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  Good Morning Hope - A True Story...

  Argita Zalli, Detina Zalli

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  Born in poverty-stricken Albania, twin sisters Argita and Detina Zalli always dreamed of becoming doctors. Their parents scrimped and sacrificed, committed to giving them a better life. But then the unthinkable happened. In 1997, the government collapsed, plunging the country into anarchy and civil war. The twins' dream unraveled along with their homeland. Their parents had to find a way to leave and save their daughters' futures—not to mention their very lives.It took over two years for the Zalli family to escape. After several dangerous attempts, they finally made it to England, where the thirteen-year-old twins believed everything would be much better. They soon found out otherwise. Now refugees, with little more than the clothes on their backs, the girls were mercilessly bullied and constantly afraid they would be sent back to Albania, and their parents would be sent to jail. Still, the twins persevered and learned how to navigate their harsh new reality. When tragedy struck yet again, the girls had to come to terms with the high price they had all paid to survive.In Good Morning, Hope, Argita and Detina share their harrowing story of courage and resilience. It was the strength of their family, particularly the sisters' unique, unbreakable bond as twins, that nurtured and sustained them throughout their perilous ordeal.

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  Combat Reporter - Don...

  Don Whitehead

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  A Pulitzer Prize–winning combat correspondent recounts his personal experience of covering World War II on the front lines.   Legendary reporter Don Whitehead covered almost every important Allied invasion and campaign in Europe—from North Africa to landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and Normandy, and to the drive into Germany. His dispatches, published in Beachhead Don, are treasures of wartime journalism.   From September 1942, as a freshly minted Associated Press journalist in New York, to the spring of 1943 as Allied tanks closed in on the Germans in Tunisia, he also kept a diary of his experiences as a rookie combat reporter. The diary stops in 1943, and it has remained unpublished until now. Later, Whitehead started work on a memoir of his extraordinary life in combat that would remain unfinished.   In this book, John B. Romeiser has woven both the North African diary and Whitehead’s memoir of the subsequent landings in Sicily into a vivid, unvarnished, and completely riveting story of eight months during some of the most brutal combat of the war. Here, Whitehead captures the fierce fighting in the African desert and Sicilian mountains, as well as rare insights into the daily grind of reporting from a war zone, where tedium alternated with terror. These writings by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner offer a unique and up-close view of the Second World War—as well as a reminder of the risks journalist take to bring us the first draft of history.   “No one bore witness better than Don Whitehead . . . this volume, deftly combining his diary and a previously unpublished memoir, brings Whitehead and his reporting back to life, and twenty-first-century readers are the richer for it.” —from the foreword by Rick Atkinson

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  Why Bowie Matters

  Will Brooker

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  A unique, moving and dazzlingly researched exploration of the places, people, musicians, writers and filmmakers that inspired David Jones to become David Bowie, what we can learn from his life’s work and journey, and why he will always matter. 
  When David Bowie died on 10th January 2016, it seemed the whole world was united in mourning. His greatest hits were sung tearfully in pubs up and down Britain, garlands of flowers were left at the Aladdin Sane mural in his old stomping ground of Brixton and tributes poured in from a galaxy of stars. To many of us, Bowie was so much more than a pop idol. But why? 
  In Why Bowie Matters, Professor Will Brooker answers that question persuasively, as both a fan and an academic. A Bowie obsessive since childhood, he hit the headlines over the course of a year-long immersive research project that took him from London to Berlin and New York, following in Bowie’s footsteps, only listening to music and reading books he loved, and even at times adopting his fashion. 
  In this original and illuminating book, Professor Brooker approaches Bowie from various angles, re-tracing his childhood on the streets of Bromley, taking us through his record collection and bookshelves, and deciphering the symbols and codes of his final work, Blackstar to piece together how an ordinary suburban teenager turned himself into a legend, and how perhaps we too could be a little more Bowie. 
  He shows us that while David Robert Jones died on that terrible day in January, David Bowie will live on forever.

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  Allen Dulles: The Life of the...

  Charles River Editors

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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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  Keith Urban

  Jeff Apter

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  Four Grammys. Twenty US Number Ones. A Hollywood marriage. Who wouldn’t want to be Keith Urban?Keith Urban came from humble origins. His father worked at the local landfill and Keith was a high school dropout. But Keith had a plan: conquer Nashville. “It’s my destiny,” he said. And Keith was hell-bent on scaling that musical Everest. Whatever it took.It didn’t come easy. Keith served his apprenticeship in the beer barns of Australia, and his early trips to America were disastrous. But he never gave up, settling in Nashville in the 1990s and forming The Ranch. When the band fell apart, so did Keith, ending up in rehab (not for the last time). But Keith did eventually reach the top, through a combination of talent, charisma, sex appeal, dogged perseverance—and skin thick enough for a rhino. And along the way he married Nicole Kidman.As Keith has said, “All those detours, the really dark ones, got me to where I am now. I would not want to change one leaf on any tree in the whole journey.”Keith Urban is the definitive biography of an international superstar.

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  The Reluctant Carer - Dispatches...

  The Reluctant Carer

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  'Incredible. One of those rare books that should be dispensed on prescription to every household.' - Lucy Easthope, author of When the Dust Settles'Hilarious, bitter, poignant and profound . . . like an existential soap opera - only with more laughs.' - Philip Hoare, author of LeviathanIt was the kind of phone call we all dread. Your elderly father has been admitted to hospital. Your even older mum is now at home alone. The answer? Simple. Drop everything, go back and help. The reality? Not so straightforward. Suddenly, you’re a kid again, stranded in the overheated house you grew up in. Soon they need you 24/7. And you want to help, of course you do. But now your own life starts to unravel almost as quickly as their health. And then there is nowhere else to go.In between bouts of washing, feeding, cooking and fighting there are times that test you, days where everything goes wrong and moments when everyone, miraculously rises to the occasion. And amidst all of that, this strange second childhood offers up a shot at redemption - if you can just stop everyone from falling down.Irresistibly funny, unflinching and deeply moving, this is a love letter to family and friends, to carers and to anyone who has ever packed a small bag intent on staying for just a few days. This is a true story of what it really means to be a carer, and of the ties that bind even tighter when you least expect it. This is The Reluctant Carer.

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