- Table View
- List View
After Cleo, Came Jonah: How A Crazy Kitten And A Rebelling Daughter Turned Out To Be Blessings In Disguise
by Helen BrownJonah entered Helen Brown's life not long after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had begun recovery from a mastectomy. His arrival coincided with the finalisation of her previous book, Cleo, as well as preparations for the wedding of her son and struggles with her daughter's determination to embark on a spiritual journey. Jonah, as it happened, was just as headstrong as Helen's daughter. So while Helen attempted to deal with her own mortality and help arrange a wedding, her daughter took off to war-torn Sri Lanka and Jonah fled down the street.In Cats and Daughters, Helen Brown writes with honesty and humour about family life, its serious setbacks and life-changing events. She also learns that sometimes the best thing a strong mother and cat slave can do is step back, have faith in those she loves and be grateful nothing's perfect. As Helen writes in her dedication, this book is 'to cats and daughters who don't always come when called'.
After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy
by Anthony T. KronmanAn intimate, philosophic quest for eternity, amidst the disenchantments and disappointments of our time“In this deceptively quiet and self-effacing book, Anthony Kronman makes an audacious argument: the most important things in our lives make sense only if we believe the world is divine. In a sense, we already believe it, if only we could find the words. Here they are.”—Jedediah Britton-Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene Many people of faith believe the meaning of life depends on our connection to an eternal order of some kind. Atheists deride this belief as a childish superstition. In this wise and profound book, Anthony Kronman offers an alternative to these two entrenched positions, arguing that neither addresses the complexities of the human condition. We can never reach God, as religion promises, but cannot give up the longing to do so either. We are condemned by our nature to set goals we can neither abandon nor fulfill, yet paradoxically are able to approach more closely if we try. The human condition is one of inevitable disappointment tempered by moments of joy. Resolutely humanistic and theologically inspired, this moving book offers a rational path to the love of God amidst the disenchantments of our time.
After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself? (PDF)
by Ed OwensThe British monarchy has been through turbulent times of late. Rocked by scandal and strife, and without it seems a clear plan for the future following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, we have been left wondering: what happens next?Nothing seems certain. Will the monarchy survive with its continuing echoes of an Imperial past? Will young people - disenchanted with the political status quo - find the ritual and practice of the monarchy quite so mesmerising as previous generations have done? What might a republican Britain look like?Ed Owens argues that the monarchy must embrace reform and transform itself radically. No more private jets while preaching about the importance of the environment; no more secrecy obscuring royal influence in high places; and no more hangers on enjoying grace-and-favour homes. A major slimming down is essential. And it's time the family archives were opened.All these issues will have a direct effect on the common good of the nation as it tries to reinvent itself as a modern working democracy, and endeavours to equip itself for the coming decades. Ed Owens situates this critical moment of royal transition in its historical context in order to set out a vision for monarchy that is future-proof, but which would also see the crown play an integral role in the evolution of 21st-century Britain.
After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?
by Ed OwensThe British monarchy has been through turbulent times of late. Rocked by scandal and strife, and without it seems a clear plan for the future following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, we have been left wondering: what happens next?Nothing seems certain. Will the monarchy survive with its continuing echoes of an Imperial past? Will young people - disenchanted with the political status quo - find the ritual and practice of the monarchy quite so mesmerising as previous generations have done? What might a republican Britain look like?Ed Owens argues that the monarchy must embrace reform and transform itself radically. No more private jets while preaching about the importance of the environment; no more secrecy obscuring royal influence in high places; and no more hangers on enjoying grace-and-favour homes. A major slimming down is essential. And it's time the family archives were opened.All these issues will have a direct effect on the common good of the nation as it tries to reinvent itself as a modern working democracy, and endeavours to equip itself for the coming decades. Ed Owens situates this critical moment of royal transition in its historical context in order to set out a vision for monarchy that is future-proof, but which would also see the crown play an integral role in the evolution of 21st-century Britain.
