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  Weekends with Matt - A memoir of...

  Matt Fowles, Peter Coleman

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  Weekends with Matt is a classic odd-couple tale of two very different men and the common ground that can be found over a shared passion. 
   
  The peacock's tail is used to describe a wine that is wonderfully complex and ultimately rewarding. Surely there’s no better metaphor for life. It was at the bottle shop, somewhere between the chardonnay and the zinfandel, that Peter realised he didn’t have a clue about wine. On his way to a dinner party and in a mild panic, he called Matt, a wine-loving acquaintance who expertly steered him towards the perfect bottle. The selection was a hit, but it was Matt’s passion that stuck in Peter’s mind. He decided to visit Matt’s vineyard for an introduction to the noble grape. One visit led to another and this unlikely pairing of a Proust-quoting intellectual and a farmer with a love of hunting found themselves bonding over life, ideas, vulnerability, aspiration, nature, philosophy and, of course, a glass or three of wine. Like a tipsy Tuesdays with Morrie, this well-crafted tale is as much a guide to life as the mysteries of wine. With thought-provoking notes and philosophical undertones, this is a delightful story that readers will love to sip and savour.

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  The Life of Kings - The...

  Frederic B Hill, Stephens Broening

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  In an age when local daily papers with formerly robust reporting are cutting sections and even closing their doors, the contributors to The Life of Kings celebrate the heyday of one such paper, the Baltimore Sun, when it set the agenda for Baltimore, was a force in Washington, and extended its reach around the globe. Contributors like David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire, and renowned political cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher (better known as KAL), tell what it was like to work in what may have been the last golden age of American newspapers -- when journalism still seemed like “the life of kings” that H.L. Mencken so cheerfully remembered. The writers in this volume recall the standards that made the Sun and other fine independent newspapers a bulwark of civic life for so long. Their contributions affirm that the core principles they followed are no less imperative for the new forms of journalism: a strong sense of the public interest in whose name they were acting, a reverence for accuracy, and an obligation

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  Another Load of Bull

  David Read

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  An historical audiobook 'Another load of Bull' by David Read,  read from Jason Savidge.  The war was over and David, returning to East Africa, asked himself, as did many of his contemporaries, "what next"? It was not an easy world in which to readjust. He opted to become a Livvestock Marketing Officer in Dodoma, with the Tanganyika Veterinary Department. Money was short, and Pat, who had also been demobbed and had joined him in Dodoma, nursed to help augment their income.    Finally, the break David had been hoping for materialized and he embarked on a new chapter in his life as a wheat farmer on the Western slopes of Kilimanjaro. With no formal training, David survived largely on his local knowledge and language skills, supplemented by his cattle buying. Life on 'Mountainside' suited David, despite the constant battle against Africa's unforgiving environment, but the winds of change were to bring a greater challenge and one that would ultimately end David's dreams.

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  Allen Dulles: The Life of the...

  Editors Charles River

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  The 28-year period from 1933-1961, bracketed on one end by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and on the other by the very height of the Cold War, was marked by a remarkably stable succession of American presidents. In fact, only three men held office in this period, and that predictability led to a general stability among government agencies. Conversely, the CIA had five different directors in its first 15 years, from 1946-1961, and then nine different directors in the next 20, with four of those directors serving less than a year. But of all the CIA’s directors, none wielded the immense influence or power of Allen Dulles, who, together with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became arguably the two most powerful people in the government after the president.  
  	To this day, Dulles’ eight-year tenure in that office is the longest, and as one of the country’s leading experts in international law, intelligence, and spycraft, he became renowned for his unwavering anti-communist ideology and readiness to take decisive measures to counter what he perceived as a menace to American safety. As such, it would be Dulles who sanctioned many of the CIA’s most notorious operations, including the ousting of Iran's democratically elected government in 1953, spying and experimentation on American citizens, and the disastrous Bay of Pigs. That last episode cost him his job, though he continued to play a role in American political life after President John F. Kennedy forced him out of the CIA in 1961.  
  	By then, however, Dulles had already had an outsized influence on the direction of the country, and to this day his legacy can be felt, even as his reputation continues to be a source of much debate. 

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  Ghost Dogs - On Killers and Kin

  Andre Dubus III

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  From the literary master and best-selling author of Townie, reflections on a life of challenges, contradictions, and fulfillments  
   
  During bright summers in Louisiana, Andre Dubus III’s grandfather taught him that men’s work is hard. As an adult, whether tracking down a drug lord in Mexico as a bounty hunter or grappling with privilege while living with a rich girlfriend in New York City, Dubus worked—at being a better worker and a better human being.  
   
  In Ghost Dogs, Dubus’s nonfiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs, and pain. In his longest essay, “If I Owned a Gun,” Dubus reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun, and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget. Drawing upon kindred literary spirits from Rilke to Rumi to Tim O’Brien, Ghost Dogs renders moments of personal revelation with emotional generosity and stylistic grace, ultimately standing as essential witness to the work of living a good life and testimony to the art of the essay.  
   
  “Andre Dubus III’s idea of an essay is tantalizingly simple: tell something important that happened to him—suddenly having big money and not knowing quite how to cope with that, loving his long-divorced parents, growing up poor and outlasting it, not loving his dog as much as he worries he should. Here is human life often cloaked in transporting mystery. Dubus possesses a rare and empathetic brilliance.”—Richard Ford

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  My Russian Grandmother and Her...

  Meir Shalev

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  From the author of the acclaimed novel A Pigeon and a Boy comes a charming tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in Nahalal, the village of Meir Shalev's birth. Here we meet Shalev's amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family's biggest enemy in their new land: dirt. 
   
   
    
  Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family's dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu. America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon's American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect. 
   
   
    
  The fate of Tonia's "svieeperrr"—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.

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