Other books that might interest you

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  Anchor in the Sea of Time An -...

  Stephen Harrigan

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  The author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Gates of the Alamo, the sweeping Texas history Big Wonderful Thing, and decades of incisive journalism, Stephen Harrigan is an adept writer skilled in crafting memorable characters. From this singular voice now comes a collection of essays tackling the most personal, and yet most expansive, themes of all: identity, memory, and time itself. 
   
  An Anchor in the Sea of Time unfolds individual stories but also a larger narrative about the development and distortions of history. In one essay, a painting on his grandparents' wall is seared in Harrigan's young mind. In another, a group trip to Vietnam stirs up a sobering confrontation with class privilege among Americans who fought there and others, like Harrigan, who did their best not to. The award-winning essay "Off Course" reflects on the father Harrigan never met. And Harrigan’s reporting about the Karankawas, an Indigenous group from the Texas coast once thought to be extinct, takes listeners deep into the recesses of collective forgetting and offers glimpses of the possibility of recovery. A vivid encounter with lost selves, vanished worlds, and futures yet unrealized, An Anchor in the Sea of Time is perhaps the most personal book yet from this beloved writer.

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  Dune and Philosophy - Minds...

  William Irwin

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  "He who controls the spice controls the universe." Frank Herbert's Dune saga is the epic story of Paul, son of Duke Leto Atreides, and heir to the massive fortune promised by the desert planet Arrakis and its vast reservoirs of a drug called "spice." To control the spice, Paul and his mother Jessica, a devotee of the pseudo-religious Bene Gesserit order, must find their place in the culture of the desert-dwelling Fremen of Arrakis. Paul must contend with both the devious rival House Harkonnen and the gargantuan desert sandworms—the source of the spice. The future of the Imperium depends upon one young man who will need to lead a new jihad to control the universe. 
   
   
   
  Dune and Philosophy recruits twenty-three philosophers to sift wisdom from Frank Herbert's Duniverse, including the first of an expected series of films following Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides and his descendants, captivatingly brought to the big screen in 2021. Substantial yet accessible chapters address philosophical questions including: 
   
   
   
  ● Is it morally right to create a savior? 
   
   
   
  ● Would interplanetary travel change human nature? 
   
   
   
  ● In conflict, how can you stay light years ahead of your opponents? 
   
   
   
  ● Does history repeat itself?

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  From Fail to Grace - My Journey...

  Grace Gan

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  There is light in the sharing of our stories. 
  "I began to realise that maybe things didn’t have to be this way. That maybe something can be done to turn things around. That perhaps miracles are attainable when faith and hope are shaped into crowns on our tiny brains. There were voices in me urging me to step out of my comfort zone to make that change. And I remember having an inclination — to not repeat the mistakes my parents made. For that’s their way of showing me what I should not be doing. But I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what I had to do to turn things around. I was clueless. But I gathered small steps would lead me to big ones and I asked myself what was the worst choice I had ever made in my life at that point. To my surprise, it didn’t take me long to figure this one out at all. It came to me like lightning itself. Striking, clear, and loud — it was my thoughts. My very negative thoughts." 
  - FROM THE PREFACE

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  Our Woman in Havana - A...

  Vicki Huddleston, Carlos Gutierrez

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  After the United States embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the United States Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. 
   
   
    
  In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans. Along with inside accounts of dramatic episodes such as the Elián González custody battle, Huddleston also evokes the charm of the island country and her affection for the Cuban people. 
   
   
    
  Uniquely qualified to explain the inner workings of United States-Cuba relations, Huddleston examines the Obama administration's diplomatic opening of 2014, the mysterious "sonic" brain and hearing injuries suffered by United States and Canadian diplomats serving in Havana, and the rescinding of the diplomatic opening under the Trump administration. She recounts missed opportunities for détente, and the myths, misconceptions, and lies that have long pervaded United States-Cuba relations. Our Woman in Havana is essential for everyone interested in Cuba as well as policymakers and observers who study the stormy relationship with our near neighbor.

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  The Bali Paradigm - Prose Poems...

  Michael M Clements

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  Have you ever dreamed of starting a new life in a tropical paradise far from home? The Bali Paradigm chronicles such a leap through the prose, poetry and illustrations of author Michael M Clements, who sold his business, his house and all his possessions and moved with his partner and son to start a new life in Bali, and in the process, created this raw and inspiring account of what it feels like to jump from one life paradigm into the next.

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  Freckles - From their pens to...

  William Pett Ridge

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  William Pett Ridge was born at Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent, on 22nd April 1859. 
  His family’s resources were certainly limited. His father was a railway porter, and the young Pett Ridge, after schooling in Marden, Kent became a clerk in a railway clearing-house. The hours were long and arduous, but self-improvement was Pett Ridge’s goal.  After working from nine until seven o’clock he would attend evening classes at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute and then to follow his passion; the ambition to write.  He was heavily influenced by Dickens and several critics thought he had the capability to be his successor. 
  From 1891 many of his humourous sketches were published in the St James's Gazette, the Idler, Windsor Magazine and other literary periodicals of the day. 
  Pett Ridge published his first novel in 1895, A Clever Wife. By the advent of his fifth novel, Mord Em'ly, a mere three years later in 1898, his success was obvious.  His writing was written from the perspective of those born with no privilege and relied on his great talent to find humour and sympathy in his portrayal of working class life. 
  Today Pett Ridge and other East End novelists including Arthur Nevinson, Arthur Morrison and Edwin Pugh are being grouped together as the Cockney Novelists.   
  In 1924, Pugh set out his recollections of Pett Ridge from the 1890s: “I see him most clearly, as he was in those days, through a blue haze of tobacco smoke. We used sometimes to travel together from Waterloo to Worcester Park on our way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening with H. G. Wells. Pett Ridge does not know it, but it was through watching him fill his pipe, as he sat opposite me in a stuffy little railway compartment, that I completed my own education as a smoker... Pett Ridge had a small, dark, rather spiky moustache in those days, and thick, dark, sleek hair which is perhaps not quite so thick or dark, though hardly less sleek nowadays than it was then”. 
  With his success, on the back of his prolific output and commercial success, Pett Ridge gave generously of both time and money to charity. In 1907 he founded the Babies Home at Hoxton.  This was one of several organisations that he supported that had the welfare of children as their mission.  
  His circle considered Pett Ridge to be one of life's natural bachelors. In 1909 they were rather surprised therefore when he married Olga Hentschel.  
  As the 1920’s arrived Pett Ridge added to his popularity with the movies. Four of his books were adapted into films.  
  Pett Ridge now found the peak of his fame had passed. Although he still managed to produce a book a year he was falling out of fashion and favour with the reading public and his popularity declined rapidly.  His canon runs to over sixty novels and short-story collections as well as many pieces for magazines and periodicals. 
  William Pett Ridge died, on 29th September 1930, at his home, Ampthill, Willow Grove, Chislehurst, at the age of 71. 
  He was cremated at West Norwood on 2nd October 1930.

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