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Venture into the Stratosphere: Flying the First Jetliners
by Dominic ColvertA fascinating, one-of-a-kind memoir that takes readers on a journey to the dawn of the jet age—and reveals how technology will shape the world to come. Drawing on engineering breakthroughs achieved during World War II, aviation in the 1950s was an exciting and uplifting sequel to the most destructive conflict in history. It gave birth to the jet age and fostered remarkable social changes. Venture into the Stratosphere is a memoir about the exhilaration and challenges of flying the first jetliners—the de Havilland Comets. Former Irish Air Corpsman and aviation engineer Dominic Colvert explains technical matters in layman&’s terms, tells a fascinating love story, examines the post-war ethos, and reveals intimate details of the flight deck in both routine and emergency situations. By opening a window onto cultural developments after the turn of the century, Colvert offers key insights into how new technologies shape behavior and values. Passenger jets have become a routine part of life for most people, but have you ever wondered—how did we get here? Read Venture into the Stratosphere to find out!
Venus Envy: Power Games, Teenage Vixens, and Million-Dollar Egos on the Women's Tennis Tour
by L. Jon WertheimA behind-the-scenes look at the hugely popular and often controversial world of women's tennis featuring such household names as Venus and Serena Williams and Anna Kournikova. At a time when attendance and TV ratings for women's tennis are at an all-time high, Sports Illustrated writer L.Jon Wertheim, draws on his investigative talents and knowledge of the game to infiltrate the heretofore closed locker rooms of the women's tour and chronicle this remarkable era in the sport's history. With a narrative sweep that rockets along like a Venus Williams serve, it takes the reader from the year's first Grand Slam tournament--where a top player ignited a firestorm of controversy when she decided to come out-- to Venus' epochal victory at Wimbledon to the U.S. Open where Serena Williams defends her title and all the whistle-stop tournaments in between where the Russian vixen Anna Kournikova sent hormonally challenged teenagers, not to mention male sportswriters, into a frenzy, Venus Envy offers the reader the equivalent of a center-court seat and an all-access locker room pass. The book will contain a wealth of previously unreported, inside-the-locker room anecdotes about the marquee names in women's tennis and should engender much off-the-book-page coverage. There are more identifiable stars than ever before and the rivalries are intense and often rancorous. The book will even appeal to those readers with only a passing interest in tennis since many of the players have transcended the sport, appearing on the covers of magazine like GQ, Rolling Stone and Vogue.
Venus and Aphrodite: A Biography of Desire
by Bettany HughesA cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian.Aphrodite was said to have been born from the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus -- and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. Proving that this fabled figure is so much more than an avatar of commercialized romance, historian Bettany Hughes reveals the remarkable lifestory of one of antiquity's most potent myths.Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.
Venus and Serena Williams
by June SwansonIntroduces the life and accomplishments of the famous tennis-playing sisters.
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage
by Stacy SchiffWinner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all. "Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form.
Vera Brittain: A Life
by Mark Bostridge Paul BerryVera Brittain is most widely known as the woman who immortalized a lost generation in her haunting autobiography of the Great War, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH.Writer, pacifist and feminist, she condemned her provincial background but remained acutely conscious of the conventional elements in her own character; she revealed a richly emotional life in her writing but was outwardly sober and reserved; she possessed a fierce desire for fame and recognition but was ready to sacrifice both on matters of principle.This biography - comprehensive, authoritative and immensely readable - confirms Vera Brittain's stature as one of the most remarkable women of our time.
Vera Brittain: A Life
by Mark Bostridge Paul BerryVera Brittain is most widely known as the woman who immortalized a lost generation in her haunting autobiography of the Great War, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH.Writer, pacifist and feminist, she condemned her provincial background but remained acutely conscious of the conventional elements in her own character; she revealed a richly emotional life in her writing but was outwardly sober and reserved; she possessed a fierce desire for fame and recognition but was ready to sacrifice both on matters of principle.This biography - comprehensive, authoritative and immensely readable - confirms Vera Brittain's stature as one of the most remarkable women of our time.
