His London, however, would have been unfamiliar to many at the time, for this novel – published in 1957 and the first of what’s often described as MacInnes’s London Trilogy – focuses on an emergent black culture. It brings vividly to life the pubs and dance halls that many contemporary readers would have considered firmly out of bounds, offering an alternate mapping of this great city.

    - STEVEN SORA, author of The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar, The Lost Colony of the Templars, Secret Societies of America's EliteA well-researched, original and fascinating work - a real page-turner. - GRAHAM PHILLIPS, bestselling author of The End of Eden, Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon, The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant, Alexander the Great, The Moses Legacy, The Marian Conspiracy, Act of GodFROM THE BACK PAGEIn Medieval England the defence of the realm in times of need rested on the shoulders of twelve men - a secret brotherhood of knights, who answered only to the ruler of England. They were called The White Hart.As they are now...In the hot late summer of 1666, a strange document is delivered to the King of England. The writing, though easy to read, refers to an obscure promise: a great fireworks display will soon take place, culminating in a pure body of flame higher than St Paul's.A week later and with the City of London burned to rubble, the hunt is on for its mysterious sender.Present day: When flames are spotted inside a modern building located at the exact site of Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane on the anniversary of the Great Fire, few are prepared that this is just the first phase of the greatest terror attack in living memory. But when information reaches the Prime Minister of a second fire spreading in Edinburgh and a break-in at the Tower of London, it isn't long before chaos ensues.For White Hart agents Mike Hansen and Kit Masterson, the escalating attacks are just the start of a bizarre sequence of events that threaten to send the present and past on a collision course. A forgotten foe has finally resurfaced, their ancient threat being carried out. Armed with both the latest in modern technology and cryptic clues from the nation's dark past, they have no choice but to tackle the threat head on, while also frantically attempting to solve a centuries' old puzzle before it's too late. If successful, they could yet save both cities from certain destruction.But only by uncovering one of history's best-kept secrets can they prevent the past from repeating itself. . .

    Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.

    Her life changed utterly with his unexpected inheritance of the title and vast estates after the wartime death of his brother, who had married “Kick” Kennedy, the beloved sister of John F. Kennedy. Her friendship with that family would last through triumph and tragedy.In 1959, the Duchess and her family took up residence in Chatsworth, the four-hundred-year-old family seat, with its incomparable collections of paintings, tapestry, and sculpture—the combined accumulations of generations of tastemakers. Neglected due to the economies of two world wars and punitive inheritance taxes, the great house soon came to life again under the careful attention of the Duchess. It is regarded as one of England’s most loved and popular historic houses.Wait for Me! is written with intense warmth, charm, and perception. A unique portrait of an age of tumult, splendor, and change, it is also an unprecedented look at the rhythms of life inside one of the great aristocratic families of England. With its razor-sharp portraits of the Duchess’s many friends and cohorts—politicians, writers, artists, sportsmen—it is truly irresistible reading, and will join the shelf of Mitford classics to delight readers for years to come.

    Beautifully written, People Like Us makes a deeply personal case for a world in which anybody can reach success, but doesn't have to leave a part of themselves behind to achieve it.' David Lammy MPWhat does it take to make it in modern Britain? Ask a politician, and they'll tell you it's hard work. Ask a millionaire, and they'll tell you it's talent. Ask a CEO and they'll tell you it's dedication. But what if none of those things is enough?Raised on benefits and having attended some of the lowest-performing schools in the country, barrister Hashi Mohamed knows something about social mobility. In People Like Us, he shares what he has learned: from the stark statistics that reveal the depth of the problem to the failures of imagination, education and confidence that compound it. We live in a society where the single greatest indicator of what your job will be is the job of your parents. Where power and privilege are concentrated among the 7 per cent of the population who were privately educated. Where, if your name sounds black or Asian, you'll need to send out twice as many job applications as your white neighbour. Wherever you are on the social spectrum, this is an essential investigation into our society's most intractable problem. We have more power than we realise to change things for the better.

    It includes tales of living through a lifetime of dysfunction, violence and terror at the hands of both her father and other nefarious individuals who would seek to perpetuate the cycle. More importantly though, it is also a story of how they did not succeed in this hateful quest, as Jvonne struggled on and through to the other side to embrace love, laughter and the pursuit of personal happiness. Part of this amazing transformation even led to her adoption of a biracial infant, an event that served both as a healing elixir to her soul and a grandiose “!#%& you” to all the ugliness that hate brings.

    The technique is controlled, not ostentatious, and one senses here a conscious link to the work of older poets such as Larkin and Levertov. Karr's strength lies in her delicate and meticulous control of detail. Characteristically, she describes a cat's nighttime prowl with humor and precision: `` . . . he pounced and rabbit-kicked my head. / I had to disentangle from my hair / all four sets of claws, then tossed him / out into the pyramid of boxes / we'd erected in the yard.'' Such loving attention to seemingly insignificant events is reminiscent of the early work of Adrienne Rich and the use of imagery is similarly evocative (``When the moon / clicked over the sun like a black lens / over a white eye. . . ''). Karr's work generally falls into clipped stanzas, the lines flowing over for an effect of ironic tension appropriate for much of the ``devilish'' material with which she is concerned. While the poet's unflinching consciousness stands out in this text, the poetic voice is not completely developed. (Apr.)

