But sometimes the best way to move forward is to look back. Philip Barlag shows us that Julius Caesar is one of the most compelling leaders of the past to study—a man whose approach was surprisingly modern and extraordinarily effective. History is littered with leaders hopelessly out of touch with their people and ruthlessly pursuing their own ambitions or hedonistic whims. But Caesar, who rose from impoverished beginnings, proved by his words and deeds that he never saw himself as being above the average Roman citizen. And he had an amazing ability to generate loyalty, to turn enemies into allies and allies into devoted followers. Barlag uses dramatic and colorful incidents from Caesar's career—being held hostage by pirates, charging headlong alone into enemy lines, pardoning people he knew wanted him dead—to illustrate what Caesar can teach leaders today. Central to Barlag's argument is the distinction between force and power. Caesar avoided using brute force on his followers, understanding that fear never generates genuine loyalty. He exercised a power deeply rooted in his demonstrated personal integrity and his intuitive understanding of people's deepest needs and motivations. His supporters followed him because they wanted to, not because they were compelled to. Over 2,000 years after Caesar's death, this is still the kind of loyalty every leader wants to inspire. Barlag shows how anyone can learn to lead like Caesar.

    The Netherlands are a tiny nation that punch above their weight on the world stage, where prostitutes are entitled to sick pay and prisons are closing due to lack of demand. After a chance encounter, Ben Coates left behind life in London to move to the Netherlands, where he learned the language, worked for Dutch company and married a Dutch wife. He takes readers into the heart of his adopted country, going beyond the usual tourist attractions and cliches to explore what it is that makes the Dutch the Dutch, Holland not the Netherlands and the colour orange so important. A travelogue, a history and a personal account of a changing country - Ben Coates tells the tale of an Englishman who went Dutch and liked it.

    They exhibit an extreme passion for freedom of choice—which has turned law circumvention into an art and has made them incapable of comprehending words like “discipline,” “co-ordination,” or “system.” There's no such thing as a meek GreekA Greek cannot talk unless he has his hands free, and a soft-spoken Greek is one who can be heard only as far as across the street. Two Greeks having an amiable conversation sound as if they are ready to murder each other, and a party of exuberant Greeks having a good time could be described as a pack of hounds that has just sighted the fox. Free spiritsMercurial in the extreme, the Greeks' temperament flourishes uninhibited throughout their waking hours. This is probably why the ancient sages saw fit to carve their maxims “Nothing in excess” and “Know thyself” on the portals of the Delphic Oracle, in an attempt to persuade their fellow Greeks to curb their emotions. They were not heeded then any more than they are now. How much does a Greek urn?In general, Greeks believe in free trade, fair dealing, and keeping one's word. They are quick at grasping (and inventing) complicated business and financial arrangements and they are past masters in acting as middlemen—which means that they are paid by both parties while risking nothing themselves.

    Traversing the country, he encounters a pompous Western businessman swindling his way to millions, a local vendor with a flair for painting nudes, and long ago legends of a western circus. Sensitively written and expertly researched, Greetings from Myanmar: Exploring the Price of Progress in One of the Last Countries on Earth to Open for Business is the story of a flourishing nation still very much in limbo and an answer to the hard questions that arise when tourism not only charts, but shapes a place as well.

    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

    He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

    Johnston's frank, informed, and novel thoughts about Canada.Touching on a wide range of topics ranging from learning, the law, kindness and courage, to the monarchy, Aboriginal education, justice, bilingualism, mental health and hockey, David Johnston has always used the letter writing form to tackle the passions, challenges, and goals of his incredibly accomplished and varied life. From his earliest years at Harvard, he has written several letters each day, starting with those to his large family, and broadening out to an ever-widening circle of friends that includes ministers and monarchs, educators and entrepreneurs, and many extraordinary Canadians who have deepened his perspective and touched his heart. The letters included in this beautiful volume are all about Canada -- a project to help him understand and share his views on this great country, past, present and future.      Presented in three parts -- What Shapes Me, What Consumes Me, and What Comforts Me -- His Excellency reaches out to everyone from his grandchildren, Kevin Vickers, Clara Hughes, Chris Hadfield, the Aga Khan, Tina Fontaine, Mike Lazaridis, the teachers of our country, a grade five class in Winnipeg, an unknown Inuit boy he met at Rideau Hall, and many others. The perfect gift for graduates, this unique and lovely book should find its home in every Canadian's library.

