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The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan
by Jenny NordbergAn investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girlIn Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune. A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as "dressed up like a boy") is a third kind of child - a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom. The Underground Girls of Kabul is anchored by vivid characters who bring this remarkable story to life: Azita, a female parliamentarian who sees no other choice but to turn her fourth daughter Mehran into a boy; Zahra, the tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and refuses her parents' attempts to turn her back into a girl; Shukria, now a married mother of three after living for twenty years as a man; and Nader, who prays with Shahed, the undercover female police officer, as they both remain in male disguise as adults. At the heart of this emotional narrative is a new perspective on the extreme sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the violent backdrop of America's longest war. Divided into four parts, the book follows those born as the unwanted sex in Afghanistan, but who live as the socially favored gender through childhood and puberty, only to later be forced into marriage and childbirth. The Underground Girls of Kabul charts their dramatic life cycles, while examining our own history and the parallels to subversive actions of people who live under oppression everywhere.
Understanding Pat Conroy (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)
by Catherine SeltzerAn insightful look at the life and work of the extraordinary popular Southern writer.Pat Conroy’s novels and memoirs have indelibly shaped the image of the South in the American imagination. His writing has rendered the physical landscape of the South Carolina lowcountry familiar to legions of readers, and has staked out a more complex geography as well—one defined by domestic trauma, racial anxiety, religious uncertainty, and cultural ambivalence.In Understanding Pat Conroy, Catherine Seltzer engages in a sustained consideration of Conroy and his work. The study begins with a sketch of Conroy’s biography, which, while fascinating in its own right, is employed here to illuminate many of the motifs and characters that define his work and to locate him within southern literary tradition. Seltzer then explores each of Conroy’s major works, tracing the evolution of the themes within and among each of his novels, including The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and South of Broad, and his memoirs, among them The Water Is Wide and My Losing Season.Seltzer’s insightful close readings of Conroy’s work are supplemented by interviews and archival material, shedding new light on the often-complex dynamics between text and context in Conroy’s oeuvre. More broadly, Understanding Pat Conroy explores the ways that Conroy delights in troubling the boundaries that circumscribe the literary establishment—and links his work to existing debates about the contemporary American canon.
The Undertaker's Daughter: A Memoir
by Kate Mayfield“The Undertaker’s Daughter is a wonderfully quirky, gem of a book beautifully written by Kate Mayfield.…Her compelling, complicated family and cast of characters stay with you long after you close the book” (Monica Holloway, author of Cowboy & Wills and Driving With Dead People).How does one live in a house of the dead? Kate Mayfield explores what it meant to be the daughter of a small-town undertaker in this fascinating memoir evocative of Six Feet Under and The Help, with a hint of Mary Roach’s Stiff.After Kate Mayfield was born, she was taken directly to a funeral home. Her father was an undertaker, and for thirteen years the family resided in a place nearly synonymous with death, where the living and the dead entered their house like a vapor. In a memoir that reads like a Harper Lee novel, Mayfield draws the reader into a world of haunting Southern mystique.In the turbulent 1960s, Kate’s father set up shop in sleepy Jubilee, Kentucky, a segregated, god-fearing community where no one kept secrets—except the ones they were buried with. By opening a funeral home, Frank Mayfield also opened the door to family feuds, fetishes, murder, suicide, and all manner of accidents. Kate saw it all—she also witnessed the quiet ruin of her father, who hid alcoholism and infidelity behind a cool and charismatic façade. As Kate grows from trusting child to rebellious teen, the enforced sobriety of the funeral home begins to chafe, and she longs for the day she can escape the confines of Jubilee and her place as the undertaker’s daughter.“Mayfield fashions a poignant send-off to Jubilee in this thoughtfully rendered work” (Publishers Weekly).
