional comebacks in decades. In his warm, witty and authentic voice, Gary recounts his story with compelling insight, captivating sincerity and a human side that people rarely see.From returning with a critically and commercially successful Take That and reigniting his own legendary songwriting career, going beyond recorded music to forge success on TV with The X Factor and Let It Shine, to overcoming his weight problems and crippling obsession with food, this is the story of how Gary found balance in both his personal and professional life.Here is one of the UK's most beloved pop stars, more open, honest and raw than ever before.
£9.18
Clairview Books Nature Spirits: The Remembrance: A Guide to the Elemental Kingdom
In this lucid, step-by-step guide, Susan Raven introduces us to the world of nature spirits and elemental beings, and explains why these entities wish to reconnect with us. By working together with the elementals - which reside in earth, water, air and fire - we can become responsible co-creators at this critical time in our evolution. The future of humanity, and that of the Earth, may be dependent upon such a positive and reciprocal relationship. Susan investigates the nature of the accelerated, evolutionary wave of consciousness pulsing into Earth at the present time, and how its effects are helping us forge a new link with the spiritual and etheric worlds. It is in the ether - where the dissolving and coalescing forces behind physical matter exist - that we find the kingdom of the nature spirits. Making use of her personal experiences, Susan describes the activities of these beings in the landscape, in plants and in human beings. She presents meditations and exercises to prepare us for a meeting with the nature spirits, and emphasises the importance of working with the elemental kingdom in our immediate environment. The path of personal development outlined in Nature Spirits: The Remembrance features a wide range of insightful testimony from some of the most well-respected seers, with particular emphasis on the work of Rudolf Steiner. 'The task of the troubadour has always been to listen to the wind and anticipate the future, to discern the fine nuances of a spiritual age and to play the dual roles of receiver and transmitter. My many years as a songwriter and performer have encouraged me to go ahead and petition the hidden spirit within nature to reveal its inspirations and imaginations...'
£12.99
Icon Books Tony Carr: A Lifetime in Football at West Ham United
'A man who had such a huge impact on my career and so many other young players at West Ham United. I highly recommend this fantastic read.' FRANK LAMPARD JR'This man passed on the West Ham DNA to the best generation of academy graduates to come through the West Ham system.' RIO FERDINAND'A West Ham United man, a must read for every West Ham United fan.' MARK NOBLEThe autobiography of a West Ham legend - including exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and Mark Noble.Tony Carr is one of the most influential coaches of all time. Having achieved his boyhood dream of signing with West Ham United in 1966 and training alongside the inimitable Bobby Moore, a leg break forced Carr to end his playing career before it had even begun. Not to be deterred, he decided to forge himself a new path and was appointed director of youth football at West Ham in 1973, aged just 23.As Carr tells in this book the very first time, over the next 43 years he honed his craft, becoming hugely admired for identifying and nurturing young talent, guiding multiple generations of international starlets through the ranks at The Academy of Football.In his brilliant, understated style, Tony tells the incredible story of his footballing life. He recounts the highs and lows of his time with West Ham, with tales of the twelve managers he coached under. This unique evocation of a coach's craft includes exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and current West Ham captain Mark Noble as they talk frankly about football and their place within it.
£20.00
Cornerstone Malice: Book One of the Malice Duology
__________________________________________________________The princess isn't supposed to fall for an evil sorceress. But in this darkly magical retelling of Sleeping Beauty, true love is more complicated than a simple fairy tale. Perfect for fans of Naomi Novik and Holly Black.'Malice is the dark and wicked heart of a fairytale carved into a book. This story is beautiful, vicious magic.' Tasha Suri, author of Empire of Sand 'A truly original and clever retelling of a classic that had me racing to the end - you'll never look at Sleeping Beauty the same again.' S.A. Chakraborty, author of City of Brass__________________________________________________________Once upon a time, there was a wicked fairy who, in an act of vengeance, cursed a line of princesses to die. A curse that could only be broken by true love's kiss.Utter nonsense.Let me tell you, no one in Briar cares what happens to our princess. I thought I didn't care, either. Until I met her.Princess Aurora, last heir to the throne, the future queen her realm needs. One who isn't bothered that I am Alyce, the Dark Grace, abhorred and feared for the mysterious dark magic that runs in my veins. But with less than a year before the curse kills her, any future I might imagine for us is quickly disappearing - and she can't stand to kiss yet another idiotic prince. But maybe I can help her. If my power began the curse, it might be the one to lift it. Perhaps, together, we could forge a new world.But we all know how this story ends. Aurora is the beautiful princess. And I am the villain.Book Two of the Malice Duology is available to preorder now!
£9.99
Hodder & Stoughton Happy Dog, Happy You: A positive guide to a joyful relationship with your dog
Want to raise a calm, happy and fulfilled dog?Award-winning groomer, TV personality and experienced dog handler Verity Hardcastle has compiled everything you need to know in this comprehensive dog-care manual: from choosing a breed, to practical diet and nutrition tips and knowing what to buy, to behaviour training and exercise advice... everything you need to fill life with fun and create a joyful friendship with your dog. With a positive focus on mindfulness and wellbeing, Verity shares her expertise as a dog handler and reiki practitioner to help encourage a calm daily routine - this book includes mindful tips and techniques you can try at home or out on walks together. You will also discover how to communicate effectively with your dog, and learn beautiful bonding activities such as massage, meditation and 'doga' (or dog yoga) to build a warm and loving environment in which you can both thrive.This is a must-have for anyone who wants to forge a lasting bond with their four-legged friend. Make both your life and your pooch's happier than ever before! 'If you're considering getting a dog; or have one already and need some advice, this is a great book, full of useful, interesting and practical tips!' - Julian Norton, aka The Yorkshire Vet, veterinary surgeon and author 'If you want to know all about your pooch - fetch this. Inspiring, warm and practical guide to cohabiting with your canine.' - Russell Kane, comedian 'This book is full of practical, heartfelt advice for both new and experienced dog owners. Dogs have long been human's best friend and this book helps us to benefit even more from this relationship. Your furry friend will thank you!' - The Reverend Canon Kate Bottley
£16.99
Cornerstone The Touch: a powerful, sweeping family saga from the international bestselling author of The Thorn Birds
Let international bestselling author Colleen McCullough sweep you away with this enthralling, evocative and emotional saga of one woman's quest to come to terms with a new life. If you like Victoria Hislop, Lucinda Riley and Fiona Valpy, you'll love this!'Fast-moving and immensely readable... Back to the open spaces, merciless climate and sheer pioneering stance of the magical THE THORN BIRDS, this book is a page turner from start to finish' -- Maeve Binchy'A compelling, passionate and gritty saga that was well worth the wait' -- She'A powerful saga' -- Mirror'Absorbing' -- Sunday Telegraph'I could put this book down. I was consumed with it' -- ***** Reader review'This book is utterly compelling and quite simply, I loved it. I wanted to finish it, but, didn't want it to end. Beautifully written, descriptive passages. A truly Master author. Thank you' -- ***** Reader review'One of the best reads I've had in years' -- ***** Reader review'Thoroughly loved this book, I was hooked from the first page!' -- ***** Reader review**********************************************************************Alexander Kinross is remembered in his native Scotland only as a shiftless boilermaker's apprentice. But when he writes from Australia to summon his bride, his relatives realize he is now a man to be reckoned with.Arriving in Sydney after a difficult voyage, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Drummond meets her husband-to-be and discovers that he frightens and repels her.Isolated in Alexander's great house, Elizabeth finds that marriage does not prompt her husband to enlighten her about his past life - nor his present one, in which his mistress, the sensuous, tough, outspoken Ruby Costevan, still plays a part...Will she be able to forge a happy new life in this new world?
