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At Home A Short History of Private Life
Brief Summary
"Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home.
To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
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ISBN:9780767919388
Author:Bill Bryson
Lola and the Boy Next Door
Brief Summary
Lola Nolan is a budding costume designer, and for her, the more outrageous, sparkly, and fun the outfit, the better. And everything is pretty perfect in her life (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.
When Cricket, a gifted inventor, steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.
ISBN:9780525423287
Author:Stephanie Perkins
The Political Animal: An Anatomy
Brief Summary
Jeremy Paxman knows every maneouvre a politician will make to avoid answering a difficult question, but in The Political Animal he seeks an answer to just one: What makes politicians tick? Embarking on a journey in which he encounters movers and shakers past and present, he discovers: that Prime Ministers have often lost a parent in childhood why Trollope is the politician's novelist of choice that Lloyd George once hunted Jack the Ripper how an Admiral's speech in parliament helped win WWII Where do politicians come from?
How do they get elected? What do they do all day? And why do they seek power? All these questions and many more are addressed in Paxman's thrilling dissection of that strange and elusive breed - the political animal. 'Lively, persuasive, excellent.
Boisterous and funny, provocative and punchily written... an intelligent romp' Matthew Parris, Spectator 'Entertaining, informative, incisive and insightful' Andrew Rawnsley Observer 'One of the best primers on the vicissitudes of political life I have read Christopher Silvester, Sunday Times Jeremy Paxman is a journalist, best known for his work presenting Newsnight and University Challenge. His books include Empire, On Royalty, The English and The Political Animal. He lives in Oxfordshire.
ISBN:9780140288476
Author:Jeremy Paxman
Tintin King Ottokars Sceptre
Brief Summary
Tintin finds a lost briefcase and returns it to the owner, Professor Hector Alembick, who is a sigilographer, an expert on seals. He shows Tintin his collection of seals, including one which belonged to the Syldavian King Ottokar IV. Tintin then discovers that he and Alembick are under surveillance by some strange men. Tintin's flat is even bombed in an attempt to kill him. Suspecting a Syldavian connection, Tintin offers to accompany Alembick to Syldavia for research.
On the plane Tintin begins to suspect his companion. The Alembick travelling with him doesn't smoke and doesn't seem to need the spectacles he wears, while the Alembick he first met smoked heavily and had very poor eyesight. During a layover, Tintin fakes a fall and grabs Alembick's beard, thinking it is false and Alembick is an imposter. However, it is (for Alembick) painfully real. Tintin decides to let the matter drop but then, while flying over Syldavia, it is the pilot of the plane who opens a trap door and Tintin drops out, landing in a haywagon.
Tintin's friends Thomson and Thompson are summoned to investigate but their theory on how the sceptre was stolen proves bad and painful for them. Later on, Tintin notices a spring cannon in a toy shop and this gives him the clue. Professor Alembick had asked for some photographs to be taken of the sceptre, but the camera was a spring cannon in disguise, which allowed him to catapult it out of the castle into a nearby forest.
Searching the forest, Tintin spots the sceptre being found by agents of the neighbouring country, Borduria. Following them all the way to the border, he wrests the sceptre from them. In the wallet of one of the thieves he discovers papers that show that the theft of the sceptre was just part of a major plan for the taking over of Syldavia by their long-time political rival, Borduria.
Tintin steals a Me-109 from a Bordurian airfield (whose squadron is being kept ready to take part in the envisioned "Anschluss" of Syldavia) to fly it back to the King in time. He is shot down by the Syldavians who have naturally opened fire on an enemy aircraft violating their airspace. He manages to make the rest of the journey by foot.
Meanwhile the Interior Minister informs the King that rumours have been spreading that the sceptre has been stolen and that there have been riots against local Bordurian businesses, acts which would justify a Bordurian takeover of the country. The King is about to abdicate when Snowy runs in with the sceptre (which had fallen out of Tintin's pocket).