The Undertaker's Wife: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Laughter in the Unlikeliest of Places
by Dee Oliver Jodie BerndtOn Dee Branch’s first date with Johnnie Oliver, a fourth-generation funeral director, she knew she was in for a unique relationship when he had to leave “for just a minute”—and he came back to the car with a corpse. Over twenty years later, Dee was still in love with her charming southern gentleman when he passed away suddenly in 2007. Determined to carry on Johnnie’s work, Dee earned her mortuary science degree, only to find herself no longer needed in the family business. So Dee crossed the racial divide in the most segregated industry in America and joined the staff of an African-American funeral home as a single white woman. In The Undertaker’s Wife, Oliver draws from her wealth of experience to provide candid and often hysterically funny advice on dying well and surviving the loss of those who have gone before. Her insights on the common ground of grief, survival, and the ever-present faithfulness of God (to all of us, regardless of our race, religious upbringing, or socio-economic background) will help readers prepare for one of life’s only certainties—and do it with wisdom, grace, and a healthy dose of joy.
Undici viaggiatori ed esploratori che hanno ampliato i confini del mondo conosciuto
by Debora Serrentino Michael RankDall'autore del best-seller #1 "I dieci grandi generali della storia", arriva un nuovo appassionante libro sui più grandi esploratori della storia e sul modo in cui le loro scoperte hanno plasmato il mondo moderno. Che si tratti di Rabban Bar Sauma, il monaco cinese del tredicesimo secolo incaricato dai mongoli di viaggiare verso ovest per formare un'alleanza militare contro l'Islam, o di Marco Polo, che ha aperto una finestra sull'oriente per l'Europa, o del Capitano James Cook, i cui viaggi alla scoperta del mare crearono l'economia globale del ventunesimo secolo, ognuno di questi esploratori ha avuto un'incredibile impatto sulla società moderna. Questo libro tratterà degli undici più grandi esploratori della storia. Alcuni hanno viaggiato per devozione religiosa, come Ibn Battuta, che ha viaggiato dal Nord Africa fino all'Indonesia nel 1300, visitando, sul percorso, ogni luogo del pellegrinaggio islamico. Altri hanno viaggiato per profitto, come Ferdinando Magellano, che voleva consolidare i possedimenti spagnoli sul commercio delle spezie. Altri hanno viaggiato per il semplice brivido dell'avventura, come l'esploratore vittoriano Richard Francis Burton, che imparò 29 lingue, andò in pellegrinaggio alla Mecca sotto copertura e scrisse 50 libri su argomenti che variano dalla traduzione del Kama Sutra al manuale di esercizi con la baionetta. Anche altri hanno viaggiato per il piacere della scoperta, come Ernest Shackleton, che ha condotto ventiquattro uomini alla base del mondo nel tentativo di attraversare l'Antartide a piedi. Quali che siano state le ragioni per la scoperta, questi esploratori ci ispirano ancora oggi a superare i limiti della conquista umana e a scoprire nel frattempo qualcosa su noi stessi.