After Ireland: Writing the Nation from Beckett to the Present
by Declan KiberdPolitical failures and globalization have eroded Ireland’s sovereignty—a decline portended in Irish literature. Surveying the bleak themes in thirty works by modern writers, Declan Kiberd finds audacious experimentation that embodies the defiance and resourcefulness of Ireland’s founding spirit—and a strange kind of hope for a more open nation.
After Kathy Acker: A Biography (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents Ser.)
by Chris KrausRich girl, street punk, lost girl and icon ... scholar, stripper, victim and media-whore: The late Kathy Acker's legend and writings are wrapped in mythologies, created mostly by Acker herself. The media storm that surrounded Kathy Acker's books was unprecedented: her books were banned in several countries and condemned by the mainstream media, but eventually the controversy, and attention, faded away. Twenty years after her untimely death aged just 50, Acker's legend has faded, making her writing more legible. In this first, fully authorized biography, Kraus approaches Acker both as a writer, and as a member of the artistic communities from which she emerged. At once forensic and intimate, After Kathy Acker traces the extreme discipline and literary strategies Acker used to develop her work, and the contradictions she longed to embody. Using exhaustive archival research and ongoing conversations with mutual colleagues and friends, Kraus charts Acker's movement through some of the late twentieth century's most significant artistic enterprises.
After Nature
by W. G. SebaldAfter Nature is the very first literary work by W. G. Sebald, author of AusterlitzAfter Nature by W.G. Sebald, author of Austerlitz, is his first literary work and the start of his highly personal and brilliant writing journey. In this long prose poem, Sebald introduces many of the themes that he explores in his subsequent books. Focusing on the conflict between man and nature, each of the three distinct parts of After Nature give centre stage to a different character from a different century - the last being W.G. Sebald himself.'A deeply intelligent book, but also a marvellously warm, exciting and compassionate one' Andrew Motion'A début of rare poetic grandeur' Irish Times'Astonishing writing. A true poet at work' Evening Standard'Graceful, allusive, serious, but also immensely readable' Sunday Telegraph'When you read Sebald you are transported to another realm' Literary ReviewW . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, For Years Now and A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.
After Pusan
by Alan RossAfter Pusan, first published in 1995, is the third panel (alongside Blindfold Games and Coastwise Lights, also in Faber Finds) of a triptych of memoirs by Alan Ross. Inspired by Ross's visit in 1986 to the South Korean coastal city of Pusan, like its predecessors it gracefully entwines poetry and prose. 'After Pusan opens with a thirty-page prose memoir of [Ross's] visit, economically and self-effacingly told, deft in its detail and tireless in its curiosity... This memoir is more than merely an adjunct to Ross's other travel writings, though, and more than only a prelude to the poems which fill the rest of these hundred pages. After Pusan breaks a long silence in his life as a poet; and it was that visit to Korea... that suggested to him 'that if poetry was ever going to come again it might do so now.' PN Review
After Sappho
by Selby Wynn SchwartzIt’s 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her – and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it. 1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted... But she is sure she can sell a painting – and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.... In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller – and fuller.Sarah Bernhardt – Colette – Eleanora Duse – Lina Poletti – Josephine Baker – Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women sharing the pages of a book as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past – their constant efforts to push against the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman – that also offers hope for our present, and our futures.
After Steve: How Apple Became A Trillion-dollar Company And Lost Its Soul
by Tripp MickleFrom the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants—Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO—and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul.
After the Annex: Anne Frank, Auschwitz and Beyond
by Bas von Benda-BeckmannOn 27 January 1945 Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Russian soldiers. At that point not only his journey home started, but also his long quest to find out what had happened to his wife Edith, his daughters Margot and Anne and the four other people with whom he had been in hiding in the Annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam: Herman and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter and dentist Fritz Pfeffer. In the months after his liberation Otto Frank would discover that he was the only survivor out of these eight people. After the Annex continues the journey that Otto began. It is the ultimate attempt, based on thorough research in archives and available eye witness accounts, to reconstruct as precisely as possible what happened to the eight people in hiding after their arrest.