£10.99
Night Shade Books Emissary: The Second Book of the Seven Eyes
Draken vae Khellian, bastard cousin of the Monoean King, had risen far from his ignominious origins, becoming both a Bowrank Commander and a member of the Crown’s Black Guard. But when cursed black magic took his wife and his honor away, he fought past his own despair and grief and carved out a new life in Akrasia. His bloody, unlikely path, chronicled in Exile: The First Book of the Seven Eyes, led him to a new loveand a throne.Draken has seen too much blood . . . the blood of friends and of enemies alike. Peace is what he wants. Now he must leave his wife and unborn child in an attempt to forge an uneasy truce between the Monoean King and the kingdom of Akrasia. The long bloody shadow of Akrasia’s violent past hangs over his efforts like a shroud. But there are other forces at work. Peace is not something everybody wants . . . not even in the seemingly straightforward kingdom of Draken’s birth.Factions both known and unknown to Draken vie to undermine his efforts and throw the kingdom into civil war. Forces from his days in the Black Guard prove to be the most enigmatic, and a bloody tide threatens to engulf Draken’s every step.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
£13.53
Pegasus Books Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team That Fought the Soviets for the Soul of Its People—And Olympic Gold
A classic David & Goliath tale, complete with colourful heroes, cold-hearted villains, and nail-biting games—with the hockey rink serving as an arena for a nation’s resistance. During the height of the Cold War, a group of small-town young men would lead their underdog hockey team from the little country of Czechoslovakia against the Soviet Union, the juggernaut in their sport. As they battled on the ice, the young players would keep their people’s quest for freedom alive, and forge a way to fight back against the authoritarian forces that sought to crush them. From the sudden invasion of Czechslovakia by an armada of tanks and 500,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers, to a hockey victory over the Soviets that inspired half a million furious citizens to take to the streets in an attempt to destroy all representations that they could find of their occupiers, Freedom to Win ranges from iconic moments in history to courageous individual stories. We will witness the fearless escape by three brothers who made up the core of the national team, thrilling world championship games and gold medal matches. We will watch as a one brave player takes a stand and leads ten thousand people in a tear-filled rendition of the Czechoslovak national anthem amid chants of “freedom!” while a revolution raged in the streets of Prague. At the heart of Freedom to Win is the story of the Holíks, a Czechoslovak family whose resistance to the Communists embodied the deepest desires of the people of their country. Faced with life under the cruel and arbitrary regime that had stolen their family butcher shop, the Holík boys became national hockey icons and inspirations to their people. Filled with heart-pounding moments on the ice and unforgettable slices of history, Freedom to Win is the ultimate tale of why sports truly matter.
£19.80
University of Minnesota Press Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy
Mapping the transformation of media activism from the seventies to the present dayHacked Transmissions is a pioneering exploration of how social movements change across cycles of struggle and alongside technology. Weaving a rich fabric of local and international social movements and media practices, politicized hacking, and independent cultural production, it takes as its entry point a multiyear ethnography of Telestreet, a network of pirate television channels in Italy that combined emerging technologies with the medium of television to challenge the media monopoly of tycoon-turned-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Street televisions in Italy represented a unique experiment in combining old and new media to forge grassroots alliances, fight social isolation, and build more resilient communities. Alessandra Renzi digs for the roots of Telestreet in movements of the 1970s and the global activism of the 1990s to trace its transformations in the present work of one of the network’s more active nodes, insu^tv, in Naples. In so doing, she offers a comprehensive account of transnational media activism, with particular attention to the relations among groups and projects, their modes of social reproduction, the contexts giving rise to them, and the technology they adopt—from zines and radios to social media. Hacked Transmissions is also a study in method, providing examples of co-research between activist researchers and social movements, and a theoretical framework that captures the complexities of grassroots politics and the agency of technology. Providing a rare and timely glimpse into a key activist/media project of the twenty-first century, Hacked Transmissions marks a vital contribution to debates in a range of fields, including media and communication studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, social movements studies, sociology, and cultural theory.
£87.30
University of Minnesota Press Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy
Mapping the transformation of media activism from the seventies to the present dayHacked Transmissions is a pioneering exploration of how social movements change across cycles of struggle and alongside technology. Weaving a rich fabric of local and international social movements and media practices, politicized hacking, and independent cultural production, it takes as its entry point a multiyear ethnography of Telestreet, a network of pirate television channels in Italy that combined emerging technologies with the medium of television to challenge the media monopoly of tycoon-turned-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Street televisions in Italy represented a unique experiment in combining old and new media to forge grassroots alliances, fight social isolation, and build more resilient communities. Alessandra Renzi digs for the roots of Telestreet in movements of the 1970s and the global activism of the 1990s to trace its transformations in the present work of one of the network’s more active nodes, insu^tv, in Naples. In so doing, she offers a comprehensive account of transnational media activism, with particular attention to the relations among groups and projects, their modes of social reproduction, the contexts giving rise to them, and the technology they adopt—from zines and radios to social media. Hacked Transmissions is also a study in method, providing examples of co-research between activist researchers and social movements, and a theoretical framework that captures the complexities of grassroots politics and the agency of technology. Providing a rare and timely glimpse into a key activist/media project of the twenty-first century, Hacked Transmissions marks a vital contribution to debates in a range of fields, including media and communication studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, social movements studies, sociology, and cultural theory.
£22.99
Cornell University Press Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage
In non-democratic regimes around the world, non-state organizations provide millions of citizens with medical care, schooling, childrearing, and other critical social services. Why would any authoritarian countenance this type of activism? Under what conditions does the private provision of social services generate political mobilization? And in those cases, what linkage does the provision of social services forge between the provider and recipient? In Winning Hearts and Votes, Steven Brooke argues that authoritarians often seek to manage moments of economic crisis by offloading social welfare responsibilities to non-state providers. But providers who serve poorer citizens, motivated by either charity of clientelism, will be constrained in their ability to mobilize voters because the poor depend on the state for many different goods. Organizations that serve paying customers, in contrast, may produce high quality, consistent, and effective services. This type of provision generates powerful, reputation-based linkages with a middle-class constituency more likely to support the provider on election day. Brooke backs up his novel argument with an in-depth examination of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the archetypal organization that combines social service provision with electoral success. With a fascinating array of historical, qualitative, spatial, and experimental data he traces the Brotherhood's provision of medical services from its origins in the 1970s, through its maturation under the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak, to its apogee during the country's brief democratic interlude, 2011–2013. In addition to generating new insights into authoritarian regimes, party-voter linkages and clientelism, and the relationship between political parties and social movements, Winning Hearts and Votes details the history, operations, and political effects of the Muslim Brotherhood's much discussed but little understood social service network.
