Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Dolly's Mixture - A Memoir of...

  Dorothy Cannell

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  The Guild's guest speaker told us of his great joy when, walking one day, he espied a lady who possessed an unusual knocker. He offered her £3 for this collector's item and she was thrilled to be able to unscrew it on the spot for him. He said he happily left a knockerless lady holding in her hand his three £1 notes. Did we think he had robbed the lady?
  It's the 1950's, and Dolly and her husband Chas are now Grocers and Provision Merchants. Owning a shop was a childhood dream of Dolly's, though it wouldn't have happened had Dolly's rice puddings been a little better. And it is at this relatively advanced age, amid the continuing adventures and misadventures of Dolly's eccentric and hilarious family, Dolly finds a best friend for the first time in her life.
  'You have to laugh with Dolly Scannell. Somehow that Cockney flow of funny tales shakes you up into laughter' Evening Standard

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  From Pole to Pole - Roald...

  Garth James Cameron

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  Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, ski and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on 12 May 1926 as the leader of the Amundsen- Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge. His involvement in aviation from 1909 to his death in 1928, has not been the subject of a detailed study until now.This book explores Amundsen's enthusiasm for flight from the moment he read about Bleriot's flight across the English Channel in an aeroplane on 25 July 1909. From that moment onwards he saw the potential of aircraft as vehicles to explore portions of the globe that remained unexplored in the first quarter of the 20th century. The man-lifting kites built by Einar Sem-Jacobsen took the life of his second in command, Ole Engelstad and were carried, but not used, during his 1910-1912 expedition to the South Pole. He saw aeroplanes flying in America and Germany in 1913 and in 1914 he was taught to fly by Sem-Jacobsen. He passed his flight test on a Farman Longhorn biplane on 1 June 1914 and in mid-1915 was issued with the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (Norge) aeroplane pilot's certificate number one. He bought a Farman biplane to take with him on an expedition to the North Polar Sea but the outbreak of the Great War stopped the Expedition and Amundsen gave his Farman to the Norwegian government. After the war he acquired a Curtiss Oriole biplane and two Junkers F13's then in 1925 he embarked on a flight, which he barely survived, to the North Pole in two Dornier Wal flying boats. 1926 brought long delayed success when the Norge flew to the Pole and on to Alaska. On 18 June 1928 he and five companions took off from Tromso on a search and rescue flight for the missing airship Italia and were never seen again.

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  Rivermouth - A Chronicle of...

  Alejandra Oliva

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  In this powerful and deeply felt polemic memoir, Alejandra Oliva, a Mexican-American translator and immigrant justice activist, offers a chronological document of her experience interpreting at the US-Mexico border, and of the people she has encountered along the way. Tracing her family's long and fluid relationship to the border, each generation born on opposite sides of the Rio Grande, and having worked on asylum cases since 2016, she knows all too well the gravity of taking someone's trauma and delivering it to the warped demands of the American immigration system.In Rivermouth, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different phases of immigration and looks at how language and opportunity move through each of them; from the river as the waterway that separates the US and Mexico, to the table as the place over which Oliva prepares asylum seekers for their Credible Fear Interviews, and finally, to the wall as the behemoth imposition that runs along America's southernmost border.As investigative and analytical as she is meditative and introspective, sharp as she is lyrical, and incisive as she is compassionate, in Rivermouth, Oliva argues for a better world while guiding us through the suffering that makes the fight necessary and the joy that makes it worth fighting for.

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  Siya Kolisi - Against All Odds

  Jeremy Daniel

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  When Siya Kolisi leads the Springboks out onto the field at the Rugby World Cup in September 2019, it will be the crowning glory of an incredible journey that began on the impoverished streets of Zwide, a township outside Port Elizabeth. As the first black South African to captain a Springbok rugby team, Kolisi's remarkable story is unique and deserves to be heard.
  His mother was a teenager when he was born. She left him in the care of his grandmother who brought him up until she died (in his arms) when Siya was twelve. He found love and acceptance playing junior rugby with the African Bombers club until his talent was spotted by the prestigious Grey High School who offered Siya a full scholarship that changed his life.
  He adapted well to the posh private school, but it was on the rugby field where he excelled. Siya was rewarded with a call-up the SA schools team and a contract to join the Western Province rugby union.
  Author Jeremy Daniel tracks Siya's journey from running wild on the streets of Zwide, through some crucial games in high school, into the Western Province rugby set-up and his fight to become Springbok captain. He goes deep inside the systems that identify junior talent, the characters who shaped his journey and the moments where he showed who he really was. Siya never forgot where he came from, and ultimately adopted his mother's other two children after she died when he was in high school.
  His life has not been without controversy, and his marriage to a fiery young white woman was a lightning rod for racial politics. But he is a shining beacon of hope for South Africa, he is massively popular and there is a huge appetite from the public to know about his life and to support him as Springbok captain.

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  Walt Whitman - A Life

  Justin Kaplan

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  The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author “gives us flesh and blood Whitman in this fine and sensitive biography” (The Boston Globe). 
   
  A moving, penetrating, sharply focused portrait of America’s greatest poet—his genius, his passions, his androgynous sensibility—an exuberant life entwined with the turbulent history of mid-nineteenth century America. In vivid detail, Justin Kaplan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, examines the mysterious selves of this enigmatic man whose bold voice of joy and sexual liberation embraced a growing nation . . . and exposes the quintessential Whitman, that perfect poet whose astonishing verse made “words sing, dance, kiss, copulate” for an entire world to hear. 
   
  “Whitman emerges from this biography alive and kicking—hugely human, enormously attractive.” —Newsweek 
   
   
   
  “Not only readable, but dramatic.” —The New York Times Book Review 
   
  “A buoyant, energizing book.” —The Nation 
   
  “Brilliant.” —Publishers Weekly

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  Fighting For A Future - Trapped...

  Shabnam Ighani

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  "Our guide would show us the lights in the distance and tell us we were nearly there. But I knew it was a lie. Those lights were at least a few days away."Shabnam Ighani's happy and carefree life shattered after the revolution of the Islamic Republic in 1979, bringing discrimination for her Bahá'i faith and being a female, a marriage she felt trapped in, and a desire only to escape and build a better future for her family. Determined, Shabnam fled Iran with only what she could carry and her two young sons.Follow Shabnam on her harrowing and triumphant escape from Iran, and discover the 10 self-made rules she used to build a new future for her family, free to mix into society with the freedom to fight for a better future.

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