Sachin Tendulkar has made poets of prose writers even if his strokeplay has demontrated the futility of conveying in words the brilliance of his batsmanship. As R C Robertson-Glasgow said in another context, he was "easy to watch, difficult to bowl to and impossible to write about." In this collection of essays by some of the finest writers on cricket, the attempt is not so much to pin Sachin down as to let him roam free: beyond statistics, above nationality, and above the need to explain. From the sublime to the ridiculous it is all here. As Peter Roebuck once said "Whenever I feel low I only need to remind myself how privileged I am to be writing on the game in the Tendulkar era"

Voetstoots is ’n bontgejasde keur uit sestien jaar van Annelie se koerantrubrieke. Die temas is so wyd soos die Heer se genade. Rakende aan die torings van Babel wat ons bou. ’n Kind wat doodgeskok word terwyl hulle jagentjies speel. ’n Begrafnisbrief uit Holland. ’n Boer wat sy plaashek vir oulaas sluit. Toentertyd se poskoets en handsentrale. Die boks langspeelplate in die gryse se waenhuis. Die smart om ’n kind te begrawe. ’n Glips met bensien in die tamatieslaai. ’n Sywurmhart wat sy in haar Bybel bêre. Mense sonder ’n woord van eer.

’n Eensame oom wie se hondjie op ’n sypaadjie doodgebyt is. ’n Lys van moets en moenies vir dames uit 1944. ’n Boks papsakwyn wat suur geword het.

Dis lag, huil, kwaadword, nostalgie, deernis, onbegrip en lewenswette saamgeryg in ’n kleurvolle lappieskombers. En Annelie is bedrewe met die rygnaald.

Explores the link between revolutionary change in the Victorian world of print and women's entry into the field of mass-market publishing This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change, 1832-1860. It includes discussion of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. Easley analyses the ways Victorian women's participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century.

The devoted journalists at the Chicago Tribune have been reporting the city's news for 170 years. As a result, the paper has amassed an inimitable, as-it-happened history of its hometown, a city first incorporated in 1837 that rapidly grew to become the third-largest city in the United States. Since 2011, the Chicago Tribune has been mining its vast archive of photos and stories for its weekly feature Chicago Flashback, which deals with the significant people and events that have shaped the city's history and culture from the paper's founding in 1847 to the present day. Now the editors of the Tribune have carefully collected the best, most interesting Chicago Flashback features into a single coffee-table volume. Each story is accompanied by at least one black-and-white image from the paper's fabled photo vault located deep below Michigan Avenue's famed Tribune Tower. Chicago Flashback offers readers a unique perspective on the city's long and colorful history.

Rafah, a town at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front rubbish-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. Situated on the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been reduced to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this most bitter of conflicts.

Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinian refugees dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah - coldblooded massacre or dreadful mistake - reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco arrives in Gaza and, immersing himself in daily life, uncovers Rafah, past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, Footnotes in Gaza captures the essence of a tragedy.

As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, Joe Sacco's unique visual journalism has rendered a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Footnotes in Gaza, his most ambitious work to date, transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.

First published more than three decades ago, this reissue of Rachel Carson's award-winning classic brings her unique vision to a new generation of readers. Stunning new photographs by Nick Kelsh beautifully complement Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush.

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder." Writes Carson, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." The Sense of Wonder is a refreshing antidote to indifference and a guide to capturing the simple power of discovery that Carson views as essential to life.

In her insightful new introduction, Linda Lear remembers Rachel Carson's groundbreaking achievements in the context of the legendary environmentalist's personal commitment to introducing young and old to the miracles of nature.

Kelsh's lush photographs inspire sensual, tactile reactions: masses of leaves floating in a puddle are just waiting to be scooped up and examined more closely. An image of a narrow path through the trees evokes the earthy scent of the woods after a summer rain. Close-ups of mosses and miniature lichen fantasy-lands will spark innocent'as well as more jaded'imaginations. Like a curious child studying things underfoot and within reach, Kelsh's camera is drawn to patterns in nature that too often elude hurried adults'a stand of beech trees in the springtime, patches of melting snow and the ripples from a pebble tossed into a slow-moving stream.

The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from children to grandchildren, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time.

Twenty-one years after the murder of Hip-hop genius The Notorious B.I.G., The Man On High fuses the creative and the critical, asking what legacy means in the 21st century. Contemplating Biggie through the lens of skateboarding, music and poetry, Alessandrelli proves that The Notorious B.I.G. will always be rapping in the present tense.