After the Crash: The Heart-rending True Story Of How One Man's Love For His Son Saved Both Their Lives
by Martin Spinelli'In the pit of my stomach, as I kissed my four-year-old son Lio and my darling wife Sasha goodbye, I knew something was up. By that evening, the police had told me about the crash.'Lio's bright and talented mother was killed that day, and he narrowly escaped the same fate. But instead of it being an ending for us, the crash was a beginning.'Lio's miraculous recovery from severe brain damage and a coma defied medical science. As I witnessed his astonishing journey - from intensive care bed to 10 Downing Street - and fought to pull him through horrific injuries and the loss of his mother, I found real purpose and meaning for the first time in my life.'After the Crash is much more than a moving personal story. It's a handbook for dealing with disaster, not just surviving it but mastering it and using it to transform your life for the better.
After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller
by Max WallaceIn this "stunning" new history, New York Times bestselling author Max Wallace draws on groundbreaking research to reframe Helen Keller&’s journey after the miracle at the water pump, vividly bringing to light her rarely discussed, lifelong fight for social justice across gender, class, race, and ability (Rosemary Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author).Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 Raised in Alabama, she sent shockwaves through the South when she launched a public broadside against Jim Crow and donated to the NAACP. She used her fame to oppose American intervention in WWI. She spoke out against Hitler the month he took power in 1933 and embraced the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the first public figures to alert the world to the evils of Apartheid, raising money to defend Nelson Mandela when he faced the death penalty for High Treason, and she lambasted Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Cold War, even as her contemporaries shied away from his notorious witch hunt. But who was this revolutionary figure? She was Helen Keller. From books to movies to Barbie dolls, most mainstream portrayals of Keller focus heavily on her struggles as a deafblind child—portraying her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, as a miracle worker. This narrative—which has often made Keller a secondary character in her own story—has resulted in few people knowing that her greatest accomplishment was not learning to speak, but what she did with her voice when she found it.After the Miracle is a much-needed corrective to this antiquated narrative. In this first major biography of Keller in decades, Max Wallace reveals that the lionization of Sullivan at the expense of her famous pupil was no accident, and calls attention to Keller&’s efforts as a card-carrying socialist, fierce anti-racist, and progressive disability advocate. Despite being raised in an era when eugenics and discrimination were commonplace, Keller consistently challenged the media for its ableist coverage and was one of the first activists to highlight the links between disability and capitalism, even as she struggled against the expectations and prejudices of those closest to her. Peeling back the curtain that obscured Keller&’s political crusades in favor of her &“inspirational&” childhood, After the Miracle chronicles the complete legacy of one of the 20th century&’s most extraordinary figures.
After the Worst has Happened: Tales from a funeral director on the lighter side of death
by Richard GoslingWhen Richard Gosling's young daughter faced emergency surgery, a colleague carelessly asked what would happen if she died. In that moment, Richard was forced to picture his own daughter's funeral, and the people who are there to help families after the worst has happened.Aged 40, Richard left his job in the public service and started preparing coffins, driving hearses, assisting in the mortuary and bringing in the deceased from hospitals and nursing homes, slowly working his way up to become operations manager of a venerable Sydney funeral home.After the Worst Has Happened lifts the curtain on a world we all try to avoid but must pass through. It shows the lighter side of death amid all its other facets, as Richard steers families through heartbreak, anger and grief while holding space for love and acceptance. Ultimately, it's about how extraordinarily beautiful it can be to spend a daily life surrounded by our final rite of passage.
After They Killed Our Father: A Refugee from the Killing Fields Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind
by Loung UngIn 1980, at the age of ten, Loung Ung escaped a devastated Cambodia and flew to the US as a refugee. She and her eldest brother, with whom she escaped, left behind their three surviving siblings, and her book is alternately heart-wrenching and heart-warming, as it follows the parallel lives of Loung and her closest sister, Chou, during the 15 years it took for them to be reunited. Their two worlds were very different, and Loung's depiction of the contrast between her life in the affluent West and that of her sister, who navigated her way through landmine-strewn fields and survived raids by the Khmer Rouge, is laced with the guilt she feels about being the lucky one. This powerful story helps us to understand what happens when a family is torn apart by politics, adversity and war. It is also the compelling and inspirational tale of a remarkable woman.
