Other books that might interest you

• 

  Same Ground - Chasing Family...

  Russell Wangersky

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “Read him.” — George Elliott Clarke, author of I & I and George and Rue
  		 
  An award-winning author goes looking for the meaning of family and belonging on a glorious wild-goose-chase road trip across middle America
  		 
  Wangersky’s great-great-grandfather crossed the continent in search of gold in 1849. William Castle Dodge was his name, and he was 22 years old. He wrote a diary of that eventful journey that comes into the author’s hands 160 years later. And typically, quixotically, Wangersky decides to follow Dodge’s westward trail across the great bulging middle of America, not in search of gold but something even less likely: that elusive thing called family.
  		 
  What ensues becomes this story, by turns hilarious and profound, about a very long trip — by car, in Wangersky’s case, and on mule and foot in Dodge’s. Interweaving his experiences on the road with Dodge’s diary, the author contemplates the human need to hunt for roots and meaning as he — and Dodge — encounter immigrants who risk everything to be somewhere else, while only glimpsing those who are there already and who want to hold onto their claim in the stream of human migration.
  		 
  Same Ground is a story about what time washes away and what persists — and what we might find, unexpectedly, if we go looking.

  Show book

• 

  Grave Tidings - An Anthology of...

  Paul Berra

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "You see! This is how you die." - Coco Chanel
  "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!" - Breaker Morant
  "If any of you have a message for the devil, give it to me, for I am about to meet him!" - Lavinia Fisher
  "I am dying. Please… bring me a toothpick. " - Alfred Jarry
  Funny, reflective, scornful or delirious, we are fascinated by famous last words because, humanity in extremis, they seem to tell us something about ourselves. Featuring lovers, killers, artists, traitors, spies, rulers, poets and pariahs, this thoughtful volume brings together the hedonists and the fatalists, the pragmatists and the optimists in a collection of famous last utterances - and the stories behind them - from throughout history.

  Show book

• 

  Not a Hazardous Sport -...

  Nigel Barley

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Nigel  Barley travels to Sulawesi in Indonesia to live among the Torajan people, known for their spectacular buildings and elaborate ancestor cults. At last he is following his own advice to students, to do their anthropological fieldwork 'somewhere where the inhabitants are beautiful, friendly, where you would like the food.' Barley explores the island on horseback and in buses jammed to the gunnels, and meets priests faithful to the old animist rituals. With his customary wit, he takes the reader deep into this complex but adaptable society.
  Reversing the habitual patterns of anthropology, Barley then invites four Torajan carvers to London to build a traditional rice barn at the Museum of Mankind. The observer becomes the observed. Now, it is Barley's turn to explain the absurdities of an English city to his bemused guests, in a glorious finale to a trilogy of anthropological journeys that began with The Innocent Anthropologist.

  Show book

• 

  Turner

  Stéphanie Angoh

  • 0
  • 6
  • 0

  At fifteen, Turner was already exhibiting View of Lambeth. He soon acquired the reputation of an immensely clever watercolourist. A disciple of Girtin and Cozens, he showed in his choice and presentation of theme a picturesque imagination which seemed to mark him out for a brilliant career as an illustrator. He travelled, first in his native land and then on several occasions in France, the Rhine Valley, Switzerland and Italy. He soon began to look beyond illustration. However, even in works in which we are tempted to see only picturesque imagination, there appears his dominant and guiding ideal of lyric landscape. His choice of a single master from the past is an eloquent witness for he studied profoundly such canvases of Claude as he could find in England, copying and imitating them with a marvellous degree of perfection. His cult for the great painter never failed. He desired his Sun Rising through Vapour and Dido Building Carthage to be placed in the National Gallery side by side with two of Claude’s masterpieces. And, there, we may still see them and judge how legitimate was this proud and splendid homage. It was only in 1819 that Turner went to Italy, to go again in 1829 and 1840. Certainly Turner experienced emotions and found subjects for reverie which he later translated in terms of his own genius into symphonies of light and colour. Ardour is tempered with melancholy, as shadow strives with light. Melancholy, even as it appears in the enigmatic and profound creation of Albrecht Dürer, finds no home in Turner’s protean fairyland – what place could it have in a cosmic dream? Humanity does not appear there, except perhaps as stage characters at whom we hardly glance. Turner’s pictures fascinate us and yet we think of nothing precise, nothing human, only unforgettable colours and phantoms that lay hold on our imaginations. Humanity really only inspires him when linked with the idea of death – a strange death, more a lyrical dissolution – like the finale of an opera.

  Show book

• 

  Churchyard Epiphany - A...

  Leila White

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This book details over one hundred medicinal plants found growing in an acre of an East of England churchyard. It explores the history of usage from the distant past to the present. The contents of this book are for information only. This is not a substitute for expert medical advice.

  Show book

• 

  Our Miss Brooks: Wishing Well...

  Al Lewis

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  There's going to be a Wishing Well Dance at Madison High, and everyone wants a lock of Miss Brooks' hair. To most of us a school dance isn’t the most exciting thing in the world but to our Miss Brooks, the one planned for last Friday night was a most welcome diversion.

  Show book