OK, maybe the shoes were new, but it struck me that he hardly ever sets foot in the street. It's all hotel, limousines, sterilized airports—the life I was about to lead. I shivered, feeling poised at the top of a rollercoaster about to sweep across the world. In 1978, Sean Mayes toured the world with David Bowie. Traveling first class and performing each night with one of the world's greatest rock stars at the height of his fame was an amazing experience—fortunately, Sean had the foresight to document it. Here, for the first time in complete book form, Sean's tour diary is presented; a blow-by-blow record of how it felt to be part of a real rock circus, from rehearsals in Dallas through shows across the US, UK, Europe, Australasia, and Japan to recording in London and Switzerland. Providing page after page of fascinating insight into life on the road with Bowie, Sean's account is a unique travelogue, a must for any Bowie fan or, indeed, anyone interested in life on a sell-out world tour. Also included is a full tour chronology and previously unpublished photos from Sean's personal archive.

    As the petroleum minister for Saudi Arabia and the leading force behind OPEC, he was the biggest player in the world's biggest business - oil.His is a story of ultimate political power, of the Middle East, of the "oil weapon" and the embargoes, of a brilliant young Saudi lawyer who emerged from the desert sands to walk comfortably through the halls of power in Washington DC, in London, in Paris, and throughout much of the rest of the world.It is also the story of a man who, in 1975, faced sudden death not once but twice. His mentor and lifelong support, the legendary King Faisal, was shot dead at his feet; and nine months later Yamani himself was kidnapped by the terrorist who was known as, "Carlos the Jackal," only narrowly escaping with his life.Co-starring Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Qaddafi, Jimmy Carter, the CIA, the Shah of Iran, Ronald Reagan and Nat King Cole, this is the up close and personal story of a man who strode across the world's stage a superstar in the media, was heralded as "the best friend the West had in the Middle East," and yet became the face of the oil embargoes that threatened to cripple Western economies.A brilliant and enormously charming man who could move markets with a few simple words, Sheikh Yamani earned the respect of political leaders in the West while suffering the jealousy of kings and princes back home. His sudden and abrupt firing in October 1986 made front page headlines throughout the world.Written in 1988 with the unprecedented cooperation of Sheikh Yamani - meeting with him regularly over the course of a year in five countries - plus hundreds of interviews with the people who knew him best, Jeffrey Robinson's gripping and intimate account opens a door to the very heart of one of the world's most controversial and fascinating statesmen.Heralded in the West as "the best book ever written about the oil business," and banned in Saudi Arabia when it was first published, this #1 international bestseller is now, finally, available as an eBook for the first time.*** "A sizzler" - Today*** "Bestselling writer Jeffrey Robinson has taken the lid off Yamani's life" - Sunday Express*** "Rich in entertaining anecdote" - Financial Times*** "Superb" - The Sunday Times*** "Robinson provides the reader with a portrait of a man who, while claiming he was nothing more than a simple Bedouin, became a deft politician and media personality indelibly associated in the public mind with the rise in OPEC economic power and Saudi Arabia's leading position in global oil production" - Washington Report*** "In crisp, straightforward sentences, Robinson describes how Ahmed Zaki Yamani's close relationship with King Faisal, and his own urbane intelligence, made him the dominant industry figure worldwide" - Publishers Weekly*** "Yamani emerges from the book as a man of intelligence and charm, deeply devoted to his family and his Muslim faith, who rose from a Mecca boyhood to become a jet-setting world figure and custodian of one-third of the non-communist world's oil" - Houston Post*** "Riveting, fast paced" - Globe and Mail*** "Robinson weaves a fascinating tale" - San Francisco Chronicle*** "A colorful, well rounded biography." - Philadelphia Inquirer*** "Oil gagsters were referring to the hot book as "the OPEC version of the Andy Warhol Diaries" - Liz Smith*** "A Fascinating portrait of this master politician" - Wall Street Journal

    It is a genuine, firsthand account of a one-year tour that shows how a soldier grew and matured from an awkward, bewildered, inexperienced, eighteen year-old country “bumpkin” from Kentucky, to a tough, battle hardened, fighting soldier. You will laugh, cry and stand in awe at the true life experiences shared in this memoir. The awfulness of battle, fear beyond description, the sorrow and anguish of losing friends, extreme weariness, the dealing with the scalding sun, torrential rain, cold, heat, humidity, insects and the daily effort just to maintain sanity were struggles faced virtually every day. And yet, there were the good times. There was the coming together to laugh, joke, and share stories from home. There was the warmth and compassion shown by men to each other in such an unreal environment. You will see where color, race or where you were from had no bearing on the tight-knit group of young men that was formed from the necessity to survive. What a “bunch” they were! ... then the return to home and all the adjustments and struggles to once again fit into a world that was now strange and uncomfortable. "Call Sign Dracula" is an excellent and genuine memoir of an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War.

