Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Du Mauriers Just as They Were

  Anne Hall

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  The Du Mauriers, Just As They Were tells the story of five generations of this remarkable family, beginning with Mathurin-Robert Busson, a master glassblower who immigrated to London in 1789, added the suffix 'Du Maurier' to his name, and so became a 'gentleman glassblower'. His three English-born children relocated to the continent, becoming respectively a doctor of philology in Hamburg; the governess to the daughters of a Portuguese statesman; and an aspiring inventor who married a daughter of the courtesan Mary Anne Clarke. This latter's son was George Du Maurier. He was born in Paris in 1834, then went to London to study chemistry and finally took up the beaux-arts in Paris, Antwerp and Düsseldorf. Later, he established himself in London as a beloved Punch cartoonist. In his last years, George Du Maurier wrote and illustrated three immensely popular semi-autobiographical novels. Of his children, the youngest Gerald Du Maurier became a prominent actor-manager, and Gerald's second daughter was the novelist Daphne Du Maurier.
  In the course of her career Daphne published four volumes of family history, culminating in the extensively-researched Glass-Blowers, which revealed her French forebear's aristocratic imposture for the first time. Daphne identified with her Victorian grandfather, sharing his love of France and deep interest in family history. However she puzzled over his first book, Peter Ibbetson, wondering why he had portrayed their ancestors as aristocrats. The reason is complicated, highly revealing, and would almost certainly have been a complete surprise to her.

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  Ambition Pragmatism and Party -...

  Scott Kaufman

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  Within eight turbulent months in 1974 Gerald Ford went from the United States House of Representatives, where he was the minority leader, to the White House as the country's first and only unelected president. His unprecedented rise to power, after Richard Nixon's equally unprecedented fall, has garnered the lion's share of scholarly attention devoted to America's thirty-eighth president. But Gerald Ford's (1913–2006) life and career in and out of Washington spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party captures for the first time the full scope of Ford's long and remarkable political life. 
  The man who emerges from these pages is keenly ambitious, determined to climb the political ladder in Washington, and loyal to his party but not a political ideologue. Drawing on interviews with family and congressional and administrative officials, presidential historian Scott Kaufman traces Ford's path from a Depression-era childhood through service in World War II to entry into Congress shortly after the Cold War began. He delves deeply into the workings of Congress and legislative–executive relations, offering insight into Ford's role as the House minority leader in a time of conservative insurgency in the Republican Party.

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  Gangbuster The - To Catch a...

  Peter Bleksley

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  'Four million quid. There it was, inches away from me on a hotel table. Not in conventional currency, but in the world's deadliest commodity. Heroin.'  As part of Scotland Yard's undercover team, it was Peter Bleksley's job to infiltrate some of the capital's most dangerous gangs and bring them down. For ten years, he went deeper into the criminal underworld than any cop had before him.  Meeting with dealers, gangland leaders and members of the IRA and the Mafia, he lived the life of the Great Pretender, constantly changing his identity to ensure his cover was never blown.  Whilst undeniably thrilling work at times, it came at a heavy price. The more successful he was at bringing criminals to justice, the longer the list of those who wanted revenge became. Even now, Peter looks over his shoulder in case someone should wish to act on an old threat.  In The Gangbuster, Bleksley draws us into the world of drugs, violence and covert operations he inhabited for so long in the pursuit of justice.  Now a renowned policing and crime expert seen on the BBC and as the Chief on Channel 4's Hunted, Peter Bleksley reputation still precedes him the world over.

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  Paper Trails - True Stories of...

  Pete Dexter

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  In the 1970s and '80s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces—with a new preface by the author—assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heartbreaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

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  Dead End Gene Pool - A Memoir

  Wendy Burden

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  For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy Burden's birth, the Burdens had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites listeners to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother. At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof mother, who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain-smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.

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  Hitmen for Hire - Exposing South...

  Mark Shaw

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  Hitmen for Hire takes the reader on a journey like no other, navigating a world of paid hitmen, informers, rogue policemen, criminal taxi bosses, gang leaders, and crooked politicians and businessmen. Criminologist Mark Shaw examines a society in which contract killings have become commonplace, looking at who arranges hits, where to find a hitman, and even what it is like to operate as a hitman – or woman.
  Since 1994, South Africa has seen a worrying increase in the commercialisation of murder – and has been rocked by several high-profile contract killings. Drawing on his research of over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders are used to exert a mafia-type control over the country's legal and illegal economic activity. Contracted assassinations, and the organised criminal activity behind them, contain sinister linkages with the upperworld, most visibly in relation to disputes over tenders and access to government resources. State security actors increasingly mediate relations between the under and upper worlds, with serious implications for the long-term success of the post-apartheid democratic project.

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