Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Kelly - More Than My Share of It...

  Clarence L "Kelly" Johnson,...

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  Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson led the design of such crucial aircraft as the P-38 and Constellation, but he will be more remembered for the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. His extraordinary leadership of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" cemented his reputation as a legendary figure in American aerospace management.

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  Ronald Reagan and Margaret...

  Nicholas Wapshott

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  It is well known that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close allies and kindred political spirits.  During their eight overlapping years in office, the U.S. president and the U.K. prime minister worked together to promote lower taxes, deregulation, free trade, and an aggressive stance against the Soviet Union.But according to Nicholas Wapshott, the Reagan/Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Drawing on interviews with those closest to them, as well as on hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, Wapshott depicts a more complex, personal, and sometimes argumentative relationship than has previously been revealed.On the surface they had little in common, in either background or personality. Reagan, the son of the town drunk, used his genial charm to win over his enemies and always focused on the big picture rather than details. Thatcher, the daughter of a strict, middle-class shopkeeper, was a hard worker and master of details who would rather be respected than liked.Yet from their very first meeting in 1975, they recognized each other as political soulmates, committed not just to conservative principles but to getting things done. Over the years, they discussed and debated strategies, took strength from each other, celebrated each other's triumphs, and commiserated with each other's failures. Wapshott shines new light on this unique friendship and how it changed the world.

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  The Haldanes of Gleneagles - A...

  Neil Stacy

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  “The story of a remarkable Scottish family set against the great sweep of Scotland’s history . . . [a] remarkable piece of research” (Magnus Linklater, former Scottish editor of The Times).   The Haldanes have been in Scotland for over eight hundred years, and their story illustrates many of the defining themes of Scotland’s history. Haldanes played significant roles in the Bruce war of independence, the political upheavals which accompanied the establishment of the Stewart dynasty, the religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Darien Scheme and the Act of Union, the Jacobite rebellions, the development of the East India Company, and in the theological controversies of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, Haldanes are still to be found in the public eye with some influence on matters of national significance.   In this book, Neil Stacy follows the fortunes of the family, highlighting the extraordinary contributions they have made in so many areas, as well as uncovering some of the more colorful episodes in the family’s history, such as long-buried secrets of romance in the teeth of parental opposition, a military career threatened by a youthful liaison with a blackmailing barmaid, and an attempt to run a temperance hotel in the western Highlands which ended in high farce.   “For producing so many individuals of unusual distinction there can be few families to rival the Haldanes of Gleneagles. Neil Stacy does them proud, he relates their 900-year saga with clarity and wit.” —John Keay, author of India: A History   “I had expected to be intrigued and entertained by this comprehensive history of the Haldanes of Gleneagles; and I was, abundantly.” —Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh

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  Missed Translations - Meeting...

  Sopan Deb

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  A bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian. 
  Approaching his 30 birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history. Sure, Deb knew the facts: his parents, both Indian, separately immigrated to North America in the 1960s and 1970s. They were brought together in a volatile and ultimately doomed arranged marriage and raised a family in suburban New Jersey before his father returned to India alone. 
  But Deb had never learned who his parents were as individuals—their ages, how many siblings they had, what they were like as children, what their favorite movies were. Theirs was an ostensibly nuclear family without any of the familial bonds. Coming of age in a mostly white suburban town, Deb’s alienation led him to seek separation from his family and his culture, longing for the tight-knit home environment of his white friends. His desire wasn’t rooted in racism or oppression; it was born of envy and desire—for white moms who made after-school snacks and asked his friends about the girls they liked and the teachers they didn’t. Deb yearned for the same. 
  Deb’s experiences as one of the few minorities covering the Trump campaign, and subsequently as a stand up comedian, propelled him on a dramatic journey to India to see his father—the first step in a life altering journey to bridge the emotional distance separating him from those whose DNA he shared. Deb had to learn to connect with this man he recognized yet did not know—and eventually breach the silence separating him from his mother. As it beautifully and poignantly chronicles Deb’s odyssey, Missed Translations raises questions essential to us all: Is it ever too late to pick up the pieces and offer forgiveness? How do we build bridges where there was nothing before—and what happens to us, to our past and our future, if we don't?   
  Missed Translations is a powerful memoir that explores the complexities of family relationships and cultural identity. 
  Through his journey to connect with his Indian heritage and reconcile with his parents, Sopan Deb offers a poignant reflection on the importance of forgiveness and the transformative power of love. 
  HarperCollins 2024

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  Enemies of the State - The Cato...

  M.J. Trow

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  On 1 May 1820, outside Newgate Prison, in front of a dense crowd, five of the Cato Street conspirators—Arthur Thistlewood, William Davidson, James Ings, Richard Tidd and John Brunt—were hanged for high treason. Then they were decapitated in the last brutal act of a murderous conspiracy that aimed to assassinate Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his cabinet and destroy his government. The Cato Street conspirators matched the Gunpowder plotters in their daring—and in their fate—but their dark, radical intrigue hasnt received the attention it deserves. M.J. Trow, in this gripping fast-moving account of this notorious but neglected episode in British history, reconstructs the case in vivid detail and sets it in the wider context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

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  The Lives of Robert Ryan

  J R Jones

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  An “engrossing new biography” of the actor famed for his menacing onscreen persona—and his offscreen work for peace and civil rights (Film Quarterly).  The Lives of Robert Ryan is an in-depth look at the gifted, complex, intensely private man Martin Scorsese called “one of the greatest actors in the history of American film.” The son of a Chicago construction executive with strong ties to the Democratic machine, Ryan became a star after World War II on the strength of his menacing performance as an anti-Semitic murderer in the film noir Crossfire. Over the next quarter century, he created a gallery of brooding, neurotic, and violent characters in such movies as Bad Day at Black Rock, Billy Budd, The Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch. His riveting performances expose the darkest impulses of the American psyche during the Cold War.   At the same time, Ryan’s marriage to a liberal Quaker and his own conscience launched him into a tireless career of peace and civil rights activism that stood in direct contrast to his screen persona. Drawing on unpublished writings and revealing interviews, film critic J.R. Jones deftly explores the many contradictory facets of Robert Ryan’s public and private lives, and how these lives intertwined in one of the most compelling actors of a generation.   “Engaging . . . Jones describes a complex man who grappled publicly with the world’s demons and privately with his own, among them alcohol and depression.” —Associated Press   “Jones has done a superb job . . . A masterly biography.” —Library Journal  Includes photographs

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