Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse


John Crace - 2019
    That's what the country is crying out for.' There is now only one certainty in life. When things can't possibly get any worse, they absolutely will. And so, after three years of Maybot malfunctioning and Brexit bungling, welcome to BoJo the clown's national circus - where fun for literally none of the family is guaranteed. Fear not, however: Decline and Fail is your personal survival guide to the ongoing political apocalypse. This unremittingly entertaining collection of John Crace's lifegiving political sketches will get you through the darkest of days - or failing that, will at least make you laugh a bit. Miss it at your peril...

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power


Deirdre Mask - 2020
    But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class.In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, and how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we also see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata and on the streets of London. Filled with fascinating people and histories, The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn’t―and why.

Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain


Bill Yates - 2020
    The search for little Pearl consumed the next several weeks, and the story became front page news all over the United States. Hundreds of residents from the nearby towns of Waldron and Booneville Arkansas helped in the search, and a mysterious mountain hermit seemed to hold the secret to Pearl's disappearance. The incredible events that followed contributed to a mountain legend that still exists today.

My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile


Isabel Allende - 2003
    The "large old house" on the Calle Cueto, where her mother was born and which her grandfather evoked so frequently that Isabel felt as if she had lived there, became the protagonist of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. It appears again at the beginning of Allende's playful, seductively compelling memoir My Invented Country, and leads us into this gifted writer's world.Here are the almost mythic figures of a Chilean family -- grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends -- with whom readers of Allende's fiction will feel immediately at home. And here, too, is an unforgettable portrait of a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit. Although she claims to have been an outsider in her native land -- "I never fit in anywhere, not into my family, my social class, or the religion fate bestowed on me" -- Isabel Allende carries with her even today the mark of the politics, myth, and magic of her homeland. In My Invented County, she explores the role of memory and nostalgia in shaping her life, her books, and that most intimate connection to her place of origin.Two life-altering events inflect the peripatetic narration of this book: The military coup and violent death of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a writer. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on her newly adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author's past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Stay the Rising Sun: The True Story of USS Lexington, Her Valiant Crew, and Changing the Course of World War II


Phil Keith - 2015
    Another carrier was nearly ready for launch when the news arrived, so the navy changed her name to Lexington, confusing the Japanese.The men of the original "Lady Lex" loved their ship and fought hard to protect her. They were also seeking revenge for the losses sustained at Pearl Harbor. Crippling attacks by the Japanese left her on fire and dead in the water. A remarkable 90 percent of the crew made it off the burning decks before Lexington had to be abandoned. In all the annals of the Second World War, there is hardly a battle story more compelling.Lexington's legacy did not end with her demise, however. Although the battle was deemed a tactical success for the Japanese, it turned out to be a strategic loss: For the first time in the war, a Japanese invasion force was forced to retreat.The lessons learned by losing the Lexington at Coral Sea impacted tactics, air wing operations, damage control, and ship construction. Altogether, they forged a critical, positive turning point in the war. The ship that ushered in and gave birth to a new era in naval warfare might be gone, but fate decreed that her important legacy would live on.

Torpedo 8: The Story of Swede Larsen’s Bomber Squadron


Ira Wolfert - 1943
    VT-8 rose from the ashes of the Battle of Midway to become an indispensable air arm in the series of engagements for the Solomon Islands and beyond. In three months, the crack squadron carried out thirty-nine attack missions, sixteen against ships, twenty-three against ground targets. Their motto following the tragedy at Midway was "Attack and Revenge." Herman Wouk paid homage to the squadron in his 1971 novel War and Remembrance, referring to the pilots as, "The soul of America in action." *Includes annotations and images.

Necropolis: London and Its Dead


Catharine Arnold - 2006
    The city is one giant grave, filled with the remains of previous eras. The Houses of Parliament sit on the edge of a former plague pit; St Paul's is built over human remains; Underground tunnels were driven through forgotten catacombs, thick with bones. A society can be judged by the way it treats its dead, and this is especially true of London. From Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the development of cremation and the cult of mourning that surrounded the death of Diana, Princess of Wales - Necropolis leaves no headstone unturned in its exploration of our changing attitudes towards the deceased among us.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking


Rebecca Solnit - 2001
    The author argues for the preservation of the time and space in which to walk in an ever more car-dependent and accelerated world.