Vera Gran: The Accused
by Agata TuszyñskaThe extraordinary, controversial story of Vera Gran, beautiful, exotic prewar Polish singing star; legendary, sensual contralto, Dietrich-like in tone, favorite of the 1930s Warsaw nightclubs, celebrated before, and during, her year in the Warsaw Ghetto (spring 1941-summer 1942) . . . and her piano accompanist: W³adys³aw Szpilman, made famous by Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film The Pianist, based on Szpilman's memoir.Following the war, singer and accompanist, each of whom had lived the same harrowing story, were met with opposing fates: Szpilman was celebrated for his uncanny ability to survive against impossible odds, escaping from a Nazi transport loading site, smuggling in weapons to the Warsaw Ghetto for the Jewish resistance. Gran was accused of collaborating with the Nazis; denounced as a traitor, a "Gestapo whore," reviled, imprisoned, ultimately exonerated yet afterward still shunned as a performer . . . in effect, sentenced to death without dying . . . until she was found by Agata Tuszyñska, acclaimed poet and biographer of, among others, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate ("Her book has few equals"--The Times Literary Supplement).Tuszyñska, who won the trust of the once-glamorous former singer, then living in a basement in Paris--elderly, bitter, shut away from the world--encouraged Gran to tell her story, including her seemingly inexplicable decision to return to Warsaw to be reunited with her family after she had fled Hitler's invading army, knowing she would have to live within the ghetto walls and, to survive, continue to perform at the popular Café Sztuka.At the heart of the book, Gran's complex, fraught relationship with her accompanist, performing together month after month, for the many who came from within the ghetto and outside its walls to hear her sing.Using Vera Gran's reflections and memories, as well as archives, letters, statements, and interviews with Warsaw Ghetto historians and survivors, Agata Tuszyñska has written an explosive, resonant portrait of lives lived inside a nightmare time, exploring the larger, more profound question of the nature of collaboration, of the price of survival, and of the long, treacherous shadow cast in its aftermath.
Vera Rubin: A Life
by Jacqueline Mitton Simon MittonThe first biography of a pioneering scientist who made significant contributions to our understanding of dark matter and championed the advancement of women in science. One of the great lingering mysteries of the universe is dark matter. Scientists are not sure what it is, but most believe it’s out there, and in abundance. The astronomer who finally convinced many of them was Vera Rubin. When Rubin died in 2016, she was regarded as one of the most influential astronomers of her era. Her research on the rotation of spiral galaxies was groundbreaking, and her observations contributed significantly to the confirmation of dark matter, a most notable achievement. In Vera Rubin: A Life, prolific science writers Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton provide a detailed, accessible overview of Rubin’s work, showing how she leveraged immense curiosity, profound intelligence, and novel technologies to help transform our understanding of the cosmos. But Rubin’s impact was not limited to her contributions to scientific knowledge. She also helped to transform scientific practice by promoting the careers of women researchers. Not content to be an inspiration, Rubin was a mentor and a champion. She advocated for hiring women faculty, inviting women speakers to major conferences, and honoring women with awards that were historically the exclusive province of men. Rubin’s papers and correspondence yield vivid insights into her life and work, as she faced down gender discrimination and met the demands of family and research throughout a long and influential career. Deftly written, with both scientific experts and general readers in mind, Vera Rubin is a portrait of a woman with insatiable curiosity about the universe who never stopped asking questions and encouraging other women to do the same.
Vera and the Ambassador: Escape and Return
by Vera Blinken Donald BlinkenVera and the Ambassador is a book to be savored and enjoyed on many levels. Both a behind-the-scenes peek at the operations of a U.S. embassy in a post–Cold War former Soviet satellite and a personal story of a refugee's escape and triumphant return, Vera and Donald Blinken's dual memoir openly details their challenges, setbacks, and victories as they worked in tandem to advance America's interests in Eastern Europe and to restore a former Soviet satellite state to a pre-communist level of prosperity.Hungary in all its cultural glory and historical anguish lies at the heart of this dramatic and deeply personal story. Born in Budapest just prior to World War II, Vera was only five years old when the Germans invaded in 1944. In a harrowing account, she describes how she and her mother managed to survive the atrocities of the war and, in 1950, narrowly escape Soviet-occupied Hungary for the freedom and opportunity of America. Making their way to New York, Vera settled into her adopted country with an indomitable spirit, a vow to become the best American she could be, and a hope of finding some way to give back as a show of gratitude for her good fortune in surviving the destruction of the war.That opportunity came in 1994 when her husband was appointed ambassador to Hungary by President Clinton, just five years into the country's tentative transformation from a command economy and totalitarian government into a market economy and fledgling republic based upon democratic ideals. A former investment banker, Donald might have lacked foreign service experience, but his skills as an administrator and his willingness to try innovative ideas, combined with Vera's knowledge of Hungarian language and culture and her outreach to the Hungarian community, helped them deal head-on with a variety of challenges, including a collapsing economy and the threat of a slide back toward the old ways of communism, and a brutal civil war that raged across the country's southern border in the former Yugoslavia.Replete with colorful characters from the streets of Budapest, humorous scenes at the ambassadorial residence, and accounts of tense high-level diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to Hungary's vote to join NATO, Vera and the Ambassador shows how the Blinkens helped chart a new course for American diplomacy in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, it is also the story of how Hungarians came to see them personally, and memorably, as their Vera and their ambassador.
