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Pearls, Arms and Hashish: Pages from the Life of a Red Sea Navigator
by Henri De Monfreid Ida TreatFirst published in 1930, this is the personal adventure narrative of Henri de Monfreid—nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin.“Henri de Monfried satisfies the most exacting reader. One is never for a moment suspicious that his amanuensis is crediting him with words he could not use or thoughts he would not entertain. The impression conveyed by Ida Treat's really superb rendering of the French searover's story is that M. de Monfried could write very well indeed if he thought it worthwhile, but that he expresses himself as a rule in other ways.“Briefly, Henri de Monfried is the son of a Bostonian artist of French descent who lived in the south of France and married a French peasant girl. The boy grew up and tried various callings, but finally yielded to a Wanderlust which took him to French Somaliland, at the southern end of the Red Sea. He became a Moslem and engaged in pearling, gunrunning, slaving, and the smuggling of hashish into Egypt. He has a family. He is fifty years old. The Arabs call him Abd el Hai. This book is what he calls the first half of his life. He is too interested in life itself to take consolation in memoirs as yet. The British navy calls him the Sea Wolf. He makes a hobby of raising the French flag on islands inconveniently near to British coaling stations.“There are […] sketches of sea-boards and seamen in this book which recall the master's hand and mind. And there is never a word too much. A touch light as a feather; an ironical glance as his adversary departs defeated, or an equally ironical bow as the British Lion mauls him and lets him go—to try again.”—Saturday Review
Pearls of Love: How to Write Love Letters and Love Poems
by Ara John Movsesian"The primary purpose of Pearls Of Love is twofold: 1) to help you develop your writing skills in the areas of love letters and love poems, and 2) to serve as a modern day version of Cyrano De Bergerac by helping you express yourself when the words are hard to find. Pearls Of Love contains sections on basic instruction as well as various types of pre-written material. It is a complete guidebook which will help you say "I love you" in a very special and unforgettable way."-Preface
Pearls of Wisdom: Little Pieces of Advice (That Go a Long Way)
by Barbara BushThe best advice First Lady Barbara Bush offered her family, staff, and close friends. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #2c2c2c} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #2c2c2c; min-height: 14.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} span.s1 {color: #2c2c2c} First Lady Barbara Bush was famous for handing out advice. From friends and family to heads of state and Supreme Court justices, and certainly to her staff, her advice ranged from what to wear, what to say or not say, and how to live your life. She especially loved visiting with students of all ages, from kindergartners to college graduates. When she turned 80, she owned up to all her advice-giving and explained it this way: After all, in 80 years of living, I have survived 6 children, 17 grandchildren, 6 wars, a book by Kitty Kelly, two presidents, two governors, big Election Day wins and big Election Day losses, and 61 years of marriage to a husband who keeps jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. So, it's just possible that along the way I've learned a thing or two. At the end of the day, she taught all of us some valuable lessons. As First Lady, she made a point of cuddling a baby with AIDS and hugging a young man who was HIV positive and whose family had rejected him, showing us by example the importance of compassion and the myth of fear. As a mother, she made sure we all knew that your children must come first, and one of the most important things you can do is to read to them. As a friend and mentor, she showed that you had to be true to yourself, and even at the end of her life, she taught us how to die with grace.Full of Barbara Bush's trademark wit and thoughtfulness, Pearls of Wisdom is a poignant reflection on life, love, family, and the world by one of America's most iconic -- and beloved -- public figures.
Pearl's Secret: A Black Man's Search for His White Family
by Neil HenryPearl's Secret is a remarkable autobiography and family story that combines elements of history, investigative reporting, and personal narrative in a riveting, true-to-life mystery. In it, Neil Henry--a black professor of journalism and former award-winning correspondent for the Washington Post--sets out to piece together the murky details of his family's past. His search for the white branch of his family becomes a deeply personal odyssey, one in which Henry deploys all of his journalistic skills to uncover the paper trail that leads to blood relations who have lived for more than a century on the opposite side of the color line. At the same time Henry gives a powerful and vivid account of his black family's rise to success over the twentieth century. Throughout the course of this gripping story the author reflects on the part that racism and racial ignorance have played in his daily life--from his boyhood in largely white Seattle to his current role as a parent and educator in California.