Undocumented
by Dan-el Padilla PeraltaAn undocumented immigrant's journey from a New York City homeless shelter to the top of his Princeton class, Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he came here legally with his family. Together they left Santo Domingo behind, but life in New York City was harder than they imagined. Their visas lapsed, and Dan-el's father returned home. But Dan-el's courageous mother was determined to make a better life for her bright sons.Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city's homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el's only refuge was the meager library. There he met Jeff, a young volunteer from a wealthy family. Jeff was immediately struck by Dan-el's passion for books and learning. With Jeff's help, Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country.There, Dan-el thrived. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated these two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he could immerse himself in a world of books and where he soon rose to the top of his class.From Collegiate, Dan-el went to Princeton, where he thrived, and where he made the momentous decision to come out as an undocumented student in a Wall Street Journal profile a few months before he gave the salutatorian's traditional address in Latin at his commencement.Undocumented is a classic story of the triumph of the human spirit. It also is the perfect cri de coeur for the debate on comprehensive immigration reform. <br> <b>Winner of the 2016 Alex Award (10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences)</b>
Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
by Elvis CostelloBorn Declan Patrick MacManus, Elvis Costello was raised in London and Liverpool, grandson of a trumpet player on the White Star Line and son of a jazz musician who became a successful radio dance-band vocalist. <P><P>Costello went into the family business and before he was twenty-four took the popular music world by storm.Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of our day. His performances have taken him from strumming a cardboard guitar in his parents' front room to fronting a rock and roll band on our television screens and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink describes how Costello's career has endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom.This memoir, written entirely by Costello, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best-known songs and the hits of tomorrow. It features many stories and observations about his renowned cowriters and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations of the less appealing side of fame. <P>Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink provides readers with a master's catalogue of a lifetime of great music. Costello reveals the process behind writing and recording legendary albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Almost Blue, Imperial Bedroom, and King of America. He tells the detailed stories, experiences, and emotions behind such beloved songs as "Alison," "Accidents Will Happen," "Watching the Detectives," "Oliver's Army," "Welcome to the Working Week," "Radio Radio," "Shipbuilding," and "Veronica," the last of which is one of a number of songs revealed to connect to the lives of the previous generations of his family.Costello recounts his collaborations with George Jones, Chet Baker, and T Bone Burnett, and writes about Allen Toussaint's inspiring return to work after the disasters following Hurricane Katrina. He describes writing songs with Paul McCartney, the Brodsky Quartet, Burt Bacharach, and The Roots during moments of intense personal crisis and profound sorrow. He shares curious experiences in the company of The Clash, Tony Bennett, The Specials, Van Morrison, and Aretha Franklin; writing songs for Solomon Burke and Johnny Cash; and touring with Bob Dylan; along with his appreciation of the records of Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, David Ackles, and almost everything on the Tamla Motown label.Costello chronicles his musical apprenticeship, a child's view of his father Ross MacManus' career on radio and in the dancehall; his own initial almost comical steps in folk clubs and cellar dive before his first sessions for Stiff Record, the formation of the Attractions, and his frenetic and ultimately notorious third U.S. tour. He takes readers behind the scenes of Top of the Pops and Saturday Night Live, and his own show, Spectacle, on which he hosted artists such as Lou Reed, Elton John, Levon Helm, Jesse Winchester, Bruce Springsteen, and President Bill Clinton. The idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic.From the Hardcover edition.
Unflinching
by Jody MiticElite sniper Jody Mitic loved being a soldier. His raw, candid, and engrossing memoir follows his personal journey into the Canadian military, through sniper training, and firefights in Afghanistan, culminating on the fateful night when he stepped on a landmine and lost both of his legs below the knees.Afghanistan, 2007. I was a Master Corporal, part of an elite sniper team sent on a mission to flush out Taliban in an Afghan village. I had just turned thirty, after three tours of duty overseas. I'd been shot at by mortars, eyed the enemy through my scope, survived through stealth and stamina. I'd been training for war my entire adult life. But nothing prepared me for what happened next. A twenty-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, Jody Mitic served as a Master Corporal and Sniper Team Leader on three active tours of duty over the course of seven years. Known for his deadly marksmanship, his fearlessness in the face of danger, and his "never quit" attitude, he was a key player on the front in Afghanistan. As a sniper, he secured strongholds from rooftops, engaged in perilous ground combat, and joined classified night operations to sniff out the enemy. In this gritty, no-holds-barred memoir, Jody reveals he was born to be a soldier. An aimless teen in search of belonging, he found brotherhood and discipline in army life. In sniper school, he learned the mindset of a hunter-killer and developed the hyper-sensory precision of a human predator. On the warfront, Jody experienced first-hand the valour and the chaos, the battle scars and the pain of war--including the tragic losses of fellow soldiers wounded or killed in action. And one day in 2007, when he was on a mission in a small Afghan village, he stepped on a landmine and the course of his life was forever changed. After losing both of his legs below the knees, Jody was forced to confront the loss of the only identity he had ever known--that of a soldier. Determined to be of service to his family and to his country, he refused to let injury defeat him. Within three years after the explosion, he was not only walking again, he was running. By 2013, he was a star on the blockbuster reality TV show Amazing Race. And in 2014, Jody reinvented himself yet again, winning a seat as a city councillor for Ottawa. Unflinching is a powerful chronicle of the honour and sacrifice of an ordinary Canadian fighting for his country, and an authentic portrait of military life. It's also an inspirational memoir about living your dreams, even in the face of overwhelming adversity, and having the courage to soldier on.
Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime
by Scott Simon"I'm getting a life's lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?" UNFORGETTABLE is a son's spirited, affecting, and inspiring tribute to his remarkable mother and the love between parent and child. When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating familial love. UNFORGETTABLE, expands on those famous tweets to create a memoir that is rich, deeply affecting, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating. His mother was a glamorous woman of the Mad Men–era; she worked in nightclubs, modeled, dated mobsters and movie stars, and was a brave single parent to young Scott Simon. Spending their last days together in a hospital ICU, mother and son reflect on their lifetime's worth of memories, recounting stories laced with humor and exemplifying resilience. UNFORGETTABLE is not only one man's rich and moving tribute to his mother's colorful life and graceful death, it is also a powerful portrayal of the universal bond between mother and child.
Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes
by Richard Davenport-HinesIn Universal Man, noted biographer and historian Richard Davenport-Hines revives our understanding of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the twentieth century’s most charismatic and revolutionary economist. Keynes helped FDR launch the New Deal, saved Britain from financial crisis twice over the course of two World Wars, and instructed Western nations on how to protect themselves from revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment, and social dissolution. Isaiah Berlin called Keynes “the cleverest man I ever knew”—both “superior and intellectually awe-inspiring. ” Eric Hobsbawm, the twentieth century’s preeminent historian, considered him as influential as Lenin, Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Gandhi, and Mao. Keynes was nothing less than the Adam Smith of his time: his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, became the most important economics book of the twentieth century, as important as Smith’s Wealth of Nations in inaugurating an economic era. Keynes’s brilliant ideas made possible 35 years of prosperity after the Second World War, the most sustained period of rapid expansion in history. And now, and in the wake of the 2008 global economic collapse, he is once again shaping our world. Every day, we are likely to hear about “Keynesian economics” or the “Keynesian Revolution,” terms that testify to his continuing influence on both economic theory and government policies. Indeed, with the thorough discrediting of his opponents—Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and other supporters of the notion that capitalism is self-regulating, and needs no government intervention—nations across the world are turning to Keynes’s signature innovations: above all that governments must involve themselves in their economies to stave off financial collapse. Previous biographies have explored Keynes economic thought at great length and often in the jargon of the discipline. Universal Man is the first accessible biography of Keynes, and reveals Keynes as much more than an economist. Like many Englishmen of his class and era, Keynes compartmentalized his life. Accordingly, Davenport-Hines views Keynes through multiple windows, as a youthful prodigy, a powerful government official, an influential public man, a bisexual living in the shadow of Oscar Wilde’s persecution, a devotee of the arts, and an international statesman of great renown. Delving into Keynes’s experiences and thought, Davenport-Hines shows us a man who was equally at ease socialising with the Bloomsbury Group as he was persuading heads of state to adopt his policies. Exploring the desires and experiences that compelled Keynes to innovate, Davenport-Hines is the first to argue that Keynesian economics has an aesthetic basis. In this book we come to understand not just the most enduringly influential economist of the modern era, but one of the most gifted and vital men of our times: a disciplined logician with a capacity for glee who persuaded people, seduced them, subverted old ideas, and installed new ones; a man whose high brilliance did not give people vertigo, but clarified and lengthened their perspectives. Engaging, learned, and sparkling with wit and insight, Universal Man is the perfect match for its subject.
Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary
by Edward KleinA New York Times Bestseller! From the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Amateur and Blood Feud . . . <P><P>Unlikeable is the stunning, powerful exposé of Hillary Clinton and her floundering race for the White House. With unprecedented access to longtime associates of the Clintons and the Obamas, investigative reporter Edward Klein meticulously recreates conversations and details of Hillary Clinton's behind-the-scenes plotting in Chappaqua and Whitehaven. <P><P>Klein, the former editor in chief of New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, draws a deeply troubling portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a highly unlikeable presidential candidate and a woman more associated with scandal than with accomplishments, with lying than with truth, with arrogance than with compassion.
The Unmaking of a Mayor
by William F. Buckley Jr.John V. Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City in 1965. But that year's mayoral campaign will forever be known as the Buckley campaign. "As a candidate," Joseph Alsop conceded, "Buckley was cleverer and livelier than either of his rivals." And Murray Kempton concluded that "The process which coarsens every other man who enters it has only refined Mr. Buckley."The Unmaking of a Mayor is a time capsule of the political atmosphere of America in the spring of 1965, diagnosing the multitude of ills that plagued New York and other major cities: crime, narcotics, transportation, racial bias, mismanagement, taxes, and the problems of housing, police, and education. Buckley's nimble dissection of these issues constitutes an excellent primer of conservative thought.A good pathologist, Buckley shows that the diseases afflicting New York City in 1965 were by no means of a unique strain, and compared them with issues that beset the country at large. Buckley offers a prescient vision of the Republican Party and America's two-party system that will be of particular interest to today's conservatives. The Unmaking of a Mayor ends with a wistful glance at what might have been in 1965-and what might yet be.
Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food
by Megan KimbleIn the tradition of Michael Pollan’s bestselling In Defense of Food comes this remarkable chronicle, from a founding editor of Edible Baja Arizona, of a young woman’s year-long journey of eating only whole, unprocessed foods—intertwined with a journalistic exploration of what “unprocessed” really means, why it matters, and how to afford it.In January of 2012, Megan Kimble was a twenty-six-year-old living in a small apartment without even a garden plot to her name. But she cared about where food came from, how it was made, and what it did to her body: so she decided to go an entire year without eating processed foods. Unprocessed is the narrative of Megan’s extraordinary year, in which she milled wheat, extracted salt from the sea, milked a goat, slaughtered a sheep, and more—all while earning an income that fell well below the federal poverty line.What makes a food processed? As Megan would soon realize, the answer to that question went far beyond cutting out snacks and sodas, and became a fascinating journey through America’s food system, past and present. She learned how wheat became white; how fresh produce was globalized and animals industrialized. But she also discovered that in daily life, as she attempted to balance her project with a normal social life—which included dating—the question of what made a food processed was inextricably tied to gender and economy, politics and money, work and play.Backed by extensive research and wide-ranging interviews—and including tips on how to ditch processed food and transition to a real-food lifestyle—Unprocessed offers provocative insights not only on the process of food, but also the processes that shape our habits, communities, and day-to-day lives.
Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall
by Anita SilveyJane Goodall, one of the most recognized scientists in the Western world, became internationally famous because of her ability to observe and connect with another species. A girl of humble beginnings and training, she made scientific breakthroughs thought impossible by more experienced field observers when she was only in her twenties. Then these animals shaped Jane's life. She began tirelessly fighting to protect the environment so that chimpanzees and other animals will continue have a place and a future on our planet. Jane Goodall continues to leave the modern world with an extraordinary legacy and has changed the scientific community forever.