£35.00
Cornell University Press Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply
Supplying water to millions is not simply an engineering and logistical challenge. As David Soll shows in his finely observed history of the nation’s largest municipal water system, the task of providing water to New Yorkers transformed the natural and built environment of the city, its suburbs, and distant rural watersheds. Almost as soon as New York City completed its first municipal water system in 1842, it began to expand the network, eventually reaching far into the Catskill Mountains, more than one hundred miles from the city. Empire of Water explores the history of New York City’s water system from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, focusing on the geographical, environmental, and political repercussions of the city’s search for more water. Soll vividly recounts the profound environmental implications for both city and countryside. Some of the region’s most prominent landmarks, such as the High Bridge across the Harlem River, Central Park’s Great Lawn, and the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County, have their origins in the city’s water system. By tracing the evolution of the city’s water conservation efforts and watershed management regime, Soll reveals the tremendous shifts in environmental practices and consciousness that occurred during the twentieth century. Few episodes better capture the long-standing upstate-downstate divide in New York than the story of how mountain water came to flow from spigots in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Soll concludes by focusing on the landmark watershed protection agreement signed in 1997 between the city, watershed residents, environmental organizations, and the state and federal governments. After decades of rancor between the city and Catskill residents, the two sides set aside their differences to forge a new model of environmental stewardship. His account of this unlikely environmental success story offers a behind the scenes perspective on the nation’s most ambitious and wide-ranging watershed protection program.
£19.99
Johns Hopkins University Press Science for a Green New Deal: Connecting Climate, Economics, and Social Justice
Science, not politics, can take us beyond the hype and headlines to forge a realistic green new deal.Since it was first proposed in the US House of Representatives, the Green New Deal has been hotly debated, often using partisan characterizations that critique it as extreme or socialist. The intent was not simply to fight climate change or address a specific environmental concern, but rather to tackle how climate change and other environmental challenges affect the economy, the vulnerable, and social justice—and vice versa. In Science for a Green New Deal, Eric Davidson dissects this legislative resolution. He also shows how green new deal thinking offers a framework for a much-needed convergence of the natural sciences, social science, economics, and community engagement to develop holistic policy solutions to the most pressing issues of our day. Davidson weaves the case for linkages among multiple global crises, including a pandemic that has reversed progress on fighting poverty and hunger, an acceleration of climate change that has exacerbated storms, floods, droughts, and fires, and a renewed awareness of profound social injustices highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.Illustrating these points with his personal life experiences as a child growing up in Montana and as a famed researcher leading a large scientific society, Davidson relates these complex challenges to our everyday lives and decision-making. How, he asks, can we extract from the Earth's resources what we need for the prosperity, well-being, and dignity of current and future generations of billions of people without exhausting or polluting those resources? Written in clear, jargon-free prose, Science for a Green New Deal is a realistic and optimistic look at how we can attain a more sustainable, prosperous, and just future.
£23.00
John Wiley & Sons Inc AI for Marketing and Product Innovation: Powerful New Tools for Predicting Trends, Connecting with Customers, and Closing Sales
Get on board the next massive marketing revolution AI for Marketing and Product Innovation offers creatives and marketing professionals a non-tech guide to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—twin technologies that stand poised to revolutionize the way we sell. The future is here, and we are in the thick of it; AI and ML are already in our lives every day, whether we know it or not. The technology continues to evolve and grow, but the capabilities that make these tools world-changing for marketers are already here—whether we use them or not. This book helps you lean into the curve and take advantage of AI’s unparalleled and rapidly expanding power. More than a simple primer on the technology, this book goes beyond the “what” to show you the “how”: How do we use AI and ML in ways that speak to the human spirit? How to we translate cold technological innovation into creative tools that forge deep human connections? Written by a team of experts at the intersection of neuroscience, technology, and marketing, this book shows you the ins and outs of these groundbreaking technological tools. Understand AI and ML technology in layman’s terms Harness the twin technologies unparalleled power to transform marketing Learn which skills and resources you need to use AI and ML effectively Employ AI and ML in ways that resonate meaningfully with customers Learn practical examples of how to reinvest product innovation, brand building, targeted marketing and media measurement to connect with people and enhance ROI Discover the true impact of AI and ML from real-world examples, and learn the thinking, best practices, and metrics you need to capture this lightning and take the next massive leap in the evolution of customer connection. AI for Marketing and Product Innovation shows you everything you need to know to get on board.
£19.79
Cornell University Press Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply
Supplying water to millions is not simply an engineering and logistical challenge. As David Soll shows in his finely observed history of the nation’s largest municipal water system, the task of providing water to New Yorkers transformed the natural and built environment of the city, its suburbs, and distant rural watersheds. Almost as soon as New York City completed its first municipal water system in 1842, it began to expand the network, eventually reaching far into the Catskill Mountains, more than one hundred miles from the city. Empire of Water explores the history of New York City’s water system from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, focusing on the geographical, environmental, and political repercussions of the city’s search for more water. Soll vividly recounts the profound environmental implications for both city and countryside. Some of the region’s most prominent landmarks, such as the High Bridge across the Harlem River, Central Park’s Great Lawn, and the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County, have their origins in the city’s water system. By tracing the evolution of the city’s water conservation efforts and watershed management regime, Soll reveals the tremendous shifts in environmental practices and consciousness that occurred during the twentieth century. Few episodes better capture the long-standing upstate-downstate divide in New York than the story of how mountain water came to flow from spigots in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Soll concludes by focusing on the landmark watershed protection agreement signed in 1997 between the city, watershed residents, environmental organizations, and the state and federal governments. After decades of rancor between the city and Catskill residents, the two sides set aside their differences to forge a new model of environmental stewardship. His account of this unlikely environmental success story offers a behind the scenes perspective on the nation’s most ambitious and wide-ranging watershed protection program.
£35.00
Princeton University Press Foundations: How the Built Environment Made Twentieth-Century Britain
An urban history of modern Britain, and how the built environment shaped the nation’s politicsFoundations is a history of twentieth-century Britain told through the rise, fall, and reinvention of six different types of urban space: the industrial estate, shopping precinct, council estate, private flats, shopping mall, and suburban office park. Sam Wetherell shows how these spaces transformed Britain’s politics, economy, and society, helping forge a midcentury developmental state and shaping the rise of neoliberalism after 1980.From the mid-twentieth century, spectacular new types of urban space were created in order to help remake Britain’s economy and society. Government-financed industrial estates laid down infrastructure to entice footloose capitalists to move to depressed regions of the country. Shopping precincts allowed politicians to plan precisely for postwar consumer demand. Public housing modernized domestic life and attempted to create new communities out of erstwhile strangers. In the latter part of the twentieth century many of these spaces were privatized and reimagined as their developmental aims were abandoned. Industrial estates became suburban business parks. State-owned shopping precincts became private shopping malls. The council estate was securitized and enclosed. New types of urban space were imported from American suburbia, and planners and politicians became increasingly skeptical that the built environment could remake society. With the midcentury built environment becoming obsolete, British neoliberalism emerged in tense negotiation with the awkward remains of built spaces that had to be navigated and remade.Taking readers to almost every major British city as well as to places in the United States and Britain’s empire, Foundations highlights how some of the major transformations of twentieth-century British history were forged in the everyday spaces where people lived, worked, and shopped.
£22.00
Pennsylvania State University Press PathoGraphics: Narrative, Aesthetics, Contention, Community
Culturally powerful ideas of normalcy and deviation, individual responsibility, and what is medically feasible shape the ways in which we live with illness and disability. The essays in this volume show how illness narratives expressed in a variety of forms—biographical essays, fictional texts, cartoons, graphic novels, and comics—reflect on and grapple with the fact that these human experiences are socially embedded and culturally shaped. Works of fiction addressing the impact of an illness or disability; autobiographies and memoirs exploring an experience of medical treatment; and comics that portray illness or disability from the perspective of patient, family member, or caregiver: all of these narratives forge a specific aesthetic in order to communicate their understanding of the human condition. This collection demonstrates what can emerge when scholars and artists interested in fiction, life-writing, and comics collaborate to explore how various media portray illness, medical treatment, and disability. Rather than stopping at the limits of genre or medium, the essays talk across fields, exploring together how works in these different forms craft narratives and aesthetics to negotiate contention and build community around those experiences and to discover how the knowledge and experiences of illness and disability circulate within the realms of medicine, art, the personal, and the cultural. Ultimately, they demonstrate a common purpose: to examine the ways comics and literary texts build an audience and galvanize not just empathy but also action.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Einat Avrahami, Maureen Burdock, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, Ariela Freedman, Rieke Jordan, stef lenk, Leah Misemer, Tahneer Oksman, Nina Schmidt, and Helen Spandler.Chapter 7, “Crafting Psychiatric Contention Through Single-Panel Cartoons,” by Helen Spandler, is available as Open Access courtesy of a grant from the Wellcome Trust. A link to the OA version of this chapter is forthcoming.