The Pearly Prince of St Pancras
by Alf Dole Jeff HudsonPearly Kings and Queens are one of the quintessential icons of 'old London', originally invented to imitate and parody wealthy West End society but also to raise money for charities and good causes. Alf Dole lived his life in this tradition and was the grandson of the very first Pearly King of St Pancras. Born in 1930, Alf grew up in a close-knit family of costermongers - fruit and veg sellers - and his heartwarming memoir recounts London life in the city in a time of horses and trams, pubs where sing-alongs around the piano happened every weekend and summers were spent hop-picking in Kent. When war came along, Alf was evacuated to Wales, where he continued to wear his pearly suit and entertained the locals by playing the spoons. After the war he continued to sell fruit and veg, working in Chapel market. He also had his own sea food stalls outside public houses. Capturing the camaraderie of working in London's street markets in the middle of the 20th century and surviving the Second World War, Alf's memoir also serves as an important slice of social history from a time when working-class communities were proud to celebrate their traditions. Sadly Alf died just after completing his story but his daughter Diane, herself a Pearly Princess, is continuing the family custom in fine tradition.
The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution
by Alex StorozynskiThaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian born in 1746, was one of the most important figures of the modern world. Fleeing his homeland after a death sentence was placed on his head (when he dared court a woman above his station), he came to America one month after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, literally showing up on Benjamin Franklin's doorstep in Philadelphia with little more than a revolutionary spirit and a genius for engineering. Entering the fray as a volunteer in the war effort, he quickly proved his capabilities and became the most talented engineer of the Continental Army. Kosciuszko went on to construct the fortifications for Philadelphia, devise battle plans that were integral to the American victory at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, and designed the plans for Fortress West Point—the same plans that were stolen by Benedict Arnold. Then, seeking new challenges, Kosciuszko asked for a transfer to the Southern Army, where he oversaw a ring of African-American spies. A lifelong champion of the common man and woman, he was ahead of his time in advocating tolerance and standing up for the rights of slaves, Native Americans, women, serfs, and Jews. Following the end of the war, Kosciuszko returned to Poland and was a leading figure in that nation's Constitutional movement. He became Commander in Chief of the Polish Army and valiantly led a defense against a Russian invasion, and in 1794 he led what was dubbed the Kosciuszko Uprising—a revolt of Polish-Lithuanian forces against the Russian occupiers. Captured during the revolt, he was ultimately pardoned by Russia's Paul I and lived the remainder of his life as an international celebrity and a vocal proponent for human rights. Thomas Jefferson, with whom Kosciuszko had an ongoing correspondence on the immorality of slaveholding, called him "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." A lifelong bachelor with a knack for getting involved in doomed relationships, Kosciuszko navigated the tricky worlds of royal intrigue and romance while staying true to his ultimate passion—the pursuit of freedom for all. This definitive and exhaustively researched biography fills a long-standing gap in historical literature with its account of a dashing and inspiring revolutionary figure.
The Pebble Chance
by Marius Kociejowski"Here the charm is deep, the splendour unlaboured; the colours of history, reckoned afresh, saturate singular people, in whom passion is lucid again...here is one who collects his extraordinary resources, and strides."-Christopher MiddletonIn the game of bocce, no matter how intensely you study the world's surface, there is always a chance an unseen pebble will knock your ball in an unexpected direction. In these essays, poet, antiquarian bookseller, and celebrated travel writer Marius Kociejowski chronicles serendipitous encounters with authors, manuscripts, and eccentrics, in which "the curious workings of fate" and "art's unbidden swerve" intervene to shift the course of fortune.Carried by keen wit, aphoristic prose, and a rich sense of characterization, and featuring chance meetings and comic misadventures with such figures as Bruce Chatwin, Zbigniew Herbert, and Javier Marías, The Pebble Chance is a sumptuous offering of belles lettres exploring the incandescent moments when skill and providence collide."It is a testament to the power of this superb book that I felt not despondency, but ... elation."-Adam Thorpe, The Times Literary Supplement"Treasures are revealed ... with a formidable erudition, and at their best they gleam with an enameled splendour."-Ken Babstock, The Globe and Mail"Kociejowski writes beautifully ... unusual, poetic, and thought-provoking."-Library Journal
A Pebble In The Throat: Growing Up Between Two Continents
by Aasmah Mir'I loved this book ... incredibly moving' Reverend Richard Coles'A treasure of a book' Fern Britton 'Full of beauty, wit and inner strength' Samira AhmedTwo generations, two places and two stories told in unison.A Pebble in the Throat is an eloquent and often heart-breaking memoir of Aasmah Mir's childhood growing up in 1970s Glasgow. From a vivacious child to a teenage loner, Aasmah candidly shares the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures - trying to fit in at school and retreating to the safe haven of a home inhabited by her precious but distant little brother and Helen, her family's Glaswegian guardian angel.Intricately woven into this coming-of-age story is that of Aasmah's mother, as we follow her own life as a young girl in 1950s Pakistan to 1960s Scotland and beyond. Both mother and daughter fight, are defeated and triumph in different battles in this sharp and moving story. A Pebble in the Throat is a remarkable memoir about family, identity and finding yourself where you are.
