Book picks similar to
Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground by David Bownes
history
london
non-fiction
buildings-and-infrastructure
Cyclogeography - Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier
Jon Day - 2015
The bicycle enables us to feel a landscape, rather than just see it, and in the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city.Informed by several grinding years spent as a bicycle courier, Day lifts the lid on the solitary life of the courier. Travelling the unmapped byways, short-cuts and edgelands of the city, couriers are the declining, invisible workforce of the city. The parcels they deliver – either commonplace or illicit – keep the city – and capitalism - running. 'This is a street-smart, super-sharp exploration of the "soft city" as seen from the saddle; Jon Day has written a bold and clever book about the zone where capital and cycling collide. It fascinated me from first page to last.’ - Robert Macfarlane'Magically good. Jon Day conjures the secret city of the cyclist, revealing himself over the course of his swooping journeys as an astonishing writer, capable of dizzyingly elegant and thrilling flights of thought.' - Olivia Laing Following in the footsteps of the literary walkers, Day explores the connection between cycling and writing, and in the history of the bicycle he reveals also the history of the landscape. The great bicycle road races – the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a España – are exercises in applied topography. Cyclogeography explores the relationship between bodies, bikes and geography.• Includes interviews with Iain Sinclair and Richard Long• Lifts the lid on the underworld of Cycle Couriering – and the strange or illicit contents of the parcels that are delivered.• Explores the subculture of courier bicycle races including the Cycle Messenger World Championships and the Alleycat races.• Traces the beginnings of the great bicycle races such as the Tour de France Jon Day is a writer, academic and cyclist. He worked as a bicycle courier in London for several years, and is now a lecturer in English Literature at King's College London. He writes for the London Review of Books, n+1, the New Statesman and others, and is a regular book critic for the Financial Times and the Telegraph. He is a contributing editor of the Junket, an online quarterly.
A Burglar's Guide to the City
Geoff Manaugh - 2015
You'll never see the city the same way again.At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, up to the buried vaults of banks, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city.With the help of FBI Special Agents, reformed bank robbers, private security consultants, the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division, and architects past and present, the book dissects the built environment from both sides of the law. Whether picking padlocks or climbing the walls of high-rise apartments, finding gaps in a museum's surveillance routine or discussing home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar's Guide to the City has the tools, the tales, and the x-ray vision you need to see architecture as nothing more than an obstacle that can be outwitted and undercut.Full of real-life heists-both spectacular and absurd-A Burglar's Guide to the City ensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.
They Call It Pacific (Annotated): An Eye-Witness Story of Our War Against Japan from Bataan to the Solomons
Clark Lee - 1943
They Call It Pacific is an insightful account of events leading up to the war and beyond from an authority on Japanese-American affairs at the time. It is also a thrilling journal detailing Lee’s unbelievable real-time escape from the Philippine Islands with the help of the Filipino resistance. The book contains extensive accounts of the battle for the Philippines on Bataan and Corregidor, interviews with soldiers including General Douglas MacArthur, talks with Japanese prisoners, and descriptions of combat as the author accompanied Navy pilots such as Swede Larson on flights over Guadalcanal. This new edition of They Call It Pacific has been updated with footnotes and images from the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. *Includes original footnotes. *Includes photographs from World War 2.
I Swear I Was There
David Nolan - 2001
David Nolan's 'I Swear I Was There' describes the early days of the Sex Pistols, their first gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976 and the long-term effects of that first concert.
Doré's London: All 180 Illustrations from London, A Pilgrimage
Gustave Doré - 1970
This comprehensive collection of drawings by Gustave Doré, France's most celebrated graphic artist of the period, presents a panoramic portrait of that engrossing city — from fashionable ladies riding in a sunlit park to ragged wretches in a shadowy side street. Here are amazingly perceptive sketches of workaday London, busy market places, the Christy Minstrels, a waterman's family, thieves gambling, the Devils' Acre in Westminster, flower girls, waifs and strays, a wedding at the Abbey, provincials in search of lodgings, a garden party, prisoners in the Newgate exercise yard, stalls at Covent Garden Opera House, and many other scenes that capture the London of a bygone era.
A Dangerous Place: The Story of the Railway Murders
Simon Farquhar - 2016
In September 1970, two boys met in the playground on their first day at secondary school in North London. They formed what would be described at the Old Bailey thirty years later as ‘a unique and wicked bond’. Between 1982 and 1986, striking near lonely railway stations in London and the Home Counties, their partnership took them from rape to murder. Three police forces pooled their resources to catch them in the biggest criminal manhunt since the Yorkshire Ripper Enquiry.A Dangerous Place is the first full-length account of the crimes of John Duffy and David Mulcahy. Told by the son of one of the police officers who led the enquiry, exhaustively researched and with unprecedented access, this is the story of two of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century and the times they operated in. It is the story of the women who died at their hands. It is the story of the women who survived them, and who had the courage to ensure justice was done. And it is the story of a father, told by a son.
