The White Island


Stephen Armstrong - 2004
    Its history reads like a history of pleasure itself. It is also a story of invasions and migrations, of artists and conmen, of drop-outs and love-ins. The Carthaginians established a cult to their goddess of sex there, and named the island after Bez, their god of dance. Roman centurions in need of a bit of down time between campaigns would go to Ibiza to get their kicks. And over the centuries, cultures around the Med have used the island either as a playground or a dump for the kind of people who didn't quite fit in back home, but who you'd probably quite like to meet at a party...This is the history of Ibiza, the fantasy island, framed by one long, golden summer where anything can happen - and it usually does.

Vanderbilt's Biltmore


Robert Wernick - 2012
    But ambition quickly took wing. The house swelled to 225 rooms and became - until 2012 when it was topped by the home of a billionaire in Mumbai, India – the world’s largest residence ever built for a private citizen. Here’s the story of the house that Vanderbilt built - from the gardens by Frederick Law Olmsted to the John Singer Sargent portraits that adorn its walls.

Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945


Ruth Brandon - 1999
    In Surreal Lives, Ruth Brandon follows the lives and interactions of such firecracker minds as the movement's didactic "Pope," Andre Breton, and the ambitious and manic Salvador Dali, as well as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Max Ernst, and filmmaker Luis Bunuel. It charts their shifting allegiances, and their ties to muses and patrons like Gala Dali and Peggy Guggenheim. Ruth Brandon spins the many stories of Surrealism with wit, energy, and insight, bringing sharp analysis to an eccentric cast of characters whose struggles and achievements came to mirror and define the way the world changed between the wars. "Fascinating, impassioned... admirable [for] the masterly storytelling, the richness of anecdotal incident, the keen reporting of intellectual enthusiasms and artistic collaborations, and the panorama of a spectacular cultural galaxy." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Superbly entertaining... A cousin to Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World; "A lively and absorbing complement to [the Surrealists'] work." -- The New Yorker

The Franchise: Lebron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers


Terry Pluto - 2007
    . . Take[s] the reader behind the scenes in the Cavaliers' front office, revealing how championship contenders are built" -- Library JournalTwo award-winning sports journalists give an in-depth look at how a team and a city were rebuilt around superstar LeBron James.When the Cleveland Cavaliers drew the top pick in the 2003 NBA draft, an entire city buzzed with excitement. After all, how often does a LeBron James come along? Especially for Cleveland, a midmarket Rust Belt city without a sports championship in forty years. Especially for the Cavaliers, a long-struggling team that had never reached the NBA finals.Soon, everyone had something riding on LeBron--billionaire team owner Dan Gilbert looking for a return on his investment . . . teammates eager for a championship ring . . . the league in need of the next Michael Jordan to promote . . . the shoe company with its multimillion-dollar endorsement deal . . . even popcorn vendors in the stands of Quicken Loans Arena and servers waiting restaurant tables in a downtown that now booms every game night.Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst tell the converging stories of a struggling franchise that had to get worse in order to get better and a highly touted teenage phenom, the local kid who became their future.This book will fascinate any basketball fan who wants the inside story of how LeBron James became the young superstar shouldering the weight of an entire NBA franchise. Chock full of facts and analysis.

Don't Eat the Puffin: Tales From a Travel Writer's Life


Jules Brown - 2018
    Get paid to travel and write about it.Only no one told Jules that it would mean eating oily seabirds, repeatedly falling off a husky sled, getting stranded on a Mediterranean island, and crash-landing in Iran.The exotic destinations come thick and fast – Hong Kong, Hawaii, Huddersfield – as Jules navigates what it means to be a travel writer in a world with endless surprises up its sleeve.Add in a cast of larger-than-life characters – Elvis, Captain Cook, his own travel-mad Dad – and an eye for the ridiculous, and this journey with Jules is one you won’t want to miss.

How to Draw: Easy Techniques and Step-by-Step Drawings for Kids


Aaria Baid - 2019
    Every artist starts with the basics and here is a step-by-step guide to them all. With this how to draw for kids book, every kid can be creative and capture whatever catches their eye.In How to Draw, kids ages 9-12 will try their hand at everything from magical creatures and cartoons to realistic landscapes, portraits, and so much more. Covering basic techniques as they go, this book will prepare and inspire young artists to create their very own masterpieces. It’s easier than you think.How to draw for kids includes: Age-appropriate basics—Kids will learn how to shade dark and light, use perspective, create 3D shapes effects, and more. Easy-to-follow steps—Get start-to-finish instruction for every exercise. Cool pictures—Unicorns, faces of friends and neighbors, buildings, plants and trees—the possibilities are as endless as your child’s creativity. Every kid has the potential to be creative—this how to draw for kids workbook nurtures their confidence step-by-step.

The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party


Philip Gould - 1998
    Blair's majority was the culmination of a long struggle to modernize the party, and the politics of his country. Philip Gould is a political strategist and polling adviser who has worked with the Labour leadership since the 1980s. In this book he describes its rise and explains how the transformation was achieved, at the same time exploring the changed political climate in Britain.

Saint-Germain-des-Pres: Paris's Rebel Quarter


John Baxter - 2016
    It’s where Marat printed L’Ami du Peuple and Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man. Napoleon, Hemingway, and Sartre have all called it home. Descartes is buried there. Now bestselling author and Paris expert, John Baxter takes readers and travelers on a narrative tour of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is also where Baxter makes his home.Tucked along the shores of the Left Bank, Saint-Germain-des-Pres embodies so much of what makes Paris special. Its cobblestone streets and ancient facades survive to this day, spared from modernization thanks to a quirk in their construction. Traditionally cheap rents attracted outsiders and political dissidents from the days of Robespierre to the student revolts of the 1960s. And its intellectual pedigree boasts such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Arthur Rimbaud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Camus. Baxter reveals all, guiding readers to the cafes, gardens, shops, and monuments that bring this hidden history to life.Part-history, part-guidebook, Saint-Germain-des-Pres is a fresh look at one of the City of Light’s most iconic quarters, and a delight for new tourists and Paris veterans alike.

