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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography
A definitive and intriguing biography of Max Verstappen, Formula 1's hottest new superstar, Lewis Hamilton's great rival, the winner of the 2021 World Drivers' Championship, and the recently crowned 2022 champion.
No Hollywood scriptwriter could possibly have envisioned the breathless, adrenaline-pumping climax to the 2021 Formula 1 season. On the very last lap of the final race of an unbelievably arduous and controversial season, Red Bull's Max Verstappen nervelessly overtook the seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes to clinch the first place that thrust the young prodigy to the narrowest of victories and to his first World Drivers' title. It surely won't be his last.
Verstappen may only be 25 years of age, but the Dutch motorsport sensation has an incredible record in F1: 161 race starts, 76 podium finishes and 34 Grand Prix victories barely tell the story - this young man has already left an indelible mark on the sport. The son of F1 driver Jos, Verstappen junior quickly stepped out of his father's shadow: his youthful charisma, ferocious speed, fearless driving style and refusal to back down mark him out as a true champion. And the phenomenal success of Netflix's Drive to Survive documentary series has elevated his worldwide popularity still further.
Widely respected motorsport writer and F1 insider Mark Hughes is perfectly placed to write the most authoritative narrative on Verstappen's incredible rise through the ranks to F1 glory. Hughes' immaculate credentials and first-rate access enable him to generate fresh and fascinating insights, and to paint a fully-rounded and richly-textured portrait of one of the most exciting young sportsmen on the planet.
The incredible true story of the origin of human flight, by the
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough. On a winter day in
1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers
from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to
believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the
first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot. Who were
these men and how was it that they achieved what they did? David
McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the
surprising, profoundly human story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who
happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage
and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and
ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their
upbringing. In this thrilling book, McCullough draws on the immense
riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks,
scrapbooks and more than a thousand letters from private family
correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers'
story, including the little-known contributions of their sister,
Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for
them.
Roy lost his first leg at six years of age and his second leg at
twenty-one. He had little schooling and walked with artificial
legs, refusing to use a wheelchair until he was forty-six. As told
through conversations with Richard Dunn, the reader gets to know
Roy's fulfilled and incredible life-story and how he has, over the
years, helped those less fortunate than himself.
Nearing the end of his career as a ship surgeon, he agreed in 1817
to take a three year posting to St Helena. Stokoe set out for St
Helena on HMS Conqueror in 1817. At St Helena there was discord
following the Governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe's
controversial decision to dismiss Napoleon's doctor, Barry O'Mara.
About this time, Napoleon asked that Mr Stokoe, who had once
attended him and who he understood was returning to St Helena,
might attend him again 'or would the Governor authorize some other
English doctor to come, providing he sign similar conditions as had
been accepted by Stokoe in the past.' Immediately after, Mr Stokoe
arrived at St Helena, was put under arrest and tried on varying
counts-seven in all. The whole was found proven. The third
indictment read, 'That he had signed a paper purporting to be a
bulletin of General Bonaparte's health, and divulged the same to
the General and his attendants contrary to orders, ' and the
seventh, 'That he had contrary to his duty, and the character of a
British Naval Officer, communicated to General Bonaparte or his
attendant an infamous and calumnious imputation cast upon
Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe. etc. by Barry O'Meara, late
surgeon in the Royal Navy' (also now dismissed) 'implying that Sir
Hudson Lowe had practiced with the said O'Meara to induce him to
put an end to the existence of General Bonaparte. ' Stokoe, though
dismissed the Navy, was put on half-pay. At Stokoe's treatment
Napoleon, enraged, refused the future services of British doctors.
This book is Stokoe's own defense, another book with damning
evidence against the notorious Governor-Sir Hudson Lowe
When a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly
brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only
report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or
from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My
experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during
and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different
perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the
breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young
family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of
the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside
world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had
predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life
full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no
university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or
phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we
learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years
old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry
asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my
career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len
Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and
very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and
was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West
African country was already experiencing political and civil
unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of
the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of
thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the
country now `went home' as they had become the targets of
slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling
itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict
ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children
and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was
one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans
who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked
voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an
orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a
children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In
May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more
crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an
organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which
became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove
to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary
restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I
accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could
no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was
`to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration
responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he
could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life
and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the
original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria
was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to
the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version
of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up
to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the
copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean
Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A
Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra,
Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.
