Search results for ""Author Ben Laurie"

Bird-Bent Grass chronicles an extraordinary mother-daughter relationship that spans distance, time, and, eventually, debilitating illness. Personal, familial, and political narratives unfold through the letters that Geeske Venema-de Jong and her daughter Kathleen exchanged during the late 1980s and through their weekly conversations, which started after Geeske was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease twenty years later. In 1986, Kathleen accepted a three-year teaching assignment in Uganda, after a devastating civil war, and Geeske promised to be her daughter's most faithful correspondent. The two women exchanged more than two hundred letters that reflected their lively interest in literature, theology, and politics, and explored ideas about identity, belonging, and home in the context of cross-cultural challenges. Two decades later, with Geeske increasingly beset by Alzheimer's disease, Kathleen returned to the letters, where she rediscovered the evocative image of a tiny, bright meadow bird perched precariously on a blade of elephant grass. That image - of simultaneous tension, fragility, power, and resilience - sustained her over the years that she used the letters as memory prompts in a larger strategy to keep her intellectually gifted mother alive.Deftly woven of excerpts from their correspondence, conversations, journal entries, and email updates, Bird-Bent Grass is a complex and moving exploration of memory, illness, and immigration; friendship, conflict, resilience, and forgiveness; cross-cultural communication, the ethics of international development, and letter-writing as a technology of intimacy. Throughout, it reflects on the imperative and fleeting business of being alive and loving others while they're ours to hold.

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Laurie Berkner, “the queen of children’s music” (People), pairs the lyrics of her infectious hit song with Ben Clanton’s whimsical illustrations in this groovy and adorable picture book—a must-have for fans of Laurie, dancing, and all things monstrous!I’m the biggest monster that you’ve ever seen! My eyes are purple and my teeth are green. I’m big and I’m scary, you know what I mean? And this is what I like to do… Boogie away those bedtime fears and embrace your inner monster with Monster Boogie, based on Laurie Berkner’s irresistibly fun song and featuring lively, playful artwork by Ben Clanton! I do the monster boogie. So can you! Rraaaahhh!

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As an independent publisher, Jeremy Robson always punched above his weight with a roster of authors that have been the envy of many large publishers. As a poet, he has been at the centre of the poetry scene since the 1960s, with a number of highly praised volumes to his credit and the friendship of many leading poets and musicians. In this engrossing memoir, Robson looks back at both his publishing career and life as a poet. Stories abound; whether it be driving Muhammad Ali around Britain, coping with Michael Winner or working in the desert with David Ben-Gurion. Time spent joyously laughing with Maureen Lipman and Alan Coren while undertaking an exciting poetry reading tour with Ted Hughes, and packing the Royal Festival Hall for a historic poetry and jazz concert. Jeremy recounts treasured and life-long friendships with the poets and writers; Dannie Abse, Alan Sillitoe, Vernon Scannell, Laurie Lee, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Elie Wiesel and Frederic Raphael. Well known and celebrated as both publisher and poet, Jeremy Robson has produced a delicious memoir that will delight the reader.

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Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben WhishawDickens's epic, exuberant novel is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories in literature. It chronicles David Copperfield's extraordinary journey through life, as he encounters villains, saviours, eccentrics and grotesques, including the wicked Mr Murdstone, stout-hearted Peggotty, formidable Betsey Trotwood, impecunious Micawber and odious Uriah Heep.Dickens's great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood, and which he described as a 'favourite child') is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.

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Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw'The greatest achievement of the greatest of all novelists' Leo TolstoyIn David Copperfield - the novel he described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew on his own experiences to create one of his most moving and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. It is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant but unworthy school-friend Steerforth; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature's great comic creations. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jeremy Tambling