£27.95
The University of Chicago Press The Making of Environmental Law
The unprecedented expansion in environmental regulation over the past thirty years—at all levels of government—signifies a transformation of our nation's laws that is both palpable and encouraging. Environmental laws now affect almost everything we do, from the cars we drive and the places we live to the air we breathe and the water we drink. But while enormous strides have been made since the 1970s, gaps in the coverage, implementation, and enforcement of the existing laws still leave much work to be done.In The Making of Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus offers a new interpretation of the past three decades of this area of the law, examining the legal, political, cultural, and scientific factors that have shaped—and sometimes hindered—the creation of pollution controls and natural resource management laws. He argues that in the future, environmental law must forge a more nuanced understanding of the uncertainties and trade-offs, as well as the better-organized political opposition that currently dominates the federal government. Lazarus is especially well equipped to tell this story, given his active involvement in many of the most significant moments in the history of environmental law as a litigator for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, an assistant to the Solicitor General, and a member of advisory boards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund.Ranging widely in his analysis, Lazarus not only explains why modern environmental law emerged when it did and how it has evolved, but also points to the ambiguities in our current situation. As the field of environmental law "grays" with middle age, Lazarus's discussions of its history, the lessons learned from past legal reforms, and the challenges facing future lawmakers are both timely and invigorating.
£28.78
Big Finish Productions Ltd Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles - All of Time and Space
There's a story told throughout the universe. From the dawn of history to its dying days, you'll find someone telling it. The story of the traveller in the blue box. The story of the Doctor. No one knows the power of stories more than the Doctor who has been in so many. But for Valarie, this is all new. She's about to learn how a story can save a life, forge a civilisation or even rewrite reality itself. 1 All of Time and Space by Ellery Quest. As concepts for shows go, it's a good one. An adventurer and his friend travelling through all of time and space, righting wrongs and defending those who can't defend themselves. Yet, as its creator is about to discover, there are those who'd rather this show never existed. What's so dangerous about 'Doctor Who'? 2 The Yearn by Angus Dunican. The people of Medruth are under siege. Forced into underground bunkers, the Medruthians are desperate for a way to escape. When the Doctor and Valarie arrive, it seems like they've finally got everything they wanted. Except, that's when the nightmares really begin. 3 Curiosity Shop by James Goss. Mr Foreman owns a junkyard. He doesn't get many visitors. In fact, all anyone ever seems interested in is Barbara. One woman informs Mr Foreman she knows the truth about Barbara, that she went on impossible adventures with a man called the Doctor. This woman, this Valarie, will do anything to be reunited with Barbara and the Doctor. Even if it kills her. CAST: Jacob Dudman (The Doctor), Safiyya Ingar (Valarie Lockwood), Leroy Bonsu (Ellery Quest / Alien Diner), Derek Griffiths (Goals) Richard Hope (Mr Darling), Mark Rowley (Wyler) Mia Tomlinson (Roanna), David Dobson (Hoster), Samuel Clemens (Entity / Yearn). Other parts played by members of the cast.
£22.49
HarperCollins Publishers Joe’s Kitchen: Homemade meals for a happy family
SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Our kids love their dad's cooking’ Stacey Solomon ‘Joe is an incredibly passionate and knowledgeable cook. He cares deeply about family and brings joy to the kitchen.’ Gregg Wallace The debut family cookbook from actor, presenter, King of the Jungle and MasterChef 2021 finalist, Joe Swash. Joe Swash grew up loving good food and the family togetherness mealtimes can bring. He’s not a trained chef, but by trial and error has come up with his own ways of making great meals for his family together with his wife, Stacey Solomon, and their children at their family home. Filled with family favourites to take you from breakfast to dinner on weekdays, weekends and for special occasions,you’ll find Joe’s personal twists on popular dishes such as Eggs Benedict, Steak and Mushroom Pie and Chicken Caesar Salad, as well as cheffy tips picked up from MasterChef for surprisingly simple showstoppers including Seafood Paella and White Chocolate Soufflés. Even if you have very little experience in the kitchen, Joe’s simple, straightforward recipes are guaranteed crowd-pleasers and will help you put food your family will love on the table. Filled with personal anecdotes about his own family, this book is a joyful celebration of how food can help us reconnect with memories as well as forge new ones together. ContentsBreakfast and BrunchQuick Meals and SnacksSoups, Sandwiches and SaladsWeekdaysWeekendsLet's CelebratePuddings, Bakes and CakesSides and Basics ‘What I’ve learned is that cooking and mealtimes are not just about eating – it’s about sharing love and being together, having quality time. Now I have my own family, I’ve realised just how vital and precious that is. By writing this book I want to give you some insight into my life and my experiences in the kitchen.’ Joe Swash
£19.80
Simon & Schuster The After Collection: After, After We Collided, After We Fell, After Ever Happy, Before
The inspiration behind the major films After and After We Collided! From the New York Times bestselling author and Wattpad sensation Anna Todd, “the biggest literary phenom of her generation” (Cosmopolitan), comes the complete collection of her sizzling After series. After: Once she meets Hardin, good girl Tessa’s life will never be the same. He is rude, cocky, and the exact opposite of her reliable boyfriend back home—she should hate him, but then she finds herself alone with him one night. What follows is a passionate but tempestuous romance that turns Tessa’s usually calm and traditional world upside down. After We Collided: Tessa and Hardin’s tentative relationship takes a devastating turn when a dark secret from Hardin’s mysterious past surfaces. Can Tessa manage to move on and forge a new life for herself? Or will Hardin be able to change enough to win back his one true love? After We Fell: Hardin isn’t the only one with secrets. Everything Tessa thought she knew about her life goes up in smoke and she has no idea if Hardin will be willing to stay with her. Trapped in a seemingly unending cycle of jealousy and rage, neither has any idea if their passion is enough to keep their relationship alive. After Ever Happy: Each new challenge Tessa and Hardin face only makes their passionate bond stronger and stronger. But when a revelation about the past shakes Hardin’s impenetrable façade to the core—and then Tessa suffers a tragedy—will they stick together again or be torn apart? Before: The ups and downs of Tessa and Hardin’s relationship are explored by others in their lives before, during, and after the events of the series. Finally, Hardin reveals his own perception of his life with Tessa, which will completely change how you see the famous brooding boy and the angel who loved him.
