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Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography Of Gregor Townsend
by Gregor TownsendGregor Townsend is one of rugby’s true greats. The most capped Scotland international of all time, a captain of his country and a winning British Lions tourist, Townsend’s time in the game has spanned continents, cultures and the amateur and professional eras. Always worth the admission money, his own story provides a unique perspective on rugby.
Tears at Bedtime
by Andrew Crofts Tom WilsonAt just six years old Tom Wilson fell prey to a predator of the worst sort. David Murphy was supposed to be his carer, instead he lifted his victims from their beds in the dead of night, and Tom was powerless to stop it.Tom endured years of horrific abuse which led to years of silence and self-torture. He grew up to be a troubled man, stumbling through care homes, schools, borstal and eventually prison. The damage that was done to him in those early years had destroyed his life.Then, one day, Tom read a newspaper article which unlocked the terrible memories he'd kept hidden for over forty tormented years. And a painful battle for justice began...
Tête-à-Tête: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean-Paul Sartre
by Hazel RowleyThey are one of the world's legendary couples. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre - those passionate, free-thinking Existentialist philosopher-writers - had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Hazel Rowley portrays them up close: their romantic entanglements, their Parisian café society circle, their discussions of each other's work. Theirs is a great story - and a great story is precisely what they most wanted their lives to be.
Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred
by Mark GevisserWhat happens to a dream deferred? This question, from one of Thabo Mbeki's favourite poems by Langston Hughes, provides the thread for this magisterial biography of the second president of a democratic South Africa. In the long shadow of Nelson Mandela, Mbeki attempted to forge an identity for himself as the symbol of modern Africa. Mark Gevisser brings to life the voices and places that made Thabo Mbeki: the frontier of the Eastern Cape; 'Swinging' Britain and neo-Stalinist Moscow in the 1960s; the fraught world of African exile; the confusion of the transition. He examines the meaning of home and exile; of fatherhood and family. He tells the story of South Africa's black elite over a turbulent century - from 'black Englishman' to revolutionaries to heads of state - and Mbeki's own transition from doctrinaire communism to economic liberalism. Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred is a work of deep scholarship and a gripping, highly readable story. By tracing the path of Mbeki's life, it sheds new light on his political personality and provides unprecedented insight into the dramatic role he has played in South African history.
"They Say": Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race (New Narratives in American History)
by James West DavidsonBetween 1880 and 1930, Southern mobs hanged, burned, and otherwise tortured to death at least 3,300 African Americans. And yet the rest of the nation largely ignored the horror of lynching or took it for granted, until a young schoolteacher from Tennessee raised her voice. Her name was Ida B. Wells. In "They Say," historian James West Davidson recounts the first thirty years of this passionate woman's life--as well as the story of the great struggle over the meaning of race in post-emancipation America. Davidson captures the breathtaking, often chaotic changes that swept the South as Wells grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi: the spread of education among the free blacks, the rise of political activism, the bitter struggles for equality in the face of entrenched social custom. As Wells came of age she moved to bustling Memphis, eager to worship at the city's many churches (black and white), to take elocution lessons and perform Shakespeare at evening soirées, to court and spark with the young men taken by her beauty. But Wells' quest for fulfillment was thwarted as whites increasingly used race as a barrier separating African Americans from mainstream America. Davidson traces the crosscurrents of these cultural conflicts through Ida Wells' forceful personality. When a conductor threw her off a train for not retreating to the segregated car, she sued the railroad--and won. When she protested conditions in the segregated Memphis schools, she was fired--and took up full-time journalism. And in 1892, when an explosive lynching rocked Memphis, she embarked full-blown on the career for which she is now remembered, as an outspoken writer and lecturer against lynching. Richly researched and deftly written, "They Say" offers a gripping portrait of the young Ida B. Wells, shedding light not only on how one black American defined her own aspirations and her people's freedom, but also on the changing meaning of race in America.
Thin
by Grace BowmanBright, popular, pretty and successful, Grace Bowman had the world at her feet. So what drove her to starve herself nearly to death at the age of 18? And what, more importantly, made her stop? A grippingly honest account of life with anorexia nervosa, A Shape of My Own is Grace's hearbreaking, shocking and, finally, inspirational memoir. An extraordinary story, it is also a common one - is there a woman in the western world who has a normal relationship with food? A compulsive read, essential for anyone hoping to understand more about eating disorders and overcoming addiction.
Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself
by Alan Alda'The message is consistent: it's not what you do in life, but how you do it. Notice everything. Always be open to new ideas, new experiences. Alda is chatty, easygoing and humble ... His words of inspiration would be a perfect gift.' Publishers Weekly Acclaimed actor and internationally bestselling author Alan Alda has written a shrewd and funny account of some impossible questions he's asked himself over the years: what do I value? What, exactly, is the good life? (And what does that even mean?) Here, Alda listens in on things he's heard himself saying at critical points in his life - from the turbulence of the 60s, to his first Broadway show, to the birth of his children, and to the ache of September 11. He notices that 'doorways are where the truth is told', and wonders what one thing - art, activism, family, money, fame - could lead to a 'life of meaning'. In a book that is candid, wise and as questioning as it is incisive, Alda amuses and moves us with his uniquely witty meditations on questions great and small.
This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor
by Susan Wicklund Alan KesselheimA brave account of the social and political forces that threaten a woman's right to choose, this emotionally affecting memoir from a doctor on the front lines of the abortion debate reveals what's really at stake in the Supreme CourtIn America the reproductive justice debate is reaching a new pitch, with the Supreme Court weighted against women's choice and state legislatures passing bills to essentially outlaw the practice of abortion. With This Common Secret, Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her twenty-year career in the vanguard of the abortion war. Growing up in working-class rural Wisconsin, Susan made the painful decision to have an abortion at a young age. It was not until she became a doctor that she realized how many women shared her ordeal of an unwanted pregnancy...and how hidden this common experience remains.Now, in this raw and riveting true story, Susan and the patients she's treated share the complex, anguished, and empowering emotions that drove their own choices. Hers is a calling that means sleeping on planes and commuting between clinics in different states--and that requires her to wear a bulletproof vest and to carry a .38 caliber revolver. This Common Secret reveals the truth about the reproductive health clinics that anti-abortion activists mischaracterize as damaging and unsafe. This intimate memoir explains how social stigma and restrictive legislation can isolate women who are facing difficult personal choices--and how we as a nation can, and must, support them.
This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor
by Susan Wicklund Alan KesselheimA brave account of the social and political forces that threaten a woman's right to choose, this emotionally affecting memoir from a doctor on the front lines of the abortion debate reveals what's really at stake in the Supreme Court In America the reproductive justice debate is reaching a new pitch, with the Supreme Court weighted against women's choice and state legislatures passing bills to essentially outlaw the practice of abortion. With This Common Secret, Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her twenty-year career in the vanguard of the abortion war. Growing up in working-class rural Wisconsin, Susan made the painful decision to have an abortion at a young age. It was not until she became a doctor that she realized how many women shared her ordeal of an unwanted pregnancy. . . and how hidden this common experience remains. Now, in this raw and riveting true story, Susan and the patients she's treated share the complex, anguished, and empowering emotions that drove their own choices. Hers is a calling that means sleeping on planes and commuting between clinics in different states -- and that requires her to wear a bulletproof vest and to carry a .38 caliber revolver. This Common Secret reveals the truth about the reproductive health clinics that anti-abortion activists mischaracterize as damaging and unsafe. This intimate memoir explains how social stigma and restrictive legislation can isolate women who are facing difficult personal choices -- and how we as a nation can, and must, support them.
Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by Claire TomalinThomas Hardy is the acclaimed biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin'An extraordinary story, beautifully told. Tomalin is the most empathetic of biographers' Craig Brown, Mail on SundayParadox ruled Thomas Hardy's life. His birth was almost his death; he became one of the great Victorian novelists and reinvented himself as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets; he was an unhappy husband and a desolate widower; he wrote bitter attacks on the English class system yet prized the friendship of aristocrats.In the hands of Whitbread Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin, author of the bestselling books Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman, Thomas Hardy the novelist, poet, neglectful husband and mourning lover all come vividly alive. 'Another triumph for a biographer who goes from strength to strength' Melvyn Bragg, Guardian, Books of the Year'Tomalin provides an object lesson in how to write a life' Economist'A moving story, and Tomalin tells it vividly, with as great a fund of sympathy and sense, as can be imagined' Daily Telegraph'Skilful and absorbing, admirable. The most compelling of life stories' Daily Telegraph'Hardy emerges as a man full of spirit and gaiety' Sunday TimesClaire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography (BOOKS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD #6)
by Christopher Hitchens'Christopher Hitchens... at his characteristically incisive best.' --The TimesThomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the uprising of the French people, Paine's text is a passionate defence of man's inalienable rights.In Rights of Man Paine argues against monarchy and outlines the elements of a successful republic, including public education, pensions and relief of the poor and unemployed, all financed by income tax. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned and suppressed but here the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. Above all, Hitchens demonstrates how Thomas Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic, whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us: the United States of America.
