It's belly-laughing funny but it's also a hymn to the grand and complex game delivered with a narrative pace and ability I'm afraid most Test players don't have. For anyone who ever dreamed of excelling at a sport but never quite made it but still gave it your life, this is the story. A great read!' Tom Keneally'The Grade Cricketer has taken us so far inside a district club dressing room that you feel like a locker. Ligaments could not be closer to the bone than some of his observations.' Kerry O'Keeffe 'The Grade Cricketer is strange and, I suspect, brilliant'. Wisden

    "Merwin writes, " J.D. McClatchy has said in THE NEW YORKER, "with one of the most distinctive and original voices in American poetry."

    What doesn’t he get? Just about everything. That’s why he walks around with a little camera attached to his glasses that records his entire life. Then he watches it all later to try to figure out the things he didn’t get before – which, as you’ll recall, is just about everything – and he makes a weekly video blog for all to see. Unfortunately, Hugh’s cluelessness leads him to run for Student Council President. Even his little sister knows that this school election thing is just “not him”, but Hugh, as always, has to find out the hard way. At least Hugh’s campaign gets him the attention of the very confident, very pretty – and very intimidating – Molly MacLaine. But will Molly be able to help Hugh survive his disastrous campaign, or will he crash and burn… and bring the whole school down with him? If you like the Middle School series and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, you’ll love HughTube. This book is for anybody who’s ever been baffled by the secrets, contradictions and unwritten rules of middle school. Tweens and teens will easily relate to the comic mishaps of our hapless hero. This funny coming of age, middle grade story is the first in a series, so if you like it, there's more to come! Don't forget to look for the surprise after Chapter 1!

    The combatants are a sexy, volatile young woman and three Back Bay types a writer, a lawyer and a fiancee in sensible shoes. The setting is Boston, the ending is happy and laughter abounds."Stinging one liners." N.Y. Daily News."Places a superior wryly pleasing ... fashionable femin

    The astounding yet true story of the life of Ignacz Semmelweis provided Celine with a narrative whose appalling events and bizarre twists would have lain beyond credibility in a work of pure fiction. Semmelweis, now regarded as the father of antisepsis, was the first to diagnose correctly the cause of the staggering mortality rates in the lying-in hospital at Vienna. However, his colleagues rejected both his reasoning and his methods, thereby causing thousands of unnecessary deaths in maternity wards across Europe. This episode, one of the most infamous in the history of medicine, and its disastrous effects on Semmelweis himself, are the subject of Celine's semi-fictional evocation, one in which his violent descriptive genius is already apparent. The overriding theme of his later writing--a caustic despair verging on disgust for humanity--finds its first expression here, and yet he also reveals a more compassionate aspect to his character. Semmelweis was not published until 1936, after the novels that made Celine famous. -It is not every day we get a thesis such as Celine wrote on Semmelweis!- wrote Henry Miller of this volume.

    The insights Cohen provides into subculture and mass morality are as relevant today as they were when the book was originally published in 1972, as illustrated by the author's introduction for this new edition, in which he tracks moral panics over the last thirty years, commenting on the demonization of young offenders and asylum seekers and on the News of the World's 'name and shame' campaign against paedophiles.Revisiting the theory of moral panic and exploring the way in which the concept has been used, this new edition features a select bibliography of key texts for further reading. The third edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics makes available a valuable and widely recommended text.

    Their reserve is not a defense against the rest of the world: it is a protective cover, like the lid of a nuclear reactor. Rob joyCalvinism is still deeply ingrained in the Scottish soul. A Scottish poet, overcome by the joy of sunshine and blue sky, once cried out what a fine day it was. The woman to whom he spoke replied, “We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it.” Cunning and cleverThe Scots respect cleverness and like to feel that they possess plenty of it themselves. In Scotland there is nothing wrong with being clever, so long as you show it by words or actions, rather than by bragging. You don't have to hide it. To say of someone that “he has a good conceit of himself” is neither praise nor blame, just a statement of fact.