£78.68
Vintage Publishing The Coming Wave: The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the ultimate AI insider
**A Sunday Times, Economist, Prospect and Financial Times Book of the Year****SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023**AI. SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY. QUANTUM COMPUTING. Everything is about to change. This is the only book you need to understand this new world.From the ultimate AI insider, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google.'Fascinating, well-written, and important' Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens'Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing' Stephen Fry'An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times' Bill GatesSoon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.None of us are prepared.As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side and the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?This ground-breaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes 'the containment problem' - the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies - as the essential challenge of our age.'A stunning book by a man at the very centre of the AI revolution' Rory Stewart'Essential reading' Daniel Kahneman‘Confused by the current furore about AI? This book is a good place to start…’ Financial Times, Books of the Year 2023**A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, Sept 2023**
£22.50
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Adama
THERE IS NO LAND WITHOUT BLOOD, AND I WATER THIS LAND WITH THE BLOOD OF MY MEN. Ruth’s family were in Budapest when the Nazis came. Now Ruth is in Palestine, amid the bare hills inland from Haifa, breaking the rocky soil of an unyielding land before it breaks her. With her comrades, her fellow kibbutzniks, she will build a better world. There will be green grass, orange trees and pomegranates, a land that is their own and no one else’s. So they till their fields, dig their wells, build their homes and forge a new way of living, fiercely proud of their shared pursuit of a dream. But as one generation begets another, the dream unravels, twisted into a dark tapestry of secrets and lies; sacrificed for revenge, forbidden love and murder. A sweeping historical epic following four generations of a single family as they struggle to hold on to their land and each other. 'Tidhar [is] fast emerging as the leader of a new wave of Israeli literature' Daily Mail 'Adama is an unstoppable masterpiece... If history is a nightmare we’re all trying to wake up from, then Adama is a trumpet blast that rings out the past and into the future' Junot Díaz 'As a study of biblical comeuppance, the land and the blood have the last say. I recommend Adama as an instructive primer for today's generation of Israeli politicians. There are, indeed, lessons to be learned' Jewish Chronicle 'Word by word I was drawn deeper and deeper into this incredible book – a story of inheritance, loss, longing and what could have been. Lavie Tidhar's prose is beautiful, his characters lacerating and heartbreaking by turns. I loved it.' Catriona Ward
£20.00
Columbia University Press Anatheism: Returning to God After God
Has the passing of the old God paved the way for a new kind of religious project, a more responsible way to seek, sound, and love the things we call divine? Has the suspension of dogmatic certainties and presumptions opened a space in which we can encounter religious wonder anew? Situated at the split between theism and atheism, we now have the opportunity to respond in deeper, freer ways to things we cannot fathom or prove. Distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney calls this condition ana-theos, or God after God-a moment of creative "not knowing" that signifies a break with former sureties and invites us to forge new meanings from the most ancient of wisdoms. Anatheism refers to an inaugural event that lies at the heart of every great religion, a wager between hospitality and hostility to the stranger, the other--the sense of something "more." By analyzing the roots of our own anatheistic moment, Kearney shows not only how a return to God is possible for those who seek it but also how a more liberating faith can be born. Kearney begins by locating a turn toward sacred secularity in contemporary philosophy, focusing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. He then marks "epiphanies" in the modernist masterpieces of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Kearney concludes with a discussion of the role of theism and atheism in conflict and peace, confronting the distinction between sacramental and sacrificial belief or the God who gives life and the God who takes it away. Accepting that we can never be sure about God, he argues, is the only way to rediscover a hidden holiness in life and to reclaim an everyday divinity.
£22.50
HarperCollins Publishers Ed Sheeran
‘Compelling new biography’ Daily Express ‘Fascinating stories’ Daily Mirror ‘A well-researched, entertaining look at Ed Sheeran … Sheeran fans will relish this well-told biography.’ Publishers Weekly Ed Sheeran is a true inspiration. His moving and uplifting songs forge a lasting connection with the millions of people around the world who love him and his music. He was the thirteen-year-old guitarist in a school rock band when he decided to become a singer-songwriter, even though he could barely hold a tune and had never written a song. Within a year, he had recorded an album in his bedroom. Bestselling biographer Sean Smith traces the astonishing journey of the shy little boy with a stammer who, avoiding flashy showmanship, grew up to be a global phenomenon. Through compelling new research and interviews, he tells the story of Ed’s remarkable mum and dad who gave their son the courage to pursue his dream, the friends and mentors who encouraged him and the lovers who inspired his most famous songs. Smith describes the setbacks Ed faced before his fortunes were transformed by Elton John’s management company, a record deal and a song that changed everything – with a little help from Taylor Swift. Ed found it difficult to cope with the world at his feet, but a new relationship with a girl from his home town has brought him happiness and a fresh purpose in life. Now he is the most successful solo star on the planet, earning £83 million last year. Yet in the middle of his record-breaking 2018 UK tour, he played for just 400 people at a charity night to raise money for the homeless. As this captivating book reveals, there’s no one quite like Ed.
£10.99
Troubador Publishing John F. Kennedy: The London Story
Two months after his twenty-first birthday, a young Harvard student arrived to join his father the American Ambassador in London. Jack, as he was known to family, had no idea how his journey to England on the eve of war would come to change and shape his life. Jack’s beloved sister Kick was presented at Court that summer and hailed by the Press as ‘most exciting debutante’ that year. She introduced her brother to a small circle of young aristocrats, all descended from families that had long ruled England. Fascinated by books on Britain’s history and tales from the Court of King Arthur, Jack felt immediately at home. The eager student from Boston was soon sharing tea with a thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, partying at Blenheim Palace and speeding across Europe as the borders were closing. Amongst the last to escape Berlin he would return with a secret Embassy note predicting hostilities ‘within a week’. With sister Kick and brother Joe he raced to Parliament to see Chamberlain declare war and Churchill rise to inspire a nation in its hour of need. Jack was spell-bound. He would forge lifelong bonds of friendship sharing such dramatic times with his young aristocratic circle. This family circle, after Kick’s marriage, would then come to play an astonishing role in shaping Jack’s actions from the Cuba Missile Crisis to Berlin when the free world came close to nuclear Armageddon. In John F. Kennedy: The London Story, the author reveals the extraordinary role Britain came to play in Jack’s life. By looking at his early life, we see how he became the man to lead and inspire the free world. Ideal for any history or politics enthusiasts, or anyone with an interest in how early events shape a life.
£27.00
Icon Books Tony Carr: A Lifetime in Football at West Ham United
'A man who had such a huge impact on my career and so many other young players at West Ham United. I highly recommend this fantastic read.' FRANK LAMPARD JR'This man passed on the West Ham DNA to the best generation of academy graduates to come through the West Ham system.' RIO FERDINAND'A West Ham United man, a must read for every West Ham United fan.' MARK NOBLEThe autobiography of a West Ham legend - including exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and Mark Noble.Tony Carr is one of the most influential coaches of all time. Having achieved his boyhood dream of signing with West Ham United in 1966 and training alongside the inimitable Bobby Moore, a leg break forced Carr to end his playing career before it had even begun. Not to be deterred, he decided to forge himself a new path and was appointed director of youth football at West Ham in 1973, aged just 23.As Carr tells in this book the very first time, over the next 43 years he honed his craft, becoming hugely admired for identifying and nurturing young talent, guiding multiple generations of international starlets through the ranks at The Academy of Football.In his brilliant, understated style, Tony tells the incredible story of his footballing life. He recounts the highs and lows of his time with West Ham, with tales of the twelve managers he coached under. This unique evocation of a coach's craft includes exclusive interviews with Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole and current West Ham captain Mark Noble as they talk frankly about football and their place within it.