    When Christie Blatchford wandered into a Toronto courtroom in 1978 for the start of the first criminal trial she would cover as a newspaper reporter, little did she know she was also at the start of a self-imposed life sentence. In this book, Christie Blatchford revisits trials from throughout her career and asks the hard questions--about judges playing with the truth--through editing of criminal records, whitewashing of criminal records, pre-trial rulings that kick out evidence the jury can't hear. She discusses bad or troubled judges--how and why they get picked, and what can be done about them. And shows how judges are handmaidens to the state, as in the Bernardo trial when a small-town lawyer and an intellectual writer were pursued with more vigor than Karla Homolka. For anyone interested in the political and judicial fabric of this country, Life Sentence is a remarkable, argumentative, insightful and hugely important book.

    His ruthless ambition was evident from his insistence, as a three-year-old, that he would one day be 'world king'. Eton and Oxford prepared him well for a frantic career straddling the dog-eat-dog worlds of journalism and politics. His transformation from bumbling stooge on Have I Got New for You to a triumphant Mayor of London was overshadowed only by his colourful personal life, brimming with affairs, scandals and transgressions. His ascent to Number 10 in the wake of the acrimonious, era-defining Brexit referendum would prove to be only the first act in an epic drama that saw him play both hero and villain - from proroguing parliament to his controversial leadership of the Covid-19 Crisis, all against the backdrop of divorce, marriage, the birth of his sixth child, revolts among Tory MPs and the countdown to Brexit.Yet despite his celebrity, decades of media scrutiny, the endless vitriol of his critics and the enduring adoration of his supporters, there is so much we've never understood about Boris - until now. Previous biographies have either dismissed him as a lazy, deceitful opportunist or been transfixed by his charm, wit and drive. Both approaches fall short, and so many questions about Boris remain unanswered.What seismic events of his childhood have evaded scrutiny? How has he so consistently defied the odds, proved his critics wrong, and got away with increasingly reckless gambles? What were his real achievements and failures as Mayor of London, what was really going on during his time as Foreign Secretary, and why did he write two articles for the Telegraph, one in favour of Leave and the other for Remain? How have the women in his life exerted more influence than any of us realise, and why is his story ultimately one overshadowed by family secrets?Based on a wealth of new interviews and research, this is the deepest, most rounded and most comprehensive portrait to date of the man, the mind, the politics, the affairs, the family - of a loner, a lover, a leader.Revelatory, unsettling and compulsively readable, it is the most timely and indispensable book yet from Britain's leading investigative biographer.

    A Short History of the World takes readers from the Mayans to Mongolia, from the kingdom of Benin to the court of the Jagiellonian kings of Poland. Traditional histories of this kind have tended to be Eurocentric, telling mankind's story through tales of Greece and Rome and the crowned heads of Europe's oldest monarchies. Here, Marr widens the lens, concentrating as much, if not more on the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Instead of focusing on one episode of history taking place in one place, he draws surprising parallels and makes fascinating connections, focusing on a key incident or episode to tell a larger story: for instance, the liberation of the serfs in Russia, which took place at the same time as the American Civil War, which resulted in the abolition of slavery in the U.S.  But he begins the account with an episode in the life of Tolstoy, who racked up huge gambling debts and had to sell land and slaves as a result. Fresh and exciting, this is popular history at its very best.

    As a young man, he was fond of sports and hunting, and was said to be uncommonly handsome. Standing more than six feet tall, he loomed large in the lives and minds of his subjects as he navigated his country through the tricky diplomatic and military hazards of the sixteenth century. A man of enormous appetites, Henry conducted affairs with many women, married six, and executed two. His infatuation with Anne Boleyn set in motion a chain of events that reshaped the church in England and eroded the dominance of Rome. But the popular image of Henry as a crude tyrant, dispatching courtiers, enemies, and wives with gusto, obscures a more nuanced and fascinating character. He was a true Renaissance king who presided over one of Europe's greatest courts and nudged Western civilization onto a new course. Here, from Abigail Archer, author of The New York Times bestseller Elizabeth I, is the story of Henry VIII.

