Other books that might interest you

• 

  Residual Governance - How South...

  Gabrielle Hecht

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In Residual Governance, Gabrielle Hecht dives into the wastes of gold and uranium mining in South Africa to explore how communities, experts, and artists fight for infrastructural and environmental justice. Hecht outlines how mining in South Africa is a prime example of what she theorizes as residual governance—the governance of waste and discard, governance that is purposefully inefficient, and governance that treats people and places as waste and wastelands. She centers the voices of people who resist residual governance and the harms of toxic mining waste to highlight how mining's centrality to South African history reveals the links between race, capitalism, the state, and the environment. In this way, Hecht shows how the history of mining in South Africa and the resistance to residual governance and environmental degradation is a planetary story: the underlying logic of residual governance lies at the heart of contemporary global racial capitalism and is a major accelerant of the Anthropocene.

  Show book

• 

  My Escape from Donington Hall

  Gunther Plüschow

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  It was an escape from a PoW camp as daring and fraught with danger as any immortalised by Hollywood. Yet the story is less familiar than most  as it concerns the only German prisoner of war to escape from captivity in mainland Britain and make it home during either World War.After being caught in Gibraltar during an earlier attempt to return to his homeland, Pluschow and other captured Germans were shipped to Plymouth and then on to the PoW camp at Donington Hall, where he arrived in May 1915.On July 4 he and fellow prisoner Oskar Trefftz broke out by climbing over two 9ft barbed wire fences, before changing clothes and walking 15 miles to Derby where they caught a train to London.By the next morning the men's escape was featured in the Daily Sketch newspaper with both names and descriptions of the pair. They went their separate ways but Trefftz was recaptured at Millwall Docks. Realising he had to alter his appearance, Pluschow removed his smart tie and handed his coat in at the cloakroom at Blackfriars station. The German then used scraped-up coal dust, boot polish and Vaseline to change his fair hair to greasy black and covered himself in soot to make him appear as a dock worker. Pluschow then stowed away on a Dutch steamer ship at Tilbury docks, talked his way past a policeman in Holland before travelling to Germany by train. Upon his return home he received a hero's welcome and was presented with the Iron Cross First Class.This extraordinary story is told in Gunther's own words for the first time in English.

  Show book

• 

  The Man in the Iron Mask -...

  Alexandre Dumas

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  To paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas père was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language—has minced no words—to describe violent scenes of violent times.In this, the eleventh of the series, Dumas switches away from his usual narrative style and gives us, instead, a detailed review--almost a bibliographic essay--on the various ideas and theories advanced by historians, speculative writers and critics on one of the enduring fascinations of French royal history: the case of The Man in the Iron Mask.Ever since the time of Louis XIV, the story has been told of a man mysteriously snatched out of the world and buried for life, not merely in a prison cell, but also in an mask of iron: an imprisonment designed to ensure that no one would ever know his name or even see his face. Dumas asks, who was the man in the iron mask? Why was he imprisoned? Why were such strange precautions taken, and why was he treated with such respect and care, given everything he asked for--except his freedom and his name?Dumas is very scrupulous about his sources, carefully citing the full bibliographic details, while also indulging his novelist's flair for the dramatic. This recording preserves all that, to give the listener the full air of authenticity Dumas so carefully manufactures.Enjoy!

  Show book

• 

  Casanova's Guide to Medicine -...

  Lisetta Lovett

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Forget the stereotype!  Giacomo Casanova's (1725-1798) reputation as libertine has sadly eclipsed his talents as scholar, linguist, prolific writer and manqué doctor. Fortunately for us, he wrote his memoirs at the end of his life on the advice of his doctor to control his propensity to depression. Although these often have been harvested for information on political, cultural and social aspects of his time, the insights they give about medical practice and the lived experiences of illness have been largely neglected.  This book addresses this deficiency through exploring in detail what Casanova wrote on a variety of conditions that include venereal disease and female complaints, duelling injuries, suicide, skin complaints and stroke and even piles. These descriptions provide alternately grim and amusing insights about public health measures, the doctor-patient relationship, medical etiquette and the dominant medical theories of the era. To help the reader understand the historical significance of the medical subjects covered, the author integrates throughout the book an extensive historical context drawn from contemporary sources of information and current history of medicine literature

  Show book

• 

  Take Back the Tray -...

  Joshna Maharaj

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

  A beloved chef takes on institutional food and sparks a revolution
  		 
  Good food generally doesn’t arrive on a tray: hospital food is famously ridiculed, chronic student hunger is deemed a rite of passage, and prison meals are considered part of the punishment. But Chef Joshna Maharaj knows that institutional kitchens have the ability to produce good, nourishing food, because she’s been making it happen over the past 14 years. She’s served meals to people who’d otherwise go hungry, baked fresh scones for maternity ward mothers, and dished out wholesome, scratch-made soups to stressed-out undergrads. She’s determined to bring health, humanity, and hospitality back to institutional food while also building sustainability, supporting the local economy, and reinvigorating the work of frontline staff.
  		 
  Take Back the Tray is part manifesto, part memoir from the trenches, and a blueprint for reclaiming control from corporations and brutal bottom lines. Maharaj reconnects food with health, wellness, education, and rehabilitation in a way that serves people, not just budgets, and proves change is possible with honest, sustained commitment on all levels, from government right down to the person sorting the trash. The need is clear, the time is now, and this revolution is delicious.

  Show book

• 

  Vedantic Stories & Meditations -...

  Sandeep Verma

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  We live in a world of commodities. Today's consumerist culture tells us that we are not enough and that true happiness comes from external objects. The problem with this message is that, no matter how much wealth we acquire, there is always something better. Even after you buy that new car or those new shoes, soon after your acquisition, the object losses its appeal. 
  We believe that happiness is somewhere outside and can be obtained through relationships, wealth, name and fame, and position in the world. Consequently, we spend most of our life in acquiring these external goals. We eat some delicious food, listen to music, party, travel the world, drink the most expensive vines and spend time with people. During such occasions, the mind feels fulfilled, but this fulfilment doesn't last. 
  Fulfilment is an easy concept on the surface, yet it’s so elusive. Where is this fulfilment? 
  The truth is, happiness and fulfilment don't come from the external world.  
  Vedanta philosophy, originating from the Vedas, the most ancient scriptures of India, teaches us that our fundamental nature is complete. We seek happiness outside because we don't think of ourselves as whole. We think of ourselves as needing to be SAVED. Vedanta teaches us We are never LOST. At worst, we are living in ignorance of our true nature. 
  Throughout ancient times, great spiritual masters have often conveyed profound spiritual truths through interesting stories. And they know our psychology - that we may not remember abstruse metaphysical truths - but everybody loves a nice story. In this course, we are going to learn the teachings of Vedanta through stories only. In each session, we will have a story followed by a Vedantic meditation. Whether you are new to Vedanta or you are familiar with it, there is something for everybody.

  Show book