Other books that might interest you

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  Radiolab: Mixtape - How The...

  Radiolab

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  Before the podcast and the smartphone, there was the cassette tape and the Walkman — two devices that, although not considered much today, were revolutionary. They were recordable, rewritable, spliceable, compact, and mobile. For the first time, they allowed you to move through the world and listen to a voice speaking only to you. These cassette tapes brought us together, pulled us apart, and forever changed how we say those three simple words, ‘I love you.’ In five episodes from around the world, Mixtape explores the impact the cassette had and continues to have today.

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  The Beautiful Struggle - A Memoir

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

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  An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence—and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack—and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free.Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present—to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction.With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers asmall and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in Black America and beyond.“Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley

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  Thailand - Culture Smart!: The...

  Roger Jones

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  For many outsiders, Thailand still conjures up images of the East at its most mysterious and enchanting—a view largely formed by Hollywood films like The King and I. Never conquered by foreigners, this proud and ancient land has been shaped by Buddhism, the monarchy, and the military. Today, it is a representative democracy with a populist female prime minister and is ranked among the tiger economies of Southeast Asia. It is a manufacturing powerhouse, the world’s largest rice exporter, and a tourist paradise that welcomes twenty-two million visitors a year to its beach resorts and its vibrant capital, Bangkok. Yet despite the veneer of Western modernity, the country and its people remain an enigma for many visitors, smiling and inscrutable. It conceals a unique system of personal values and attitudes, developed over centuries. You may find that Thais react to you in surprising and unexpected ways, coming as they do from a culture based on respect, status, self-control, non-confrontation, and harmony. They are also naturally generous and have a great love of fun. Culture Smart! Thailand describes how the Thai people view the world and themselves. It helps visitors become more culturally aware and better able to interact successfully with the locals. Thailand’s charm lies in being different, and visitors who make an effort to understand the differences will find their stay in “The Land of Smiles” a richly rewarding experience.

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  Britain's Most Notorious Hangmen

  Stephen Wade

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  A breathtaking history of Britain’s executioners—from the seventeenth court of King Charles II to the UK’s last official hangman of the twentieth century.   In 1663, Jack Ketch delighted in his profession and gained notoriety not only because of those he executed—dukes and lords—but for how often he botched the job. Centuries later, in 1965, after nearly six hundred trips to the gallows, Albert Pierrepoint retired as Britain’s longest-running executioner. Between them are three hundred years in a fascinating history of crime, and the “turn-off men” who handled the penalties—many of them criminals themselves, doing the grim work to save their own necks.  Britain’s Most Notorious Hangmen tells the stories of the men who plied their deadly trade at Tyburn tree or at the scaffolds in the prison yards across the country, including such notable “neck-stretchers” as Throttler Smith and the celebrated James Billington. But true-crime historian Stephen Wade explores the lives and crimes of many of the infamous killers that were hanged, as well. He also sheds light on the changing social norms of the country, and the moral dilemmas that arose for hangmen tasked with performing what was once considered the most crowd-pleasing free “entertainment” ever offered to the public.

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  A Chip Shop in Poznań - My...

  Ben Aitken

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  'One of the funniest books of the year' - Paul Ross, talkRADIO
  WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM.
  
  Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop.
  
  Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament.
  
  In 2016 Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. He flew to a place he'd never heard of and then accepted a job in a chip shop on the minimum wage.
  
  When he wasn't peeling potatoes he was on the road scratching the country's surface: he milked cows with a Eurosceptic farmer; missed the bus to Auschwitz; spent Christmas with complete strangers and went to Gdansk to learn how communism got the chop. By the year's end he had a better sense of what the Poles had turned their backs on - southern mountains, northern beaches, dumplings! - and an uncanny ability to bone cod.
  
  This is a candid, funny and offbeat tale of a year as an unlikely immigrant.

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  Guardian of the Republic - An...

  Allen West

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  Over the course of the past few decades, Allen West has had many titles bestowed on him, among them Lt. Colonel, U.S. Representative, "Dad," and Scourge of the Far Left. He rose from humble beginnings in Atlanta where his father instilled in him a code of conduct that would inform his life ever after. Throughout his years leading troops, raising a loving family, serving as Congressman in Florida's 22nd district, and emerging as one of the most authentic voices in conservative politics, West has never compromised the core values on which he was raised: family, faith, tradition, service, honor, fiscal responsibility, courage, freedom.Today, these values are under attack as never before, and as the far Left intensifies its assaults, few have been as vigorous as West in pushing back. He refuses to let up, calling out an Obama administration that cares more about big government than following the Constitution, so-called black "leaders" who sell out their communities in exchange for pats on the head, and a segment of the media that sees vocal black conservatives as threats to be silenced.Now more than ever, the American republic needs a guardian: a principled, informed conservative who understands where we came from, who can trace the philosophical roots of our faith and freedom, and who has a plan to get America back on track. West isn't afraid to speak truth to power, and in this book he'll share the experiences that shaped him and the beliefs he would die to defend.

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