    By Royal Appointment is a fictionalised account of their story, based on true events. In the years following the Great Famine of the 1840’s, Queen Victoria has become deeply unpopular in Ireland. In 1861, as an official visit from the monarch is planned to win over her Irish subjects, her son Bertie is dispatched to County Kildare for military training as part of the charm offensive. Bertie has undergone a life of duty, protocol and a harsh educational regime. As a frantic search is under way to find him a suitable princess to marry, he relishes the prospect of freedom from court life in Ireland. There, he is quickly introduced to a life of decadence and soon presented to the notorious actress Nellie Cliffden. Nellie is as famous for her shocking behaviour as her beauty. A famine orphan who has climbed the ladder of society by any means she could, even she is shocked to find herself in the company of the Prince of Wales. When Bertie and Nellie fall in love, the royal family is engulfed in a scandal threatening the future of the monarchy and Nellie becomes a pawn in a dangerous world of power, politics and blackmail.

    Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones? In his important new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia--one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day. The Supreme Court, in accord with the wishes of the Nixon administration, allowed the suburbs to lock nonresidents out of their school systems. City schools, whose student bodies were becoming increasingly poor and black, simply received more funding, a measure that has proven largely ineffective, while the independence (and superiority) of suburban schools remained sacrosanct. Weaving together court opinions, social science research, and compelling interviews with students, teachers, and principals, Ryan explains why all the major education reforms since the 1970s--including school finance litigation, school choice, and the No Child Left Behind Act--have failed to bridge the gap between urban and suburban schools and have unintentionally entrenched segregation by race and class. As long as that segregation continues, Ryan forcefully argues, so too will educational inequality. Ryan closes by suggesting innovative ways to promote school integration, which would take advantage of unprecedented demographic shifts and an embrace of diversity among young adults. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written by one of the nation's leading education law scholars, Five Miles Away, A World Apart ties together, like no other book, a half-century's worth of education law and politics into a coherent, if disturbing, whole. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered why our schools are so unequal and whether there is anything to be done about it.

    She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more ...Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.

    . . within seconds, flaming gasoline was pouring out, burning white and orange . . .”“We shot at the Russian tanks when they came out of the dust cloud . . . the T34 exploded like a rotten fruit . . . engine, turret and deck all going in different directions, with the crew torn apart likewise . . .”Told by the men who fought in the tanks, with all the searing aggression and violence that they experienced . . . these are the shocking first-hand stories of the SS panzer troops themselves. The crews of the Panzer IV, the Stug, the Panther, Jagdtiger, Tiger and King Tiger . . . the authentic voices of the gunners, commanders and drivers who fought some of the deadliest battles in human history.In 1962, German researchers conducted a series of interviews with former members of the Waffen SS panzer troops who had fought in World War 2. The intention was to probe the SS veterans' motivations and psychology, but the men were unwilling to discuss these matters in depth. They were prepared, however, to describe their combat experiences - and they gave astonishing accounts of tank battles in Operation Barbarossa, Normandy, Italy, the Russian Front, the massive conflict at Kursk, the Ardennes and during the final apocalyptic battles against the Soviets within the Reich and for Berlin itself. These were men whose memories of battle were still vivid, and they were ready to relate the physical details of combat – the violent sights, sounds, and sensations of tank fighting, the weapons and tactics that they used, their triumphs and humiliations. Told in ice-cold, clinical detail, with phenomenal drama and sense of crisis, these first-hand accounts stand out today as one of the most remarkable testimonies to the experience of tank warfare in WW2. They will fascinate anyone interested in tank combat, the Waffen SS and the use of armor from 1941 to 1945.This book has the complete set of interviews from Books 1 and 2, with accounts of tank battles in:Operation Barbarossa (Panzer IV) Onslaught in the East (Stug III) Kursk (Tiger I)Italy (Elefant and Panther)Normandy (Panther)The Ardennes (Jagdtiger)Prussia (Stug IV)Berlin (King Tiger and Wirbelwind)A unique and shocking insight into panzer warfare in all its horrors.