Verdad, Mentiras y Propaganda
by Lucinda E Clarke José A Herrera REste libro describe la primera parte de mi viaje desde ser maestra de escuela primaria, pasando por anunciante en radio, luego escritora de libretos para radio hasta llegar a producir para televisión. Todas las historias son verídicas, aunque algunos nombres han sido cambiados para proteger a los personajes más interesantes. Si alguna vez se han preguntado qué ocurre detrás de las cámaras, este libro les brindará algunos secretos y les explicará cómo se hacen los programas de TV. ¿Cómo se siente trabajar con gente famosa, o entrevistarles cuando no les interesa hablarte? No se dejen engañar con eso de que trabajar en televisión es glamoroso. No lo es. Yo pasé más tiempo en baños y husmeando entre montañas de basura que en salas de banquete. Hacer cualquier tipo de programa de TV es un trabajo de equipo, y yo he trabajado con los mejores equipos de grabación y el mejor personal de estudio en Sudáfrica. Sin ellos y sin su pasión, no podría orgullosamente recordar nada de lo que produjimos. Este libro es para ellos y los clientes que nos dieron la confianza de relatar sus historias. Es también para mi esposo que sufre desde hace tiempo y cuya paciencia mientras escribo este libro ha resistido nuevos límites. No hay dos días que sean iguales en el mundo de los medios de comunicación y yo me siento privilegiada de haber sido parte de ello. Pero no crean todo lo que ven en la televisión. Probablemente, ¡es más sabio no creer en absolutamente nada! España 2014
Verdades, Mentiras e Propaganda
by Lucinda E Clarke Talita Mahfuz AdamoEmbora Lucinda sonhasse ser escritora, obediente, ela estudou para ser professora e obter um emprego “adequado”. Seu primeiro contato com a mídia foi através do trabalho no Serviço de Língua Inglesa em Benghazi, na Líbia. Infelizmente, depois disso, ela voltou às salas de aula. Ela não imaginava que perder o emprego de professora e fazer fiasco numa audição para a SABC a teria levado a escrever roteiros de rádio sobre gado doméstico, sobre o qual ela não sabia absolutamente nada. Assim, começou a sua jornada através da escritura, pré-produção e direção de programas sobre diversos assuntos. O que você vê na televisão, às vezes tem pouca relação com a verdade. Esta coleção de acontecimentos far-lhe-á rir e chorar. Ela retira a máscara da mídia e revela a verdade.
Verdes colinas de africa (Spanish Edition)
by Ernest HemingwayUna obra maestra del reportaje donde el Premio Nobel de Literatura Ernest Hemingway cuenta la estancia de un mes—diciembre de 1933—en África, dedicado a una de sus grandes pasiones: la caza mayor.La luz africana, el paisaje febril, la excitación y la tensión que produce la cinegética se convierten para Hemingway en motivos de reflexión que van mucho más allá del safari y la simple narración turística. Como siempre, Hemingway logra elevar la anécdota a la categoría de mito, explorar la condición del hombre a través de sus instintos más primarios y, en definitiva, indagar en torno a la eterna cuestión de la muerte, el deseo y la supervivencia.
Verdi for Kids: His Life and Music with 21 Activities (For Kids series)
by Deborah Voigt Helen BauerGiuseppe Verdi, one of the most influential composers of the 19th century and a dominant force in Italian opera for 50 years, is illuminated in this thorough exploration geared toward young musicians. Offering insight into Verdi's long life--from the horrible loss of his family to the disapproving opinions of his neighbors--and opening the world of opera and Italian culture, this resource creates an accessible and tangible investigation into the elite world of classical opera. Engaging and creative activities, such as singing like a diva, making a panpipe, playing bocce ball, and sketching a costume for Falstaff, reinforce the musical concepts and terms that are introduced within and elucidate the times in which Verdi lived. Along with learning about various opera jobs, opera production, what takes place at rehearsals, and opera house history, inquisitive kids will gain a fuller understanding of Verdi's life, times, and music and how the composer intersected with the great musicians and events of his lifetime.
