His Labour government introduced sweeping new legislation that unchained the country from its old conservative bonds, established the world's first nuclear free state and let loose a free market economic agenda that radically transformed the country. It was a rapid climb to the very top for the overweight doctor's son from working class South Auckland. As leader during the final years of the Cold War he confronted the agendas of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and lived through the political upheavals of the fall of the Soviet Union, post-apartheid South Africa and Rajiv Ghandi's India. Along the way he memorably defeated the Reverend Jerry Falwell in a famous Oxford Union debate about the morality and sanity of the nuclear arms race, and negotiated the aftermath of the tragic bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French agents in Auckland harbour.

    Yet little is said about him today even as we appear to live in a leadership vacuum. Unafraid of Greatness is a re-examination of the life and thought of Jan Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary readership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. The author argues that there is a need to bring Smuts back into the present, that Smuts' legacy still has much to instruct. He draws several parallels between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both intellectuals much lionised abroad and yet often distrusted at home. This book is a highly readable account of Smuts' life. It also examines a number of overarching themes: his relationships with women, spiritual life, intellectual life and his role as advisor to world leaders. Politics and international affairs receive the lion's share, but Smuts' unique contributions to other fields - for example, botany - are not neglected. Unafraid of Greatness does not shy away from the contradictions of its subject. Smuts was one of the architects of the United Nations, and a great champion of human rights, yet he could not see the need to reform the condition of the African majority in his own country.

    When she befriends some Tibetan nomads, her trek quickly evolves from a daredevil adventure to a journey of self-discovery and personal revelation.

    It tells the journey from riches to rags, from fear and suffering, to the joy of freedom and recovery.

    For five years in his mid-twenties, he sailed on the BEAGLE around the world, exploring jungles, climbing mountains, trekking across deserts. With every new landfall, he had new adventures: he rode through bandit country, was thrown into jail by revolutionaries, took part in an armed raid with marines, survived two earthquakes, hunted and fished. He suffered the terrible cold and rain of Tierra del Fuego, the merciless heat of the Australian outback and the inner pangs of heartbreak. He also made the discoveries that finally led him to formulate his theory of Natural Selection as the driving force of evolution. The five-year voyage of the BEAGLE was the basis for all Darwin's later work; but it also turned him from a friendly idler into the greatest scientist of his century. Kevin Jackson is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker. His most recent book is Constellation of Genius: 1922 and All That Jazz (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2013). He lives in Cambridge, England.

    Founded in 1821 as the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, it housed, fed and treated thousands of patients incapable of surviving on their own. The patient population in 1961 eclipsed 6,600, well above its listed capacity of 4,823, despite an operating budget that ranked forty-fifth out of the forty-eight states with such large public hospitals. By the mid-1990s, the patient population had fallen under 700, and the hospital had become a symbol of captivity, horror and chaos. Author William Buchheit details this history through the words and interviews of those who worked on the iconic campus.

    In the distance an immense cliff loomed, apparently to the summit of the mountains. Written by the medical officer of the Mariposa Battalion (the first group of Euro-Americans to enter the valley), Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian war of 1851 is perhaps the single most important original source we have that focuses on the early history of Yosemite Valley. Out of print for many years, this wonderful source chronicles key historical events surrounding the discovery of Yosemite, including the 1851 conflict with the Yosemite native population, and the naming of various landmarks. What makes this source particularly valuable and rich is the first person perspective provided by Dr Bunnel’s narrative. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, born in 1824 in Rochester, New York, was an American author, explorer, and physician. Inspired by the males in his family, Bunnell desired adventure in ‘the West’ from a young age. He is perhaps most well-known for his involvement in the Mariposa Battalion, and is often credited as the person who named Yosemite. He was also a soldier and surgeon I the American Civil War. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    She has used the city as a setting for many of her novels and there are many reasons why. On her blog in 2013 she spent 30 days sharing what she loved about New Orleans. From favorite restaurants, to museums she loves to her most loved ghost stories, she shared what made New Orleans one of her favorite cities in the United States. Now she has compiled these blogs into this ebook that she wants to share with those who are going to New Orleans, those who have dreamed of the city and want to learn more, and those who might want to debate her choices. Why I Love New Orleans is a love story, it's the story of Heather's love for this magical city.