Tintin then gives the King the papers he took from the man who stole the sceptre. They prove that the plot was masterminded by Müsstler, leader of the Iron Guard, a local political party. The King takes action by having Müsstler and his associates arrested and the army mobilised along the Bordurian frontier. In response, the Bordurian leader pulls his own troops back from the border, though he stresses his own country's "desire for peace" and criticises Syldavia's "strange" behaviour.
ISBN:0416605109
Author:Herge
Tintin and the Picaros
Brief Summary
Tintin hears in the news that Bianca Castafiore, her maid, pianist and Thomson and Thompson, have been imprisoned in San Theodoros for allegedly attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Tapioca, who has yet again deposed Tintin's old friend, General Alcazar. Tintin, Calculus and Haddock soon become embroiled in the accusations, and, travelling to San Theodoros to clear their names, find themselves caught in a trap laid by their old enemy, Colonel Sponsz, who has been sent by the East Bloc nation of Borduria to assist Tapioca. Sponsz has concocted the conspiracy of which Tintin and his friends are accused in a plot to wreak revenge upon them for humiliating him in The Calculus Affair. Escaping, Tintin, Haddock, and Calculus join Alcazar and his small band of guerrillas, the Picaros, in the jungle near an Arumbaya Indian village.
Meanwhile, in a show trial orchestrated by Sponsz, Castafiore is sentenced to life imprisonment and the Thompsons are ordered to be executed by firing squad. Tintin enlists Alcazar's help in freeing his friends, but upon arrival at his jungle headquarters, finds that Alcazar's men have become demoralised drunkards since Tapioca started dropping copious quantities of alcohol near their camp. Additionally, Alcazar is continually henpecked by his shrewish wife Peggy, who nags him constantly about his failure to achieve a successful revolution.
Fortunately, Calculus has invented a pill which will make alcohol unpalatable to anyone who ingests it (which he proves to have tested on Haddock, much to the latter's ire). Tintin offers to use the pill to cure the Picaros of their alcoholism if Alcazar agrees to make the overthrow of Tapioca bloodless. Alcazar reluctantly agrees, and as his men are cured, Jolyon Wagg arrives with his musical troupe the Jolly Follies, who intend to perform at the upcoming carnival in San Theodoros. Alcazar — with a little advice from Tintin — launches an assault on Tapioca's palace during the carnival by 'borrowing' the troupe's costumes and sneaking his men into the capital. He topples Tapioca, but on Tintin's urging, does not execute him, as is tradition; Tapioca is instead forced to publicly surrender his powers to Alcazar and is exiled, while Sponsz is sent back to Borduria.
Meanwhile, Thomson and Thompson are due to be shot on the same day as the carnival (although as naive as ever in their observations, the detectives show courage by refusing to be blindfolded). Tintin and Haddock reach the state prison in time to prevent the executions from taking place. Castafiore, her maid and her pianist are also released, and Alcazar can finally give his wife the palace he has promised. With everything back in order (or not), Tintin and his friends leave. As they fly home, Tintin and Haddock express gratitude about being able to go home, showing a wearier attitude towards travel than in earlier books.
The second to last panel shows a final, skeptical political message: as under Tapioca, the city slums are filled with wretched, starving people and patrolled by indifferent police. Nothing is different, except that a Viva Tapioca sign has been changed to read Viva Alcazar, demonstrating Hergé's view that even if regimes change, conditions do not improve.
ISBN:9780416851700
Author:Herge
Tintin in America
Black Water Rising
Brief Summary
Writing in the tradition of Dennis Lehane and Greg Iles, Attica Locke, a powerful new voice in American fiction, delivers a brilliant debut thriller that readers will not soon forget.
Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he's long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him.
Houston, Texas, 1981. It is here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora's Box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston's corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.
With pacing that captures the reader from the first scene through an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.
ISBN:9780061735868
Author:Attica Locke
A Strangeness in My Mind
Brief Summary
A Strangeness In My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years' worth of love letters, and their life in Istanbul.
In the four decades between 1969 and 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, from selling yoghurt and cooked rice, to guarding a car park. He observes many different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get demolished and re-built, and he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; at the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clashes, and military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that separates him from everyone else - the source of that strangeness in his mind. But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings and trying to understand who his beloved really is.
