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  Just Add Water - A Surfing...

  Clay Marzo, Robert Yehling

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  Clay Marzo has an almost preternatural gift with a surfboard. From his first moments underwater (he learned to swim at two months old) to his first ventures atop his father's surfboard as a toddler, it was obvious that Marzo's single-minded focus on all things surfing was unique. But not until late in his teens, when this surfing phenom was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, did the deeper reasons for his obsession-and his astonishing gift for surfing-become clear.Just Add Water is the remarkable story of Marzo's rise to the top of the pro surfing world-and the personal trials he overcame in making it there. Marzo endured a difficult childhood. He was a colicky baby who his mother found could be soothed only with water. Later, as he entered school, his undiagnosed Asperger's made it tough for him to relate to his peers and fit in, but his relationship with the wave was elemental. Marzo could always turn to surfing, the only place where he truly felt at peace.

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  For the Love of Physics - From...

  Warren Goldstein, Walter Lewin

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  “YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE” is a common refrain in the emails Walter Lewin receives daily from fans who have been enthralled by his world-famous video lectures about the wonders of physics. “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes,” wrote one such fan. When Lewin’s lectures were made available online, he became an instant YouTube celebrity, and The New York Times declared, “Walter Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits.” For more than thirty years as a beloved professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lewin honed his singular craft of making physics not only accessible but truly fun, whether putting his head in the path of a wrecking ball, supercharging himself with three hundred thousand volts of electricity, or demonstrating why the sky is blue and why clouds are white. Now, as Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Lewin takes readers on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. “I introduce people to their own world,” writes Lewin, “the world they live in and are familiar with but don’t approach like a physicist—yet.” Could it be true that we are shorter standing up than lying down? Why can we snorkel no deeper than about one foot below the surface? Why are the colors of a rainbow always in the same order, and would it be possible to put our hand out and touch one? Whether introducing why the air smells so fresh after a lightning storm, why we briefly lose (and gain) weight when we ride in an elevator, or what the big bang would have sounded like had anyone existed to hear it, Lewin never ceases to surprise and delight with the extraordinary ability of physics to answer even the most elusive questions. Recounting his own exciting discoveries as a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy—arriving at MIT right at the start of an astonishing revolution in astronomy—he also brings to life the power of physics to reach into the vastness of space and unveil exotic uncharted territories, from the marvels of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud to the unseeable depths of black holes. “For me,” Lewin writes, “physics is a way of seeing—the spectacular and the mundane, the immense and the minute—as a beautiful, thrillingly interwoven whole.” His wonderfully inventive and vivid ways of introducing us to the revelations of physics impart to us a new appreciation of the remarkable beauty and intricate harmonies of the forces that govern our lives.

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  The Kurds - my friends in the north

  John Cookson

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  A story of broken dreams, bloodshed and betrayal
  ‘The Kurd requires a beating one day and a sugar plum the next.’ British Government official 1921 
  
  'Saddam throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, “oh, he’s using gas!’’’ former President Donald Trump 2019 
  
  Delving into history and mixing eye-witness accounts with compelling anecdotes from his journalistic career, John Cookson examines the Kurds' eternal quest for independence. He tells of his encounters with Kurdish guerillas in their mountain hideouts and of his travels with Kurdish smugglers. He documents survivors' stories from Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign and reveals for the first time how Iraqi Kurdistan was saved from being overrun by murderous jihadis in the summer of 2014. 
        He also digs through secret archives to discover why Sir Winston Churchill and Middle East titans like T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell made a fateful decision to leave the Kurds landlocked and doomed to an eternity of conflict.

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  Fishing with Harry - A tale of...

  Tony Baws

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  Harry, an incorrigible, engaging and dapper biscuit salesman in his forties, ex-Army and the City, becomes the unlikely angling companion of young Tony, the love-struck, shy 19-year-old accountant who is courting his step-daughter.
  
  Throughout the 1960s, this unique fishing friendship is cemented via a series of largely nocturnal fishing jaunts across London, Essex then further afield, to ponds, gravel pits and rivers.
  
  As mods and rockers hit the scene, Harry and Tony set off at first on buses, then on a scooter and later, more luxuriously, in Tony's battered green Ford. With huge excitement and more than their share of mayhem and mishap, they cast their lines wherever fish are to be found (or not, as the case may be!)
  At times touching, at times bawdy, always amusing – this is a book not just for anglers but for anyone who enjoys a finely-told story.
  ** All royalties from sales of this book will be donated to the charity CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) **

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  Pinter in the Theatre

  Ian Smith

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  An exploration of Harold Pinter's work in the theatre - through interviews with the man himself and with actors and directors who worked with him.
  'Ian Smith paints a detailed picture of one of theatre's leading men in his collection of interviews, reviews and essays... a fascinating insight' - Observer
  Eight actors and directors who worked with Pinter in the theatre talk candidly about what it's like to appear in a Pinter play, to direct a Pinter play, to be directed by Pinter, to work alongside Pinter as an actor. The voices belong to directors Katie Mitchell and Sam Mendes, and to actors Barry Foster, Susan Engel, Roger Lloyd Pack, Roger Davidson, Douglas Hodge and Harry Burton.
  Before that come six interviews with Pinter himself, ranging from the earliest ever in 1960, when Pinter was 29, through the box-office successes of the seventies and the political plays of the eighties up to an extensive 1996 interview surveying the whole gamut of his work. Also included is an interview with Peter Hall, who directed the premieres of several of Pinter's best-known plays including The Homecoming and Old Times.

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  Foxe's Book of Martyrs Vol 1 A...

  William Byron Forbush

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  The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, is an English Protestant account of the persecutions of Protestants, many of whom had died for their beliefs within the decade immediately preceding its first publication. It was first published by John Day, in 1563. Lavishly illustrated with many woodcuts, it was the largest publishing project undertaken in Britain up to that time. Commonly known as, “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs”, the work’s full title begins with “Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church.” There were many subsequent editions, by Day, and by other editors down through the years. Foxe’s original work was enormous (the second edition filling two heavy folio volumes with a total of 2,300 pages, estimated to be twice as long as Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” This edition is much abridged from Foxe’s original.  (Summary from Wikipedia)

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