Los pecados de Neruda
by HERNAN LOYOLAEl libro que se hace cargo de los pecados bajo los que se han visto envueltas en los últimos años la figura y la obra de Pablo Neruda. Breve y consistente ensayo biográfico de la pluma del gran nerudiano Hernán Loyola, en donde aborda las polémicas póstumas en que se han visto envueltas la obra y figura de Neruda. En ocho capítulos, ocho pecados, Loyola aborda, enfrenta y encara cada una de estas polémicas: el poeta inútil, el poeta machista, el poeta fabulador, el poeta violador, el poeta mal marido, el poeta mal padre, el poeta plagiario, el poeta insolente y el poeta abandonador.
Peculiar People: The Story of My Life
by Augustus HareThese days hardly anyone remembers Augustus John Curthbert Hare (1834-1903). But in his prime, the late Victorian age, his name was on the lips of anyone who mattered. He was a travel writer, a storyteller and a memoirist of the first order, and his work is a fascinating record of a lost way of life amongst the strangest upper classes of English society.
A Peculiar Treasure
by Edna FerberPulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber's stunning first autobiography, in which she recounts her small-town Midwestern childhood and rise to literary fame, all amidst the backdrop of America around the turn of the 20th century.A modest girl growing up one of the only Jewish children in her Midwestern town, Edna Ferber started overcoming the odds at a young age. Pursuing work at the local newspaper as an innocent 17-year-old, she was assigned the night court shift, reporting on drugs and violence, and gradually finding her own voice in standing up to what she witnessed. As she continued to pursue writing, she recalls the various ways in which she found inspiration, leading her to publish her first books and later, So Big, which won a Pulitzer Prize and catapulted her to fame. Ferber's incredible experiences all occur during a time of pre-WWII rising anti-Semitism and the gaining power of Hitler in Europe, and the various historical and political tensions of the time color the fascinating events of her life.
Pedaços de Vida
by Judite SousaUm livro intimista de uma das mais respeitadas e reconhecidas jornalistas portuguesas Partindo de pedaços da sua vida pessoal e profissional, Judite Sousa reflecte, neste livro, sobre a nossa existência em sociedade, sobre a forma como comunicamos, como agimos, como evoluímos. Ao longo da vida, passamos por experiências que nos vão marcar, que vão definir a nossa maneira de estar, de pensar e, no limite, de agir. Guardamos o que nos foi acontecendo de bom e de mau. Conhecermo-nos é um exercício difícil, porque as circunstâncias da vida apanham-nos, muitas vezes, de surpresa e não estamos preparados para lidar com mágoas, tristezas, mentiras ou, em sentido contrário, alegrias ou bem-estar. O que damos como certo e verdadeiro pode deixar de o ser em horas, minutos, segundos. Em rigor, ninguém pode dizer que está preparado para as maiores adversidades: a decepção, o fracasso ou a morte. A vida é uma aprendizagem permanente e, neste livro, Judite Sousa fala sobre a Vida, tal como a entende e tal como a vive até hoje.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paulo FreireThe methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Myra Bergman Ramos Paulo FreirePaulo Freire has perfected a method for teaching illiterates that has contributed, in an extraordinary way, to that process. In fact, those who, in learning to read and write, come to a new awareness of selfhood and begin to look critically at the social situation in which they find themselves, often take the initiative in acting to transform the society that has denied them this opportunity of participation. Education is once again a subversive force.