Afterglow: A Dog Memoir (Books That Changed The World Ser.)
by Eileen MylesSkinny's Book of the Year, 2018In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly made an indelible impact on the writer's way of being. Over the course of sixteen years together, Myles was devoted to the pit bull and their linked quality of life. And starting from the emptiness following Rosie's death, Afterglow launches a playful and incisive investigation into the mostly mutually beneficial, sometimes reprehensible power dynamics between pet and pet-owner. At the same time, it reimagines Myles's experiences with alcoholism and recovery, intimacy and mourning, celebrity and politics, spirituality and family history, while joyously transcending the parameters of memoir.Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles's childhood puppet, to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull; from shimmering poetic transcriptions of video footage taken during their walks, to Rosie's final enlightened narration from the afterlife, this totally singular text combines elements of science fiction, screenplay, monologue, and lucid memory to get to the heart of how and why we dedicate our existence to our dogs.
The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: Life, Death and Everything Afterwards
by Annie KaganIn 2004, bad boy Billy Fingers Cohen, a homeless small-time drug dealer and addict in a state of drug induced euphoria ran into a busy intersection and was killed instantly by a speeding automobile. He left behind a grieving sister. For weeks she struggled with grief and tried to make sense of Billy's seemingly wasted life and tragic death.A few weeks after his death, William Cohen, aka Billy Fingers, woke his sister Annie at dawn. 'I'm drifting weightlessly through these glorious stars and galaxies and I feel a Divine Presence, a kind, loving beneficent presence, twinkling all around me.'Billy's ongoing after-death communications take his sister on an unprecedented journey into the bliss and wonder of life beyond death. Billy's profound, detailed description of the mystical realms he traverses, the Beings of Light that await him, and the wisdom he receives take the reader beyond the near-death experience. Billy is, indeed, as Dr. Raymond Moody points out in his foreword, explaining the phenomena we've known about since ancient times, an afterworld walker. A fascinating page-turner filled with wisdom, humour and hope, The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, will forever change your views about life, death and the hereafter.If I could give you a gift it would be to find the glory inside yourself, beyond the roles and the drama, so you can dance the dance of the game of life with a little more rhythm, a little more abandon, a little more shaking-those-hips.
Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation
by Rachel CuskUsing her own life as a starting point, Rachel looks at the issues that arise for a woman in the years after she has lived the defining experiences of feminity. She writes about marriage, separation, motherhood, work, money, domesticity and love. Cusk considers the kinds of generational knowledge the contemporary woman harbours, the terrors or expectations that have been passed down to her and that are refracted through the modern transformation of female status.Aftermath is written in the personal/political mode that characterised A Life's Work, Cusk's acclaimed book about becoming a mother.
Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn
by Brett Anderson'A compelling personal account of the dramas of a singular British band' Neil TennantThe trajectory of Suede - hailed in infancy as both 'The Best New Band in Britain' and 'effete southern wankers' - is recalled with moving candour by its frontman Brett Anderson, whose vivid memoir swings seamlessly between the tender, witty, turbulent, euphoric and bittersweet. Suede began by treading the familiar jobbing route of London's emerging new 1990s indie bands - gigs at ULU, the Camden Powerhaus and the Old Trout in Windsor - and the dispiriting experience of playing a set to an audience of one. But in these halcyon days, their potential was undeniable. Anderson's creative partnership with guitarist Bernard Butler exposed a unique and brilliant hybrid of lyric and sound; together they were a luminescent team - burning brightly and creating some of the era's most revered songs and albums.In Afternoons with the Blinds drawn, Anderson unflinchingly explores his relationship with addiction, heartfelt in the regret that early musical bonds were severed, and clear-eyed on his youthful persona. 'As a young man . . . I oscillated between morbid self-reflection and vainglorious narcissism' he writes. His honesty, sharply self-aware and articulate, makes this a compelling autobiography, and a brilliant insight into one of the most significant bands of the last quarter century.
Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest
by Jules MountainJules Mountain is a survivor. The odds of surviving his type of cancer were one in five; the odds of dying on Everest are one in sixty. But just as he reaches Base Camp in April 2015, the giant earthquake in Nepal sets off an avalanche that will kill 21. Jules is within touching distance of his life's ambition and is now faced with an agonising choice about his next move. Aftershock is a heart-stopping eyewitness account of the deadliest day in history on the world's most iconic mountain. It is also an exploration of the choices we make in life, and throws up difficult questions about how logic and compassion can be affected by altitude and extreme stress.
Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity
by Nadia OwusuI have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me. Our shared languages are thunder and reverberation.When Nadia Owusu was two years old her mother abandoned her and her baby sister and fled from Tanzania back to the US. When she was thirteen her beloved Ghanaian father died of cancer. She and her sister were left alone, with a stepmother they didn't like, adrift. Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London. And for every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It's no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It's no wonder that those fault lines eventually ruptured. Aftershocks is the account of how she hauled herself out of the wreckage. It is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu's astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis.
Against a Tide of Evil: How One Man Became the Whistleblower to the First Mass Murder of the Twenty-First Century
by Dr Mukesh Kapila Damien LewisIn this no-holds-barred account, the former head of the United Nations in Sudan reveals for the first time the shocking depths of evil plumbed by those who designed and orchestrated ‘the final solution’ in Darfur.A veteran of humanitarian crisis and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, Dr Mukesh Kapila arrived in Sudan in March 2003 having made a promise to himself that if he were ever in a position to stop the mass-killers, they would never triumph on his watch.Against a Tide of Evil is a strident and passionate cri de coeur. It is the deeply personal account of one man driven to extreme action by the unwillingness of those in power to stop mass murder. It explores what empowers a man like Mukesh Kapila to stand up and be counted, and to act alone in the face of global indifference and venality.Kapila’s story reads like a knife-edge international thriller as he risks all to use the powers at his disposal to bring to justice those responsible for the first mass murder of the twenty-first century: the Darfur genocide.
Against All Odds
by R.A. LangAgainst All Odds takes you on a worldwide adventure filled with unexpected events, impossible and sometimes life-threatening situations including romance, tragedy, being shot at, ambushed, voodoo, cholera, Venezuelan riots, oil site evacuations, attempted murder escape from a crazed Kazakh psychopath, the KGB and more!
Against All Odds: The epic story of the Oceanos rescue
by Andrew Pike‘Recording the time as 12.05 am and date as 4 August, musician Moss Hills added calmly: “so I guess we’re going down”.’In August 1991, excited holiday-makers boarded the Oceanos at East London for the trip of a lifetime. Despite treacherous weather, the captain ordered the ship to set sail for Durban. And so began the ill-fated voyage.Hurricane force winds and giant rogue waves aggravated the hostile storm. Soon the ship started taking water. Panicked senior crew members scrambled into lifeboats leaving the ship’s evacuation to the on-board entertainers. At one point, a musician manned the bridge, at another, a magician.Women and children clambered aboard lifeboats which were launched into terrifying seas, leaving their husbands behind, unsure if they would see each other again. After all the operational lifeboats had been utilised, 221 passengers and junior crew were left stranded on the rapidly sinking ship.During this catastrophe the South African Air Force embarked on their biggest air rescue ever, with helicopter crews and Navy divers risking everything to evacuate the remaining passengers.In Against All Odds, maritime lawyer Andrew Pike, who was part of the legal investigation into the Oceanos’ sinking, recreates the compelling drama and extraordinary heroism of the greatest maritime rescue in South African history.
Against Enough: An Essay From The Collection, Of This Our Country
by J K ChukwuTo define Nigeria is to tell a half-truth. Many have tried, but most have concluded that it is impossible to capture the true scope and significance of Africa’s most populous nation through words or images.