He presents the country like a magic-lantern show, as vivid images ceaselessly appear before his - and his readers' - eyes. Italy's most famous sights are all to be found here - St Peter's in Rome, Naples with Vesuvius smouldering in the background, the fairytale buildings and canals of Venice - but Dickens's chronicle is not simply that of a tourist. Combining compelling travelogue with piercing social commentary, he portrays a nation of great contrasts: between grandiose buildings and squalid poverty, ancient monuments and everyday life, past and present.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Kate Flint

    alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.

    Through the years, the group's trademark razor-sharp choreography, finely tuned harmonies, and compelling vocals made them the exemplars of the Motown style. This is the frank, revealing story of the legendary supergroup, told by its founder.

    This selection of letters does full justice to these splendid attribute's " Phillip Toynbee.

    In both subject and sound, it was like nothing else on the radio. It defied the cynicism and apathy of Generation X; it challenged the aesthetic expectations for a "pop song" (or even a "protest song"), fusing blues, opera, rock and gospel; and it demanded accountability in an era of corporate greed, globalization and environmental indifference. A massive hit globally (reaching #1 in over fifteen countries), it wasn't even offered as a single in the United States. Yet nearly two decades later, it stands as one of Jackson's greatest artistic achievements. In this groundbreaking monograph, author Joseph Vogel details the song's context and evolution from its inception in Vienna in 1988, to its release and reception in 1995, to Jackson's final live performance in Munich in 1999. Based on original research, including interviews with the song's key participants, Earth Song: Inside Michael Jackson's Magnum Opus offers a fascinating reassessment of this prophetic musical statement.

    No printings but KINGDOM HOUSE editions have a biographical and historical illustrated introduction. Contains map, town photographs, and stills and background on the Ronald Reagan film.

    Enough is enough. She vows to lose weight—not because she yearns to become a pretzel, but so she can keep up with her little boy and turn her life around at last. But after years of trying and failing, AJ knows she needs a miracle to drop eight dress sizes, so she agrees to be a human guinea pig and record her weekly progress in front of a camera for a television program on body image. In Confessions AJ shares her incredible journey, from her first close encounters with a nutritionist, personal trainer and psychologist to overcoming an early cataclysmic fall off the wagon—waking up in hospital with a broken leg after downing her first cocktail in weeks on an empty stomach—and the triumph of shedding that first few pounds. The result is a funny, insightful and inspiring account of a woman who lost more than half her body weight without losing her sense of humor—and discovered a whole new life.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    “If you haven't read Chris Offutt, you've missed an accomplished and compelling writer” (Chicago Tribune).At the age of nineteen, Chris Offutt had already been rejected by the army, the Peace Corps, the park rangers, and the police. So he left his home in the Kentucky Appalachians and thumbed his way north—into a series of odd jobs and even stranger encounters with his fellow Americans. Fifteen years later, Offutt finds himself in a place he never thought he’d be: settled down with a pregnant wife. Writing from the banks of the Iowa River, where he came to rest, he intersperses the story of his youthful journeys with that of his journey to fatherhood in a memoir that is uniquely candid, occasionally brutal, and often wonderfully funny. As he reckons with the comforts and terrors of maturity, Offutt finally discovers what is best in life and in himself.

    Currently the play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Martinez has witnessed enormous change in the game he loves, as it has morphed from a grassroots pastime to big business. Not all of the change has been for the better, and today’s fans struggle to connect to their on-the-field heroes as loyalty to club and player wavers and free agency constantly changes the face of every team’s roster.In Change Up, Martinez offers his unique insights into how Major League Baseball might reconnect with its fanbase, how the clubs might train and prepare their players for their time in “The Show,” and how players might approach the sport in a time of sagging fan interest. Martinez isn’t shy with his opinions, whether they be on pitch count, how to develop players through the minor-league system, and even if there should be a minor-league system at all. Always entertaining, ever insightful, Martinez shares brilliant insights and inside pitches about summer’s favourite game.

    She was, in many ways, a victim of a society that severely circumscribed the lives of women, and that deprived even privileged and talented women like Alice of their intellectual, spiritual, and emotional-as well as physical-freedom. Indeed, James spent many of her years as an invalid, afflicted with a depressive malaise that left her constantly trying to recover a sense of identity and integrity.Yet, within the pages of the journal she kept during the last four years of her life, Alice James emerges neither as a downtrodden casualty of her era nor as merely an interesting footnote to the illustrious James family saga, but rather as a formidable and triumphant individual in her own right. Far from displaying any wholesale acceptance of the ruling assumptions about her gender-or, for that matter, about anything else-James's diary reveals a vigorously opinionated, intellectually curious, extremely gifted writer renegotiating her position within the discourses of her time.Long unavailable to students, scholars, and the general reader, this volume reprints Leon Edel's 1964 edition, which is widely accepted as the most faithful reproduction of the original diary. A new introduction by Linda Simon draws extensively on recent scholarship to illuminate James's role both in the context of her family and nineteenth-century culture.

    Until he was kidnapped by the Intelligence Service.Behind his professional success, Kooshyar was a rebel on several fronts. Marginalised since boyhood as a Jew in a fundamentalist Islamic state, he was a member of a political group that opposed the government. He'd also been using his medical skills illegally, to save unmarried pregnant women from death by stoning.Snatched from the street, he was jailed and tortured and then forced to spy for the regime, before finally escaping to Turkey. There he faced a whole new struggle to keep his family safe while awaiting refugee status from the UN. He was forbidden to work and at the mercy of corrupt police, con men and red tape. Then life became more dangerous still, when the Intelligence Service tracked him down and used his mother, back in Iran, as blackmail.Kooshyar's inspiring story of how he managed to forge a new life in Australia is heightened by his largeness of heart, strength of character, and insight into human behaviour, from the unfathomably evil to the selflessly kind. With the skill of a natural storyteller, Journey of a Thousand Storms recounts a life of endurance, compassion and gritty determination.

    Across five decades, Prine has created critically acclaimed albums--John Prine (one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), Bruised Orange, and The Missing Years--and earned many honors, including two Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association, and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His songs have been covered by scores of artists, from Johnny Cash and Miranda Lambert to Bette Midler and 10,000 Maniacs, and have influenced everyone from Roger McGuinn to Kacey Musgraves. Hailed in his early years as the "new Dylan," Prine still counts Bob Dylan among his most enthusiastic fans. In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine's musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine's best-known songs and discusses all of Prine's albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records. This thorough, entertaining treatment gives John Prine his due as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation.