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  Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The...

  Matt Trollope, Tony Pike

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  From a poverty-stricken, sexually abused child to a globe-trotting, hedonistic and unapologetic international playboy, Mr Pikes‘ life was the definition of a rollercoaster. And at his world-renowned Rock 'n' Roll hotel (Pikes) in Ibiza, ANYTHING went. Partying hard, taking drugs, ripping clothes off A-list celebrities, enjoying the wildest sexual fantasies humanly possible... These were all on the daily order! And by listening to this autobiography, you now have the chance to embark on this exciting journey.Yes, the legendary Mr Ibiza has had a long life. But it STILL seems like he‘s lived 100 average lifetimes!Some of these mind-boggling stories will have you sitting on the edge of your chair, never wanting to leave. 
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  The Times  
  Much-married, hedonistic hotel owner who partied hard with many a pop star and was known as the Hugh Hefner of Ibiza; John Donne may have written that no man is an island, but Tony Pike came close. Known as Mr Ibiza, he was the embodiment of Balearic hedonism, a brash, hard-drinking, drug-taking philanderer whose way with women would have made even the love poet blush. 
    
  New York Times Post 
  Ibiza legend who founded legendary celeb hangout Pikes Ibiza and helped turn island into party paradise 
    
  The Independent  
  The resort, now known as Pikes Ibiza, was built, founded and run by Mercury's friend Tony Pike, an English-born Australian adventurer and playboy who had turned a ruined farmhouse into Spain's beacon hotel for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. 
  Shortlist 
  The incredible story of Tony Pike. 

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  Italy - Culture Smart!: The...

  Barry Tomalin

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  Italy delights and stimulates with its magnificent cities and monuments, stunningly beautiful landscapes, the glory of its art and architecture, the richness and variety of its food, the elegance of its design and fashion, and the vitality and charm of its people. Italian style and culture have been exported all over the world. At home, however, Italian society and politics are facing challenges as the country struggles to maintain its standard of living, the stability of its currency, and its ability to provide jobs. The influx of refugees across the Mediterranean is putting pressure on both its social fabric and its economy. 
  
  Culture Smart! Italy is an insider’s guide to their daily lives, passions, and preoccupations. It introduces you to their history and culture and provides vital information and practical tips to help smooth your path in different social situations.

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  The Trigger - Hunting the...

  Tim Butcher

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  On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and that proved fatal for empires and a way of ruling that had held for centuries.The Trigger tells the story of a young man who changed the world forever. It focuses on the drama of the incident itself by following Princip's journey. By retracing his steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth, through the mountains of the northern Balkans to the great plain city of Belgrade, and ultimately to Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding of Princip and makes discoveries about him that have eluded historians for a hundred years. Traveling through the Balkans on Princip's trail, and drawing on his own experiences there as a war reporter during the 1990s, Butcher unravels this complex part of the world and its conflicts, and shows how the events that were sparked that day in June 1914 still have influence today. Published for the centenary of the assassination, The Trigger is a rich and timely work, part travelogue, part reportage, and part history.

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  Kingdom of the Monkey - war...

  Jim Taylor

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  ‘Kingdom of the Monkey’ is the extraordinary and vivid account of a country so captivating, yet so obscure in every way, that the deeper you go in the harder it gets to look away. Cambodia, 1993 – 2003: this is no tropical paradise; stay too long out there and soon nothing you may come across really holds the same power to shock or surprise you. It’s a time when all acceptable norms of humanity seem to be turned upside down. Even the last of Indochina’s civil wars, grinding on out in the countryside, presents as a mere sideshow diversion to the main events being played out in the free-for-all capital that is Phnom Penh.

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  Taking Lady Gibraltar

  Dick Schwirian

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  Grant's Convoluted Tour de Force in the WestThe Taking of Lady Gibraltar is about one of the major events of the Civil War: the campaign to seize Vicksburg by Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant. Before 1863, Vicksburg, situated on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, was thought to be impregnable. Grant created a new reality. The capture of Vicksburg and its garrison was, if not the signature northern victory of the Civil War, at least among the top contenders. It denied the Confederacy free access to the Mississippi River, it split the South in two, and, perhaps most importantly, it ultimately persuaded Abraham Lincoln to appoint Grant commander of all Union armies. In the words of the sixteenth president: “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”  It may be inaccurate to say that Grant won the Civil War for the North, but there is truth in the claim. His success, first in the west and later in the east, was phenomenal. Was he a military genius? Probably not. But he had a keen sense for the opportunistic moment and the fortitude to pursue a course of action relentlessly, once chosen. The Taking of Lady Gibraltar illustrates these qualities—and some shortcomings—in an exciting and stimulating read for anyone who loves Civil War history and historical fiction.

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  Lingo - Around Europe in Sixty...

  Gaston Dorren

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  Six thousand years. Sixty languages. One “brisk and breezy” whirlwind armchair tour of Europe “bulg[ing] with linguistic trivia” (The Wall Street Journal).   Take a trip of the tongue across the continent in this fascinating, hilarious and highly edifying exploration of the many ways and whys of Euro-speaks—its idiosyncrasies, its histories, commonalities, and differences.   Most European languages are descended from a single ancestor, a language not unlike Sanskrit known as Proto-Indo-European (or PIE for short), but the continent’s ever-changing borders and cultures have given rise to a linguistic and cultural diversity that is too often forgotten in discussions of Europe as a political entity. Lingo takes us into today’s remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word “you.”   “In this bubbly linguistic endeavor, journalist and polyglot Dorren thoughtfully walks readers through the weird evolution of languages” (Publishers Weekly), and not just the usual suspects—French, German, Yiddish, irish, and Spanish, Here, too are the esoteric—Manx, Ossetian, Esperanto, Gagauz, and Sami, and that global headache called English. In its sixty bite-sized chapters, Dorret offers quirky and hilarious tidbits of illuminating facts, and also dispels long-held lingual misconceptions (no, Eskimos do not have 100 words for snow). Guaranteed to change the way you think about language, Lingo is a “lively and insightful . . . unique, page-turning book” (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

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