    They died only a few miles apart and yet there cannot be a bigger contrast between their legacies. Edward had been born into poverty in west London on the eve of the twentieth century, had a job washing railway carriages, was conscripted into the army at the age of eighteen and sent to the Western Front from where he would never return.He lies buried miles from home in a small military cemetery on the outskirts of an obscure town close to the French border in western Belgium. No-one has ever visited him.Like thousands of other young boys, Edward’s life and death were forgotten.By delving into and uncovering letters, poems and war diaries to reconstruct his great uncle’s brief life and needless death; Charlie fills in the blanks of Edward’s life with the experiences of similar young men giving a voice to the voiceless. Edward Connelly’s tragic story comes to represent all the young men who went off to the Great War and never came home.This is a book about the unsung heroes, the ordinary men who did their duty with utmost courage, and who deserve to be remembered.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Ahluwalia played a key role in the transformation of India from a state-run to a market-based economy, and remained a constant fixture at the top of India's economic policy establishment for an unprecedented period of three decades.The book traverses the politics, personalities, events and crises in India's recent history. It goes behind the numbers to bring alive the politics of reform, and how policy change was pushed through—at first, slowly, under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and then much more boldly in 1991 when the opportunity provided by a severe balance of payments crisis was seized for wide-ranging reform. Ahluwalia, who served as commerce secretary and finance secretary during this crucial period, makes a convincing case for why, contrary to the accusations at the time, the reforms that formed part of the conditionality of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme in 1991, were home-grown and not thrust upon a reluctant India by the IMF.Ahluwalia discusses the successes and failures of the UPA regime during which period he served as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, a Cabinet-level position. He presents the story behind India’s spectacular economic growth in the first half of the UPA’s tenure as well as its historic achievements in poverty alleviation. He also candidly discusses the policy paralysis and allegations of corruption that came to mark the last few years of UPA 2. Narrated with wit, humour and remarkable intellect, Backstage is a definitive contribution to India's economic and political history by one uniquely positioned to write it.

    

    In his insider account, author RVS Mani discloses how the country’s internal security establishment functioned in the period of 2004-2014 when India faced some of the bloodiest terrorist carnages. This former Home Ministry official posted in the Internal Security Division between 2006-2010 also poses several questions that the nation should seek answers to.

    After teaching himself the basics, he turned pro as an eighteen-year-old in 1956 and over the next twenty-three years fought some of the sport's greatest names: Joe Frazier, George Foreman and, most famously, Muhammad Ali (twice). Since retiring from the ring in 1979, Chuvalo has had to come to terms with a series of crushing body blows. His youngest son, a heroin addict, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Two other sons died from heroin overdoses. His first wife, overcome with grief, took her own life. Yet Chuvalo has stoically fought back. He formed his Fight Against Drugs foundation in 1996 and has spent the past seventeen years travelling across Canada and to parts of the United States, talking to tens of thousands of students and young adults about what happened to his family.An inspirational story of a Canadian icon, Chuvalo is both a top-flight boxing memoir and a poignant, hard-hitting story of coping with unimaginable loss.

    Here was Arnold Palmer, the workingman's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying"; Ben Hogan, the greatest player of the fifties, a perfectionist battling twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his big-time debut, a crew-cut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion: twenty-year-old Jack Nicklaus.        And of course, the rest: Ken Venturi, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Doug Sanders, Gary Player, and the many other colorful characters who chased around a little white ball--and a dream.        Would Palmer win the mythical Grand Slam of golf? Could Hogan win one more major tournament? Was Nicklaus the real thing? Even more than an intimate portrait of these men and their exciting times, The Eternal Summer is also an entertaining, perceptive, and hypnotically readable exploration of professional golf in America.