£10.99
Little, Brown Book Group Boys in the Trees: A Memoir
#1 New York Times Bestseller A People Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year 'A sensational memoir ...brilliantly well written. Carly Simon is incapable of writing a boring sentence ...you can forgive anything for the unparalleled brilliance of her writing' - Lynn Barber, Sunday Times 'Hugely affecting memoir ...heartfelt and remarkable' - Fiona Sturges, Independent Carly Simon is a household name. She was the staple of the '70s and '80s Billboard charts and was famously married to James Taylor with whom she has two children. She has had a career that has spanned four decades, resulting in thirteen top 40 hits, including the Number 1 song 'You're So Vain', numerous Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her song 'Let the River Run' (from the film Working Girl). Boys in the Trees is a rhapsodic, beautifully composed memoir of a young woman's coming of age amongst the glamorous literati and intelligentsia of Manhattan (her father was Richard Simon, co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster), a reflection on a life begun amidst secrets and shame, and a powerful story of the strength to leave that all behind and forge a path of art, music and love in the Golden Age of folk and rock. At once an insider's look into a life in the spotlight, a lyric reflection on a particular time in our culture's history, and a beautiful memoir about the pains and joys of love and art, Boys in the Trees is the story Carly Simon has long been waiting to tell the world. Praise for the US edition: 'One of the best celebrity memoirs of the year' Hollywood Reporter 'Intelligent and captivating' People 'Compelling' Rolling Stone
£12.99
Association pour la generalisation de l'Inventaire regional en Picardie Sur Une Frontiere De La France. La Thierache (Aisne)
Se jouant des limites, puisqu'elle etait frontiere de la France au XVIIe siecle et qu'elle deborde aujourd'hui sur les departements du Nord et des Ardennes, le Thierache est, dans l'Aisne, un terroir ouvert a l'identite forte. Vallons, haies, forets, villages a l'habitat disperse, mosaique oA' regnent le vert des pres, le bleu de l'ardoise, le rouge orange de la brique, l'ocre jaune du torchis et le brun du bois, s'imposent a l'evidence comme un seul et meme A"paysA". Agricole et discrete, la Thierache fut, dans l'ancien diocese de Laon, terre de mission et de defrichement pour les grandes abbayes qui s'y implanterent au Moyen Age, puis terre d'accueil precoce du protestantisme. Sans cesse parcourue par les armees de l'invasio,, cette region, sans autre defense que ses forets, vit ses bourgs se ceinturer de murailles, et ses eglises se herisser de fortifications aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles, en particulier pendant la guerre de Trente Ans qui marqua memoires et paysages. Dans ce terroir depourvu de grands centres urbains, les petites cites d'Aubenton, Guise, Hirson, La Capelle, Le Nouvion-en-Thierache, Montcornet, Rozoy-sur-Serre, Vervins ont connuune histoire politique mouvementee, souvent encore lisible dans leur architecture. L'experience industrielle et sociale sans equivalent en France, reussie par Jean-Baptiste Godin au Familistere de Guise, tranche sur les activites artisanales implantees en Thierache (meunerie, verrerie, forge, tissage, vannerie, saboterie...), reflets durables d'une economie et d'un monde rural qui s'effaceraient sans bruit, si plusieurs petits musees ne s'efforcaient de transmettre le souvenir de modes de vie disparus et d'hommes emblematiques (Mgr Pigneau de Behaine, Godin, Mermoz...). Malgre toutes les epreuves, la Thierache a conserve, dans ses edifices cultuels, un riche patrimoine religieux: des fonts baptismaux medievaux en A"pierre bleueA", des peintures dont les plus connues restent celles de Jouvenet, un vaste corpus de vitraux des XIXe et XXe siecles, de superbes autels et decors de choeur, et pres d'un tiers des orgues de l'Aisne dont la renommee a largement franchi les frontieres du departement.
£83.88
University of Hawai'i Press The People’s West Lake: Propaganda, Nature, and Agency in Mao’s China, 1949-1976
The People’s West Lake examines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to reconfigure Hangzhou’s urban space, alter the natural environment in West Lake (Xihu), and refashion the city’s culture in post-1949 China. It pieces together five initiatives between the 1950s and the 1970s: the dredging of the lake, the construction of the public park of Watching Fish at the Flower Harbor (Huagang guanyu), the afforestation movement, the development of collectivized pig farming around West Lake, and the two campaigns to remove lakeside tombs. These projects were intended to generate visible and tangible results—a lake with a good depth, a scenic public garden, greener hills surrounding the lake, a growing swine population and rising productivity of fertilizer, and a tourist site cleansed of burial grounds—while also being readily subject to the Party’s propaganda. These initiatives were designed both to achieve economic, cultural, and ecological utilities and to forge and popularize a sense of socialist nationhood. The CCP’s endeavor to fundamentally transform the West Lake area also opened up possibilities for both human and nonhuman actors to variously benefit from, get along with, and undermine the political authorities’ planning. This book thus emphatically foregrounds and unifies the agency of both humans and nonhuman entities that are not necessarily tied to intentionality, bringing into question the legitimacy of the human/nonhuman binary. Author Qiliang He explores the agency of both humans and nonhumans (including water, microbes, aquatic plants, the park, pigs, trees, pests, and tombs) to affect, deflect, and undercut the CCP’s sociopolitical programs, thereby diminishing the efficacy of state propaganda. Highlighting the nonpurposive agency of both actors problematizes the long-held resistance-accommodation paradigm, which presumes the resisters’ a priori subjectivities independent of the socialist system, in studying the state-society relationship in the People’s Republic of China. Using a project-based approach, The People’s West Lake gives the nature-human relationship in Mao’s China (best known as Mao’s "war against nature") historical and cultural specificities to reexamine the PRC regime’s central planning and the issues related to it.
£28.27
Thomas Nelson Publishers The Flirtation Experiment: Putting Magic, Mystery, and Spark Into Your Everyday Marriage
From popular Christian voices Lisa Jacobson and Phylicia Masonheimer, The Flirtation Experiment inspires you to strengthen your marriage with a fun, unexpected approach that leads to the depth, richness, and closeness you desire. Romance novels, Hallmark movies . . . the immense demand for romantic stories reveals a deep, unsatisfied longing that can be found in many marriages, but does it have to be that way? Is it possible that the best marriage has to offer can grow, rather than fade after you say “I do”? Lisa and Phylicia say, “Absolutely yes!” So what is the secret to a happy, thriving, loving marriage, where the fire of romance and close friendship do not fade? While The Flirtation Experiment includes the frisky side of marriage, it’s far more than a good romp. By degrees, each chapter takes you to a deeper place, covering themes every beautiful marriage has in common, such as covenant, healing, and hope. After reading The Flirtation Experiment, wives will be filled with hope and encouragement for how they can make a powerful, positive change in their marriages, become empowered to pursue their husbands romantically, understand the Bible invites women to be proactive in their marriages, be motivated to consistently love in creative ways, and forge closeness and intimacy in their marriages. “Intentional flirting keeps a positive lightness in the atmosphere and improves our overall communication,” says Jacobson. “My light flirtations bring us closer in meaningful ways and lead to connection on a deeper level. It helps us discover true romance waiting for us in everyday situations.” Perfect for the wife who wants romance, passion, and the closeness that only comes from a deep heart connection but isn’t sure where to start, The Flirtation Experiment is a candid, real-life record of two Christian women from different seasons of life who discovered they could make a significant impact on their marriage relationships, one small flirtatious experiment at a time.Readers can go deeper by using The Flirtation Experiment Workbook.
