Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.

    Everyone else know Gideon Goosen as a monster: a gangster, assassin and murderer, who made a pact with the devil and deserves to live out his days in a solitary cell in Pretoria Central. How is it possible that the son of a decorated, God-fearing security policeman could fall so low? His mother blames it on his friends from the other side of the railway line in Randfontein, others on a leggy prostitute from Nigel who became his obsession. Gideon himself believes everything changed on an autumn morning when the fatal pellets from a pump-action shotgun cut short the life of an anti-apartheid activist in the driveway of his home. Set against the backdrop of the dying days of apartheid, and inspired by a true story and events that really happened, Jacques Pauw's explosive debut novel exposes the raw, seamy underworld of gangsterism and brutality when life was cheap and fear was everywhere.

    While engaged in this dreadful task, he loses his way and emerges in the bedroom of Ellie, the young daughter of the house who mistakes him for a thief. He runs away, and, hot and bothered, he slips into a cooling stream, falls fast asleep, and becomes a water baby.In this new life, he meets all sorts of aquatic creatures, including an engaging old lobster, other water babies, and at last reaches St Branden's Isle where he encounters the fierce Mrs Bedonbyasyoudid and the motherly Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. After a long and arduous quest to the Other-end-of-Nowhere young Tom achieves his heart's desire.

    The 'scholars' are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polygot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the orginal.In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the Britsh Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes ofr cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated - or translated - into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the unexperctedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and harmless. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationshiops of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish - and English - history.

    Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence. His various schemes - running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars - lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.

    A native Mainer, Roberts, whose historical novels include Northwest Passage and Arundel, was intrigued by the story of the December 1710 wreck of the Nottingham. After running aground a dozen miles offshore, the ship broke up, stranding her crew with minimal tools, scant shelter, and a few pieces of cheese. The men survived nearly a month of screeching gales, sub-freezing temperatures, and driving snowstorms. During their ordeal they resorted to cannibalism and were finally rescued after one of them made it ashore on a crude raft. Included here are contemporary accounts from crew members, offering dramatically different versions of the true-life traumatic event and a fascinating counterpoint to Roberts’ fictionalized version. A bestseller when published in 1956, Boon Island is a story of the ways that crisis can inspire the best--and worst--in human nature.

    There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams, which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives and the power of one.

    The first of these came out in 1946: the ever famous "How to be an Alien." Later he enlarges the picture with "How to be inimitable" and "How to be Decadent." All three books were illustrated by the master of the cartoonists' art, the late Nicolas Bentley. Here they are, all in one volume, which will make life much easier for today's would-be Brits than it was for those who pervaded them. It is said that a few of the latter actually failed to become indistinguishable from the genuine British article because they found it too tiresome to seek out three separate books: a misfortune that need never again occur to anyone.

    He understood how politics is shaped by the clash of men with various colorings of self-interest and idealism, how violence breeds violence, how fragile human beings create masks and disguises for protection, how schemers do the same for advancement, how love can grow out of hate and hate out of love.Dare anyone say that these insights are irrelevant to living in the real world? For many in an older generation, the Bible and the Collected Shakespeare were the two indispensable books, and thus their sense of life and history was shaped by the best and best-told stories. And they were the wiser for it.Literature abstracts from the complex events of life (just as we all do in everyday life) and can reveal patterns that are like the patterns of events in the real world. Studying literature can give us sensitivity to those patterns. This sensitivity to the rhythm of life is closely connected with what the Bible calls wisdom.

    White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.

    It is perhaps because of this that the poem is still popular with and of interest to modern readers. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister."In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect which often divides readers - is it the natural sound of mourning and grief, or merely monotonous? The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.Excerpt: Strong Son of God, immortal Love,Whom we, that have not seen thy face,By faith, and faith alone, embrace,Believing where we cannot prove ;Thine are these orbs of light and shade ;Thou madest Life in man and brute ;[...]

     Attu was the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain, located one thousand miles from Alaska, and subject to brutal weather all year round. Prior to the war it had been home to two Americans and forty-five Aleut hunters and their families, but in June 1942 the Japanese had seized the island and now had over two-thousand troops on the barren island threatening the security of the U.S. mainland. The Battle of the Komandorski Islands in the Bering Sea on March 26, 1943, cleared the way for attempt to retake the island of Attu. Code-named Operation Landgrab, the U.S. military planned for the invasion to take place in May. Army planners had initially thought this would be a quick operation, but instead of being a short invasion it dragged on for over two weeks. The Japanese had realized that their options were limited and so launched a last-ditch banzai charge against the American frontline that was suffering from brutal Arctic conditions, equipment failures and food shortages. Although the U.S. military was able to recapture the island it had cost the lives of over five hundred American soldiers. Robert J. Mitchell, Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond’s book The Capture of Attu provides fascinating insight into this ferocious conflict. Part One of the book provides an overview of the military campaign while Part Two provides personal narratives of the soldiers who fought. This book attempts to put the reader on the battlefield with the ground soldier. Men who fought on Attu, officers and enlisted men, told their stories to Lieutenant Robert J. Mitchell of the 32d Infantry, one of the regiments engaged. These stories tell of the discomforts and perils, the failures and successes, the fear and courage, the many fights between small groups and the occasional humor, of which battle consists. Robert J. Mitchell served as a lieutenant in the US Army's 7th Infantry Division in World War II, being stationed on Attu Island off of Alaska as well as other areas of the Pacific. He was shot in the chest while on Attu and carried the bullet for the rest of his life. While recuperating, he wrote the stories of the other men in his hospital tent. For this he was made an aide to the general in charge of media for the rest of the war. He passed away in 1992. His co-authors Sewell T. Tyng and Nelson Drummond also served on Attu and passed away in 1946 and 1999 respectively. Their book The Capture of Attu was first published in 1944.

    The popularity of the book is so great that it has run into forty two impressions ever since it was originally published in the year 1951

    Originally published in 1930, the landmark novel was one of the first to shatter the world’s illusion that war is a glorious endeavour. Instead, this chilling first-hand account brought readers face to face with the brutal, ugly realities of life in the trenches. Often compared to All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms, Generals Die in Bed was described by the New York Times as “a burning, breathing, historic document.” With veterans of WWI no longer here to tell their tales, this book stands as a lasting monument to the horror of war.

    (from Wikipedia)