How To Be a Woman Quick Reads 2021


Caitlin Moran - 2021
    But a few nagging questions remain...Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby?Part memoir, part protest, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.

The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson


Joachim Joesten - 1968
    Joesten carefully documents the little-known facts behind Johnson's involvement in scandals stretching back to his first stolen election in 1948, thru the Bobby Baker, Billy Sol Estes and Walter Jenkins affairs, and culminates with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Included are LBJ's connection to mobsters, big Texas oil, political graft and corruption, blackmailing of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and a disturbing number of murders committed by his henchmen for LBJ's personal gain.FROM THE BOOK:The true nature of Lyndon B. Johnson has long been hidden from the public through the frenzied efforts of highly paid P.R. wizards and artificial image-builders. William Manchester came closer than most other people to seeing through the benign public relations mask of Lyndon Johnson, but one wouldn't know it from scanning the pages of 'The Death of a President'.If there are two persons in the world who have really come to know Johnson at close quarters, outside of his own family, they are Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy. Manchester interviewed both of them at length and they told him, without mincing their words, what they thought of That Man in the White House. But when Manchester, having faithfully recorded everything the Kennedys had told him, rushed into print with his story, years ahead of schedule, they both got panicky and practically forced him to 'revise' his story out of recognition.Edward J. Epstein, the author of Inquest, somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the original, unedited manuscript of the Manchester book, then entitled 'Death of a Lancer', and revealed in the July issue 1967 of Commentary, some of its contents.In his original draft, Manchester, it seems, made some very pungent remarks about Lyndon Johnson whom he described, among other things, as a 'chameleon who constantly changes loyalties'; 'a capon' and 'a crafty schemer who has a gaunt, hunted look about him'.He also pictured Johnson as 'a full-fledged hypomaniac' and 'the crafty seducer with six nimble hands who can persuade a woman to surrender her favors in the course of a long conversation confined to obscure words. No woman, even a lady, can discern his intentions until the critical moment'.By far the most interesting aspect of this matter, however, is Epstein's contention that Manchester's original theme, which gave unity to his book, was 'the notion that Johnson, the successor, was somehow responsible for the death-of his predecessor'.Several quotations from the original draft bear out this contention. At one point, the Lancer version states, 'The shattering fact of the assassination is that a Texas murder has made a Texan President'.At another, Kenneth O'Donnell, Kennedy's appointments secretary, is quoted as exclaiming 'They did it. I always knew they'd do it. You couldn't expect anything else from them. They finally made it'.Then Manchester comments: 'He didn't specify who "they" were. It was unnecessary. They were Texans, Johnsonians'.But what is one to think of an author who allows his most important work not only to be castrated, but to be turned completely upside down by a publisher more committed to the dictates of expediency than to the search for historical truth?

Jam Butties and a Pan of Scouse


Maggie Clarke - 2017
    The story covers Maggie Clarke's upbringing in the tenements close to the docks, the River Mersey and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal: an area notorious for having the worst slums in Britain, yet the closest community as well.At the tender age of 11, Maggie Clarke finds herself the matriarch of the family when her Irish mother runs off with another man. Leaving school at 14 to work at a local factory putting sticks into lollies, she is determined to make a better life for herself and her family - before starting her own family with her childhood sweetheart, who she marries at 19 after 'falling in the family way'. She has one night of married life with her husband before he is sent to India with the Navy and is devastated when she never hears from him again, presuming him a casualty of the war that is raging at home and abroad. Another tragedy strikes when Maggie's brother Tommy is also claimed by the war, leaving her father inconsolable, but Maggie knows life has to go on and falls in love with Joseph, an Irish settler who she has 8 children with. But her happiness is short-lived as her first husband suddenly appears out of the blue demanding a divorce, and her new husband drinks away what little money they have, returning in fits of rage that leave Maggie and her children hungry and afraid. Many times she is only able to feed her brood by the kindness of neighbours putting a 'pan of scouse' on the range for her, or feeding her kids jam butties to help out. Maggie's story sweeps across the changing face of Liverpool, from its squalid dock streets, the tenement blocks and cobbled roads to the decline of the docklands, new council housing, the rise of the Mersey beat, the Beatles and the energy and passion of a city that is home to a cast of colourful characters with the resilience to withstand the heartbreak and hardships that only the poorest can know.

Return to the Big Fancy: A Riotous Descent Into the Depths of Customer, Corporate, and Coworker Hell


Freeman Hall - 2012
    But instead of fame and fortune, he found himself stuck behind a wall of script-killing rewrites, unable to make a living.In Return to the Big Fancy, Freeman shares his wildly entertaining journey back through the fiery gates of Retail Hell. He thought he had seen it all in his day, but with the bar set higher than ever before, employees are now graciously bowing before Corporate as they climb over fellow salespeople, and even friends, to earn enough transactions and commissions to actually survive. As he learns more of the wretchedness that has befallen the sales floor, he realizes that The Big Fancy has its customers and its employees on a short leash. But leave it to Freeman and the threat of disappearing commissions to rally the retail slaves and show Corporate who's really in charge!

