Other books that might interest you

• 

  Coin Street Chronicles -...

  Gwen Southgate

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Coin Street Chronicles is a memoir that paints a picture of Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, as seen though the eyes of one for whom it was the backdrop of her childhood. The story is set in and around Coin Street, on the south bank of the River Thames. The area is now a cultural showcase known as The South Bank, but was then a gritty, Cockney-like corner of London. Stories of its colorful characters are woven throughout the narrative as they cope first with the poverty of the Depression years and then with World War II and its aftermath in the 1940s. Evacuation during the war years entails many abrupt transitions and good-byes - some sad, some glad - and much settling in to new settings that run the gamut from a remote Dorset farm to a Welsh mining town. Even after the war, the author remains a quasi-evacuee for two more years, fleeing from a difficult, violence-prone stepfather in order to continue in school. The memoir ends on the day that she heads off to university, exulting in her escape from the limiting nature of working class culture; but appalled by the wide gulf that threatens to open up between her and her feisty mother whose pluck and determination has been largely responsible for that escape.An Author's Republic audio production.

  Show book

• 

  Scribbling the Cat - Travels...

  Alexandra Fuller

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger." Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war. With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller here recounts her friendship with K. K is, seemingly, a man of contradictions: tattooed, battle scarred, and weathered by farm work, he is a lion of a man, feral and bulletproof. Yet he is also a born-again Christian, given to weeping when he recollects his failed romantic life, and more than anything else welling up inside with memories of battle. For his war, like all wars, was a brutal one, marked by racial strife, jungle battles, unimaginable tortures, and the murdering of innocent civilians-and K, like all the veterans of the war, has blood on his hands. Driven by K's memories, Fuller and K decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way-by traveling from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. It is a strange journey into the past, one marked at once by somber reflections and odd humor and featuring characters such as Mapenga, a fellow veteran who lives with his pet lion on a little island in the middle of a lake and is known to cope with his personal demons by refusing to speak for days on end. What results from Fuller's journey is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured, and scrambled to survive during wartime and who now must attempt to live with their past and live past their sins. In these men, too, we get a glimpse of life in Africa, a land that besets its creatures with pests, plagues, and natural disasters, making the people there at once more hardened and more vulnerable than elsewhere.

  Show book

• 

  Molecules of Emotion - The...

  Candace B. Pert

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The bestselling and revolutionary book that serves as a “landmark in our understanding of the mind-body connection” (Deepak Chopra, MD).In her groundbreaking book Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert—an extraordinary neuroscientist who played a pivotal role in the discovery of the opiate receptor—provides startling and decisive answers to these and other challenging questions that scientists and philosophers have pondered for centuries.Pert’s pioneering research on how the chemicals inside our bodies form a dynamic information network, linking mind and body, is not only provocative, it is revolutionary. By establishing the biomolecular basis for our emotions and explaining these scientific developments in a clear and accessible way, Pert empowers us to understand ourselves, our feelings, and the connection between our minds and our bodies—or bodyminds—in ways we could never possibly have imagined before. From explaining the scientific basis of popular wisdom about phenomena such as "gut feelings" to making comprehensible recent breakthroughs in cancer and AIDS research, Pert provides us with an intellectual adventure of the highest order.Molecules of Emotion is a landmark work, full of insight and wisdom and possessing that rare power to change the way we see the world and ourselves.

  Show book

• 

  Confessions of a Wall Street...

  Jennifer Reingold, Dan Reingold

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “A well-documented, in-depth look at the Street that names heroes and villains and pulls no punches.” —The Boston Globe 
   
  Dan Reingold was a top analyst for fourteen years, chief competitor to Salomon Smith Barney’s Jack Grubman in the red-hot telecom sector. He was part of the Street and believed in it. But in this action-packed, highly personal memoir Reingold describes how his enthusiasm gave way to disgust as he learned how deeply corrupted Wall Street and much of corporate America had become during the roaring stock market bubble of the 1990s. 
   
  Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst provides a front-row seat at one of the most dramatic—and ultimately tragic—periods in financial history. Reingold recounts his introduction to a world of leaks and secret deal-making; his experiences with corporate fraud; and Wall Street’s alarming penchant for lavish spending and multimillion-dollar pay packages. He spars with arch rival Grubman; fends off intense pressures from bankers and corporate CEOs; and is wooed by Morgan Stanley’s John Mack and CSFB’s Frank Quattrone. He tells of confidential deals whispered about days before their official announcement, and recalls the moment he learned that WorldCom was massively cooking its books. And he reveals his shock at being an unwitting catalyst for a series of sexually explicit e-mails that would rock Wall Street; bring Grubman to his knees; and contribute to the stepping aside of Grubman’s boss, Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill. In addition, he shows how government investigators never got to the heart of the ethical and legal transgressions of the era, leaving investors—even sophisticated professionals—cheated.  
   
  Reingold’s stories range from outrageous to hilarious to simply absurd. But together they provide a sobering exposé of Wall Street: a jungle of greed and ego brimming with conflicts and inside information, and a business absurdly out of touch with the Main Street it claims to serve. 
   
  “Shows us that much of what propelled the meteoric rise of the stock market in the late nineties was self-interested, sometimes criminal, hot air . . . a riveting and revealing account.” —Michael K. Powell, former chairman, FCC

  Show book

• 

  Duncan Hines - How a Traveling...

  Louis Hatchett

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This delightful biography “offers conclusive proof that Hines was not only a real human being, but an American culinary hero” (The Weekly Standard).   Duncan Hines may be best known for the cake mixes, baked goods, and bread products that bear his name, but many people don’t know that he was a real person and not just a fictitious figure invented for the brand. America's pioneer restaurant critic, Hines discovered his passion while working as a traveling salesman during the 1920s and 1930s—a time when food standards were poorly enforced and food safety was a constant concern. He traveled across America discovering restaurants and offering his recommendations to readers in his bestselling compilation Adventures in Good Eating—and the success of this work and his subsequent publications led Hines to manufacture the extremely popular food products that we still enjoy today.   In this biography, Louis Hatchett explores the story of the man, from his humble beginnings in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to his lucrative licensing deal with Procter & Gamble. Following the successful debut of his restaurant guide, Hines published his first cookbook at age fifty-nine and followed it with The Dessert Book—culinary classics including recipes from establishments he visited on his travels, favorites handed down through his family for generations, and new dishes that contained unusual ingredients for the era. Many of the recipes served as inspiration for mixes that eventually became available under the Duncan Hines brand.   This is a comprehensive account of the life and legacy of a savvy businessman and an often-overlooked culinary pioneer whose love of good food led to his name becoming a grocery shelf favorite.

  Show book

• 

  Collected Prose

  James Elroy Flecker

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Best remembered for his poetry, James Elroy Flecker was also a playwright, novelist and prose writer. This collection of his idiosyncratic prose writings includes The Last Generation (a short science fiction story), short sketches, a dialogue, and several critical studies. - Summary by Phil Benson

  Show book