Other books that might interest you

• 

  Charm

  Rupert Brooke

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  To all who knew him, the man himself was at least as important as his work. "As to his talk" — I quote again from Mr. Somerset — "he was a spendthrift. I mean that he never saved anything up as those writer fellows so often do. He was quite inconsequent and just rippled on, but was always ready to attack a careless thinker. On the other hand, he was extremely tolerant of fools, even bad poets who are the worst kind of fools — or rather the hardest to bear — but that was kindness of heart."Of his personal appearance a good deal has been said. "One who knew him," writing in one of the daily papers, said that "to look at, he was part of the youth of the world. He was one of the handsomest Englishmen of his time. His moods seemed to be merely a disguise for the radiance of an early summer's day." (From Rupert Brooke: A Biographical Note by Margaret Lavington in THE COLLECTED POEMS OF RUPERT BROOKE, (from which this poem is taken.)

  Show book

• 

  The Unexpected Spy - From the...

  Tracy Walder, Jessica Anya Blau

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs 
  When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. 
  The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists—men who swore they'd never speak to a woman—until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. 
  Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn't a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate—and thus change the world. 
  A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

  Show book

• 

  The Long Baby Boom - An...

  Jeff Goldsmith

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “Important, timely . . . should be the basis for a national debate about how we each want to grow older and what kind of society we want to do it in.” —John Rother, Group Executive Officer of Policy and Strategy, AARP 
   
  The aging of the boomer generation has unleashed a veritable tidal wave of gloomy punditry, advertising for financial services, and forecasts of impending national bankruptcy. In The Long Baby Boom, Jeff Goldsmith counters the catastrophic predictions with a far more optimistic scenario. 
   
  Drawing on evidence that most baby boomers plan on working long past age sixty-five, Goldsmith argues that they will have a constructive impact on society. By assuming a much larger portion of the financial burden of their own retirement and health costs, they will help preserve Social Security and Medicare for the less fortunate—and for successive generations. 
   
  The Long Baby Boom is the first comprehensive forecast of baby boomers’ career plans, health trends, and cultural and political values. Goldsmith’s pro-work, pro-savings, pro-health social policy emphasizes personal responsibility without ripping the social safety net. Constructive and innovative, The Long Baby Boom doesn’t promise a cloud-free future, but it does reassure us that the sky isn’t falling.

  Show book

• 

  Lightning Eject - The Dubious...

  Peter Caygill

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "The English Electric Lightning entered RAF squadron service in 1960 and continued flying in the interceptor role until 1988. It had a stunning world-beating performance with a top speed in excess of Mach 2 and a climb rate that would take it to 40,000 feet in a little over 3 minutes. The aircrafts safety record, however, left much to be desired. During a period in the early 1970s the attrition rate was the loss of a Lightning every month. There was a six per cent chance of a pilot experiencing an engine fire and a one in four chance that he would not survive.This book looks at Lightning accidents and incidents in chronological order using the official accident reports, Board of Inquiry findings and firsthand accounts from pilots. It puts the reader very much in the cockpit. "

  Show book

• 

  The Encyclopedia of...

  Rex Sorgatz

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “In an era of ‘alternative facts,’ Rex Sorgatz’s The Encyclopedia of Misinformation helps put things in perspective.” —Fast Company 
   
  This compendium of misinformation, deception, and self-delusion throughout history examines fakery in the context of science and advertising, humor and law, sports and video games, and beyond. Entries span eclectic topics: Artificial Intelligence, Auto-Tune, Chilean Sea Bass, Clickbait, Cognitive Dissonance, Cryptids, False Flag Operations, Gaslighting, Gerrymandering, Kayfabe, Laugh Tracks, Milli Vanilli, P.T. Barnum, Photoshopping, Potemkin Villages, Ponzi Schemes, Rachel Dolezal, Strategery, Truthiness, and the Uncanny Valley.  
   
  From A to Z, this is the definitive guide to how we are tricked, and how we trick ourselves. 
   
  “Occasional salty language and pop-culture references make this compendium of 300 short entries a delightful mix of high- and lowbrow.” —Booklist

  Show book

• 

  The Skies Belong to Us - Love...

  Brendan I. Koerner

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In an America torn apart by the Vietnam War and the demise of the idealism of the sixties, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine. Over a five-year period starting in 1968, the desperate and disillusioned seized commercial jets nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to foreign lands, where they imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their criminal exploits mesmerized the country, never more so than when the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner's The Skies Belong to Us pulled off the longest-distance hijacking in American history.A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama-including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet The Skies Belong to Us is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.

  Show book