Other books that might interest you

• 

  The Case of the Married Woman -...

  Antonia Fraser

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Caroline Norton dazzled nineteenth-century society with her vivacity, her intelligence, her poetry, and in her role as an artist's muse. After her marriage in 1828 to the MP George Norton, she continued to attract friends and admirers to her salon in Westminster. Most prominent among her admirers was the widowed Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. 
   
   
   
  Racked with jealousy, George Norton took the Prime Minister to court, suing him for damages on account of his adultery with Caroline. A dramatic trial followed. Despite the unexpected and sensational result—acquittal—Norton was still able to legally deny Caroline access to her children. He also claimed her income as an author for himself, since the copyrights of a married woman belonged to her husband. 
   
   
   
  Yet Caroline refused to despair. Beset by the personal cruelties perpetrated by her husband and a society whose rules were set against her, she chose to fight. She channeled her energies in an area of much-needed reform: the rights of a married woman and specifically those of a mother. She campaigned tirelessly, achieving her first landmark victory with the Infant Custody Act of 1839. Provisions which are now taken for granted owe much to Caroline, who was determined to secure justice for women at all levels of society from the privileged to the dispossessed.

  Show book

• 

  Disequilibria - Meditations on...

  Robert Lunday

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Disequilibria: Meditations on Missingness is a hybrid memoir that recounts the 1982 disappearance of the author's stepfather, James Edward Lewis, a pilot and Vietnam veteran. Recounting his family's experiences in searching for answers, Lunday interrogates the broader cultural and conceptual responses to the phenomenon of missingness by connecting his stepfather's case to other true-life disappearances as well as those portrayed in fiction, poetry, and film. In doing so Disequilibria explores the transience in modern life, considering the military-dependent experience, the corrosive effects of war, and the struggle to find closure and comfort as time goes by without answers.

  Show book

• 

  The Camel's Back

  F Scott itzgerald

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Camel's Back - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald "Tales of the Jazz Age" (1922). When Perry Parkhurst decides that his long-time engagement to Betty Medill has gone on long enough, he presents her with a marriage license and an ultimatum: get married immediately or end the relationship all-together. But things don't go quite as well as Perry expected, and the two end up parting ways for good. Perry decides to drown his sorrows and soon ends up attending the same costume party as Betty, dressed in an elaborate camel costume.

  Show book

• 

  The Fortune Teller's Prophecy -...

  Lally Pia

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  When a military coup in Ghana leads to the abrupt closure of Lally Pia's medical school, she is stranded thousands of miles away from her family - and left with no educational prospects, no money, and a botched American Green Card. But a Sri Lankan priest told Lally's father that she will one day become a "Doctor of Doctors" - a laughable outcome, given her current predicament. 
  This multicultural roller coaster illustrates the power of self-determination as Lally takes on obstacle after obstacle - an abusive relationship, the welfare state and a gruesome job where she has to dismember human bodies - in order to fulfill her dreams. A searing examination of the immigrant experience. The Fortune Teller's Prophecy is a nail-biting, four-continent quest for ultimate triumph.

  Show book

• 

  The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

  A. J. Mackinnon

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A revitalised edition of this much-loved bestseller. 
   
  Truly hilarious books are rare. Even rarer are those based on real events. Join A.J. Mackinnon, your charming and eccentric guide, on an amazing voyage in a boat called Jack de Crow. 
   
  A couple of quiet weeks sailing the River Severn was the intention. Somehow things got out of hand – a year later I had reached Romania and was still going... 
   
  Equipped with his cheerful optimism and a pith helmet, this Australian Odysseus in a dinghy travels from the borders of North Wales to the Black Sea – 4,900 kilometres over salt and fresh water, under sail, at the oars, or at the end of a tow-rope – through twelve countries, 282 locks and numerous trials and adventures, including an encounter with Balkan pirates. Along the way he experiences the kindness of strangers, gets very lost, and perfects the art of slow travel. 
   
   ‘A marvellous adventure, and Mackinnon recounts it with humour and unflagging enthusiasm ... a clever and entirely engaging read’ Melbourne Times 
   
  ‘A great travel writer and more importantly a great traveller’ Sydney Morning Herald 
   
  ‘Not just an adventurer, but an artist, philosopher and keen observer of the world around him’ Canberra Times 
   
  ‘A wonderful idea for a book – a series of ever bolder improvisations ... undertaken in praise of the spirit of adventure’ Times Literary Supplement 
   
   ‘Mackinnon’s journey makes a lovely picaresque tale, one dotted with English literary references and wonderful descriptions of the English and European countryside’ Good Reading

  Show book

• 

  Idleness - A Philosophical Essay

  Brian O'Connor

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The first book to challenge modern philosophy’s case against idleness, revealing why the idle state is one of true freedomFor millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom, modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to denigrate idleness. In Idleness, the first book to challenge modern philosophy's portrayal of inactivity, Brian O'Connor argues that the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed--and that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of freedom.Idleness explores how some of the most influential modern philosophers drew a direct connection between making the most of our humanity and avoiding laziness. Idleness was dismissed as contrary to the need people have to become autonomous and make whole, integrated beings of themselves (Kant); to be useful (Kant and Hegel); to accept communal norms (Hegel); to contribute to the social good by working (Marx); and to avoid boredom (Schopenhauer and de Beauvoir). O'Connor throws doubt on all these arguments, presenting a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that draws on more productive ideas about idleness, from ancient Greece through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Schiller and Marcuse's thoughts about the importance of play, and recent critiques of the cult of work. A thought-provoking reconsideration of productivity for the twenty-first century, Idleness shows that, from now on, no theory of what it means to have a free mind can exclude idleness from the conversation.

  Show book