Other books that might interest you

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  How to Drink - A Classical Guide...

  Vincent Obsopoeus

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  A spirited new translation of a forgotten classic, shot through with timeless wisdom 
  Is there an art to drinking alcohol? Can drinking ever be a virtue? The Renaissance humanist and neoclassical poet Vincent Obsopoeus (ca. 1498–1539) thought so. In the winelands of sixteenth-century Germany, he witnessed the birth of a poisonous new culture of bingeing, hazing, peer pressure, and competitive drinking. Alarmed, and inspired by the Roman poet Ovid's Art of Love, he wrote The Art of Drinking (De Arte Bibendi) (1536), a how-to manual for drinking with pleasure and discrimination. In How to Drink, Michael Fontaine offers the first proper English translation of Obsopoeus's text, rendering his poetry into spirited, contemporary prose and uncorking a forgotten classic that will appeal to drinkers of all kinds and (legal) ages. 
  Arguing that moderation, not abstinence, is the key to lasting sobriety, and that drinking can be a virtue if it is done with rules and limits, Obsopoeus teaches us how to manage our drinking, how to win friends at social gatherings, and how to give a proper toast. But he also says that drinking to excess on occasion is okay—and he even tells us how to win drinking games, citing extensive personal experience.

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  Ancient Origins of Mesoamerica -...

  NORAH ROMNEY

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  Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and, to a smaller extent, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia in the Central Andes have deep-rooted roots in the subsoil of their pre-Columbian civilizations. The first chapters of the history of Latin America correspond to those who inhabited it before their first contact with Europeans. This is especially true in Mesoamerica. The objectives here are to show the development of the peoples and high civilizations of Mesoamerica before the establishment of the Mexica (Aztecs) in the Valley of Mexico (1325); second, to examine the key features of the political and socio-economic organization, and the artistic and intellectual achievements achieved during the period of rule of the Mexica (Aztecs) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and, finally, present a vision of the prevailing situation in Mesoamerica, on the eve of the European invasion (1519), between the solid continental masses of North and South America, Mesoamerica (that is, the area where it developed with High culture difficulties, which, at the time of contact with the Spaniards, reached an area of about 900,000 km2), has a varied isthmic character, with various geographical features, such as the gulfs of Tehuantepec and Fonseca, on the Pacific Ocean coast, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Honduras.

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  The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street...

  John Saumarez Smith

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  Collected mid-twentieth–century correspondence between the author of The Pursuit of Love and her former employer, the celebrated London bookseller. 
   
  Nancy Mitford was a brilliant personality, a remarkable novelist and a legendary letter writer. It is not widely known that she was also a bookseller. From 1942 to 1946 she worked in Heywood Hill’s famous shop in Curzon Street, and effectively ran it when the male staff were called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France, but she maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and the many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post-war Britain. Her letters to Heywood Hill advise on recent French titles that might appeal to him and his customers, gossip engagingly about life in Paris, and enquire anxiously about the reception of her own books, while seeking advice about new titles to read. In return Heywood kept her up to date with customers and their foibles, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London. Charming, witty, utterly irresistible, the correspondence gives brilliant insights into a world that has almost disappeared. 
   
  Praise for The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street 
   
  “This volume of letters between [Nancy Mitford], then living in Paris, and G. Heywood Hill (1907–1986) is like a glass of champagne, from a good year, at a quiet garden party. It’s a beautiful day, one is among friends—but not too many—and laughter reigns.” —The New Criterion

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  Tank Driver - With the 11th...

  J. Ted Hartman

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  A chronicle of one soldier’s life as a US army tank driver in Europe during World War II. 
   
  Tank Driver is the story of a young man’s combat initiation in World War II. Based on letters home, the sparse narrative has the immediacy of on-the-spot reporting. Ted Hartman was a teenager when he was sent overseas to drive a Sherman tank into combat to face the desperate German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hartman gives a riveting account of the shifting tides of battle and the final Allied breakout. He tells about the concentration camps, the spectacle of the defeated Germans, and the dramatic encounter with Russian soldiers in Austria that marked combat’s end. This is a vivid, personal account of some of the most dramatic fighting of World War II. 
   
  “[A] well-balanced, often moving look at one man’s war and every man’s war.” —World War II

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  Struggle and Suffrage in...

  Dee Gordon

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  While Southend-on-Sea, like many seaside towns, may not have been at the forefront of the struggle for suffrage and equal rights in the lives of women between 1850 and 1950, there are surprisingly famous names linked to the town and its women. Novelist Rebecca West, living in nearby Leigh-on-Sea during the First World War (and her lover, H.G. Wells) played a key role in the suffrage and feminist movements and in women’s entry into the scientific and literary professions. Princess Louise, a visitor to the town, was known to be a feminist, regardless of her position, and Mrs Margaret Kineton-Parkes (founder member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and involved in the Women’s Freedom League) gave a number of talks to the town’s female population. The most high profile of local residents was Mrs Rosa Sky, the one-time Treasurer of the Women’s Social and Political Union and an active member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, but others were quietly active behind the scenes.  This book is not about the distinguished and illustrious, it is about women from all classes, from all kinds of backgrounds, who entered the world of business, who rebelled against the traditional roles of mother, homemaker or domestic servant. It is about women struggling to come to terms with changes at home, in marriage, in education, in health care and in politics. It is the first to look at these issues as they impacted on a town whose population and visitors were growing in line with the expectations of its female population.

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  Nate's Triumph - Presuming...

  Nate Trainor

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  Nate Trainor, born with Joubert syndrome, could not communicate with words until he was twenty-one. Stuck in a system that prematurely labeled him "profoundly retarded," Nate shares his battles with the public school system to be included, his incredible efforts to prove his intelligence, and the breakthroughs that finally gifted him with words and a voice. His journey proves how one man at a vast disadvantage can prevail in a world that seems hostile or indifferent to him.

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