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John le Carré was a defining writer of his time. This enthralling collection letters - written to readers, publishers, film-makers and actors, politicians and public figures - reveals the playfully intelligent and unfailingly eloquent man behind the penname._____'The symbiosis of author and editor, father and son, has resulted in a brilliant book, le Carré's final masterpiece' 5*, Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph_____A Private Spy spans seven decades and chronicles not only le Carré's own life but the turbulent times to which he was witness. Beginning with his 1940s childhood, it includes accounts of his National Service and his time at Oxford, and his days teaching the 'chinless, pointy-nosed gooseberry-eyed British lords' at Eton. It describes his entry into MI5 and the rise of the Iron Curtain, and the flowering of his career as a novelist in reaction to the building of the Berlin Wall. Through his letters we travel with him from the Second World War period to the immediate moment in which we live. We find le Carré writing to Sir Alec Guinness to persuade him to take on the role of George Smiley, and later arguing the immorality of the War on Terror with the chief of the German internal security service. What emerges is a portrait not only of the writer, or of the global intellectual, but, in his own words, of the very private, very passionate and very real man behind the name._____Includes letters to:John BanvilleWilliam BurroughsJohn CheeverStephen FryGraham GreeneSir Alec GuinnessHugh LaurieBen MacintyreIan McEwanGary OldmanPhilip RothPhilippe SandsSir Tom StoppardMargaret ThatcherAnd more...

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Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution . These essays explore open source's impact on the software industry and reveal how open source concepts are infiltrating other areas of commerce and society. The essays appeal to a broad audience: the software developer will find thoughtful reflections on practices and methodology from leading open source developers like Jeremy Allison and Ben Laurie, while the business executive will find analyses of business strategies from the likes of Sleepycat co-founder and CEO Michael Olson and Open Source Business Conference founder Matt Asay. From China, Europe, India, and Brazil we get essays that describe the developing world's efforts to join the technology forefront and use open source to take control of its high tech destiny. For anyone with a strong interest in technology trends, these essays are a must-read. The enduring significance of open source goes well beyond high technology, however. At the heart of the new paradigm is network-enabled distributed collaboration: the growing impact of this model on all forms of online collaboration is fundamentally challenging our modern notion of community. What does the future hold? Veteran open source commentators Tim O'Reilly and Doc Searls offer their perspectives, as do leading open source scholars Steven Weber and Sonali Shah. Andrew Hessel traces the migration of open source ideas from computer technology to biotechnology, and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger and Slashdot co-founder Jeff Bates provide frontline views of functioning, flourishing online collaborative communities. The power of collaboration, enabled by the internet and open source software, is changing the world in ways we can only begin to imagine.Open Sources 2.0 further develops the evolutionary picture that emerged in the original Open Sources and expounds on the transformative open source philosophy. "This is a wonderful collection of thoughts and examples by great minds from the free software movement, and is a must have for anyone who follows free software development and project histories." --Robin Monks, Free Software Magazine The list of contributors include * Alolita Sharma * Andrew Hessel * Ben Laurie * Boon-Lock Yeo * Bruno Souza * Chris DiBona * Danese Cooper * Doc Searls * Eugene Kim * Gregorio Robles * Ian Murdock * Jeff Bates * Jeremy Allison * Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona * Kim Polese * Larry Sanger * Louisa Liu * Mark Stone * Mark Stone * Matthew N. Asay * Michael Olson * Mitchell Baker * Pamela Jones * Robert Adkins * Russ Nelson * Sonali K. Shah * Stephen R. Walli * Steven Weber * Sunil Saxena * Tim O'Reilly * Wendy Seltzer

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From the author of the viral TikTok sensation, The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, comes the only spicy grumpy x sunshine Christmas romcom you need this year!A charming break from reality' Publishers WeeklyKira North hates Christmas. Which is unfortunate since she just bought a Christmas tree farm in a town that's too cute for its own good.Bennett Ellis is on vacation in Dream Harbor taking a break from his life in California. And most importantly, taking a break from his latest run of disastrous dates.After a run in with Kira in her fields, Ben has no intention of offering to help the grumpy owner set up her tree farm, despite the fact she's clearly got no idea what she's doing.Kira knows she should stop being so stubborn, but her farm is not all cute and cozy like people always show on social media, it's borderline dangerous with no heating, and she'd rather no one saw it.But somehow fate finds Ben at Kira's farm once more, and as Kira watches him swing an ax at the first tree, she finds herself

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Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben WhishawDickens's great coming-of-age novel, now in a beautiful clothbound Penguin editionThis is the novel Dickens regarded as his 'favourite child' and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the 'umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens's own father which evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt.Dickens's great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood) is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.Charles Dickens (1812-70) had his first, astounding success with his first novel The Pickwick Papers and never looked back. In an extraordinarily full life he wrote, campaigned and spoke on a huge range of issues, and was involved in many of the key aspects of Victorian life, by turns cajoling, moving and irritating. He completed fourteen full-length novels and volume after volume of journalism. Of all his many works, he called David Copperfield his 'favourite child'.Jeremy Tambling is Professor of Literature at the University of Manchester.