£18.70
Liverpool University Press Triumph at Midnight in the Century: A Critical Biography of Arturo Barea -- Explaining the Roots of the Spanish Civil War
Arturo Barea (1897-1957) is often seen as merely a spontaneous writer with a passion against injustice. In fact, he set out deliberately to write concretely and sensuously: about himself in order to understand his mid-life nervous breakdown; and about his generation as a way of explaining the underlying causes of the Spanish Civil War. With acute psychological insight, this self-taught boy from the slums, who left school aged 13, drew a unique portrait of Spanish society in the early twentieth century. His trilogy "The Forging of a Rebel" was well-received by George Orwell, "An excellent book -- Senor Barea is one of the most valuable of the literary acquisitions that England has made as a result of Fascist persecution"; and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "One of the best novels written in Spanish." He is unusual in that he was one of the first Spanish working-class writers, one of the first autobiographers in Spain, and someone who published mainly in English though all his attention was focused on Spain. In this ground-breaking biography, based on numerous interviews with people who knew Barea, Michael Eaude revisits Bareas writing qualities and deficiencies in the context of stimulating intersections of literature and politics, and of Spain and England. He evaluates all his major works, including The Track, the story of Barea's time as a sergeant during the 1920s colonial war in Morocco; The Forge, the story of city and country, school and work, in the first years of the twentieth century, told through the eyes of a child; The Clash, the story of Barea's experience as a censor during the Civil War; The Broken Root, his last novel, about exile and an imagined return to Madrid; and his short stories and essays. He also puts into perspective Barea's more than 800 talks for the BBC, and rebuts slanders that Barea did not write his own books. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies
£27.50
American Psychological Association Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children
New York Times Bestseller! Becoming Brilliant offers solutions that parents can implement right now. Backed by the latest scientific evidence and illustrated with examples of what’s being done right in schools today, this book introduces the 6Cs—collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence—along with ways parents can nurture their children’s development in each area. In just a few years, today's children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those their parents and grandparents knew. Even the definition of "career" and "job" are changing as more people build their own teams to create new businesses, apps, and services. Although these changes are well underway, our system of K–12 education in the United States lags behind. Our education system still subscribes to the idea that content is king. The exclusive focus on content is reflected in what we test and how we teach, and even the toys we offer our children at home. Employers want to hire excellent communicators, critical thinkers, and innovators — in short, they want brilliant people. But they are often disappointed. So what can we do, as parents, to help our children be brilliant and successful? Stories about the failures of our educational system abound, but most of them stop after pointing out the problems. Becoming Brilliant goes beyond complaining to offer solutions that parents can apply right now. Authors Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek provide a science-based framework for how we should be educating children in and outside of school. Parents become agents of change for children's success when they nurture six critical skills. Constructed from the latest scientific evidence and presented in an accessible way rich with examples, this book introduces the 6Cs — collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence — along with tips to optimize children's development in each area. Taken together, these are the skills that will make up the straight-A report card for success in the 21st century.
£17.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Gloria
_______________ 'Kerry Young is a standalone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region. Read her if you want to know about the Caribbean' - Monique Roffey, winner of the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature 'A vivid portrayal ... Kerry Young's heartfelt, sparky and affecting debut novel is a chronicle of multicultural Jamaica, both in its cultural richness and in its strife and tensions' - Guardian 'A pacy but absorbing saga of domestic struggle and gangland manoeuvring set against the violent backdrop of postwar Jamaican politics' - Independent on Sunday _______________ From the author of the Costa and Commonwealth Prize-shortlisted Pao Jamaica, 1938. Gloria Campbell is sixteen years old when a single violent act changes her life forever. She and her younger sister flee their hometown to forge a new life in Kingston. As all around them the city convulses with political change, Gloria’s desperation and striking beauty lead her to Sybil and Beryl, and a house of ill-repute where she meets Yang Pao, a Kingston racketeer whose destiny becomes irresistibly bound with her own. Sybil kindles in Gloria a fire of social justice which will propel her to Cuba and a personal and political awakening that she must reconcile with the realities of her life, her love of Jamaica and a past that is never far behind her. Set against the turbulent backdrop of a country on the cusp of a new era, Gloria is an enthralling and illuminating story of love and redemption. _______________ 'Gloria is a brilliant, observant, sometimes complex read, but with clear and simple messages, it speaks to the feminist and equal rights campaigner in all of us *****' - Western Mail 'A very authentic portrayal of a woman’s lot in 1950s, 1960s Jamaica. I fell in love with Gloria and was turning over the pages rapidly, willing her to conquer her situation. A triumph' - Alex Wheatle, author of Brenton Brown 'A highly evocative portrait of a country in transition, and of one woman’s search for self-awareness and self-respect' - Mail on Sunday
£14.99
Fordham University Press Experiments in Exile: C. L. R. James, Hélio Oiticica, and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness
Comparing the radical aesthetic and social experiments undertaken by two exile intellectuals, Experiments in Exile charts a desire in their work to formulate alternative theories of citizenship, wherein common reception of popular cultural forms is linked to a potentially expanded, non-exclusive polity. By carefully analyzing the materiality of the multiply-lined, multiply voiced writing of the “undocuments” that record these social experiments and relay their prophetic descriptions of and instructions for the new social worlds they wished to forge and inhabit, however, it argues that their projects ultimately challenge rather than seek to rehabilitate normative conceptions of citizens and polities as well as authors and artworks. James and Oiticica’s experiments recall the insurgent sociality of “the motley crew” historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker describe in The Many-Headed Hydra, their study of the trans-Atlantic, cross-gendered, multi-racial working class of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Reading James’s and Oiticica’s projects against the grain of Linebaugh and Rediker’s inability to find evidence of that sociality’s persistence or futurity, it shows how James and Oiticica gravitate toward and seek to relay the ongoing renewal of dissident, dissonant social forms, which are for them always also aesthetic forms, in the barrack-yards of Port-of-Spain and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the assembly lines of Detroit and the streets of the New York. The formal openness and performative multiplicity that manifests itself at the place where writing and organizing converge invokes that sociality and provokes its ongoing re-invention. Their writing extends a radical, collective Afro-diasporic intellectuality, an aesthetic sociality of blackness, where blackness is understood not as the eclipse, but the ongoing transformative conservation of the motley crew’s multi-raciality. Blackness is further instantiated in the interracial and queer sexual relations, and in a new sexual metaphorics of production and reproduction, whose disruption and reconfiguration of gender structures the collaborations from which James’s and Oiticica’s undocuments emerge, orienting them towards new forms of social, aesthetic and intellectual life.
£73.80
Columbia University Press Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era
Houston A. Baker Jr. condemns those black intellectuals who, he believes, have turned their backs on the tradition of racial activism in America. These individuals choose personal gain over the interests of the black majority, whether they are espousing neoconservative positions that distort the contours of contemporary social and political dynamics or abandoning race as an important issue in the study of American literature and culture. Most important, they do a disservice to the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who have fought for black rights. In the literature, speeches, and academic and public behavior of some black intellectuals in the past quarter century, Baker identifies a "hungry generation" eager for power, respect, and money. Baker critiques his own impoverished childhood in the "Little Africa" section of Louisville, Kentucky, to understand the shaping of this new public figure. He also revisits classical sites of African American literary and historical criticism and critique. Baker devotes chapters to the writing and thought of such black academic superstars as Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele; Yale law professor Stephen Carter; and Manhattan Institute fellow John McWhorter. His provocative investigation into their disingenuous posturing exposes what Baker deems a tragic betrayal of King's legacy. Baker concludes with a discussion of American myth and the role of the U.S. prison-industrial complex in the "disappearing" of blacks. Baker claims King would have criticized these black intellectuals for not persistently raising their voices against a private prison system that incarcerates so many men and women of color. To remedy this situation, Baker urges black intellectuals to forge both sacred and secular connections with local communities and rededicate themselves to social responsibility. As he sees it, the mission of the black intellectual today is not to do great things but to do specific, racially based work that is in the interest of the black majority.