    You're welcome.—from the introduction by Daniel HandlerNonsense Novels sends up the silliest conventions of the ghost story, the detective story, the rags-to-riches story, the adventure story, the shipwreck story, and, of course, the story itself. Among other things. Here the close cultivation of cliché yields a bumper crop of absurdity and the utterly ludicrous turns up at every new twist of the tale.This is a satirical masterpiece. Stephen Leacock was a genius.

    Even as we approach its fiftieth anniversary, the movement remains so contentious that the Chinese Communist Party still forbids fully open investigation of its origins, development, and conclusion. Drawing upon a vital trove of scholarship, memoirs, and popular culture, this Very Short Introduction illuminates this complex, often obscure, and still controversial movement. Moving beyond the figure of Mao Zedong, Richard Curt Kraus links Beijing's elite politics to broader aspects of society and culture, highlighting many changes in daily life, employment, and the economy. Kraus also situates this very nationalist outburst of Chinese radicalism within a global context, showing that the Cultural Revolution was mirrored in the radical youth movement that swept much of the world, and that had imagined or emotional links to China's red guards. Yet it was also during the Cultural Revolution that China and the United States tempered their long hostility, one of the innovations in this period that sowed the seeds for China's subsequent decades of spectacular economic growth.

    Its virtues lay in its collective wisdom, its attachment to chivalric codes, and its sense of public duty. It evolved from a medieval warrior caste into a self-assured and sophisticated elite, which made itself the champion of popular liberty: It forced King John to sign the Magna Carta and later used its power and wealth to depose a succession of tyrannical kings from Richard II to James II. Britain's liberties and constitution were the result of aristocratic bloody-mindedness and courage."Aristocrats" traces the history of this remarkable supremacy. It is a story of civil wars, conquests, intrigue, chicanery, and extremes of selflessness and greed. The aristocracy survived and, in the age of the great house and the Grand Tour, governed the first industrial nation while a knot of noblemen ruled its growing empire. Under pressure from below, this political power was slowly relinquished and then shared. Yet democratic Britain retained its aristocracy: Churchill, himself the grandson of a duke, presided over a wartime cabinet that contained six hereditary peers.Lawrence James illuminates the culture of this singular caste, shows how its infatuation with classical art has forged England's heritage, how its love of sport has shaped the nation's pastimes and values, and how its scandals have entertained its public.Impeccably researched, balanced, and brilliantly told, "Aristocrats" is an enthralling story of survival, a stunning history of wealth, power, and influence.

    Rostovtzeff

    Written by a single, masterful author but obscured by ancient editors and lost for millennia, this brilliant epic of love, deception, war, and redemption is a compelling account of humankind's complex relationship with God. Friedman boldly restores this prose masterpiece-the very heart of the Bible-to the extraordinary form in which it was originally written.

    Unlike Drummond, Carter believes there's more to starting a revolution than claiming the credit every time trouble breaks out on the rundown inner city London estates. Soon Drummond finds himself drawn into a local conflict between a crew of anarchists and a fascist fringe where events start to get murderously personal. As the tempo of bombings and assassinations speeds up all across London, from Whitehall to Brixton, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the warring parties. Finally, as the plot races to its cataclysmic conclusion, anarchism and fascism are revealed as mirror images of each other. Stewart Home's ongoing satire of urban subcultures has never been so fierce, furious or entertaining.

    John Brewster's landmark book shows us how English artists, amateurs, entrepeneurs, and audiences created a culture that is still celebrated for its wit and brilliance.

    A new arrival, Miss Gomez, lives for her postal correspondence with the Church of the Brethren of the Way in Jamaica. No one will believe Miss Gomez when she announces her revelation of a hideous sex crime soon to be committed in Crow Street. Until Prudence Tuke disappears, the police arrive, and the newspapers herald a 'Sex Crime Prophecy'...