Pedal, Balance, Steer: Annie Londonderry, the First Woman to Cycle Around the World
by Vivian KirkfieldAnnie Londonderry proves women can do anything they set their minds to—even cycle around the world—in this nonfiction picture book for cycling enthusiasts, budding travelers, and anyone who dreams of reaching a difficult goal.In the 1890s, times were tough, and opportunities for women were few and far between. When mother-of-three Annie Londonderry saw an ad promising $10,000 to a woman who could cycle around the world in a year, something no one thought possible, she decided it was time to learn to ride. She waved goodbye to her family in Boston and set off for Chicago.Annie was exhausted when she arrived fifty-nine days later—and she realized she&’d never make it across the Rockies before winter, and certainly not riding a heavy women&’s bike and wearing a corset and petticoats. So Annie got herself a better bicycle and comfortable bloomers, and headed back East to try a different route. Facing robbers, sprained ankles, and disapproving stares, Annie missed her family and wanted to quit. But she journeyed on, all over the world. And, when she finally reached California and the Southwest, she kept pedaling. Her family was counting on the prize money, and people around the world, especially women, were watching.Annie came through for all of them, arriving in Chicago fourteen days before her deadline and proving that women could do just about anything.
Pedal Power: Inspirational Stories from the World of Cycling
by Anna HughesThis book collects inspirational stories from riders around the world, both ordinary and extraordinary, from the cyclist who conquered Mont Ventoux on a Boris bike, to the trials rider who hops from building to building, to classic tales of Grand Tour rivalries and legendary cycling records of days gone by.
The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi
by Edward CohenEdward Cohen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt, thousands of miles from the northern centers of Jewish culture. As a child he sang "Dixie" in his segregated school, said the "sh'ma" at temple. While the civil rights struggle exploded all around, he worked at the family clothing store that catered to blacks.His grandfather Moise had left Romania and all his family for a very different world, the Deep South. Peddling on foot from farm to farm, sleeping in haylofts, he was the first Jew many Mississippians had ever seen. Moise's brother joined him and they married two sisters, raising their children under one roof, an island of Judaism in a sea of southern Christianity.In the 1950s, insulated by the extended family of double-cousins, Edward believed the world was populated totally by Jews--until the first day of school when he had the disquieting realization that he was the only Jew in his class. At times he felt southern, almost, but his sense of being an outsider slowly crystallized, as he listened to daily Christian school prayers tried to explain his annual absences to classmates who had never heard of Rosh Hashanah. At Christmas his parents' house was the only one without lights. In the seventh grade, he was the only child not invited to dance class.In a compelling work that is nonfiction throughout, but conveyed with a fiction writer's skill and technique, Cohen recounts how he left Mississippi for college to seek his own tribe. Instead, he found that among northern Jews he was again an outsider, marked by his southernness. They knew holidays like Simchas Torah; he knew Confederate Memorial Day.He tells a story of displacement, of living on the margin of two already marginal groups, and of coming to terms with his dual loyalties, to region and religion. In this unsparingly honest and often humorous portrait of cultural contradiction, Cohen's themes--the separateness of the artist, the tug of assimilation, the elusiveness of identity--resonate far beyond the South.
Pedigree
by Robert Baldick Luc Sante Georges SimenonPedigree is Georges Simenon's longest, most unlikely, and most adventurous novel, the book that is increasingly seen to lie at the heart of his outsize achievement as a chronicler of modern self and society. In the early 1940s, Simenon began work on a memoir of his Belgian childhood. He showed the initial pages to André Gide, who urged him to turn them into a novel. The result was, Simenon later quipped, a book in which everything is true but nothing is accurate. Spanning the years from the beginning of the century, with its political instability and terrorist threats, to the end of the First World War in 1918, Pedigree is an epic of everyday existence in all its messy unfinished intensity and density, a story about the coming-of-age of a precocious and curious boy and the coming to be of the modern world.
Pedigree
by Patrick Modiano"It's a book less on what I did than on what others, mainly my parents, did to me"Taking in a vast gallery of extraordinary characters from Paris' post-war years, Pedigree is an autobiographical portrait of Post-War Paris and a tumultuous childhood - a childhood replete with insecurity and sorrow that informed the oeuvre of France's Nobel Laureate. <P><P>With his sometime-actress mother and shady businessman father barely functioning in any parental role, the young Modiano spent his childhood being packed off to the care of others, or held at a safe distance in a grimy boarding school - which he ran away from several times. His impecunious mother had "a heart of stone"; his womanising father once called the police when his son asked him for money, and later ceased all contact with him.But for all his parents' indifference, it is the death of his younger brother when Modiano is eleven that cuts deepest, leaving a wound that can never be healed.