The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir
by Lucy LumAn intense and emotive memoir of one girl’s difficult family upbringing in a Singaporean Chinese family during the Second World War.
Through The Children's Gate: A Home in New York
by Adam GopnikOn every page of this delicious book you will meet characters and situations that tell you this could only be New York. The parents who are determined to get their children literally to fly at the school production of Peter Pan - the Cambodian cashier at the local deli who is more Jewish than Gopnik's grandfather - his gloriously peculiar analyst who argues that a name can be damaging to the human psyche, saying Adam's name is very ugly - the birder who takes Adam to see the huge flock of feral parrots that have taken over Flatbush. No one knows how they got there or how they survive the brutal winters, but they do. And flourish on it. 'These birds are so bold. They are real New Yorkers. They have so much attitude'.Through the Children's Gate is written with Gopnik's signature mix of mind and heart, elegantly and exultantly alert to the minute miracles that bring a place to life.
Thunderstruck
by Erik LarsonIn 1910, Edwardian England was scandalized by a murder. It seems mild-mannered American Hawley Crippen had killed his wife, buried her remains in the cellar of their North London home and then gone on the run with his young mistress, his secretary Ethel Le Neve. A Scotland Yard inspector, already famous for his part in the Ripper investigation, discovered the murder and launched an international hunt for Crippen that climaxed in a trans-Atlantic chase between two ocean liners. The chase itself was novel, but what captured the imagination was the role played by a new and little understood technology: the wireless. Thanks to its inventor Marconi's obsessive fight to perfect his machine, the world was able to learn of events occurring in the middle of the Atlantic as they unfolded - something previously unthinkable.Commentators of the time all agreed that if not for Marconi, Crippen would have escaped. But Marconi had struggled to gain acceptance for his invention (some viewed it as a supernatural device, while distrust of foreigners remained prevalent in England and America). It was the Crippen case that helped convince the world of the potential of Marconi's miracle technology, so accelerating the revolution that eventually produced the modern means of communication we take for granted today.With its cast of captivating characters, Thunderstruck is Erik Larson doing what he does brilliantly well: bringing together seemingly disparate yet inextricably linked lives to paint a fascinating and exciting portrait of an extraordinary age of cultural, social and technological change while evoking the darker side of human nature.
The Times Great Victorian Lives
by General Editor: Ian Brunskill Edited By Professor Andrew SandersObituaries of the most influential Victorians as profiled by The Times, including Dickens, Darwin, Ruskin, Peel, WG Grace and Florence Nightingale.
Title Deeds
by Liza CampbellLiza Campbell was the last child to be born at Cawdor Castle, as featured in Macbeth. Her father Hugh, the 25th Thane of Cawdor, inherited good looks,wealth, an ancient title, three stately homes and 100,000 acres of land. But increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh turned to drink, drugs, and extramarital affairs. Until the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless profligacy, abuse and terrifying domestic violence, leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years.Title Deeds is a dark yet funny, contemporary fairy story about growing up in an old family where ancient curses and grisly past events are matched by the turmoil of a confusing and frightening present. Liza Campbell shows how even enormous wealth and privilege can hide unspoken abuse and misery: and what it is like to watch your father destroy himself and everything he holds dear.
Tommy Cooper: The Definitive Biography Of A Comedy Legend
by John FisherThe first ever intimate portrait of Britain’s best-loved, but little known, comedy entertainer. Fully authorised, and written by Cooper’s friend and colleague John Fisher.
Tommy Turnbull: A Miner's Life
by Joseph RobinsonWhen Tommy Turnbull was born, a coalminer's wage in Britain had hardly altered in a hundred years and, little though it was, it was never long before the money found its way back to where it came from. The house the miner and his family lived in, the shop they bought their groceries from and the pub he had his gill in, were often owned by his employer, the Coalowner. But really it wasn't a wage at all. It was merely the juggling of payments and and fines by the Coal Company. For those who worked in the pits it was a story of unending struggle for decent wages, shorter hours, job security, decent conditions and safety underground. Throughout the period of the book there were lock-outs, strikes, police harassment, arrests and imprisonment. This story, seen through the eyes of one miner and his family, gives a far more vivid account of what life down the pit meant than the dry statistics and cold factual accounts that are fund in some of the official histories of the industry.