    From there he joined the ever-popular Move, then helped form the groundbreaking Electric Light Orchestra. After co-founder Roy Wood left in 1972, Lynne turned what had been a struggling rock and classical fusion into one of Britain s most consistently successful and popular acts. Following a run of hit singles, albums, and sell-out concerts throughout the world, he laid the group to rest in 1986 and combined a solo career as an artist and producer with membership of the ultimate supergroup, the Traveling Wilburys. His production credits include Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Del Shannon, George Harrison, and even the Beatles on their two final singles in the mid- 90s. Jeff Lynne: The Electric Light Orchestra, Before and After is the first-ever biography of one of the most prolific and highly regarded performers of the last fifty years. Rich in backstage anecdotes of overheated orchestras, frontmen rivalries, tour mishaps, cross-group partnerships, unlikely collaborations, and self-imposed exile from the stage in the quest for inspiration, this book will leave fans and general readers delighted and inspired by a career at the epicentre of twentieth-century rock. ** This electronic edition contains 35 photographs **

    In 1905 an unknown 26-year-old clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, who had supposedly failed math in school, burst on to the scientific scene and swept away the hidebound theories of the day. The clerk, Albert Einstein, introduced a new and unexpected understanding of the universe and launched the two great revolutions of twentieth-century physics, relativity and quantum mechanics. The obscure origin and wide-ranging brilliance of the work recalled Isaac Newton’s “annus mirabilis” (miracle year) of 1666, when as a 23-year-old seeking safety at his family manor from an outbreak of the plague, he invented calculus and laid the foundations for his theory of gravity. Like Newton, Einstein quickly became a scientific icon--the image of genius and, according to Time magazine, the Person of the Century.The actual story is much more interesting. Einstein himself once remarked that “science as something coming into being ... is just as subjectively, psychologically conditioned as are all other human endeavors.” In this profile, the historian of science L. Randles Lagerstrom takes you behind the myth and into the very human life of the young Einstein. From family rifts and girlfriend troubles to financial hardships and jobless anxieties, Einstein’s early years were typical of many young persons. And yet in the midst of it all, he also saw his way through to profound scientific insights. Drawing upon correspondence from Einstein, his family, and his friends, Lagerstrom brings to life the young Einstein and enables the reader to come away with a fuller and more appreciative understanding of Einstein the person and the origins of his revolutionary ideas.About the cover image: While walking to work six days a week as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein would pass by the famous "Zytglogge" tower and its astronomical clocks. The daily juxtaposition was fitting, as the relative nature of time and clock synchronization would be one of his revolutionary discoveries in the miracle year of 1905.

    For the next 15 years, Trident Studios, was at the epicentre of the music industry, recording some of the era's greatest artists, from The Beatles and David Bowie to Elton John and Genesis. Trident also developed their own talent, including a raw and demanding four-piece band called Queen. After an acrimonious split with Trident, their volatile leader Freddie Mercury famously dedicated a song to Norman: Death On Two Legs. In Life On Two Legs, this legendary music figure breaks his forty year silence and sets the record straight, not just about Freddie and Queen but also about artists from John Lennon and Marc Bolan to Harry Nilsson and Phil Collins and the recording of such classics as Hey Jude by The Beatles and Space Oddity by David Bowie. Funny, fascinating and occasionally irreverent - and with a foreword by Sir Paul McCartney - this is an unmissable memoir that brings to vivid life some of rock's greatest characters as well as the era and the studio that produced some of its classic music.

    While he is often unjustly overlooked as a mere adjunct to his more famous brothers Brian and Dennis, Carl was a major international rock star from his early teens.The proud owner of one of the greatest voices in popular music--one that graced some of the most important records of the pop era, including 'God Only Knows' and 'Good Vibrations'--Wilson was also one of the first musicians to bring the electric guitar to the forefront of rock'n'roll. His musical skills provided The Beach Boys' entree into the music business, from which he then stewarded their onstage journey through the ups and downs of the 60s to their comeback in the 70s and into the role of 'America's band' in the 80s. Along the way, Carl quietly endured his own battles with obesity, divorce, substance abuse, and ultimately terminal cancer, all the while working to protect his family's business and legacy. This major new biography reveals the true story of modern rock'n'roll, lived from the center of the most important decades of popular music.

    Helping to bring these forgotten figures into the light, Andrew Gimson's illuminating accounts are accompanied by sketches from Guardian sartirical cartoonist, Martin Rowson, making this the perfect gift for all lovers of history and politics.