Its cricket team evolved in the chaotic aftermath. Initially unrecognised, underfunded and weak, Pakistan's team grew to become a major force in world cricket. Since the early days of the Raj, cricket has been entwined with national identity and Pakistan's successes helped to define its status in the world. Defiant in defence, irresistible in attack, players such as A.H.Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Wasim Akram and Imran Khan awed their contemporaries and inspired their successors. The story of Pakistan cricket is filled with triumph and tragedy. In recent years, it has been threatened by the same problems affecting Pakistan itself: fallout from the 'war on terror', sectarian violence, corruption, crises in health and education, and a shortage of effective leaders. For twenty years, Pakistan cricket has been stained by the scandalous behaviour of the players involved in match-fixing. Since 2009, the fear of violence has driven Pakistan's international cricket into exile. No one knows when it will return home. But Peter Oborne's narrative is also full of hope. For all its troubles, cricket gives all Pakistanis a chance to excel and express themselves, a sense of identity and a cause for pride in their country. Packed with first-hand recollections, and digging deep into political, social and cultural history, Wounded Tiger is a major study of sport and nationhood.

    Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

    Plait created his popular web site: http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html, to debunk bad astronomy in popular culture. This website proved popular, which led to this first book by Plait, that carries on from the website and in a detailed and clear fashion criticises and disproves popular myths and misconceptions relating to astronomy, and promotes science as a means of explaining the skies. The work describes 24 common astronomical fallacies, including the beliefs that the Coriolis effect determines the direction that water drains in a bathtub, and that planetary alignments can cause disaster on Earth. The author sharply and convincingly dismisses astrology, creationism, and UFO sightings, and explains the principles behind basic general concepts (the Big Bang, why the sky is blue, etc.).

    In this extraordinary feat of nature writing, we meet ants who harvest crops, raise insects as livestock, build roadways and bridges, embark on nuptial flights, and make war.

    The record of the journey is the latter half of his The Maine Woods, which is perhaps the finest idyl of the forest ever written. It is particularly charming in its blending of meditative and poetic fancies with the minute description of the voyager’s experiences. The chief attraction that inspired Thoreau to make the trip was the primitiveness of the region. Here was a vast tract of almost virgin woodland, peopled only with a few loggers and pioneer farmers, Indians, and wild animals. No one could have been better fitted than Thoreau to enjoy such a region and to transmit his enjoyment of it to others.

     This book is perfect for history lovers. Author James Weber did the research and compiled this huge list of events and battles that changed the course of history forever. Some of them include: - The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria (September 18, 1931) - The Signing of the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union (August 23, 1939) - The Battle of Britain (Summer 1940) - Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) - The Destruction of Cologne during the Thousand Bomber Raid (May 30, 1942) - The Battles of Midway (June 1942) - The German Surrender at Stalingrad (February 2, 1943) - Drop of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and many many more The book takes you through the most important events of WWII from before the beginning of the war in 1939 until its end in 1945. It contains all the major battles and fights. You will find pictures and explanations to every event, making this the perfect resource for students and anyone wanting to broaden their knowledge in history. Download your copy now! Tags: world war ii books, world war 2 historical fiction, history, world history, history books, history of war, war tactics, military, history books best sellers, world war 2 books for kindle, world war 2 books for teens, world war 2 books young adult, history books for kids, military tactics, world war 2 memorabilia, world war ii in colour, world war 2 movies, world war 2 posters, world war 2 books for kids, world war 2 books for adults, history channel, nazi germany, axis, allies, d-day, history for dummies, iwo jima, pearl harbor, adolf hitler, world war z, world war, third reich, erwin rommel, heinrich himmler,

    In this 148-page hardback they reveal the places that they have got to know and love and show you why Tokyo is the friendliest big city in the world. It’s a guide book that will lead you to the best in culture and new architecture – and a few fun nights out too.The Monocle Travel Guide series reveals our favourite places in each city we cover, from the ideal route for an early-morning run to the best spots for independent retail. Full of surprises and quirks, they also feature detailed design and architecture pages, neighbourhood walks to get you away from the crowds and our favourite places to eat everything be it tasty fast food or something truly celebratory.

