Other books that might interest you

• 

  And Furthermore

  Judi Dench

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  I can hardly believe that it is more than half a century since I first stepped on to the stage of the Old Vic Theatre and into a way of life that has brought me the most rewarding professional relationships and friendships.  I cannot imagine now ever doing anything else with my life except acting..." —Judi Dench 
  From London's glittering West End to Broadway's bright lights, from her Academy Award-winning role as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love to "M" in the James Bond films, Judi Dench has treated audiences to some of the greatest performances of our time.  She made her professional acting debut in 1957 with England's Old Vic theatre company playing Ophelia in Hamlet, Katherine in Henry V (her New York debut), and then, Juliet. In 1961, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Anya in The Cherry Orchard with John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft. In 1968, she went beyond the classical stage to become a sensation as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, adding musical comedy to her repertoire. Over the years, Dench has given indelible performances in the classics as well as some of the greatest plays and musicals of the twentieth century including Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, Kaufman and Hart's The Royal Family and David Hare's Amy's View (for which she won the Tony Award).  Recently, she made a triumphant return to A Midsummer Night's Dream as Titania, a role she first played in 1962, now played as a theatre-besotted Queen Elizabeth I.  A Macmillan Audio production.

  Show book

• 

  God's Middle Finger - Into the...

  Richard Grant

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All, a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains.Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. The Mexican army occasionally goes in to burn marijuana and opium crops—the modern treasure of the Sierra Madre—but otherwise the government stays away. In its stead are the drug lords, who have made it one of the biggest drug-producing areas in the world.Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them—until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport.With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.

  Show book

• 

  Sobremesa - A Memoir of Food and...

  Josephine Caminos Oría

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The table is where we find our way. Together. 
   
  The communal family table bears witness to our lives. The way we approach each meal speaks volumes about who we are and what we are going through in that very moment. It’s where the spirits of those who left too soon can be conjured back to mind through taste and smell. Still, we underestimate its pull and often miss the soulful nourishment and magic that happens at sobremesa—the time spent talking after a meal—due to our increasingly busy lives. 
   
  In her coming-of-age adventure, Caminos Oría travels to her family’s homeland of Argentina in search of belonging—to family, to country, to a love, and ultimately, to oneself. Steeped in the lure of Latin culture, she pieces together her mom and abuela’s pasts, along with the nourishing dishes—delectably and spiritually—that formed their kitchen arsenal. But Caminos Oría’s travels from las pampas to the prairie aren't easy or conventional. She grapples with mystical encounters with the spirit world that lead her to discover a part of herself that, like sobremesa, had been lost in translation. 
   
  Just as she's ready to give up on love all together, Caminos Oría’s own heart surprises her by surrendering to a forbidden, transcontinental tryst with the Argentine man of her dreams. To stay together, she must make a difficult choice: return to the safe life she knows in the States or follow her heart and set a new table, one where she can be her full self, unapologetically, in full-fledged Spanglish. 
   
  Deliciously soulful and chock full of romance, this otherworldly, multigenerational story of a daughter's love and familial culinary legacy serves up, in 13 courses, a gastronomic meditation on the tables we set for ourselves throughout our lives—knowingly or not.

  Show book

• 

  Life of Christ

  Giuseppe Ricciotti

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Unabridged English Translation including 92 footnotes. 
  An instant best-seller in Italy, Vita di Gesù Cristo ("Life of Jesus Christ") was also highly praised by Catholic peer journals worldwide and has never since been out of print. The author, Giuseppe Ricciotti, was an archaeologist and Biblical scholar. After his seminary studies and completing mandatory military service, he was ordained a priest in 1913 and continued his studies at the University of Rome. During World War I he served as a military chaplain, volunteering for service at the front lines, for which he was later awarded a Silver Medal of Military Valor. After the war, he resumed his studies and graduated in 1919 with a degree in Biblical Studies. During World War II, he took in many refugees at the congregation's Motherhouse the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains. 
  Excerpt from the Author's Preface:  
  I have studied the ancient fact and not the modem theory, the solidity of the documents and not the flimsiness of any interpretation presently the fashion. The first vague notion of writing this book came to me many years ago in extraordinary circumstances. I had been carried to a field hospital set up in a wood of fir trees in a valley among the Alps. For some time, I hovered between life and death. And awaiting my fate, it suddenly came to me that if I should live, I might write a life of Christ; his Gospel, in fact, was on the straw mattress beside me. The thought never left me; it became a kind of spiritual necessity. I have studied the ancient fact and not the modem theory, the solidity of the documents and not the flimsiness of any interpretations presently the fashion. I have even dared to imitate the famous "dispassionateness” of the canonical Evangelists, who have neither an exclamation of joy when Jesus is born nor a word of lament when he dies. It has been my intention, then, to write a critical work.

  Show book

• 

  Naked at Lunch - A Reluctant...

  Mark Haskell Smith

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “A delightful and informative look at nudism throughout history and around the world.” —The Seattle Times   People have been getting naked in public for reasons other than sex for centuries. But as Mark Haskell Smith reveals, being a nudist is more complicated than simply dropping trou. “Nonsexual social nudism,” as it’s called, rose to prominence in the late nineteenth century. Intellectuals, outcasts, and health nuts from Victorian England and colonial India to Belle Époque France and Gilded Age Manhattan disrobed and wrote manifestos about the joys of going clothing-free. From stories of ancient Greek athletes slathered in olive oil to the millions of Germans who fled the cities for a naked frolic during the Weimar Republic to American soldiers given “naturist” magazines by the Pentagon in the interest of preventing sexually transmitted diseases, this book uncovers nudism’s amusing and provocative past.   Coated in multiple layers of high SPF sunblock, Haskell Smith publicly disrobes for the first time in Palm Springs; observes the culture of family nudism in a clothing-free Spanish town; and travels to the largest nudist resort in the world, a hedonist’s paradise in the south of France. He reports on San Francisco’s controversial ban on public nudity, participates in a week of naked hiking in the Austrian Alps, and caps off his adventures with a week on a Caribbean cruise known as the Big Nude Boat.   Equal parts cultural history and gonzo participatory journalism, Naked at Lunch is “an absolute hoot” (Los Angeles Magazine) and “a total joy” (Meghan Daum).   “Smith puts on his reporter’s hat and takes off everything else as he explores the history and sociology of nudism.” —Los Angeles Times

  Show book

• 

  Libyan Sands - Travel in a Dead...

  R.A. Bagnold

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In the 1920s and 30s, a band of British officers stationed in Egypt began to explore the Western Desert which straddles the borders with Libya and the Sudan. Adapting a series of Model T Fords, Bagnold and his colleagues set out across territory hitherto traversed only by camel caravans. They mapped new routes across 'impassable' sand seas, in 'regions untrodden by man since the Stone Age'. They also uncovered inner strengths, an awed respect for the stern and beautiful environment and a tender relationship with the machines upon which their lives depended. Their knowledge went on to play a crucial part in the North African campaign during the Second World War. For these men formed the nucleus of the celebrated LRDG, the Long Range Desert Group, and the SAS. It is the quiet heroism of such men that is celebrated in Michael Ondaatje's triumphant novel, The English Patient.

  Show book