The Untold Story of Henry Knox: The Man Who Saved Boston (What You Didn't Know About The American Revolution Ser.)
by Danny Kravitz
The Untold Story of Washington's Surprise Attack: The Daring Crossing Of The Delaware River (What You Didn't Know About The American Revolution Ser.)
by Danny Kravitz
Untrodden Ground: How Presidents Interpret the Constitution
by Harold H. BruffWhen Thomas Jefferson struck a deal for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he knew he was adding a new national power to those specified in the Constitution, but he also believed his actions were in the nation’s best interest. His successors would follow his example, setting their own constitutional precedents. Tracing the evolution and expansion of the president’s formal power, Untrodden Ground reveals the president to be the nation’s most important law interpreter and examines how our commanders-in-chief have shaped the law through their responses to important issues of their time. Reviewing the processes taken by all forty-four presidents to form new legal precedents and the constitutional conventions that have developed as a result, Harold H. Bruff shows that the president is both more and less powerful than many suppose. He explores how presidents have been guided by both their predecessors’ and their own interpretations of constitutional text, as well as how they implement policies in ways that statutes do not clearly authorize or forbid. But while executive power has expanded far beyond its original conception, Bruff argues that the modern presidency is appropriately limited by the national political process--their actions are legitimized by the assent of Congress and the American people or rejected through debilitating public outcry, judicial invalidation, reactive legislation, or impeachment. Synthesizing over two hundred years of presidential activity and conflict, this timely book casts new light on executive behavior and the American constitutional system.
Up Close and Personal
by Cris Shore Susanna TrnkaCombining rich personal accounts from twelve veteran anthropologists with reflexive analyses of the state of anthropology today, this book is a treatise on theory and method offering fresh insights into the production of anthropological knowledge, from the creation of key concepts to major paradigm shifts. Particular focus is given to how 'peripheral perspectives' can help re-shape the discipline and the ways that anthropologists think about contemporary culture and society. From urban Maori communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, from Arnhem Land in Australia to the villages of Yorkshire, these accounts take us to the heart of the anthropological endeavour, decentring mainstream perspectives, and revealing the intimate relationships and processes that create anthropological knowledge.
Up With The Lark: My Life On the Land
by Joan Bomford'An evocative portrait of a forgotten period of Britain's farming history... is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily TelegraphJoan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.
Up With The Lark: My Life On the Land
by Joan Bomford'An evocative portrait of a forgotten period of Britain's farming history... is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily TelegraphJoan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.
Up With The Lark: My Life On the Land
by Joan Bomford'An evocative portrait of a forgotten period of Britain's farming history... is an ode both to the soil, and those who have worked it alongside her' Daily TelegraphJoan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. She ran away from school whenever she could to help him. As an 8 year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she's still as active, still driving tractors, still feeding the farm's beef cattle and horses, and still giving riding lessons.This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. With the warmth and wit of a born story teller, she tells us what it's been like to live through an era of enormous change, her love of animals kindled by her father's shire horses who did all the heavy work until machinery took over. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman's overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else - being Farmer Joan.(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton
Upon the Ruins of Liberty: Slavery, the President's House at Independence National Historical Park, and Public Memory
by Roger C. AdenThe 2002 revelation that George Washington kept slaves in his executive mansion at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park in the 1790s prompted an eight-year controversy about the role of slavery in America's commemorative landscape. When the President's House installation opened in 2010, it became the first federal property to feature a slave memorial. In Upon the Ruins of Liberty, Roger Aden offers a compelling account that explores the development of this important historic site and how history, space, and public memory intersected with contemporary racial politics. Aden constructs this engrossing tale by drawing on archival material and interviews with principal figures in the controversy-including historian Ed Lawler, site activist Michael Coard, and site designer Emanuel Kelly. Upon the Ruins of Liberty chronicles the politically-charged efforts to create a fitting tribute to the place where George Washington (and later, John Adams) shaped the presidency while denying freedom to the nine enslaved Africans in his household. From design to execution, the plans prompted advocates to embrace stories informed by race, and address difficulties that included how to handle the results of the site excavation. As such, this landmark project raised concerns and provided lessons about the role of public memory and how places are made to shape the nation's identity.
