Publisher: Cervantes Digital
This is a first hand account of the first successful expedition to the South Pole, written by the leader Roald Amundsen. It constructs the character of the expedition and provides insight into Amundsen's philosophy of exploration and his own professionalism, in the age of the amateur explorer.
This is a concise summary and analysis of A Brief History of Intelligence , by Max Bennett. It is not the original book and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Max Bennett. Ideal those seeking a quick and insightful overview. A Brief History of Intelligence explores the evolution of human intelligence, examining its development from early ancestors to modern-day humans. The book delves into the biological, psychological, and social factors that have shaped cognitive abilities, offering insights into how intelligence has been measured and understood throughout history. It provides a clear and engaging overview of the science behind human thought, decision-making, and problem-solving, while addressing the implications for the future of intelligence.Show book
‘I would get out of the car at every shopping centre and want to ask the stranger walking by with their trolley: “Why are you still shopping? Someone I love has died.”’ – Dela Gwala Death is a fact of life, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. This timely collection brings together a range of voices to offer reflections on death and dying, from individual losses to large scale catastrophes. Karin Schimke revisits her troubled relationship with her late father, a Second World War survivor ‘whose brain had been broken by violence’. Madeleine Fullard, the head of South Africa’s Missing Persons Task Team, draws us into the search for activists who were ‘disappeared’ or went missing in political circumstances between 1960 and 1994. Caine Prize winner Lidudumalingani remembers his childhood in a small village in the Eastern Cape, and how his mother always listened to death notices read over the radio as a way of bearing witness to the grief of strangers. The other contributors in this poignant and thought-provoking anthology turn their minds to subjects as varied as the ritual of washing the body of the deceased before burial, the ethics of killing small animals, and the extinction of humankind. In a time of relentless grief, Our Ghosts Were Once People reminds us that one of the small consolations of literature is that all sorrows can be borne.Show book
Taken to Europe as a slave, he found his way home and changed the course of American history American schoolchildren have long learned about Squanto, the welcoming Native who made the First Thanksgiving possible, but his story goes deeper than the holiday legend. Born in the Wampanoag-speaking town of Patuxet in the late 1500s, Squanto was kidnapped in 1614 by an English captain, who took him to Spain. From there, Englishmen brought him to London and Newfoundland before sending him home in 1619, when Squanto discovered that most of Patuxet had died in an epidemic. A year later, the Mayflower colonists arrived at his home and renamed it Plymouth. Prize-winning historian Andrew Lipman explores the mysteries that still surround Squanto: How did he escape bondage and return home? Why did he help the English after an Englishman enslaved him? Why did he threaten Plymouth's fragile peace with its neighbors? Was it true that he converted to Christianity on his deathbed? Drawing from a wide range of evidence and newly uncovered sources, Lipman reconstructs Squanto's upbringing, his transatlantic odyssey, his career as an interpreter, his surprising downfall, and his enigmatic death. The result is a fresh look at an epic life that ended right when many Americans think their story begins.Show book
A "hauntingly effective" surrealist travel memoir about the mysterious transformations that may lurk inside us all (Library Journal, starred review). Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that's out to consume him whole? With nods to Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, this surrealist debut memoir takes us into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there.Show book
In the 1960s and 70s, actor Steve McQueen was the king of cool, appearing in such classics as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and Bullitt. McQueen left the world at age 50, a film legend who went from abandoned child to glittering superstar to a haunted man. In My Husband, My Friend: A Memoir, Steve' s wife of more than 15 years, Neile, rode the dazzling Hollywood roller coaster with him. Anecdotally, she details the actor's private personality and his feelings about his career. She also shares an emotional journey of love and pain and reveals a Steve McQueen no one knew— his good side, his crazy side, his dark side, and the inner demons that drove him.Show book
Between 1930 and 1932, Henry Ford sent 450 of his Detroit employees plus their families to live in Gorky, Russia, to operate a new manufacturing facility. This is the true story of one of those families—Carl and Elisabeth Werner and their young daughter Margaret—and their terrifying life in Russia under brutal dictator Joseph Stalin. Margaret was seventeen when her father was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason. She and her mother were left to withstand the hardships of life under the oppressive Soviet state, an existence marked by poverty, starvation, and fear. Refusing to comply with the Socialist agenda, Margaret was ultimately sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Stalin's Gulag. Filth, malnutrition, and despair accompanied merciless physical labor. Yet in the midst of inhumane conditions came glimpses of hope and love as Margaret came to realize her dependence upon "the grace, favor, and protection of an unseen God." In all, it would be thirty long years before Margaret returned to kiss the ground of home. Of all the Americans who made this virtually unknown journey—ultimately spending years in Siberian death camps—Margaret Werner was the only woman who lived to tell about it. Written by her son, Karl Tobien, Dancing Under the Red Star is Margaret's unforgettable true story: an inspiring chronicle of faith, defiance, and personal triumph.Show book