South Africa: History in an Hour


Anthony Holmes - 2012
    Read a concise history of South Africa in just one hour.South Africa is a nation that has been ravaged by oppression and racial inequality. After years of concentrated violence and apartheid, Nelson Mandela led the country to unite ‘for the freedom of us all’ as the country’s first black President.SOUTH AFRICA: HISTORY IN AN HOUR gives a lively account of the formation of modern South Africa, from the first contact with seventeenth-century European sailors, through the colonial era, the Boer Wars, apartheid and the establishment of a tolerant democracy in the late twentieth century. Here is a clear and fascinating overview of the emergence of the ‘Rainbow Nation’.Love your history? Find out about the world with History in an Hour…

A Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming


Kerri Rawson - 2019
    When she opened it, an FBI agent informed her that her father had been arrested for murdering ten people, including two children. It was then that she learned her father was the notorious serial killer known as BTK, a name he’d given himself that described the horrific way he committed his crimes: bind, torture, kill. As news of his capture spread, Wichita celebrated the end of a thirty-one-year nightmare. For Kerri Rawson, another was just beginning. She was plunged into a black hole of horror and disbelief. The same man who had been a loving father, a devoted husband, church president, Boy Scout leader, and a public servant had been using their family as a cover for his heinous crimes since before she was born. Everything she had believed about her life had been a lie.Written with candor and extraordinary courage, A Serial Killer’s Daughter is an unflinching exploration of life with one of America’s most infamous killers and an astonishing tale of personal and spiritual transformation. For all who suffer from unhealed wounds or the crippling effects of violence, betrayal, and anger, Kerri Rawson’s story offers the hope of reclaiming sanity in the midst of madness, rebuilding a life in the shadow of death, and learning to forgive the unforgivable.

The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator


Joakim Palmkvist - 2017
    When a search yielded nothing, and all physical evidence had seemingly disappeared, authorities had little to go on—except a disturbing phone call five weeks later from Göran’s daughter Maria. She was sure that her sister, Sara, was somehow involved. At the heart of the alleged crime: Sara’s greed, her father’s land holdings, and his bitter feud with Sara’s idler boyfriend. With no body, there was no crime—and the case went as cold and dark as the forests of southern Sweden. But not for Therese Tang. For two years, this case was her obsession.A hard-working ex-model, mother of three, and Missing People investigator, Therese was willing to put her own safety at risk in order to uncover the truth. What she found was a nest of depraved secrets, lies, and betrayal. All she had to do now, in her relentless and dangerous pursuit of justice, was prove that it led to murder.

Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs


Michael Novacek - 1996
    They unearthed a treasure trove of Cretaceous dinosaurs and mammals, including several new species, that has already helped to reshape our understanding of the dinosaur age. In Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs, team leader Michael Novacek, Provost of Science of the American Museum of Natural History and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, re-creates the day-to-day drama of field exploration over the past six years in the Gobi and recounts his and his colleagues' historic discoveries, reported in front-page headlines across the world. In a remarkable narrative that interweaves expedition chapters with in-depth scientific discussions on the nature and importance of the fossil record, Novacek takes us on a journey that explores the very nature of scientific inquiry and dinosaur research.

The Underground Girls of Kabul: in Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan


Jenny Nordberg - 2014
    A bacha posh (literally translated from Dari as "dressed up like a boy") is a third kind of child – a girl temporarily raised as a boy and presented as such to the outside world. Jenny Nordberg, the reporter who broke the story of this phenomenon for the New York Times, constructs a powerful and moving account of those secretly living on the other side of a deeply segregated society where women have almost no rights and little freedom. The Underground Girls of Kabul is anchored by vivid characters who bring this remarkable story to life: Azita, a female parliamentarian who sees no other choice but to turn her fourth daughter Mehran into a boy; Zahra, the tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and refuses her parents' attempts to turn her back into a girl; Shukria, now a married mother of three after living for twenty years as a man; and Nader, who prays with Shahed, the undercover female police officer, as they both remain in male disguise as adults. At the heart of this emotional narrative is a new perspective on the extreme sacrifices of Afghan women and girls against the violent backdrop of America's longest war. Divided into four parts, the book follows those born as the unwanted sex in Afghanistan, but who live as the socially favored gender through childhood and puberty, only to later be forced into marriage and childbirth. The Underground Girls of Kabul charts their dramatic life cycles, while examining our own history and the parallels to subversive actions of people who live under oppression everywhere.

A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary


Alain de Botton - 2009
    He provides an extraordinary mediation upon the nature of place, time and our daily lives.

American Interior: The quixotic journey of John Evans, his search for a lost tribe and how, fuelled by fantasy and (possibly) booze, he accidentally annexed a third of North America


Gruff Rhys - 2014
     In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more. American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts. Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.