What matters more in love: what we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control?
A Strangeness In My Mind tries to answer these questions while portraying the tensions between urban life and family life, and the fury and helplessness of women inside their homes.
ISBN:9780571275977
Author:Orhan Pamuk
Change of Heart
Brief Summary
The acclaimed #1 "New York Times" bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation. Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?
One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.
For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love.
ISBN:9780743496742
Author:Jodi Picoult
The Coming Collapse of China
Brief Summary
China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere:
Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.
Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.
ISBN:9780375504778
Author:Gordon G. Chang
Thus Bad Begins
Brief Summary
Standing in a corridor, watching a shadowy figure pleading with another through a closed door: Javier MarÃas’s novels are as intimate as they are weird and fascinating.
And Thus Bad Begins is an intimate book, based in a single Madrid apartment where Juan de Vere works for film director Eduardo Muriel as an assistant-dogsbody. Juan’s clear on his place in the pecking order: "There’s nothing original about me”, he says.
Juan is a very junior bystander, simply watching, as it becomes clear that something catastrophic has happened in his boss’s marriage to the beautiful Beatriz. But what?
MarÃas often makes use of an apparently dull narrator to tell an increasingly extraordinary story (from the race-track loiterer of the 1992 short "Broken Binoculars”, to the café-going voyeur of 2013’s The Infatuations).
ISBN:9781101946084
Author:Javier MarÃas
Women and the Vote A World History
Brief Summary
Before 1893 no woman anywhere in the world had the vote in a national election. A hundred years later almost all countries had enfranchised women, and it was a sign of backwardness not to have done so.
This is the story of how this momentous change came about. The first genuinely global history of women and the vote, it takes the story of women in politics from the earliest times to the present day, revealing startling new connections across time and national boundaries - from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world post-9/11.
A story of individuals as well as of wider movements, it includes the often dramatic life-stories of women's suffrage pioneers from across the world, painting vivid biographical portraits of everyone from Susan B. Anthony and the Pankhursts to hitherto lesser-known activists in China, Latin America, and Africa.
It is also the first major post-feminist history of women's struggle for the vote. Controversially, Jad Adams rejects the widely accepted idea that success was primarily a result of the pressure group politics of the suffragists and their supporters. Ultimately, he argues, it was nationalism, not feminism, that was the most important factor in winning women the vote.
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ISBN:9780198706854
Author:Jad Adams
Alias Grace: A Novel
It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.
ISBN:0385490445
Author:Margaret Atwood
Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction
Brief Summary
The influence of Aristotle, the prince of philosophers, on the intellectual history of the West is second to none. In this book, Jonathan Barnes examines Aristotle's scientific researches, his discoveries in logic and his metaphysical theories, his work in psychology and in ethics and politics, and his ideas about art and poetry, placing his teachings in their historical context.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
ISBN:9780192854087
Author:Jonathan Barnes
Shadow Command
Brief Summary
General Patrick McLanahan's new Aerospace Battle Force has grown into a full-fledged task force based on the Armstrong Space Station. Providing almost instant access to space and every corner of the globe using the Black Stallion space planes, the ABF's powerful network of satellites and unmanned aircraft controlled from space can not only attack any target anywhere on the planet within hours but can even invade any computer network as easily as making a phone call.
But the program has its critics and doomsayers, including Russia, the United Nations, and the American press. Wealthy, Western-educated, and sophisticated Russian president Leonid Zevitin uses a combination of top-secret anti-spacecraft weaponry, fear mongering, and new U.S. president Joseph Gardner's own egotism in an effective plan to eliminate all support for the space program. Gardner and his allies in Congress and the Pentagon will stop at nothing even destroying one of their own to get what they want.
Yet McLanahan and his forces refuse to allow the Russian aggression to stand. McLanahan ignores directives from the White House and Pentagon to stand down and orders the ABF to attack secret Russian bases in Iran.