£22.50
New Harbinger Publications What Makes You Stronger: How to Thrive in the Face of Change and Uncertainty Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Discover the skills you need to face change and uncertainty with confidence—and grow even stronger!Change can happen so slowly that you might not even notice it. And sometimes, it can happen in an instant, causing your world to come crashing down. For many of us, change is scary, and as a result, we may try to avoid it, or even actively resist it. But while burying our heads in the sand can provide some short-term relief, our fear can grow and manifest itself in life-altering ways like stress, anxiety, or depression. The good news is that you can learn to transform how you respond to unwanted change.In What Makes You Stronger, you’ll learn to apply the authors’ proven-effective DNA-v model (Discoverer, Noticer, Advisor, Value, and Vitality)—a potent blend of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness, and positive psychology to gain resilience in the face of change. Using this simple six-step process, you’ll not only cope with change and adversity—but grow stronger from it! You’ll discover strategies for managing uncertainty, breaking unhealthy behavior patterns, and reducing overwhelm when things start to feel out of control.If you’re ready to stop running from change, and start living a life guided by your values, this powerful guide will be with you, every step of the way.DNA-v: A Simple 6-Step Process to Positive Change ·The Broaden and Build Process – Learn to create, think, play, and explore in a way that builds value and joy ·Mindfulness and Attention Process – Pause and respond to feelings, rather than reacting impulsively ·The Cognitive Process – Disengage from negative self-talk ·The Values-Based Process – Clarify your values to create a meaningful life ·The Self-View Process – Let go of your ego and see your potential rather than your limitations ·The Social-View Process – Build genuine connections, manage difficult people, and forge strong social relationships
£15.99
Avalon Travel Publishing Moon Nova Scotia, New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island (Sixth Edition)
Spot moose and porcupines on a secluded hike, relax in a candy-colored fishing village, and immerse yourself in Canada's maritime history with Moon Nova Scotia, New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island. Inside you'll find:* Flexible itineraries including a coastal road trip and a multi-week Nova Scotia adventure, designed for foodies, families, outdoor adventurers, history buffs, and more* Top experiences and activities: Take a scenic drive along the coast, tour North America's oldest working brewery, or stroll around the town that inspired Anne of Green Gables. Feast on fresh lobster, crab, and salmon or sample traditional Acadian rappie pie. Board and explore historic ships harbored at a UNESCO World Heritage Site or learn how to forge metal and spin cloth at the living history settlement of Kings Landing * Best outdoor adventures: Keep an eye out for the world's rarest whales, kayak along the craggy coast, and take in a colorful sunset on a harbor cruise. Hike through wildflower-filled meadows or bright fall foliage, kayak the alongside the craggy coast, or bike the beach boardwalks. Walk between giant sea stacks during low tide and let the sound of waves lull you to sleep at an oceanfront campsite * Strategic advice from Canadian Andrew Hempstead on when to go, where to stay, and how to get around* Full-color photos and detailed maps throughout* Background information on the environment, culture, and history* Essential tips for families with children, travelers with disabilities, and moreExperience the natural beauty and fascinating history of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island with Moon's expert tips and unique experiences.Expanding your trip? Try Moon Atlantic Canada or Moon Canadian Rockies.About Moon Travel Guides: Moon was founded in 1973 to empower independent, active, and conscious travel. We prioritize local businesses, outdoor recreation, and traveling strategically and sustainably. Moon Travel Guides are written by local, expert authors with great stories to tell-and they can't wait to share their favorite places with you.For more inspiration, follow @moonguides on social media.
£14.99
John Wiley & Sons Inc Grassroots Leaders for a New Economy: How Civic Entrepreneurs Are Building Prosperous Communities
A seminal work in fleshing out the kind of leadership we need to renew and prepare communities for the demands of democracy in the coming era. Ronald Heifetz, director, Leadership Education Project, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Jolted by the economic downturn of the early 1990s and the rapid globalization of the economy, a group of California business, government, education, and community leaders formed Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, a collaborative regional alliance that helped create a strengthened economy and an improved quality of life in their community. Now three of Joint Venture's advisers outline the process that led to this dramatic turnaround, as well as success stories in Florida, Ohio, Kansas, and Texas. They reveal the powerful new concept of civic entrepreneurship, and they offer practical, proven strategies that community leaders across the country can employ to foster local economic development and renewal. Grassroots Leaders for a New Economy explains the unique leadership qualities that set civic entrepreneurs apart, and illustrates how these leaders can emerge from all levels of private, public, social, and civic organizations. The book shows how civic entrepreneurs forge powerfully productive linkages at the intersection of business, government, education, and community, and it demonstrates how they operate at the grassroots level to create collaborative advantages that make it possible for their economic communities to compete on the global stage. Citing numerous real-life examples, authors Douglas Henton, John Melville, and Kimberly Walesh illustrate the necessary steps to build an economic community. They show how civic entrepreneurs motivate and network to organize for action, set priorities, and mobilize resources to get things done. Finally, they demonstrate how to sustain cross-sector collaboration over the long haul for the good of the community. An indispensable resource, Grassroots Leaders for a New Economy offers step-by-step guidance and practical advice equally useful to business executives, elected officials and public managers, community development practitioners, or concerned citizens who want to take an active role in shaping the future of local economic development.
£31.99
Harvard University Press Happiness in Action: A Philosopher’s Guide to the Good Life
“Here, at last, is a book about what happiness really means, and why it often eludes us in our stressed-out, always-on lives.”—Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO, ThriveA young philosopher and Guinness World Record holder in pull-ups argues that the key to happiness is not goal-driven striving but forging a life that integrates self-possession, friendship, and engagement with nature.What is the meaning of the good life? In this strikingly original book, Adam Adatto Sandel draws on ancient and modern thinkers and on two seemingly disparate pursuits of his own, philosophy and fitness, to offer a surprising answer to this age-old human question.Sandel argues that finding fulfillment is not about attaining happiness, conceived as a state of mind, or even about accomplishing one’s greatest goals. Instead, true happiness comes from immersing oneself in activity that is intrinsically rewarding. The source of meaning, he suggests, derives from the integrity or “wholeness” of self that we forge throughout the journey of life.At the heart of Sandel’s account of life as a journey are three virtues that get displaced and distorted by our goal-oriented striving: self-possession, friendship, and engagement with nature. Sandel offers illuminating and counterintuitive accounts of these virtues, revealing how they are essential to a happiness that lasts.To illustrate the struggle of living up to these virtues, Sandel looks to literature, film, and television, and also to his own commitments and adventures. A focal point of his personal narrative is a passion that, at first glance, is as narrow a goal-oriented pursuit as one can imagine: training to set the Guinness World Record for Most Pull-Ups in One Minute. Drawing on his own experiences, Sandel makes philosophy accessible for readers who, in their own infinitely various ways, struggle with the tension between goal-oriented striving and the embrace of life as a journey.
£22.46
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood
A Hugo Award Nominee!Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman!“J. Michael Straczynski is, without question, one of the greatest science fiction minds of our time.” -- Max Brooks (World War Z)For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there’s one story he’s never told before: his own.In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Marvel’s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.Joe's early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults—a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized—Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father’s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past. To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family’s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.Straczynski’s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.
£12.99