The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
by Leonard MlodinowA few million years ago, our ancestors came down from the trees and began to stand upright, freeing our hands to create tools and our minds to grapple with the world around us. Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a passionate and inspiring tour through the exciting history of human progress and the key events in the development of science. In the process, he presents a fascinating new look at the unique characteristics of our species and our society that helped propel us from stone tools to written language and through the birth of chemistry, biology, and modern physics to today's technological world. Along the way he explores the cultural conditions that influenced scientific thought through the ages and the colorful personalities of some of the great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers: Galileo, who preferred painting and poetry to medicine and dropped out of university; Isaac Newton, who stuck needlelike bodkins into his eyes to better understand changes in light and color; and Antoine Lavoisier, who drank nothing but milk for two weeks to examine its effects on his body. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and many lesser-known but equally brilliant minds also populate these pages, each of their stories showing how much of human achievement can be attributed to the stubborn pursuit of simple questions (why? how?), bravely asked. The Upright Thinkers is a book for science lovers and for anyone interested in creative thinking and in our ongoing quest to understand our world. At once deeply informed, accessible, and infused with the author's trademark wit, this insightful work is a stunning tribute to humanity's intellectual curiosity. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)From the Hardcover edition.
The Upstairs Wife
by Rafia ZakariaA memoir of Karachi through the eyes of its women An Indies Introduce Debut Authors Selection For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her Uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death. In that moment these twin catastrophes--one political and public, the other secret and intensely personal--briefly converged. Zakaria uses that moment to begin her intimate exploration of the country of her birth. Her Muslim-Indian family immigrated to Pakistan from Bombay in 1962, escaping the precarious state in which the Muslim population in India found itself following the Partition. For them, Pakistan represented enormous promise. And for some time, Zakaria's family prospered and the city prospered. But in the 1980s, Pakistan's military dictators began an Islamization campaign designed to legitimate their rule--a campaign that particularly affected women's freedom and safety. The political became personal when her aunt Amina's husband, Sohail, did the unthinkable and took a second wife, a humiliating and painful betrayal of kin and custom that shook the foundation of Zakaria's family but was permitted under the country's new laws. The young Rafia grows up in the shadow of Amina's shame and fury, while the world outside her home turns ever more chaotic and violent as the opportunities available to post-Partition immigrants are dramatically curtailed and terrorism sows its seeds in Karachi. Telling the parallel stories of Amina's polygamous marriage and Pakistan's hopes and betrayals, The Upstairs Wife is an intimate exploration of the disjunction between exalted dreams and complicated realities.From the Hardcover edition.
V. Shantaram: The Man Who Changed Indian Cinema
by Madhura Pandit JasrajHe immortalized movies on celluloid… An authentic, heartfelt, insightful and comprehensive account of one of India’s most respected and eminent filmmakers, who was an institution in himself…V. Shantaram (1901–90) stands out as a colossus in Indian cinema. As one of the pioneers in this field, he honed his skills not only as a producer and director but also as an actor, writer, cameraman, technician and editor. He effectively used the medium of cinema as a vehicle for creating awareness about numerous social problems (such as communalism, dowry and the cycle of debt and poverty) and tried to bring about a change in society. This riveting biography – penned by his daughter – brings alive the life and times of Shantaram and his contemporaries, while simultaneously throwing light on a bygone era of Indian cinema marked by struggles, uncertainties and difficulties but yet infused with hope, perseverance and determination. Among Shantaram’s prominent creations in Hindi are Ayodhya Ka Raja (1932), Sairandhari (1933; India’s first colour film), Amrit Manthan (1934), Duniya Na Maane (1937), Aadmi (1939), Padosi (1941), Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946), Dahej (1950), Janak Janak Pyal Baaje (1955), Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), Navrang (1959), Sehra (1963), Geet Gaya Pattharon Ne (1964) and Pinjra (1972)