Verdi: His Music, Life and Times
by George MartinThis book relates the life and experiences of composer Giuseppe Verdi, from his birth in 1813 to his death in 1901. Besides documenting Verdi's life and the music he created, it also goes further in discussing the times and culture in which he was living in 19th century Italy, both socially and politically.
Verdi: The Man Revealed
by John SuchetGiuseppe Verdi remains Italy’s greatest operatic composer and a man of apparent contradictions—vividly brought to life through a nuanced examination of his life and monumental music. Giuseppe Verdi remains the greatest operatic composer that Italy, the home of opera, has ever produced. Yet throughout his lifetime he claimed to detest composing and repeatedly rejected it. He was a landowner, a farmer, a politician and symbol of Italian independence; but his music tells a different story. An obsessive perfectionist, Verdi drove collaborators to despair but his works lauded from the start as dazzling feats of composition and characterization. From Rigoletto to Otello, La Traviatato to Aida, Verdi’s canon encompassed the full range of human emotion. His private life was no less complex: he suffered great loss, and went out of his way to antagonize supporters and his own family. An outspoken advocate of Italian independence and a sharp critic of the church, he was often at odds with nineteenth-century society. In Verdi: The Man Revealed, John Suchet attempts to get under the skin of perhaps the most private composer who ever lived. Unraveling his protestations, his deliberate embellishments and disavowals, Suchet reveals the true character of this great artist—and the art for which he will be forever known.
Vergeen: A Survivor Of The Armenian Genocide
by Mae M. Derdarian Virginia MeghrouniThis is the gripping true story of a girl's indomitable will to survive the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government against its Armenian subjects during World War I. Through a first-hand account of Vergeen's recollections, the brutalities endured by two million Armenians come to life and are mirrored a generation later by Hitler's attack on Jews.
Vergil: The Poet's Life (Ancient Lives)
by Sarah RudenA biography of Vergil, Rome&’s greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became the world&’s first media celebrity, a living legend. But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure; we know that he was born into a modest rural family, that he led a private and solitary life, and that, in spite of poor health and unusual emotional vulnerabilities, he worked tirelessly to achieve exquisite new effects in verse. Vergil&’s most famous work, the Aeneid, was commissioned by the emperor Augustus, who published the epic despite Vergil&’s dying wish that it be destroyed. Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid, uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil&’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct his life. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil&’s work, she brings to life a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost.
Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
by Donald J. RobertsonIn the tradition of Logicomix, Donald J. Robertson's Verissimus is a riveting graphic novel on the life and stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.Marcus Aurelius was the last famous Stoic of antiquity but he was also to become the most powerful man in the known world – the Roman emperor. After losing his father at an early age, he threw himself into the study of philosophy. The closest thing history knew to a philosopher-king, yet constant warfare and an accursed plague almost brought his empire to its knees. “Life is warfare”, he wrote, “and a sojourn in foreign land!” One thing alone could save him: philosophy, the love of wisdom!The remarkable story of Marcus Aurelius’ life and philosophical journey is brought to life by philosopher and psychotherapist Donald J. Robertson, in a sweeping historical epic of a graphic novel, based on a close study of the historical evidence, with the stunning full-color artwork of award-winning illustrator Zé Nuno Fraga.
Verlaine: A Study in Parallels
by A. E. CarterThe contradictions of Verlaine's nature are mirrored in his verse, which is alternately mystic, sensuous, exquisite and prosaic. He had extraordinary lyric powers; he was a master of eerie harmonies such as few other poets have achieved, and, in Sagesse, he produced religious verse which challenges comparison with the very best of its kind. Yet here and there can be found a curious weakening in the texture of thought and inspiration: he turns and twists, takes flight, seeks reassurance in platitude and convention – marriage, dogmatic theology, reactionary political creeds. He is even capable of lamenting (as Rimbaud shows him in Une Saison en Enfer) the emotional and poetic experiments which give his work its supreme value. It is almost as though he were afraid of his own talent. The explanation, as far as there is one, lies in a combination of personality and circumstance. This biography attempts to explore the "parallels" (Verlaine's own term) between his life and his poetry. Nearly everything he produced, whether good or bad, was a reflection of some crisis of thought or feeling. No one demonstrates better than Verlaine the antinomies between the artist and his work, between the man and the genius; and in every case we are obliged to admit that the one explains the other. Without the weakness and the squalor we might indeed have had a rational human being and a good husband for Mathilde Mauté, but we should have had no poet, or no poet like Paul Verlaine. Professor Carter concentrates on the combination of Verlaine's personality and experiences that produced some of the most brilliant poetry in the French language. The result is one of the best critical biographies of Verlaine published to date.
