The eccentric group who satirised trad jazz, pop and rock, reached Number five with ‘I’m The Urban Spaceman’ in 1968. A punishing schedule of tours and television followed, including work with the future Monty Python team. The following year, broke and burned out, the Bonzos split up, leaving behind a loyal cult following.Vivian launched into myriad solo projects in music, film and theatre, giving himself several nervous breakdowns in the process. His comic masterpiece, ‘Sir Henry at Rawlinson End’, was heard in radio, on an album, and then hit the big screen. Vivian wrote the musical ‘Stinkfoot’, was narrator on ‘Tubular Bells’ and provided lyrics for Steve Winwood. In person, he was just as multi-faceted, by turns the erudite artist and the truculent Teddy Boy, breathtakingly rude. A powerful figure, tall, red-haired and never less than extravagant in his fashion, Vivian Stanshall was a hell-raiser of legendary reputation – ably assisted through much of the 1970s by Who drummer Keith Moon. Vivian drove the many who loved him to the limit, struggling with terrible tranquilliser and alcohol dependency. He died at home in a house fire in 1995. The story of his turbulent life is utterly compelling.

    Of course, this is more than snippy waiters or rude drivers who cut you off. It is a finely honed selection of 738 exasperating things, people, situations, complaints, and attitudes that everyone who's ever had a bad day can appreciate. And which will make us all feel better, just because we know someone else is paying attention--at last. Talk about annoying:Yoga instructors who smoke.Pets that only show affection right before mealtime.Tipping someone who hasn't earned it only because you don't want to look cheap.Late fees for a video you didn't have time to watch.The second-to-last day of a two-week vacation.A sneeze that lingers in your nose, doesn't come out, and then is absorbed by your forehead.When your Cracker Jack has melted into one big Jack.When your doctor asks if you mind if an intern watches your colonoscopy.

    But the imminent collapse of twenty years of Republican conservativism means the country is already conducting an intense self-examination about the trajectory of its history; how it came to find itself in multiple crises and how an America that began as 'the last, best hope of earth' came to be so suspected and vilified around much of the world.The American Future: A History, written by an author who has spent half his life there, takes the long view of how the United States has come to this anguished moment of truth about its own identity as a nation and its place in the world.In each of the chapters devoted to the most compelling issues facing Americans now - the projection of power ("American war") ; race, immigration and the problematic promise of e pluribus unum ("American skin"); the intensity of religious conviction in public life ("American fervour") ; the mystique of American land and its battles with the imperatives of profit ('American Plenty'- Schama traces the deep history of the present crisis.Cumulatively the chapters build into a history of American exceptionalism - the 'American difference' that means so much to its people but which has led it into calamities as well as triumphs.The American Future: A History argues that if you want to know what is truly at stake, you need to absorb these stories and understand this history - for understanding is the condition of hope.

    Stumble for short.' 'Kim Jong-May awkward and incredulous as journalist asks question.' 'Supreme leader produces pure TV Valium on The One Show.' Throughout 2017 John Crace, the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, has watched Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to remain strong and stable - and, indeed, Prime Minister. He coined the term 'Maybot' for her malfunctioning public appearances. And now, in this edited collection of his unremittingly witty sketches, he tells the full story of Theresa May's turbulent first year in Westminster. As waspishly hilarious as Craig Brown's diaries in Private Eye, I, Maybot is essential and hysterically funny reading for anyone trying to make sense of our crazy political year.

    This experience gave Carducci a unique perspective on music and "Rock And The Pop Narcotic" is perhaps the only book of popular music criticism that attempts to achieve a genuine aesthetic of rock music. The content runs the gamut of music, touching on everything from the Allman Brothers to Husker Du to Black Flag.

    Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games, and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of men who grew up playing with toy soldiers—refighting World War II—and then stopped growing up. Inspired by the photos of the gallant pilot uncles that decorated the wall above his father's model-making table, by toys such as Action Man (according to Pearson—not a doll) and board games such as Escape from Colditz, dressed in Clarks' commando shoes and with the Airfix Army in support, he battled in the fields and on the beaches, in his head and on the living room floor, and across his bedroom ceiling. And 30 years later he still is. This hilariously self-deprecating memoir is a celebration of those glory days, a boy's own story of the urge to play, to conquer, and to adopt very bad German accents, shouting "Donner und Blitzen!" at every opportunity. This is a tale of obsession, glue, and plastic kits. It is the story of one boy's imaginary war and where it led him.

    Julian Mann, the hard drinking, preening, and sexually provocative star of the TV sitcome Richard the Nerd, feels caught on the horns of a dilemma: should he be concentrating on his career, which is on the slide after an unseemly bout of fisticuffs at the BAFTA awards; or following his baser instincts and bedding every young girl in sight?His twin dreams of comic immortality and a penthouse flat full of booze and young models seem to be frustrated by his wife and children; by Tom, his wife's best friend from university days, a pretentious 'National Theatre Player' who appears to be competing with Julian on the small sreen and in the bedroom; by the tax man, who's chasing him for sixty thousand pounds; and by Lillith, a psychotic fan, and member of a strange Herculean cult whose eight-year cycle of death and regeneration might augur Julian's imminent nemesis...