    Moreover, he was as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of London.Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him - and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one else dared to tell.

    Packed with facts as well as expert opinions, each book has all the key information you need to know about such popular topics as film, television, cult fiction, history, and more. In addition to an introduction to the subject, each topic is individually analyzed and reviewed, examining its impact on popular culture or history. There's also a reference section that lists related web sites and weightier (and more expensive) books on the subject. For media buffs, students, and inquiring minds, these are great entry-level books that build into an essential library.

    But then prospectors chanced first upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds, and then upon its richest deposits of gold. What followed was a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land, culminating in the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and in the devastation of the Boer republics. Martin Meredith's magisterial account of those years portrays the great wealth and raw power, the deceit, corruption, and racism that lay behind Britain's empire-building in southern Africa. Based on significant new research and filled with atmospheric detail, it focuses on the fascinating rivalry between diamond titan Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger, the Boer leader whose only education was the Bible, who believed the earth was flat, yet who defied Britain's prime ministers and generals for nearly a quarter of a century. Diamonds, Gold and War makes palpable the cost of western greed to Africa's native peoples, and explains the rise of the virulent Afrikaner nationalism that eventually took hold in South Africa, with repercussions lasting nearly a century.

    Finding Franklin outlines the larger story and the cast of detectives from every walk of life that led to the discovery, solving one of the Arctic’s greatest mysteries.In compelling prose, Russell Potter details his decades of work alongside key figures in the era of modern searches and elucidates how shared research and ideas have led to a fuller understanding of the Franklin crew’s final months. Illustrated with images and maps from the last two centuries, Finding Franklin recounts the more than fifty searches for traces of his ships and crew, and the dedicated, often obsessive, men and women who embarked on them. Potter discusses the crucial role that Inuit oral accounts, often cited but rarely understood, played in all of these searches, and continue to play to this day, and offers historical and cultural context to the contemporary debates over the significance of Franklin’s achievement.While examination of HMS Erebus will undoubtedly reveal further details of this mystery, Finding Franklin assembles the stories behind the myth and illuminates what is ultimately a remarkable decades-long discovery.

    experience its greatest wave of immigration. Between 1892 and 1954, more than 66 percent of immigrants to America came through Ellis Island. The majority of Americans today are the descendants of pioneering ancestors from that period. Here then are firsthand accounts by the last surviving immigrants and others of the hardships they endured, experiences they recalled, and the wonder and amazement they felt seeing the Statue of Liberty upon their arrival at Ellis Island—the proof that America, their dream, was real.

    “They are mistaken. I have not known you long, but I observe in you a natural dignity that cannot be learnt. To me, ma’am, you are every inch a Queen.”In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina — Drina to her family — had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone.One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. But Victoria had met Albert as a child and found him stiff and critical: surely the last man she would want for a husband….Drawing on Victoria’s diaries as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen even more richly to life in this magnificent novel.

    Kim Il Sung wasted little time before plunging the country into a futile war which cost more than two million people their lives. His son, Kim Jong Il, would wallow in obscene luxury as North Korea suffered one of the Twentieth Century’s most terrible famines. Kim Jong Un has only recently ascended to power. However, he has already ordered his own uncle’s execution by antiaircraft gun. The North Korean people are told that they are the most fortunate in the world. In reality they are the most oppressed. North Korea is a country where criticising the government, or even watching a foreign film, can lead to imprisonment and death.North Korea: A Bare Bones History tells the story of one of the world’s most enigmatic nations. It’s an extraordinary history of war, assassination, kidnapping, terrorism, and an attempt to decapitate a rival head of state.