Weitere Bücher, die Sie mögen werden

• 

  Pearls

  William John Dakin

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The use of pearls as jewels and their recognition as objects of value date back into the far beyond when the histories of ancient peoples were transcribed upon papyrus.  It is very likely that pearls were amongst the earliest gems known to man, and this is not surprising when one considers that the earliest dwellers by the sea probably fed upon the shellfish which produce such objects.  This book was written by an Australian zoologist with a view to giving the average reader a summary of the most important facts about pearls, pearl fishing and pearl formation.  (from "Pearls")

  Zum Buch

• 

  50 Things About Us - What We...

  Mark Thomas

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  From self-deceptions on size, stature and space (clue: there’s more than enough for everyone if we lose the golf courses) to the living links between empire, slavery, money and power, this is Mark Thomas’ quest to remind us of the true and shared greatness of modern Britain. 
  Structured as a list of fifty crucial ‘Things’, and fresh from a lock-down spent interviewing hundreds of NHS workers for the Wellcome Collection permanent archive, this is Mark Thomas at his provocative, passionate best.

  Zum Buch

• 

  Same Ground - Chasing Family...

  Russell Wangersky

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “Read him.” — George Elliott Clarke, author of I & I and George and Rue
  		 
  An award-winning author goes looking for the meaning of family and belonging on a glorious wild-goose-chase road trip across middle America
  		 
  Wangersky’s great-great-grandfather crossed the continent in search of gold in 1849. William Castle Dodge was his name, and he was 22 years old. He wrote a diary of that eventful journey that comes into the author’s hands 160 years later. And typically, quixotically, Wangersky decides to follow Dodge’s westward trail across the great bulging middle of America, not in search of gold but something even less likely: that elusive thing called family.
  		 
  What ensues becomes this story, by turns hilarious and profound, about a very long trip — by car, in Wangersky’s case, and on mule and foot in Dodge’s. Interweaving his experiences on the road with Dodge’s diary, the author contemplates the human need to hunt for roots and meaning as he — and Dodge — encounter immigrants who risk everything to be somewhere else, while only glimpsing those who are there already and who want to hold onto their claim in the stream of human migration.
  		 
  Same Ground is a story about what time washes away and what persists — and what we might find, unexpectedly, if we go looking.

  Zum Buch

• 

  Where Crocodiles Roam - A...

  Hollie and Jamie Manuel

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  My goodness! How are you boys still alive? 
  Because survival is by co-ordination, good luck, respect and karma and ‘sometimes luck is with you, and sometimes not, but the important thing is to take the dare.’ David Brower 
  Where Kingsley Holgate explores Africa beneath an outrageous beard with a keg of rum by his side – 40 years his junior I decided to explore my Africa with naiveté, invincibility and the testosterone fueled charisma of boyhood. 
  Unprepared, untested, unperturbed – who said that an explorer needs to be tried and tested? 
  Taking six months from our boyhood lives to find adventure? That’s easy. Undertaking a Zambezi source-to-sea paddling expedition with no previous kayaking experience? That’s harder. And stupid. 
  Staying alive amongst crocodiles and hippos, rapids and whirlpools, sunstroke and dysentery – now that’s almost impossible ... or commendable if you can live through to the end of your own story. 
  Now throw in two marauding rhino and appendicitis and see if you would still predict survival and start packing for your own adventure. Did I worry that each day may be my last? Of course I did but in the end ‘the principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin the greater the adventure), a margin whose width and length may be determined by unknown factors but whose successful navigation is determined by the measure of the adventurers nerve and wits. It is always exhilarating to live by one’s nerves and toward the summit of one’s wits.’ Tom Robbins. Another Roadside Attraction

  Zum Buch

• 

  The Hidden Fires - A Cairngorms...

  Merryn Glover

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 
   
   
   
  Elemental, fierce, and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. 
   
   
   
  In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work. This is a journey separated by time but unified by space and purpose, a conversation between two women across nearly a century that explores how entering the life of a mountain can illuminate our own. 
   
   
   
  An Australian who grew up in the Himalayas, her early experiences of the Scottish hills and weather left her cold. But gradually acclimatizing and with an approach like Shepherd's, that is more mountain wandering than mountaineering, she discovers the spark that sets the hills and herself on fire. Through Glover's deepening encounter, the wild majesty and iridescence of the Cairngorms is revealed in this beautiful evocation of landscape, place, and identity.

  Zum Buch

• 

  Too Far on a Whim - The Limits...

  Tyler A. Pitrof

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In Too Far on a Whim, Tyler A. Pitrof presents a high-spirited revision of the US Navy's commitment to high-steam propulsion systems, the mainstay of its World War II fleets. Pitrof's research persuasively demonstrates that in its war against the Imperial Japanese Navy, the US Navy succeeded despite its high-steam propulsion systems rather than because of them. 
   
   
   
  War with an aggressive Japan and a resurgent Germany loomed in the dark days of the late 1930s. Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen Sr., head of the US Navy's Bureau of Engineering, advanced a radical vision: a new fleet based on high-steam propulsion, a novel technology that promised high speeds with smaller engines and better fuel efficiency. 
   
   
   
  The official record of high-steam technology's subsequent performance has relied heavily on Bowen's own memoir, in which he painted high-steam innovation in heroic colors. Pitrof's empirical review of primary sources such as maintenance records illuminates the opposite. 
   
   
   
  Pitrof provides an account that extends far beyond technology and into matters of naval hierarchies and bureaucracy, strategic theory, and ego. 
   
   
   
  To Far on a Whim is a landmark for those interested in naval history and technology.

  Zum Buch