Parlour games. Cocktails. Welcome to a glorious journey through the golden age of the country house party - and you are invited. Our host, celebrated historian Adrian Tinniswood, traces the evolution of this quintessentially British pastime from debauched royal tours to the flamboyant excess of the Bright Young Things. With cameos by the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous earl and the off-duty politician - whether in moated manor houses or ornate Palladian villas - Tinniswood gives a vivid insight into weekending etiquette and reveals the hidden lives of celebrity guests, from Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill, in all their drinking, feasting, gambling and fornicating. The result is a deliciously entertaining, star-studded, yet surprisingly moving portrait of a time when social conventions were being radically overhauled through the escapism of a generation haunted by war - and a uniquely fast-living period of English history. Praise for The Long Weekend:'Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone.' Observer 'A deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book. Tinniswood displays a terrific insider's grasp of gossip . A meticulous, irresistible story.' Spectator 'Elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining . A confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly . Deserves to be on every costume drama producer's bookshelf.' Times

    Perhaps the most determined and inspirational war leader in Britain's history, it was during that darkest summer of 1940 that Churchill's astonishing oratory seemed to rally the nation, from his opening statement to the House of Commons on May 13th that he had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat'. Each successive crisis produced phrases that have resounded ever since, from the danger of invasion after the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk ('their finest hour') to the Battle of Britain (his tribute to the 'Few'). However, he lost the general election in June 1945. But he returned to Downing Street in 1951, finally retiring in 1955.

    This highly authoritative yet practical book helps the reader towards an in-depth understanding of panic. It is essential reading for sufferers, their friends, and family. In clear and concise language it describes a psychological self-help program for panic sufferers.

    Explore the lives of the pistol-packing, hell-raising, high-spirited gals who hung out with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch outlaw gang.

    Politicians and military historians may gloss over human slaughter, emphasizing the defense of national honor, but for men in active service, warfare means being - or becoming - efficient killers. In An Intimate History of Killing, historian Joanna Bourke asks: What are the social and psychological dynamics of becoming the best "citizen soldiers?" What kind of men become the best killers? How do they readjust to civilian life? These questions are answered in this groundbreaking new work that won, while still in manuscript, the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History. Excerpting from letters, diaries, memoirs, and reports of British, American, and Australian veterans of three wars (World War I, World War II, and Vietnam), Bourke concludes that the structure of war encourages pleasure in killing and that perfectly ordinary, gentle human beings can, and often do, become enthusiastic killers without being brutalized. This graphic, unromanticized look at men at war is sure to revise many long-held beliefs about the nature of violence.

    If the German invasion of France had failed, it is arguable that the war might have ended right there. But the French suffered instead a dramatic and humiliating defeat, a loss that ultimately drew the whole world into war.This exciting new book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies. Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries to bring the story to life, Jackson not only recreates the intense atmosphere of the six weeks in May and June leading up to the establishment of the Vichy regime, but he also unravels the historical evidence to produce a fresh answer to the perennial question--was the fall of France inevitable. Jackson's vivid narrative explores the errors of France's military leaders, her inability to create stronger alliances, the political infighting, the lack of morale, even the decadence of the inter-war years. He debunks the vast superiority of the German army, revealing that the more experienced French troops did well in battle against the Germans. Perhaps more than anything else, the cause of the defeat was the failure of the French to pinpoint where the main thrust of the German army would come, a failure that led them to put their best soldiers up against a feint, while their worst troops faced the heart of the German war machine.An engaging and authoritative narrative, The Fall of France illuminates six weeks that changed the course of twentieth-century history.

    Until now, however, no one has written the story of this woman of extraordinary talent and notoriety. She was a great beauty, an aristocratic refugee of the Russian Revolution, and a frankly erotic painter who insisted upon Renaissance aesthetics, figuration, and painterly craft in modern art. The sky-high prices attached to her canvases in recent years have still not dispelled the suspicions that a woman of Lempicka's glamour and fame could be a truly serious artist. Yet the reviews of the early twentieth century tell a different story: her work was routinely singled out as competing with major figures of the School of Paris, including Léger, Laurençin, Kisling, and Picasso.In this first critical biography, Laura Claridge draws upon her exclusive access to Lempicka's family, friends, and archives to re-create the life that the painter carefully withheld even from her own daughter: the truth of her birth; her escape from Bolshevik Russia; her determination to become a New Woman; her lifelong bouts of depression; her numerous affairs with the women and men she painted; her flight from Nazi Europe via Havana; and her years in Hollywood and New York as the "Baroness with a brush," all informed by the artistic integrity and social anachronism that condemned her to being written out of the canons of modern art. Emblematic of '20s excess and indulgence, Tamara de Lempicka's life of great wealth, indiscriminate sexuality, and endless intrigue makes for a fascinating narrative. But her paintings have inspired fierce disagreements over issues of class, wealth, and gender in modern art, making her work ripe for critical re-evaluation.  In Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, Laura Claridge has succeeded brilliantly on both counts, bringing to light the contradictions that fueled the life and work of this provocative painter.Though Paris in the early twenties certainly earned its bohemian reputation, Tamara was playing the game hard by anyone's standards. It seemed to her that she could have it all: respect, money, and sexual gratification on the side. She had arrived at the Gare du Nord only four years earlier, gifted with a painter's talent and a family history of feminine power. Encountering a cultural climate that affirmed art as a remunerative career for women, she also felt freed personally by the Modernist mantra to "make it new" that underwrote every aspect--trivial and profound--of daily life. She was determined to embody that icon of the age, the new woman.

