Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  American Bulk - Essays on Excess

  Emily Mester

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  What if we explored our relationship to consumption with the same depth and feeling we use to tell stories of great loves and losses? 
   
   
   
  Americans are caught up in bulk. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a chain restaurant. In American Bulk, Emily Mester intertwines cultural critique and personal history to explore how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. With humor and sharp intellect, she reflects on the joys and anxieties of family Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get Mall Sad. In a nuanced examination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the unexpected liberation she finds there. Finally, she ventures to Storm Lake, Iowa, to reckon with her grandmother's abandoned hoard, excavating the dysfunction that lies at the heart of her family's obsession with stuff. American Bulk introduces listeners to a striking new literary talent from the American heartland, one who dares to ask us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.

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  Strange People I Have Known - …...

  Andy McSmith

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  "As well as being one of the leading political journalists of his generation, Andy McSmith's varied life has brought him into contact with a huge variety of people, high and low, whom he describes with an acute eye for character. His book Strange People I Have Known is a fast-paced and entertaining read that brings deep insight into British political life." – Bill Browder
  "A fascinating memoir which gives a revelatory insider's account of the biggest political names from the past few decades, interwoven with evocative reflections on the many colourful characters who have peppered McSmith's own life." – Pippa Crerar
  "An addictive memoir that fizzes with anecdotes. If you like top-level political gossip and insights written with panache, look no further." – Gary Gibbon
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  Westminster and Whitehall are secret worlds, hidden to most. But working as a lobby journalist, former Labour Party staffer Andy McSmith has had exclusive access to our top politicians for decades. Here, he shares his personal encounters with the great and the good of the British political landscape, revealing what they are really like behind the scenes.
  With witty and perceptive flair, he describes encounters such as flying to Tokyo with Margaret Thatcher, the last Prime Minister who would walk fearlessly into a room full of journalists, unprotected by special advisers; dining with Sir Edward Heath, a man who knew how to hold a grudge, in his home in Salisbury; observing Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as new MPs, sharing a cramped office in Parliament and collaborating like brothers; and working with Boris Johnson back when he had an ambition to be something more than just a journalist.
  Filled with vivid portraits of those at the heart of British politics over the past forty years, Strange People I Have Known is a memoir of a life well lived and an insider's account of the inner workings of government.

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  In Love with True Love - The...

  Christine Watkins

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  In this seemingly loveless world of ours, we might wonder if true love is attainable. Is it real, or is it perhaps a dancing illusion captured on Hollywood screens? And if this love dares to exist, does it satisfy as the poets say, or fade in our hearing like a passing whisper? The souls are few who have discovered these answers, and one of them is Nicolina, a feisty, flirtatious girl who fell in love with the most romantic man in all of post-war Germany. 
   
  Little did they imagine the places where love would take them. 
   
  This enthralling, real-life short story is a glimpse into the grand secrets of true love-secrets that remain a conundrum to most, but become life itself for a grateful few. These hidden treasures wait in hope to be discovered, resting in chambers of the Heart of Love. Through this little book, may you, like Nicolina, enter their mystery, and find life, too.

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  Our Vietnam Wars Volume 2 - As...

  William F. Brown

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  Want to know what Vietnam was really like? 
  From a Marine sniper in Hue, to a medevac dust-off pilot going into a hot LZ, Navy Corpsmen, A-6 pilots taking out bridges and SAM sites in North Vietnam, a nurse on the USS Repose, combat medics deep in the jungle, machine gunners in I-Corps, mechanics working on the rolling deck of a big carrier on Yankee Station, squad leaders on infantry sweeps in “the Arizona Territory,” truck convoys under fire, riverine patrol boats in the Delta, Coast Guard “Jolly Green” search and rescue helicopters pulling downed pilots from the jungle, tank platoons in an all-out armor assault, Loach pilots in hunter-killer teams, and many more -- from the Delta to the DMZ, this book puts you in their boots. 
  Some of us were drafted. Some enlisted. Some were true war heroes, but most were just trying to survive. As everyone “in-country” knew, Vietnam was all about luck, good or bad. If you were there, you understand. If you weren’t, grab a copy and start reading, anywhere in the book. The stories are like Doritos. Try a few and you won’t be able to stop. 
  Like any war, none of us who served had much if any control over our fates. We went where they told us to go, did what they told us to do, and over 58,200 of us paid the ultimate price. Now, 50 years later, the war continues to take its toll on many who did come home, with PTSD and Agent Orange induced diabetes, heart disease, neuropathy, leukemia, Hodgkin’s Disease, and many forms of cancer. As they say, “Vietnam is the gift that keeps on giving.” 
  This is the audio edition of Volume 2 of my popular 4-volume book series, Our Vietnam Wars. It was so titled because everyone who served there fought a different war depending on the year, our branch and unit, location, sex, race, and rank. This volume 60 Stories, 271 photographs you can't appreciate from just the audio book alone. The book has 4.6 Stars on 631 Amazon customer reviews.

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  Around The World in 80 Days

  Jules Verne

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  Around the World in 80 Days  is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872.
  A classic adventure story about the incredible journey of the gentleman Phileas Fogg and his servant-companion Passepartout. Phileas Fogg, who was a member of a respectable London club, had a bet with one of its members. The essence of the bet was to cross the globe in 80 days, that is, to start and end the journey in London at a certain time. Phileas Fogg made accurate calculations and was sure that traveling around the world in 80 days is a reality. However, fate intervened in his travels - Phileas Fogg is followed by Fix, who is mistakenly convinced that the crime that was committed in London on the eve of the departure of Mr. Fogg and Passepartout was the work of Phileas Fogg. But nothing will stop travelers if they are driven by honesty and sincere feelings. Thanks to this novel, you can not only witness an exciting journey, but also learn about the everyday life and specifics of people's lives at the end of the 19th century in different countries, as well as ways of moving people over long distances (some of them are no longer used by travelers).

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  A Dead Secret - From their pens...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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