    It was a culture that reflected a turbulent political reality.

    This history begins in the slum clearances of the late nineteenth century and the aspirations of those who would build anew. John Boughton looks at how and why the state's duty to house its people decently became central to our politics. Traversing the UK, Boughton offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, as well as many accounted ordinary; he asks us to understand better their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design and the politicians, high and low, who shaped their work, the competing ideologies which have promoted state housing and condemned it, the economics which has always constrained our housing ideals, the crisis wrought by Right to Buy, and the evolving controversies around regeneration. He shows how the loss of the dream of good housing for all is a danger for the whole of society - as was seen in the fire in Grenfell Tower.

    As Olivia decides between these two conflicting possibilities, her letters recount her impressions of Britain and its inhabitants as only a black woman could record them. She gives scathing descriptions of London, Bristol, and the British, as well as progressive critiques of race, racism, and slavery. The narrative follows her life from the heights of her arranged marriage to its swift descent into annulment, destitution, and potential debauchery, only to culminate in her resurrection as a self-proclaimed "widow" who flouts the conventional marriage plot. The Woman of Colour is a unique literary account of a black heiress' life immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade, and will inspire readers to rethink issues of race, gender, class, and empire from an African woman's perspective.

    She survived—and, miraculously, the baby was born healthy. But that’s where the good news ends. Marcella was left paralyzed from the chest down. This accident was much more than just a physical and emotional tragedy. Like so many Americans—50 million, or one-sixth of the country’s population—neither Marcella nor her husband, Dave, who works for a small business, had health insurance. On the day of the accident, she was on her way to class for the nursing program through which she hoped to secure one of the few remaining jobs in the area with the promise of employer-provided insurance. Instead, the accident plunged the young family into the tangled web of means-tested social assistance. As a social policy scholar, Campbell thought she knew a lot about means-tested assistance programs. What she quickly learned was that missing from most government manuals and scholarly analyses was an understanding of how these programs actually affect the lives of the people who depend on them. Using Marcella and Dave’s situation as a case in point, she reveals their many shortcomings in Trapped in America’s Safety Net. Because American safety net programs are designed for the poor, Marcella and Dave first had to spend down their assets and drop their income to near-poverty level before qualifying for help. What’s more, to remain eligible, they will have to stay under these strictures for the rest of their lives, meaning they are barred from doing many of the things middle-class families are encouraged to do: Save for retirement. Develop an emergency fund. Take advantage of tax-free college savings. And, while Marcella and Dave’s story is tragic, the financial precariousness they endured even before the accident is all too common in America, where the prevalence of low-income work and unequal access to education have generated vast—and growing—economic inequality. The implementation of Obamacare has cut the number of uninsured and underinsured and reduced some of the disparities in coverage, but it continues to leave too many people open to tremendous risk.Behind the statistics and beyond the ideological battles are human beings whose lives are stunted by policies that purport to help them. In showing how and why this happens, Trapped in America’s Safety Net offers a way to change it.

    But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There’s Society, and then there’s Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter. Real Society is not about the money—or rather, it’s not only about the money—it is about history, breeding, tradition, and most of all, the name. The Right People is an engrossing and illuminating journey through the customs and habits of the phenomenally wealthy, from the San Francisco elite to the upper crust of New York’s Westchester County. It is a marvelously anecdotal, intimately detailed overview of the lives of the American aristocracy: where they gather and dine; their games and sports, clubs and parties, friendships and feuds; their mating, marriage, and divorce rituals—a potpourri of priceless true stories featuring the Astors, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Vanderlips, Dukes, Biddles, and other lofty names from the pages of the Social Register.

    Decisive, resourceful and independent, Sarah faces challenges in love and friendship from those around her and the wider circumstances of the war as she travels across the cities and countrysides of England and Scotland. Often described as gentle romances, D. E. Stevenson novels are neither overblown nor unduly tragic, populated with characters who quietly make those around them better simply because of their existence. Consistently satisfying, there is a good reason why Stevenson has amassed a devoted following.

    Despite the desperate shortage of housing, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of affordable homes are being pulled down, replaced by luxury apartments aimed at foreign investors. In this ideological war, housing is no longer considered a public good. Instead, only market solutions are considered - and these respond to the needs of global capital, rather than the needs of ordinary people. In politically uncertain times, the housing crisis has become a key driver creating and fuelling the inequalities of a divided nation. Anna Minton cuts through the complexities, jargon and spin to give a clear-sighted account of how we got into this mess and how we can get out of it.

    This book conveys the changes in prison life that have come about as a result of the war on drugs, prison overcrowding, and demographic changes in inmate populations.