    An author blog doesn't have to follow the rules that monetized business blogs do. This book teaches the secrets that made Anne R. Allen a multi-award-winning blogger and one of the top author-bloggers in the industry.And you'll learn why having a successful author blog is easier than you think.Here are some things you'll learn in this book:1) How an author blog is different—and easier to maintain—than a business blog2) What authors should blog about at different stages of their careers3) Choosing the right blog topics for your genre and audience4) How one type of blogpost can build your platform quickly5) Basic SEO tips that don't make your eyes glaze over with tech jargon6) How to write headers that will grab the attention of Web surfers 7) How to keep your audience by learning the tricks of content writing8) Essential blog and social media etiquette rules9) What happens to your blog when you die?

    Over the following years, attempts to correct this injustice tore France apart, inflicting wounds on the society which have never fully healed.But how did a fairly obscure miscarriage of justice come to break up families in bitterness, set off anti-Semitic riots across the French empire, and nearly trigger a coup d'état? How did a violently reactionary, obscurantist attitude become so powerful in a country that saw itself as the home of enlightenment? Why did the battle over a junior army officer occupy the foremost writers and philosophers of the age, from Émile Zola to Marcel Proust, Émile Durkheim, and many others? What drove the anti-Dreyfusards to persist in their efforts even after it became clear that much of the prosecution's evidence was faked?Drawing upon thousands of previously unread and unconsidered sources, prizewinning historian Ruth Harris goes beyond the conventional narrative of truth loving democrats uniting against proto-fascists. Instead, she offers the first in-depth history of both sides in the Affair, showing how complex interlocking influences—tensions within the military, the clashing demands of justice and nationalism, and a tangled web of friendships and family connections—shaped both the coalition working to free Dreyfus and the formidable alliances seeking to protect the reputation of the army that had convicted him. Sweeping and engaging, Dreyfus offers a new understanding of one of the most contested and significant moments in modern history.

    After marrying a marquis at the age of eighteen, she proceeded to fulfill the prescribed-and delightfully frivolous-role of a French noblewoman of her time. But she also challenged it, conducting a highly visible affair with a commoner, writing philosophical works, and translating Newton's Principia while pregnant by a younger lover. With the sweep of Galileo's Daughter, Emilie Du Châtelet captures the charm, glamour, and brilliance of this magnetic woman.

    "I'm exactly as I appear," he once said of himself. "There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water." Michael Mewshaw's Sympathy for the Devil, a memoir of his friendship with the stubbornly iconoclastic public intellectual, is a welcome corrective to this tired received wisdom. A complex, nuanced portrait emerges in these pages—and while "Gore" can indeed be brusque, standoffish, even cruel, Mewshaw also catches him in more vulnerable moments. The Gore Vidal the reader comes to know here is generous and supportive to younger, less successful writers; he is also, especially toward the end of his life, disappointed, even lonely. Sparkling, often hilarious, and filled with spicy anecdotes about expat life in Italy, Sympathy for the Devil is an irresistible inside account of a man who was himself—faults and all—impossible to resist. As enlightening as it is entertaining, it offers a unique look at a figure many only think they know.

    Here he began a twelve-year ordeal that included imprisonment on Devil's Island, trial, and long delayed pardon. This book is an account of the Dreyfus Affair, the scandal that rocked 19th century France.

    And their fans had ulcers. Now, veteran sports columnist Terry Pluto explains why everything kept going wrong. This detailed report on two decades of disappointment takes a behind-the-scenes look at upheaval in the front office, frustration on the field, and headaches and heartache in the stands. His earlier book False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail told how the NFL hamstrung the new franchise. Who could have predicted the limping would last 19 years? This book picks up the story. Season after season began with hope in spring for the NFL draft (“the Browns’ version of the Super Bowl,” a fan called it) . . . often a new coach or GM or quarterback (or all three) . . . then the losses . . . and back to rebuilding. Pluto reviews all the major moves—draft choices and deals, hiring and firing and reshuffling—and the results. If you’re a Browns fan who wants to understand what went wrong with your team, this is the place to start. Includes heartfelt and humorous opinions contributed by fans.

    George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually lead the list, But choosing the nation's worst presidents requires more thought. In Star-Spangled Men, respected presidential biographer Nathan Miller puts on display those leaders who were abject failures as chief executive. With pointed humor and a deft hand, he presents a rogues' gallery of the men who dropped the presidential ball, and sometimes their pants as well. Miller includes Richard M. Nixon, who was forced to resign to escape impeachment; Jimmy Carter, who proved that the White House is not the place for on-the-job training; and Warren G. Harding, who gave "being in the closet" new meaning as he carried on extramarital interludes in one near the Oval Office. This current edition also includes a new assessment of Bill Clinton -- who has admitted lying to his family, his aides, his cabinet, and the American people.

    Pills’ Pharmacy Hub comes a book about some of the wildest customers that pharmacists have dealt with in retail pharmacy. Journey into the world of retail pharmacy with 80 hilarious short stories: a world where people are not that bright but always think they are right, and where the word patience doesn’t exist. A world with druggies coming up with some not-so-clever schemes to get their fix. A world where people think throwing ice cream in your face is an acceptable way to get your attention. A world with a new twist at every turn--just when you think you’ve seen everything, someone always finds a way to surprise you.