The Boy With Only One Shoe: An Illustrated memoir of wartime life with Bomber Command


John Henry Meller - 2020
    is the number of Royal Air Force Bomber Command aircrew who lost their lives during World War 2. That's more than the total who serve in Britain's RAF today. With a terrifying 46% combat attrition rate, an Avro Lancaster Bomber was one of the most dangerous places to be during the conflict. Yet no one was enlisted to become aircrew: all were volunteers. So, at a time when Britain stood resolute in its fight against tyranny and oppression, young men from across the globe did just that. At just 18 years old, John Henry Meller was one such man.The ordeals and sacrifices endured by John and his generation were crucial to the success of the Allied nations. In the words of Winston Churchill, Great Britain's wartime leader:"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands ...... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and the Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."As few remain to bear witness to that time, John - together with daughter Caroline Brownbill - have chosen to document his vivid recollections of wartime life. Join him as he shares what it was like to crew a Lancaster over Europe, during the darkest days of the War.

Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil's Deal


Lehr & O'Neill - 2012
    update of first edition

The Angel of Auschwitz: [Extended Version]


S.A. Falconi - 2014
    I vow to you and to the leaders that you set for me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God!”The SS Oath of Loyalty – words that became the very death sentence for millions of Jews and Germans alike. Six decades later, we still ask ourselves why and how did it happen? "The Angel of Auschwitz", a tragic epic of historical fiction, explores these inquiries through the eyes of an unlikely antagonist-turned-protagonist – the Nazi soldier."The Angel of Auschwitz" chronicles the life of Wolfgang Bremmer, an adolescent boy from the hills of Hamburg during the Nazi occupation of Germany. As a Hitler Youth, Wolfgang is captivated by the prowess of the Nazis and thrust into the ideologies of Adolf Hitler. With an adoration for the new Fűhrer and the Third Reich, Wolfgang enlists as a young man in the SS-Death’s Head Division, the gatekeepers of the regime’s most lethal concentration camp, Dachau. It is here he is introduced to Theodor Eicke’s “School of Violence” and becomes one of the most ruthless guards the SS has ever seen. After joining Hitler’s Mobile Killing Units, he participates in the invasion of Poland and the evacuation and extermination of its Jewish inhabitants. Wolfgang is the ideal Nazi warrior: vicious, ruthless, and entirely intolerant.But evil erodes even the hardest of hearts and Wolfgang grows weary in the midst of all the death and destruction. His conscience begins to return and with that a gnawing guilt for what he and his fellow Germans have done and are about to do. But with the fear of punishment for treason, Wolfgang is trapped in the cyclone of violence. That is, until he is promoted as a guard at the Reich’s most sophisticated concentration camp, Auschwitz. In the belly of such a beast as Auschwitz, Wolfgang discovers a secret that will not only save his own life and salvation, but the lives of so many prisoners as well.

Heartbreak in the Valleys


Francesca Capaldi - 2020
    For young housemaid, Anwen Rhys, life is hard in the Welsh mining village of Dorcalon, deep in the Rhymney Valley. She cares for her ill mother and beloved younger sister Sara, all while shielding them from her father’s drunken, violent temper. Anwen comforts herself with her love for childhood sweetheart, Idris Hughes, away fighting in the Great War.Yet when Idris returns, he is a changed man; no longer the innocent boy she loved, he is harder, more distant, quickly breaking off their engagement. And when tragedy once again strikes her family, Anwen’s heart is completely broken.But when an explosion at the pit brings unimaginable heartache to Dorcalon, Anwen and Idris put their feelings aside to unite their mining community.In the midst of despair, can Anwen find hope again? And will she ever find the happiness she deserves?

Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw's Tale


John Hall - 2008
    Ride with author John Hall into the turbulent world of 1960s bike club culture, from the time he joined an upstart motorcycle club from Dixie, and rose to become Long Island chapter president of the Pagans, a club that the FBI called "the most violent criminal organization in America." Follow him into the Pagan heartland of Pennsylvania where he fell in love, got in a roadhouse brawl over a honky-tonk angel, and eventually went to jail for "takin' care a club business." Now after a career as a journalist and college professor, he returns to the violent days of his youth and smashes up stereotypes like he once smashed up bars, resurrecting long-dead brothers, in a style reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Mark Twain.  Hall presents them as they really were: hard living, hard loving, hard drinking, hard fighting rebels, but also hardworking, patriotic, loyal, and lovable characters, and a band of brothers whose outlandish behavior forged an all-American outlaw legend in the tradition of Jesse James, Doc Holliday, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd.  Outlaws yes, but outlaws as American as apple pie.

Six Wives: The Women Who Married, Lived, And Died For Henry VIII


Michael W. Simmons - 2017
    Anne Boleyn: ambitious upstart. Jane Seymour: virtuous mother. Anne of Cleves: Flanders Mare. Katherine Howard: adulterous whore. Katherine Parr: the one that got away. These are our lingering historical afterimages of the six women who married Henry VIII over the course of his thirty-six-year reign. At the age of 18, Henry succeeded to the English throne and married the Spanish princess who had briefly been the wife of his brother Arthur. Katherine of Aragon was both a virgin and a widow when the prince died at the age of fifteen, enabling Henry to marry her himself. Their marriage lasted sixteen contented years, until suddenly, Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn and sundered England from Rome in order to keep her. But Henry VIII would not be satisfied even after he took Anne Boleyn for his wife. His vanity, his ego, and his desperate need for a male heir, led him to marry four more women during the last ten years of his life. In this book, you will read about the lives, loves, and secret passions of these women. Four of them died for Henry’s pleasure—but two escaped to tell their stories.