    At work, in the middle-class world of television he’s the laddie, cockney geezer, but to his mates down the pub in south-east London, he’s the theatrical one, a media luvvie. Even at home, his wife and kids are posher than him.In this hilarious exploration of class, Rob compares his life growing up as a working-class kid to the life he lives now, trying to understand where he truly belongs.Will he always be that fat kid who was told he’d never be a high-flyer? Why does he feel ashamed if he does anything vaguely middle class? Will he ever favour craft beer over lager? What happens if you eat 50 olives and drink two bottles of champagne? Why is ‘boner’ such a funny word?In search of answers, Rob relives the moments in his life when the class divide couldn’t be more obvious. Whether it’s the gig for rich bankers that was worse than Matt Hancock hosting the GQ Men of the Year Awards, turning up at a swanky celebrity house party with a blue bag of cans from the offy or identifying the root of his ambition as a childhood incident involving soiled pants and Jurassic Park, Rob digs deep.A Class Act is his funny, candid and often moving account of what it feels like to be an outsider and the valuable (sometimes humiliating) life lessons he’s learned along the way.

    Star of action blockbuster Alpha Papa; a man with a fascinating past and an amazing future.Gregarious and popular, yet Alan’s never happier than when relaxing in his own five-bedroom, south-built house with three acres of land and access to a private stream. But who is this mysterious enigma?Alan Gordon Partridge is the best – and best-loved – radio presenter in the region. Born into a changing world of rationing, Teddy Boys, apes in space and the launch of ITV, Alan’s broadcasting career began as chief DJ of Radio Smile at St. Luke’s Hospital in Norwich. After replacing Peter Flint as the presenter of Scout About, he entered the top 8 of BBC sports presenters.But Alan’s big break came with his primetime BBC chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You. Sadly, the show battled against poor scheduling, having been put up against News at Ten, then in its heyday. Due to declining ratings, a single catastrophic hitch (the killing of a guest on air) and the dumbing down of network TV, Alan’s show was cancelled. Not to be dissuaded, he embraced this opportunity to wind up his production company, leave London and fulfil a lifelong ambition to return to his roots in local radio.Now single, Alan is an intensely private man but he opens up, for the second time, in this candid, entertaining, often deeply emotional – and of course compelling – memoir, written entirely in his own words. (Alan quickly dispelled the idea of using a ghost writer. With a grade B English Language O-Level, he knew he was up to the task.)He speaks touchingly about his tragic Toblerone addiction, and the painful moment when unsold copies of his first autobiography, Bouncing Back, were pulped like ‘word porridge’. He reveals all about his relationship with his ex-Ukrainian girlfriend, Sonja, with whom he had sex at least twice a day, and the truth about the thick people who make key decisions at the BBC.A literary tour de force, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan charts the incredible journey of one of our greatest broadcasters.

    Freud was a complicated, often irascible man, who in 19th-century Vienna developed his still-controversial ideas and the new discipline of psychoanalysis.

    

    Like any sane person, his response is to travel to Crewe, Carlisle and Luton. Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters is an attempt to seek out the England of today through the lens of its football clubs. Small teams and towns, Gray argues, made the country great and matter now more than ever. Taking twelve teams who had notable seasons in 1981, the year of his birth, Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters is part-football book, part-travelogue and part-love letter to the bits of England that often get forgotten.In Middlesbrough, his own childhood team, Gray examines the concept of supporter loyalty and identity. Is football all some of us have left to cling to in a land where the industry that bound the people of towns together has gone? In Watford he muses on the existence of a North-South divide. In Sheffield, a city of bitter derbies, he examines rivalries in football and what they say about our country. In traditionally-wealthy Ipswich he ponders the ownership of football clubs past, present and future. Via such places as Chester, Burnley, Bradford and Carlisle, this is a whistle-stop tour of the outer reaches of the football league that aims to answer big questions about Englishness.For fans of Harry Pearson's The Far Corner or Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice, this is a book that brings the real England vivdly jumping off the page.

    A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.An outgrowth of Trevor Aaronson's work as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, which culminated in an award-winning cover story in Mother Jones magazine, The Terror Factory reveals shocking information about the criminals, con men, and liars the FBI uses as paid informants--including the story of an accused murderer who has become one of the Bureau's most prolific terrorism snitches--as well as documenting the extreme methods the FBI uses to ensnare Muslims in terrorist plots, which are in reality conceived and financed by the FBI.The book also offers unprecedented detail into how the FBI has transformed from a reactive law enforcement agency to a proactive counterterrorism organization that traps hapless individuals in manufactured terrorist plots in order to justify the $3 billion it spends every year fighting terrorism.

    It ran for five years, won 15 Emmys and set the pace for the sophisticated sitcom. Written with the full cooperation of Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner and Mary Tyler Moore, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book is the first and only authorized backstage history of TV's most enduring comedy, an ultimate viewer guide to the dhow, both on and off camera. The book reads like a great dramatic script itself, beginning with the task of getting the show on its feet, moving on to the struggles to keep it alive.The first and only complete, fully authorized "biography" of one of TV's most beloved sitcoms, including the first complete viewer's guide to all 158 episodes, including a rare look at Carl Reiner's Head of the Family, the pilot film that started it all, as well as special behind-the-scenes trivia and a full chapter concordance. 50 black and white photos.

    Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science continues the Freemasonry saga by exploring its roots in The Royal Society, a group dedicated to the pursuit of scientific study.In a time when superstition and magic governed reason, the repressive dogma of Christian belief silenced many, and where a turbulent political and economical background dominated, these men forbade any discussion of religion at their meetings. Lomas claims that modern experimental science was born out of The Royal Society, which was secretly funded by The Invisible College, which is known today as Freemasonry.