When a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly
brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only
report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or
from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My
experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during
and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different
perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the
breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young
family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of
the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside
world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had
predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life
full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no
university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or
phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we
learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years
old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry
asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my
career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len
Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and
very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and
was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West
African country was already experiencing political and civil
unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of
the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of
thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the
country now `went home' as they had become the targets of
slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling
itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict
ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children
and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was
one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans
who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked
voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an
orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a
children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In
May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more
crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an
organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which
became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove
to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary
restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I
accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could
no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was
`to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration
responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he
could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life
and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the
original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria
was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to
the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version
of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up
to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the
copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean
Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A
Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra,
Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.
A moving account of one man's race to save a herd of elephants -
with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, The Elephant
Whisperer is an enthralling book that will appeal to animal lovers
and adventurous souls everywhere. When South African
conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of
'rogue' elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his
common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance
of survival - dangerous and unpredictable, they would be killed if
Anthony wouldn't take them in. As Anthony risked his life to create
a bond with the troubled elephants and persuade them to stay on his
reserve, he came to realize what a special family they were, from
the wise matriarch Nana, who guided the herd, to her warrior sister
Frankie, always ready to see off any threat, and their children who
fought so hard to survive.
Des Rubens was a well known and greatly admired Scottish climber.
He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1973 and was a teacher of
Outdoor Education in Craigroyston School Edinburgh from 1979 until
retirement in 2011. Des kept diaries of his walks and climbs all
over Scotland and wrote accounts of his climbs in the Himalaya, the
Caucasus and the United States. This collection of his writings and
those of his companions conveys, with a dry wit, his great
enthusiasm for the Scottish hills and for all aspects of
mountaineering in the greater ranges. Geoff Cohen, who has edited
the collection, was one of Des' closest climbing partners for over
40 years. Together they shared many of the adventures recounted
here, in Scotland and overseas.
'This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the
idea of unexplainable genius' - QUESTLOVE Equal parts biography,
musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life
and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound
of popular music for the twenty-first century. He wasn't known to
mainstream audiences, and when he died at age thirty-two, he had
never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a
demigod, revered as one of the most important musical figures of
the past hundred years. At the core of this adulation is
innovation: as the producer behind some of the most influential rap
and R&B acts of his day, Dilla created a new kind of musical
time-feel, an accomplishment on a par with the revolutions wrought
by Louis Armstrong and James Brown. Dilla and his drum machine
reinvented the way musicians play. In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas
chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted Detroit
childhood to his rise as a sought-after hip-hop producer to the
rare blood disease that caused his premature death. He follows the
people who kept Dilla and his ideas alive. And he rewinds the
histories of American rhythms: from the birth of Motown soul to
funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of what happens
when human and machine times are synthesized into something new.
This is the story of a complicated man and his machines; his
family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators; and his
undeniable legacy. Based on nearly two hundred original interviews,
and filled with graphics that teach us to feel and "see" the rhythm
of Dilla's beats, Dilla Time is a book as defining and unique as J
Dilla's music itself. Financial Times Music Book of the Year 2022
From the Stock Exchange to Westminster, the fantasy of an eventual
'return to normal' is still alive and well. But the economic world as
we know it - and the rules that govern it - are over. And few are
prepared.
Here, market risk expert Lawrence McDonald unveils the predictive model
he developed in the aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, outlining
actionable trading ideas for a radically reshaped economy. Readers will
discover:
- Why inflation will stay near 3-5% for the next decade
- Why hard assets and rare minerals like lithium and cobalt will
outperform growth stocks and passive investment strategies
- Why America will likely lose its position as a global superpower
and holder of the world's premier reserve currency
Rather than merely doomsaying, How to Listen When Markets Speak equips
readers to make sense of our current moment, resist reactionary
narratives and baseless analysis and pounce on a new investing playbook.
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