Fiction and Non Fiction

Brief Summary Fully revised to incorporate recent developments, this fourth edition of Understanding Global Security analyses the variety of ways in which people's lives are threatened and/or secured in contemporary global politics. The traditional focus of Security Studies texts: war, deterrence and terrorism, are analysed alongside non-military security issues such as famine, crime, disease, disasters, environmental degradation and human rights abuses to provide a comprehensive survey of how and why people are killed in the contemporary world. This new edition features: • Greater coverage of the evolving theoretical literature on security, including more analysis of critical theory perspectives and emerging schools of thought. • Reflections on recent developments in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. • New data and cases on poverty, hunger and depression and greater analysis of the social and political implications of the prolonged period of stagnation the global economy has gone through. • New content reflecting the recent resurgence in populist nationalism evident in the election of Trump in the USA, the UK’s exit from the EU and the authoritarian turn taken in many countries. • Analysis of the 2015 Paris climate change treaty and the international responses to recent pandemics such as Ebola and Zika • A new section has been included on suicide, plugging a gap evident in the earlier editions. User-friendly and easy to follow, this highly acclaimed and popular academic textbook is designed to make a complex subject accessible to all and will continue to be essential reading for everyone interested in security. ISBN:9781138726833 Author:Peter Hough

Brief Summary This book provides a comprehensive new introduction to the study of international diplomacy, covering both theory and practice. The text summarizes and discusses the major trends in the field of diplomacy, developing an innovative analytical toolbox for understanding diplomacy not as a collection of practices or a set of historical traditions, but as a form of institutionalized communication through which authorized representatives produce, manage and distribute public goods. The book: o traces the evolution of diplomacy from its beginnings in ancient Egypt, Greece and China to our current age of global diplomacy; o examines theoretical explanations about how diplomats take decisions, make relations and shape the world; o Discusses normative approaches to how diplomacy ought to adapt itself to the twenty-first century, help remake states and assist the peaceful evolution of international order. In sum, Understanding International Diplomacy provides an up-to-date, accessible and authoritative overview of how diplomacy works and ought to work in a globalizing world. This new textbook is essential reading for students of international diplomacy, and highly recommended for students of crisis negotiation, international organizations, foreign policy and international relations in general. ISBN:9781135039271 Author:Corneliu Bjola and Markus Kornprobst

Brief Summary This new and exciting title is the first definitive guide to getting a pupillage at the Bar of England and Wales. The book describes the process of becoming a barrister by walking the reader through each step of the route to pupillage. It will also offer practical advice for each stage from the authors' own personal experiences and from the wisdom of senior members of the Bar. The work seeks to weave together these complementary functions to create a product, which will guide, inform and advise all applicants of the successful route to pupillage. Coverage includes: an overview of the process; a discussion of the academic stage of the training; a focus upon the practical training; and a detailed section dedicated to the pupillage applications themselves. ISBN:9781847034014 Author:Alexander Robson and Georgina Wolfe

Brief Summary American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst. From New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin, the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a senior in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre "Tania." The weird turns of the tale are truly astonishing -- the Hearst family trying to secure Patty's release by feeding all the people of Oakland and San Francisco for free; the photographs capturing "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a bank robbery; a cast of characters including everyone from Bill Walton to the Black Panthers to Ronald Reagan to F. Lee Bailey; the largest police shoot-out in American history; the first breaking news event to be broadcast live on television stations across the country; Patty's year on the lam, running from authorities; and her circuslike trial, filled with theatrical courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal, after which the phrase "Stockholm syndrome" entered the lexicon. The saga of Patty Hearst highlighted a decade in which America seemed to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown. Based on more than a hundred interviews and thousands of previously secret documents, American Heiress thrillingly recounts the craziness of the times (there were an average of 1500 terrorist bombings a year in the early 1970s). Toobin portrays the lunacy of the half-baked radicals of the SLA and the toxic mix of sex, politics, and violence that swept up Patty Hearst; and recreates her melodramatic trial. American Heiress examines the life of a young woman who suffered an unimaginable trauma and then made the stunning decision to join her captors' crusade. Or did she? ISBN:9780385536714 Author:Jeffrey Toobin

Brief Summary For Selvon, Ardan, and Yusuf, growing up under the towers of Stones Estate, summer means what it does anywhere: football, music, and freedom, but now, after the killing of a British soldier, riots are spreading across the city, and nowhere is safe. While the fury swirls around them, Selvon and Ardan remain focused on their own obsessions, girls, and grime. Their friend Yusuf is caught up in a different tide, a wave of radicalism surging through his local mosque, threatening to carry his troubled brother, Irfan, with it. Provocative, raw, poetic yet tender, In Our Mad and Furious Citymarks the arrival of a major new talent in fiction. ISBN:9781472250193 Author:Guy Gunaratne

Brief Summary Officially censored upon its Chinese publication, and the subject of a bitter lawsuit between author and publisher, Dream of Ding Village is Chinese novelist Yan Lianke's most important novel to date. Set in a poor village in Henan province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling ring in contemporary China. Based on a real-life blood-selling scandal in eastern China, Dream of Ding Village is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan Lianke, who worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling. Whole villages were wiped out with no responsibility taken or reparations paid. Dream of Ding Village focuses on one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party pile as he exploits the situation, while another son is infected and dies. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing and what happens to those who get in the way. ISBN:9780802119322 Author:Yan Lianke

Brief Summary Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves. Able to be referenced individually, or read together as the narrative of Western scientific development, the book's twenty-eight succinct chapters lead readers from the first science texts by Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle through twentieth-century classics in biology, physics, and cosmology. The Story of Western Science illuminates everything from mankind's earliest inquiries to the butterfly effect, from the birth of the scientific method to the rise of earth science and the flowering of modern biology. Each chapter recommends one or more classic books and provides entertaining accounts of crucial contributions to science, vivid sketches of the scientist-writers, and clear explanations of the mechanics underlying each concept. The Story of Western Science reveals science to be a dramatic undertaking practiced by some of history's most memorable characters. It reminds us that scientific inquiry is a human pursuit—an essential, often deeply personal, sometimes flawed, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world. In the tradition of her perennial bestseller The-Well Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer delivers an accessible, entertaining, and illuminating springboard into the scientific education you never had. ISBN:9780393243260 Author:Susan Wise Bauer

Brief Summary A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have! Featuring additional performances by Peter Gerety, Peter Scolari, Cecily Strong, Holland Taylor, and Wilmer Valderrama on "Stay With Us.” ISBN:9780525590507 Author:Tom Hanks