Praetorian


Richard Foreman - 2013
    Rome is at war with the northern tribes - and is yet to win a significant battle. The Germanic armies have crossed the Danube and have attacked the Empire, slaughtering thousands. The Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, is losing the support of the people and the Senate. Yet he has formed a plan he believes will change the balance of power in the region. Aurelius has despatched an officer in the Praetorian Guard, the centurion Gaius Maximus, to escort the son and daughter of a powerful German tribal chief back to their village through enemy territory - in hope of arranging an alliance with Rome. But Maximus, to complete his mission, must contest with enemies at home, as well as abroad. One man will change the fate of an Empire, or die trying. From the backstreets of Rome, to the forests of Germany, and onto the Battle of Pannonia, Sword of Empire: Praetorian is the first book in a new series from the bestselling author of the novel Augustus: Son of Rome - and the Sword of Rome collection of novellas about the campaigns of Julius Caesar. For fans of Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and Conn Iggulden. Richard Foreman's books have been widely praised. Praise for 'Augustus: Son of Rome'. 'Augustus: Son of Rome forges action and adventure with politics and philosophy. This superb story is drenched in both blood and wisdom - and puts Foreman on the map as the coming man of historical fiction'. - Saul David, Author of the Zulu Hart series. Praise for Raffles: The Complete Innings. “Classy, humorous and surprisingly touching tales of cricket, friendship and crime.” - David Blackburn, The Spectator. Richard Foreman is the author of numerous best-selling books, including 'Augustus: Son of Rome' and the Raffles series of historical crime novellas. He is also the author of 'Warsaw', a literary novel set during the Second World War. He lives in London. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

Churchill in the Trenches


Peter Apps - 2015
    As First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of the First World War, Churchill found himself blamed for the catastrophic military fiasco of the Dardanelles. Thrown for the first time into the political wilderness, he decided to rejoin the British Army and take his place on the Western Front.The first standalone account of this period of his life since the 1920s, Churchill in the Trenches reconstructs his six months near the Belgian town of Ypres. It reveals he how he gradually won over the troops he commanded -- the tough but traumatized 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. And it tells the largely unknown story of how amid mud and squalor, one of the 20th century's most memorable characters became one of its greatest leaders.Peter Apps is global defense correspondent for Reuters news. In 2006, he broke his neck in a minibus accident while covering the civil war in Sri Lanka, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down. Of the 20 or so countries he has reported from, more than half have been since the injury. He is currently on sabbatical as executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21) www.projects21.com.Cover design by Kerry Ellis.

Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall


Chris Welch - 2001
    The eccentric group who satirised trad jazz, pop and rock, reached Number five with ‘I’m The Urban Spaceman’ in 1968. A punishing schedule of tours and television followed, including work with the future Monty Python team. The following year, broke and burned out, the Bonzos split up, leaving behind a loyal cult following.Vivian launched into myriad solo projects in music, film and theatre, giving himself several nervous breakdowns in the process. His comic masterpiece, ‘Sir Henry at Rawlinson End’, was heard in radio, on an album, and then hit the big screen. Vivian wrote the musical ‘Stinkfoot’, was narrator on ‘Tubular Bells’ and provided lyrics for Steve Winwood. In person, he was just as multi-faceted, by turns the erudite artist and the truculent Teddy Boy, breathtakingly rude. A powerful figure, tall, red-haired and never less than extravagant in his fashion, Vivian Stanshall was a hell-raiser of legendary reputation – ably assisted through much of the 1970s by Who drummer Keith Moon. Vivian drove the many who loved him to the limit, struggling with terrible tranquilliser and alcohol dependency. He died at home in a house fire in 1995. The story of his turbulent life is utterly compelling.

Abraham Lincoln


James Russell Lowell - 2012
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Droughts & Dreams: Stories of Self-Reliance During America’s Darkest Times


Glenn Beck - 2015
    Years-long drought coupled with relentless dust storms wreaked havoc on the Great Plains region and forced the American people to dig deep within in order to persevere and survive.Droughts & Dreams contains intimate family stories from that generation. Many are first-hand accounts of people who not only survived, but who also did it well. Tucked inside these pages, you’ll find timeless survival lessons, tips and even favorite from-scratch recipes.The memoirs in this book are not dreary recollections of the disgruntled. Rather, they are honest tales of families rediscovering how to live simply, be self-reliant and appreciate what they had.Perhaps 80-year old Jack Bolkovak stated it best when he said, “The Depression was a tough time. But it was a great beginning to life. It taught us that life is not easy and to appreciate all that we have. We had food, clothing, shelter and a loving family. That was all we needed.” “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”-Edmund Burke