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Volume 8 of "Research in Experimental Economics" provides a forum for papers incorporating laboratory experimental economics. These specifically include interdisciplinary papers, papers that report experimental design innovations and papers that report detailed data. The paper by Isaac, Walker and Williams is an example. It discusses the design of instructional experiments in such areas as monopoly, asset trading double auctions, and public goods. The paper also examines practical issues of using laboratory experiments as a teaching tool. Four papers report on public goods research. Krishnamurthy, motivated by research questions in Marketing, examines the role of non-binding, face-to-face communication in public goods environments with and without provision points. Chewning, Coller, and Laury incorporate a natural modification of previous provision-point environments, namely, multiple provision points in which additional amounts of the public good will be provided at increasing threshold steps. The paper by Packard, Isaac, and Bial extends research on the marginal per capita return effect (broken down between the MPCR affecting own payoff and affecting others). This paper takes that distinction to a boundary in which the public good provides no marginal per capita return to the contributor. The paper by Croson examines, in the light of the literature on team production, the effect in a public goods environment of different levels of feedback on others' contributions. In one treatment, individuals know only the aggregate contributions of others, while in the other treatment they had information on individual decisions. The paper by Kelly extends existing research regarding single sellers by providing for multiproduct monopolists. It is not merely the addition of additional products that distinguishes this paper, but also the fact that monopolists have a bundling decision to make. This volume concludes with two papers that use controlled experiments for testing policy-relevant allocation mechanisms. Elliott, Kruse, Schulze, and Ben-David examine four mechanisms for the rationing of productive inputs that are subject to supply shocks. Electricity markets are one obvious motivation, but certainly not the only one. Ishikida, Ledyard, Olson, and Porter present experimental "testbedding" research on the California RECLAIM emissions permit market.

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Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are—not as others perceive them—About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them. Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times’ “Disability” column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us,” this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience—stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond. Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability—from the friend who says “I don’t think of you as disabled,” to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, “Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?”—the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as “disabled” by the broader public. Here, a writer recounts her path through medical school as a wheelchair user—forging a unique bridge between patients with disabilities and their physicians. An acclaimed artist with spina bifida discusses her art practice as one that invites us to “stretch ourselves toward a world where all bodies are exquisite.” With these notes of triumph, these stories also offer honest portrayals of frustration over access to medical care, the burden of social stigma and the nearly constant need to self-advocate in the public realm. In its final sections, About Us turns to the questions of love, family and joy to show how it is possible to revel in life as a person with disabilities. Subverting the pervasive belief that disability results in relentless suffering and isolation, a quadriplegic writer reveals how she rediscovered intimacy without touch, and a mother with a chronic illness shares what her condition has taught her young children. With a foreword by Andrew Solomon and introductory comments by co-editors Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us is a landmark publication of the disability movement for readers of all backgrounds, forms and abilities. Featuring Essays from: John Altmann • Todd Balf • Jennifer Bartlett • Emily Rapp Black • Sheila Black • Sasha Blair-Goldensohn • Cheri A. Blauwet • Molly McCully Brown • Joseph P. Carter • Peter Catapano • Randi Davenport • Luticha Doucette • Anne Finger • Joseph J. Fins • Shane Fistell • Paula M. Fitzgibbons • Kenny Fries • Rosemarie Garland-Thomson • Jenny Giering • Ona Gritz • Elizabeth Guffey • Jane Eaton Hamilton • Ariel Henle • Edward Hoagland • Alex Hubbard • Liz Jackson • Elizabeth Jameson • Cyndi Jones • Anne Kaier • Georgina Kleege • Rachel Kolb • Elliott Kukla • Catherine Kudlick • Emily Ladau • Laurie Clements Lambeth • Alaina Leary • Riva Lehrer • Gila Lyons • Ben Mattlin • Zack McDermott • Catherine Monahon • Jonathan Mooney • Susannah Nevison • Joanna Novak • Valerie Piro • Oliver Sacks • Katie Savin • Melissa Shang • Alice Sheppard • Daniel Simpson • Brad Snyder • Andrew Solomon • Rivers Solomon • Carol R. Steinberg • Jillian Weise • Abby L. Wilkerson • Alice Wong