President Gardner orders McLanahan's immediate arrest. But before authorities can throw him in jail, they have to figure out how to retrieve him from the space base orbiting the earth. Currently in control of the Aerospace Battle Force from Armstrong Space Station, McLanahan closely watches Russia's movement of weaponry while defending himself against the President's attempts to discredit him. In a race against time, McLanahan must outmaneuver his own countrymen, defeat the Russians, and expose the truth . . . or die trying.
ISBN:9780061173110
Author:Dale Brown
End Game A Dreamland Thriller
Brief Summary
To combat terror, sometimes fire must be fought with fire.
In the Nevada desert, the high-tech future of warfare is being conceived and constructed at a top-secret military facility called Dreamland.
A volatile U.S. ally has fallen prey to the terrorist beast. India is the target of radical Islamic jihadists, and the world watches breathlessly as tensions escalate between the uneasy giant and its longtime nemesis, Pakistan—with China waiting in the wings, eager to flex its military might. A nuclear showdown seems inevitable, unless the masterminds at Dreamland can get to the mysterious source of the terror and end it, swiftly and permanently.
Every technological wonder the military possesses must be employed to avert an all-out Apocalypse—from an awesome new hybrid Navy destroyer to robot Nighthawks. But the fate of the region and the world will depend on the newest brainchild of the Dreamland team: an unproven instrument of ultimate power called End Game.
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ISBN:9780062087867
Author:Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
One Nation
Brief Summary
One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future
Dear Reader,
In February 2013 I gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great.
Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater than ever before, and I have never shared a more urgent message than I do now.
Our growing debt and deteriorating morals have driven us far from the founders’ intent. We’ve made little progress in basic education. Obamacare threatens our health, liberty, and financial future. Media elitism and political correctness are out of control.
Worst of all, we seem to have lost our ability to discuss important issues calmly and respectfully regardless of party affiliation or other differences. We have to come together to solve our problems.
Knowing that the future of my grandchildren is in jeopardy because of reckless spending, godless government, and mean-spirited attempts to silence critics left me no choice but to write this book. I have endeavored to propose a road out of our decline, appealing to every American’s decency and common sense.
If each of us sits back and expects someone else to take action, it will soon be too late. But with your help, I believe that America may once again be "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Sincerely,
Ben Carson
ISBN:9781595231222
Author:Ben Carson, MD
Mike’s Election Guide
Brief Summary
In his first book in five years, Michael Moore brings us the definitive guide to the 2008 election.
After a disastrous war, the failure to catch bin Laden, millions of families who have lost their homes, the Katrina debacle, soaring gas prices feeding record oil company profits, and the largest national debt caused by the biggest spending and borrowing administration in American history, the country has had it with conservatives, right-wingers and Republicans. A thrilling election season is now upon us. Obama vs. McCain. One candidate has promised a presidency different from any other, one that will take us forward to embrace the hope of the 21st century. The other candidate says he has no idea how to use a computer.
Welcome to MIKE'S ELECTION GUIDE -- Michael Moore's effort to make sense of the fall's race for the White House and Congress. In it, Moore answers the nation's most pressing questions: "Why is John McCain so angry?" "Do the Democrats Still Drink from a Sippy Cup and Sleep with the Light on?" Can I get into the Electoral College with only a 2.0 gpa?" and "How many Democrats does it take to lose the most winnable election in American history?"
It's a great year to be an American and a voter. Don't miss out on all the fun! And don't miss out on MIKE'S ELECTION GUIDE -- it's the indispensable book that belongs in every American's back pocket this season.
ISBN:9780446546270
Author:Michael Moore
An Equal Music: A Novel
Brief Summary
The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians. Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more.
Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.
ISBN:9780375709241
Author:Vikram Seth
American Slavery 1619-1877
Brief Summary
The single best short survey in America, now updated. Includes a New Preface and Afterward
In terms of accessibility and comprehensive coverage, Kolchin's American Slavery is a singularly important achievement. Now updated to address a decade of new scholarship, the book includes a new preface, afterword, and revised and expanded bibliographic essay.
It remains the best book to introduce a subject of profound and lasting importance, one that lies at the center of American history.
ISBN:9780140241501
Author:Peter Kolchin