Tommy’s Honour: The Extraordinary Story Of Golf's Founding Father And Son
by Kevin CookThe definitive account of golf’s founding father and son, Old and Young Tom Morris. For the first time, the two will be portrayed as men of flesh and blood – heroic but also ambitious, loving but sometimes confused and angry. Two men from one household, with ambitions that made them devoted partners as well as ardent foes.
Tony Visconti: Bowie, Bolan And The Brooklyn Boy
by Tony ViscontiA name synonymous with ground-breaking music, Tony Visconti has worked with the most dynamic and influential names in pop, from T.Rex and Iggy Pop to David Bowie and U2. This is the compelling life story of the man who helped shape music history, and gives a unique, first-hand insight into life in London during the late 1960s and '70s.
Too Close To The Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
by Sara WheelerConservationist, scholar, soldier, white hunter and fabled lover - Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance. After a dazzling career at Eton and Oxford, he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa - still then the land of the pioneer. Sara Wheeler reveals the truth behind his love affairs with the glamorous aviatrix Beryl Markham, and - famously - with Karen Blixen, a romance immortalised in her memoir Out of Africa. 'No one who ever met him', his Times obituary concluded, 'whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell'.
Trouble in My Head: A Young Girl's Fight with Depression
by Mathilde MonaqueMathilde Monaque developed severe depression when she was just 14. The eldest in a family of six and an exceptionally bright and gifted little girl, the discovery shook her family to the core.Trouble in My Head is Mathilde's tender and illuminating account of her struggle to surface from a disease that could have taken her life. With remarkable sensitivity and lucidity she describes her experience of depression, her days in the teenage hospital and her battle to conquer the disease. Mathilde's perspective as a sufferer of teenage depression is unique. Unlike adult depression which involves feelings of guilt, Mathilde describes teenage depression as a breaking down of certainties, the fear of being oneself, the fear of not loving and of not being loved. Adults and teenagers alike will find inspiration and insight in her touching and remarkable account.
Twenty Tales from the War Zone: The Best of John Simpson
by John SimpsonDrawing on John Simpson's acclaimed volumes of autobiography and hitherto unpublished material, Twenty Tales from the War Zone brings together some of the highlights of his remarkable journalistic career. Whether dodging guerrillas at a cocaine market in Colombia, narrowly escaping a murderous Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, interviewing a flatulent Colonel Gadaffi, crossing the border into Afghanistan dressed in a fetching bright blue burka or being kidnapped at gunpoint - or was it a finger in a pocket - in the backstreets of Belfast at the height of the troubles, Simpson paints a vivid picture of what being a journalist on the front line is all about, from low comedy to high drama. It's a rollercoaster ride that is sure to thrill anyone who dares to join it.
Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning of Our Longest War
by Erik EdstromA manifesto about America's unchallenged war machine, from an Afghanistan veteran and new kind of military hero.Before engaging in war, Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios: First, imagine your own death. Second, imagine war from “the other side.” Third: Imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought. Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Erik reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war. But that realization came too late-the damage had been done.Erik Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant. Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities, buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth: The War on Terror is not just a tragedy, but a crime. The deeper tragedy is that our country lacks the courage and conviction to say so.Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it's intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being helped, and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change. Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America's relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending.
Under a Starless Sky: A family's escape from Iran
by Banafsheh SerovOne family's journey through the turmoil of the 1978 revolution, when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, and their escape over the mountains to Turkey, and ultimately to Australia.Banafsheh is eight when the revolution begins in Iran. At first her family are jubilant about the collapse of the Shah's rule and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini, but they quickly realise that Iran has traded one dictator for another, more ruthless, ruler. Banafsheh's parents, Kamal and Nina, struggle with the harsh laws of the new revolutionary Iran. Khomeini's revolutionary guard, the Komiteh, patrol the streets, enforcing Islamic codes of dress and behaviour, and dispatching harsh justice to perceived enemies of the revolution. They drag Nina's father in for questioning, interrogate Nina and put Kamal on a stop-list, so he is unable to leave the country. Fearing for the safety of their two children, Kamal and Nina decide the family must flee their beloved country, leaving behind their extended family and friends. But the only way of escape is to take the dangerous route across the Turkish mountains.