Alaska Man: A Memoir of Growing Up and Living in the Wilds of Alaska


George Davis - 2017
    He survives this perilous wheel of fortune, and thrives in the face of danger! I would like to add to why my book is important, is that we are true authentic Alaskans that live life off of the grid and that we have been entrepreneurs, making our living off of the land and sea. We are wilderness and off the grid consultants if that is important. On our website we have a variety of things we consult on from sport fishing, hunting, adventures, lodges/outfitters, developing or improving remote properties, and much more.

Nothing of Importance: A Record of Eight Months at the Front with a Welsh Battalion, October 1915 to June 1916


John Bernard Pye Adams - 1916
     Nothing could have prepared him for the reality he ended up facing. Placing his focus on the day to day existence of the soldiers in the trenches, Adams presents a grim picture of mud-coated billets, relentless artillery barrages, working parties, training and the art of military sniping. Just as it would have been for the soldiers’ lives, Adams heightens his work with an emotive account of his first night patrol, the detonation of mines, battlefield duels and being wounded whilst out wiring in No Man’s Land. Understated and striving for truth over melodrama, Nothing of Importance is the original memoir of the First World War — the only record published while the conflict was still being fought — and the definitive account of trench warfare. Bernard Adams (1890-1917) was a British Army officer, joining 1 Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a Lieutenant in November 1914. He was the first of a triumvirate of authors who, for a time, served simultaneously in the same battalion: the second was Siegfried Sassoon, the third Robert Graves. Written whilst convalescing in 1916, he did not live to see it published.

Diplomatic Incidents


Cherry Denman - 2010
    This is Cherry Denman's witty take on her life trailing husband Charlie round some of the most godforsaken outposts of the world. Illustrated by brilliantly funny cartoons of diplomatic life, this is a collection of clever and very funny tales of global misunderstanding.

The Holy Cow and Other Indian Stories


Tarun Chopra - 2000
    Attempts to tell the reader through stories what India is, its traditions, culture, philosophical and religious beliefs customs, etc that are so variagated that it seems there are many Indias, rather that just one.

The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess


Heddy Frosell da Ponte - 2019
    The airlines were international superstars; even among those long-gone carriers, their still-remembered names can conjure deep feelings of nostalgia, romance, and adventure: Braniff, Continental, BOAC, Swissair, TWA, Pan Am.This was the fifties and sixties. The world was on the move, and it was the new jet planes that were getting people there. But competition for the travel dollar was fierce, and Madison Avenue decided the face (and heart) of every airline would be the flight attendant, the stewardess. So it was that the “stew” became synonymous with the airline’s brand. She—and at that time they were exclusively female—was the airline.The stewardess became the fantasy every woman: glamorous professional, high-end server, customer service expert, nurse, therapist, and in no small measure: sex symbol.And to that end, these women were carefully selected for their looks and brains, then rigorously trained for weeks, and finally dressed as high-flying, high-heeled models in uniforms often created by top fashion designers. Heddy Frosell da Ponte was one of those chosen women. She was the ideal candidate to be employed by Pan Am in the 1960s: a pretty female with a terrific figure, under thirty-two years old, unmarried, and a speaker of multiple languages.The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess is Heddy’s fascinating, often times hilarious collection of exploits as she traveled the world as a stewardess during the golden age of international air travel.This remarkable book is also a rare look back at the people, places, cultures, and lifestyles gone forever, but now brought back to vivid life by a stewardess-turned-author who knows how to tell a fast-moving tale. So buckle up; this will be one flight you’ll never forget. About the Author Heddy Frosell da Ponte was a flight attendant for forty five years. Now retired, she lives in Georgia. She is the author of The Glamour Years of Flying as a Stewardess.

Around the World in 80 Pints: My Search for Cricket's Greatest Places


David Lloyd - 2018
    It's all a long way from his childhood, growing up in a terraced house in post-war Accrington, Lancashire. But cricket has taken him all over the globe, and he has experienced everything from excruciating agony Down Under to the Bollywood glamour of the IPL - he's even risked it all to cross the Pennines into Yorkshire.  In Around the World in 80 Pints, Bumble relives some of the most exciting and remarkable periods in his life, showing how his travels have opened up new and exciting avenues for him. The book is packed full of brilliant stories from famous Ashes matches and Roses clashes, sharing the commentary box with Ian Botham and Shane Warne, and much else besides - all told in his idiosyncratic style that has won him so many fans the world over. His previous autobiography, Last in the Tin Bath, was a huge bestseller, and this one is sure to appeal to anyone who shares Bumble's unquenchable love for cricket - and life!

A Traveller's History of Paris


Robert Cole - 1994
    It is a wonderful place to visit and to live in. Packed with fact, anecdote, and insight, A Traveller’s History of Paris offers a complete history of Paris and the people who have shaped its destiny, from its earliest settlement as the Roman village of Lutetia Parisiorum with a few hundred inhabitants, to 20 centuries later when Paris is a city of well over two million—nearly one-fifth of the population of France. This handy paperback is fully indexed and includes a Chronology of Major Events, as well as sections on Notre-Dame and historic churches, Modernism, parks, bridges, cemeteries, museums and galleries, the Metro, and the environs. Illustrated with line drawings and historical maps, this is an invaluable book for all visitors to read and enjoy.