The Everest Politics Show: Sorrow and Strife on the World's Highest Mountain
Mark Horrell - 2016
He wanted to discover for himself whether it had become the circus that everybody described.But when a devastating avalanche swept across the Khumbu Icefall, he got more than he bargained for. Suddenly he found himself witnessing the greatest natural disaster Everest had ever seen.And that was just the start. Everest Sherpas came out in protest, issuing a list of demands to the Government of Nepal. What happened next left his team shocked, bewildered and fearing for their safety.
Almost Perfect: How a Bunch of Regular Guys Built WordPerfect Corporation
W.E. Pete Peterson - 1993
A former executive at the WordPerfect Corporation details the company's rise in the computer industry and what compelled him to leave after ten years as a driving force in the company.
The M Room: Secret Listeners who Bugged the Nazis in WW2
Helen Fry - 2012
These grand houses were rigged with the latest and most advanced listening equipment. Bugging devices were hidden in the prisoners ‘cells, the light fittings, the fireplaces, behind mirrors, in plants and even in trees in the grounds, and wired back to the ‘M’ Room. At the heart of this clandestine unit were German-Jewish émigrés who had fled Nazi persecution and were serving in the British army. In an ironic turn of events they became British Intelligence’s most valuable asset. They were the ‘secret listeners’ and spent up to twelve hours a day eavesdropping on the conversations of German PoWs. This included not only the conversations of U-boat commanders, U-boat crew, infantry soldiers or Luftwaffe pilots but significantly 59 of Hitler’s Generals. The results were to prove astounding and beyond anything Churchill could have imagined when he authorised unlimited funds in its set-up. It gave British Intelligence unprecedented access to secrets that were not obtained by any other means. Providing a detailed, oft humorous, insight into life of the Generals in captivity, the book shows the farcical ‘stage-set’ in which they found themselves. But against this backdrop, the secret listeners eavesdropped on admission of war crimes and terrible atrocities against Russians, Poles and Jews; as well as details of an SS mutiny in a concentration camp in 1936, and Hitler’s human ‘stud farms’. This story places firmly on record just how much British Intelligence knew about the Holocaust. Why, at the end of the war, were these files not released for the war crimes trials? These and other transcripts of some of the most important German military secrets of the war remained classified until 1999.During their clandestine work the secret listeners did not set eyes on a single German PoW, yet their classified work and the intelligence they gained was as significant for winning the war as Bletchley Park and cracking the Enigma Code. For over sixty years the listeners never spoke about their work, not even to their families. Many went to their grave bearing the secrets of the nation which had saved them from certain death in the Holocaust.
The Bletchley Girls
Tessa Dunlop - 2015
Many were just school girls at the outbreak of war; the next six years would change their lives forever. This vivid portrayal of their experiences, sacrifices, and memories is a poignant reminder that without the work of thousands of young women Bletchley Park's extraordinary achievements would not have been possible. By meeting and talking to these fascinating female secret-keepers who are still alive today, Tessa Dunlop captures their extraordinary journeys into an adult world of war, secrecy, love, and loss. Through the voices of the women themselves, this is the story of life at Bletchley Park beyond the celebrated code-breakers; it's the story of the girls behind Britain's ability to consistently outsmart the enemy.
London by Tube: A History of Underground Station Names
David Revill - 2011
The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey around the Tube network to reveal the history behind the names of all 268 stations. Packed full of lively stories about the colourful characters and remarkable events connected to the places that bear these names, the book delves deep into London’s rich history to recall tales of terrible fires, profligate playboys, ancient relics, devious criminals, squalid slums, lost rivers, grisly executions and unsolved mysteries. This is a book for anyone who has ever taken a trip on the Tube – the perfect gift for visitors, commuters and Londoners alike. It is a Tube guide to the city’s past. So sit back and enjoy the ride and discover something new about London and its historic Underground.
Engravings by Hogarth
William Hogarth - 1973
Sean Shesgreen, a foremost authority on Hogarth, has consistently selected the best states of the plates to be used in this edition and has carefully introduced them, commenting upon the artist's milieu and the importance of plot, character, time, setting, and other dimensions. A most important aspect of this book, found in no other Hogarth edition, is the positioning of the editor's commentary on each plate on a facing page. With the incredible and sometimes overwhelming amount of detail and action going on in these engravings, this is a most helpful feature.
Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004
Richard Avedon - 2007
This beautifully produced catalogue, designed by the renowned Danish graphic designer Michael Jensen, features deluxe tritone printing and varnish on premium paper. It includes 125 reproductions of Avedon's greatest work from the entire range of his oeuvre--including fashion photographs, reportage and portraits--and spans from his early Italian subjects of the 1940s to his 2004 portrait of the Icelandic pop star Bjork. It also features a small number of color images, including what must be one of the most famous photographic portraits of the twentieth century, -Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent- (1981). Texts by Jeffrey Fraenkel, Judith Thurman, Geoff Dyer, Christoph Ribbat, Rune Gade and curator Helle Crenzien offer a sophisticated and thorough composite view of Avedon's career.