       The grizzly is one of North America’s last large predators. Their range is diminished, but they’re spreading into the West again, where once they were king. The challenge: humans rule the roost now, and most are wary, at best, as grizzlies approach.     In searing detail, award‑winning writer, Montana rancher, and conservationist Bryce Andrews tells us about one such grizzly. Millie was a typical mother: strong, cunning, fiercely protective of her cubs. But raising those cubs was hard. The mountains were changing, as the climate warmed and people crowded the valleys. There were obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones, like the corn field that drew her into human territory, and sure trouble.     That trouble is where Bryce’s story intersects with Millie’s. He shares both in Down from the Mountain, showing how this singular drama is a piece of a much larger one in the West: an entangled, bloody collision between people protecting a life they’ve known for generations, and the people fighting to preserve one of America’s wildest landscapes.

    Countdown is partly a result of conversations with many hundreds of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal and Ghosh concludes, that "the pursuit of nuclear weapons in the subcontinent is the moral equivalent of civil war?"

    Maybe your teacher took the controversial stand that the Civil War was all about states’ rights… or maybe you learned all about the horrors slavery, but never quite figured out why things didn’t get better after the war ended. If you didn’t go to school in the United States, things are even more confusing. When the media is full of references to the Confederate flag, the legacy of slavery, and poverty in the American South, you might have a vague sense that things are bad because of the Civil War… but why? Why does a war that happened over a hundred and fifty years ago still cast a shadow over the United States? This book will tell you why. It will lead you, step-by-step, through the causes of the Civil War, and the effects. But unlike your high school history teacher, it won’t put you to sleep with long-winded biographies and lists of dates. The names you’ll learn are the big players, the ones with big personalities, who made big differences. In just a few minutes a day, you can read bite-sized stories from the Civil War – quick, easy explanations to guide you through the main points, with just enough scary, surprising, or just plain strange facts to keep you coming back for more. Each chapter ends with a bonus helping of trivia and some quick questions to test your knowledge. By the time you’re finished, you’ll know all the facts your history teacher never taught you – from who said slavery was a “positive good” (and why they thought that), to who dressed up in women’s clothing to escape from Union soldiers.

    Ki. Rangarajan. The Tamil actor Kamal Hassan suggested that Ra. Ki. translate I, Claudius by Robert Graves into Tamil. Instead, Ra. Ki. decided to present a first-person narrative of the story of Krishnadevaraya, the emperor of Vijayanagar.Ra. Ki.’s hero is like any other young man his age—his romantic attachments overshadowing everything else in his life—until his minister and mentor, Appaji, reminds him that his duty ought to take precedence over his love life.Coming to the throne under difficult circumstances, Krishnadevaraya had to wage a relentless battle to preserve the Vijayanagar empire. Circumstances prevented him from marrying the woman he loved or pursuing literature, his true passion. Overcoming all of this, Krishnadevaraya went on to become the greatest emperor of the Vijayanagar empire.I, Krishnadevaraya takes you into the inner world of the emperor, providing a vivid picture of his thinking, his insecurities and his decision-making. Ably translated by Suganthy Krishnamachari, I, Krishnadevaraya is a fascinating look at one of India’s greatest kings.

    News of both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly revelatory was his successful identification of a genetic descendant of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today. How was Sykes able to locate a living relative of a man who died thousands of years ago?In The Seven Daughters of Eve, he gives us a firsthand account of his research into a remarkable gene, which passes undiluted from generation to generation through the maternal line. After plotting thousands of DNA sequences from all over the world, Sykes found that they clustered around a handful of distinct groups. Among Europeans and North American Caucasians, there are, in fact, only seven. This conclusion was staggering: almost everyone of native European descent, wherever they may live throughout the world, can trace their ancestry back to one of seven women, the Seven Daughters of Eve.Naming them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine, Sykes has created portraits of their disparate worlds by mapping the migratory patterns followed by millions of their ancestors. In reading the stories of these seven women, we learn exactly how our origins can be traced, how and where our ancient genetic ancestors lived, and how we are each living proof of the almost indestructible strands of DNA, which have survived over so many thousands of years. Indeed, The Seven Daughters of Eve is filled with dramatic stories: from Sykes's identification, using DNA samples from two living relatives, of the remains of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaress Alexandra, to the Caribbean woman whose family had been sold into slavery centuries before and whose ancestry Sykes was able to trace back to the Eastern coast of central Africa. Ultimately, Sykes's investigation reveals that, as a race, what humans have in common is more deeply embedded than what separates us.