Vermont Women, Native Americans & African Americans: Out of the Shadows of History
by Cynthia D. BittingerVermont's constitution, drafted in 1777, was one of the most enlightened documents of its time, but in contrast, the history of Vermont has largely been told through the stories of influential white men. This book takes a fresh look at Vermont's history, uncovering hidden stories, from the earliest inhabitants to present-day citizens striving to overcome adversity and be advocates for change. Native Americans struggled to maintain an identity in the state while their land and rights were disappearing. Lucy Terry Prince was the first female African American poet who rose above racism to argue her case before Vermont's governor and won. Educator and historian Cynthia Bittinger unearths these and other inspirational stories of the contributions of women, Native Americans and African Americans to Vermont's history.
Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir
by Annette Gordon-Reed Vernon JordanAs a young college student in Atlanta, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. had a summer job driving a white banker around town. During the man's post-luncheon siestas, Jordan passed the time reading books, a fact that astounded his boss. "Vernon can read!" the man exclaimed to his relatives. Nearly fifty years later, Vernon Jordan, now a senior executive at Lazard Freres, long-time civil rights leader, adviser and close friend to presidents and business leaders and one of the most charismatic figures in America, has written an unforgettable book about his life and times. The story of Vernon Jordan's life encompasses the sweeping struggles, changes, and dangers of African-American life in the civil rights revolution of the second half of the twentieth century.
Veronica's Grave: A Daughter's Memoir
by Barbara Bracht Donsky2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award: Silver for Memoir 2017 National Indie Excellence Awards: Finalist 2017 Independent Press Award: Distinguished Favorite for Memoir 2016 Beverly Hills Book Awards: Memoir Finalist 2016 Readers' Favorite:Silver Medal for Non-fiction Memoir New York Public Library Top Pick Summer 2017 When Barbara Bracht's mother disappears, she is left a confused child whose blue-collar father is intent upon erasing any memory of her mother. Forced to keep the secret of her mother's existence from her younger brother, Barbara struggles to keep from being crushed under the weight of family secrets as she comes of age and tries to educate herself, despite her father's stance against women's education. The story is not only of loss and resilience, but one showing the power of literature—from Little Orphan Annie to Prince Valiant to the incomparable Nancy Drew—to offer hope where there is little. Told with true literary sensibility, this captivating memoir asks us to consider what it is that parents owe their children, and how far a child need go to make things right for her family.
Versailles: A Biography of a Palace
by Tony Spawforth&“An illuminating portrait&” of the palace―its architecture, its scandals, its politics, and its role in France&’s tumultuous history (The New York Times Book Review). The story of Versailles is one of historical drama, under the last three kings of France's old regime, mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today. Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Tony Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King&’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a &“perpetual house party&” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France&’s national identity since 1789. Includes photographs &“Animates the palace that was home to the most charismatic monarchy in Europe for a century, until the French Revolution . . . well-researched and highly engrossing.&” —Publishers Weekly
Verstappen Rules (Sports Superstars #3)
by Simon MugfordIs Formula One icon Max Verstappen your ultimate sporting hero? Regarded as F1's finest competitor in 2022, Verstappen is the current double world champion and the driver to beat. Son of Dutch F1 star Jos Verstappen, Max has already competed in 159 races in the premier class, claiming 32 victories and a total of 74 podium finishes so far. He has a huge following throughout Europe, especially the Netherlands, where he was named NOS Sportsman of the Year in 2022.Packed with cool facts, delightfully fun illustrations and inspirational quotes, this easy-to-read fan guide follows Verstappen's meteoric rise from a go-Kart racing champion to the subsequent Championship wins that have made him a living legend.The Sports Superstars series is aimed at building a love of reading from a young age, with fun cartoons, inspirational stories, a simple narrative style and a cast of characters chipping in with quotes, jokes and comments.