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In 2020, for the first time in centuries, heavy red curtains swept closed on stages across the West End; all theatres were closed. Two actors, keenly feeling the loss of their theatre homes, turned to a form of art that could still thrive over the following months, and set about photographing the stage doors of the deserted city. An extraordinary collaborative project almost two years in the making, Exeunt - The Stage Door Project collects together these moving images, alongside anecdotes from some of the world's leading luminaries who have trodden the boards of the pictured theatres. A tribute to the magical nature of the stage door and the tales lurking behind it, Exeunt is a celebration of the legendary theatres of the city, the extraordinary figures behind the curtain - and the faithful audiences who have flocked back after the storm. Proceeds from sales of this book go to the Actors' Benevolent Fund, ArtsMinds and Theatre Artists Fund Featuring the words of Dame Judi Dench, Emma Rice, Ned Seago, Simon Callow, John McCrea, Diane Page, Reece Shearsmith, Anita Dobson, Macy Nyman, David Bedella, Kwong Loke, Luke Giles, Stephanie Street, Dame Harriet Walter, Rebecca Frecknall, David Jonsson, Jackie Clune, Ben Cracknell, Richard Sutton, Adeyinka Akinrinade, Le Gateau Chocolat, Paule Constable, Lucian Msamati, Adrian Scarborough, David Acton, Natalie Law, Gordon Millar, Leanne Robinson, Thomas Aldridge, Katrina Lindsay, Eben Figueiredo, Andy Taylor, Aimie Atkinson, Jack Holden, Laura Donnelly, Laurie Kynaston, Abraham Popoola, Oengus MacNamara, Louis Maskell, Valda Aviks, Garry Cooper, Mark Dugdale, Lyn Paul, James Graham, Emma Sheppard, Paul Bazely, Preston Nyman, Lauren Ward, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Natalie McQueen, Gavin Spokes, Niamh Cusack, Paterson Joseph, Anna Fleischle, Daniel Monks, Michael Sheen, Lia Williams, Ruthie Henshall, Simon Lipkin, Tom Brooke, Ian Rickson, Rufus Hound, Zoe Tapper, Patsy Ferran, Joshua McGuire, Sharon D Clarke, Mark Gatiss, Taz Skylar, Marianne Benedict, Ferdinand Kingsley, Lez Brotherston, Tamsin Withers, Hadley Fraser, Karl Queensborough, Neil Salvage, Jessie Hart, Kathy Peacock, Howard Hudson, Jonathan Andrew Hume, Andy Nyman, Andrew McDonald, Claire Roberts, Michael Jibson, Jason Pennycooke, Christopher Tendai, Laura Baldwin, Matt Henry, Robert Lindsay, Simon Evans, Fisayo Akinade, Irvine Iqbal and Zoe Wanamaker.

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Apache is far and away the most widely used web server platform in the world. This versatile server runs more than half of the world's existing web sites. Apache is both free and rock-solid, running more than 21 million web sites ranging from huge e-commerce operations to corporate intranets and smaller hobby sites. With this new third edition of Apache: The Definitive Guide, web administrators new to Apache will come up to speed quickly, and experienced administrators will find the logically organized, concise reference sections indispensable, and system programmers interested in customizing their servers will rely on the chapters on the API and Apache modules. Updated to cover the changes in Apache's latest release, 2.0, as well as Apache 1.3, this useful guide discusses how to obtain, set up, secure, modify, and troubleshoot the Apache software on both Unix and Windows systems. Dozens of clearly written examples provide the answers to the real-world issues that Apache administrators face everyday. In addition to covering the installation and configuration of mod_perl and Tomcat, the book examines PHP, Cocoon, and other new technologies that are associated with the Apache web server. Additional coverage of security and the Apache 2.0 API make Apache: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition essential documentation for the world's most popular web server.

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