Pedigree
by Patrick Modiano Mark PolizzottiIn this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years--shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his "finest books" by the Guardian, Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by. Pedigree sheds light on the childhood and adolescence that Modiano explores in Suspended Sentences, Dora Bruder, and other novels. In this work he re-creates the louche, unstable, colorful world of his parents under the German Occupation; his childhood in a household of circus performers and gangsters; and his formative friendship with the writer Raymond Queneau. While acknowledging that memory is never assured, Modiano recalls with painful clarity the most haunting moments of his early life, such as the death of his ten-year-old brother. Pedigree, Modiano's only memoir, is a gift to his readers and a master key to the themes that have inspired his writing life.
Pedro
by Mª Luz GómezBiografía que encierra parte de historia de España, novela de amor y aventuras, de guerra, en África, y civil española. He concluido mi carrera. He guardado la fe. En adelante sólo me resta, recibir el premio que el Señor, justo juez, me dará.
Pedro
by Pedro MartínezUn libro audaz, sin restricciones, de uno de los lanzadores más dominantes y dinámicos que jamás haya jugado al béisbol. Del gran lanzador, campeón de la Serie Mundial, miembro del Salón de la Fama, invitado ocho veces al Juego de las Estrellas y ganador del Premio Cy Young en tres ocasiones, llegan estas memorias sin límites sobre la vida y carrera de Pedro Martínez, desde una niñez pobre en la República Dominicana hasta convertirse en uno de los mejores lanzadores de todos los tiempos# y uno de los más intimidantes. En este libro Pedro Martínez, con el humor colorido que lo caracteriza, cuenta su extraordinaria historia: Desde sus días en las ligas menores esforzándose por ganarse el respeto de sus compañeros y sus primeros días en el solitario Montreal; hasta su carrera legendaria con los Red Sox de Boston #cuando, inicio tras inicio, siempre deslumbró con su genialidad en el lanzamiento#, hasta sus últimos años en el montículo, mientras le daba los toques finales a una obra maestra que lo convirtió en un ícono. Estas memorias de una de las figuras más enigmáticas y emblemáticas del béisbol inspirarán a generaciones de fanáticos. #Pedro es un libro inteligente, sumamente divertido y con un toque de estrella como el mismo Pedro. . . Compra el libro. Lee el libro. Celebra la era dorada del béisbol de Boston#. # Boston Globe #Hay muy poco que este campeón de la Serie Mundial no cuenta en este libro; se expande sobre cualquier tema, y ofrece una mirada reveladora de una carrera colorida. . . Los detalles íntimos que ofrece Martínez desde dentro y fuera de la casa club hacen de este un libro único#. # Washington Post
Pedro: Poesía Latina Y Oratoria (elche 1530 - París 1566)
by Pedro Martinez Michael SilvermanA bold, no-holds-barred memoir from one of the most dominant and dynamic pitchers to ever play the game Before Pedro Martinez was the eight-time All Star, three-time Cy Young Award winner, and World Series champion, before stadiums full of fans chanted his name, he was just a little kid from the Dominican Republic who sat under a mango tree and dreamed of playing pro ball. Now in Pedro, the charismatic and always colorful pitcher opens up for the first time to tell his remarkable story. Martinez entered the big leagues a scrawny power pitcher with a lightning arm who they said wasn't "durable" enough, who they said was a punk. But what they underestimated about Pedro Martinez was the intensity of the fire inside. Like no one before or since, Martinez willed himself to become one of the most intimidating pitchers to have ever played the game. In Pedro we relive it all in Technicolor brightness, from his hardscrabble days in the minor leagues clawing for respect; to his early days in lonely Montreal, where he first struggled with the reputation of being a headhunter; to his legendary run with the Red Sox when start after start he dazzled with his pitching genius; to his twilight years on the mound as he put the finishing touches on a body of work that made him an icon. Bold, outspoken, intimate in its details, and grand in ego and ambition, this new memoir by one of baseball's most enigmatic figures will entertain and inspire generations of fans to come.
Pedro Infante. Las leyes del querer
by Carlos MonsiváisEn este libro se retrata a aquellos que fundaron -a través de películas, diálogos y canciones- la sustancia indescriptible que fluye al ritmo de la vida. Una crónica-ensayo de Carlos Monsivaís; un autorretrato de una época a la que las leyendas vuelven atemporal, anclada en el espacio de "lo mexicano", donde intervienen el melodrama, la comedia, los modelos de vida y de mala vida y, por supuesto, las canciones, incesantes, un buen número de ellas ya enraizadas en la vida cotidiana.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript
by Gonzalo Solís de MerásPedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America’s oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solís de Merás’s record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidíaz’s text. In 2012, David Arbesú discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesú sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine’s founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesú provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.