'An extraordinary book: deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane Heavy Light is the story of a breakdown: a journey through mania, psychosis and treatment in a psychiatric hospital, and onwards to release, recovery and healing. After a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we can be healed - or not - by treatment. A story of the wonder and intensity of the manic experience, as well as its peril and strangeness, it is shot through with the love, kindness, humour and care of those who deal with someone who becomes dangerously ill. Partly a tribute to those who looked after Horatio, from family and friends to strangers and professionals, and partly an investigation into how we understand and treat acute crises of mental health, Heavy Light's beauty, power and compassion illuminate a fundamental part of human experience. It asks urgent questions about mental health that affect each and every one of us. 'One of the most brilliant travel writers of our day takes us us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth, and humanity, that, better acquainted with its terrors, we may better face our own' Reverend Richard Coles 'A record of the bravest, most perilous, most intrepid journey that any human being can ever make. It is stricken, moving, urgent, crucial . . . A luminous, beautiful achievement' Niall Griffiths

From ISIS propaganda videos to popular regime-backed TV series and digital activism, the Syrian conflict has been dramatically affected by the production of media, at the same time generating in its turn an impressive visual culture. Yet what are the aesthetic, political and material implications of the collusion between the production of this sheer amount of visual media being continuously shared and re-manipulated on the Internet, and the performance of the conflict on the ground? This ethnography uses the Syrian case to reflect more broadly on how the networked age reshapes contemporary warfare and impacts on the enactment of violence through images and on images. In stark contrast to the techno-utopias celebrating digital democracy and participatory cultures, Donatella Della Ratta's analysis exposes the dark side of online practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production dramatically intertwine with modes of destruction and the performance of violence. Exploring the most socially-mediated conflict of contemporary times, the book offers a fascinating insight into the transformation of warfare and life in the age of the internet.

In some ways, I didn't - don't - want to remember any of it. Which is not to say that one ever forgets. I don't know any journalist who worked through the Troubles, with its relentless cycle of murders and doorstepping the homes of the dead and funerals and yet more murders, who isn't haunted from time to time by being an eyewitness to evil, to heartache and, yes, to courage too. GAIL WALKER, editor, Belfast Telegraph In Reporting the Troubles sixty-eight renowned journalists tell their stories of working in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - the victims that they have never forgotten, the events that have never left them, and the lasting impact of the experience of working through those years. The result is a compelling account of one of the most turbulent periods in recent history, told by the journalists who reported on it. Beginning in 1968 with an eyewitness report of the day that civil rights protestors clashed with the police in Derry, the journalists give candid accounts of the years that followed - arriving on the scene of major atrocities; knocking on the doors of bereaved relatives; maintaining objectivity in the face of threats from paramilitaries and pressure from the state; and always the absolute commitment to telling the truth. This is a landmark book - a history of the Troubles told by the journalists who were on the ground from the beginning and including many of the biggest names in journalism from the last fifty years. Reporting the Troubles is a remarkable act of remembrance that is raw, thought provoking and profoundly moving. Contributors: Kate Adie, Martin Bell, Nicholas Denis, Sean O'Neill, David Armstrong, Wendy Austin, Trevor Birney, Suzanne Breen, Gordon Burns, Anne Cadwallader, Michael Cairns, Jim Campbell, Paul Clark, John Coghlan, Martin Cowley, Ed Curran, David Davin-Power, Deaglan de Breadun, John Devine, Noel Doran, Noreen Erskine, Paul Faith, Robert Fisk, Derval Fitzsimons, Tommie Gorman, Katie Hannon, Deric Henderson, Eamonn Holmes, Gloria Hunniford, John Irvine, Jeanie Johnston, Alan Jones, Hugh Jordan, Richard Kay, Martin Lindsay, Ivan Little, Jane Loughrey, Eamonn Mallie, Ray Managh, Steven McCaffery, Justine McCarthy, Alf McCreary, Denzil McDaniel, Henry McDonald, Jim McDowell, Eddie McIlwaine, Susan McKay, David McKittrick, Ivan McMichael, Gerry Moriarty, John Mullin, Bill Neely, Miriam O'Callaghan, Conor O'Clery, Sister Martina Purdy, Ken Reid, Brian Rowan, Chris Ryder, Gerald Seymour, Sam Smyth, Peter Taylor, Alex Thomson, Chris Moore, Gail Walker, David Walmsley, Ian Woods, Robin Walsh.

"Did Mandela work for nothing?"
"Mr Sushi comes to town"
"Give me a corrupt black any day"

These are just some of Eric Miyeni’s newspaper columns and opinion pieces, which have earned him friends and enemies alike. Known for his straight-talking frankness, his views on subjects ranging from politics and travel to big business and sport elicit strong responses.

Here Comes The Snake In The Grass is a selection of Eric Miyeni’s columns and occasional writings covering a variety of topics, from Julius Malema, Oprah Winfrey and Brenda Fassie to the value of radio, the true cost of crime, the need for excellence in South Africa and the difficulty of finding love in the modern world. Some of the writings in this collection court controversy, addressing issues many want hidden from view; others provide glimpses of the writer’s softer side. All show why Eric Miyeni’s is an unmistakeable voice in the South African media.

Alternately hard-hitting and personal, rousing and funny, Here Comes The Snake In The Grass is an entertaining and informative look at the South African cultural landscape.

Travelling from Madrid to The Valley of the Fallen, through Castile and Leon and across the fiercely contested region of Catalonia, Christopher Finnigan meets a remarkable cast of characters behind some of the biggest political events Spain has witnessed in decades. Whether it is the Indignados left-wing activists rethinking society, the everyday citizens sitting in parliament, or the Catalan separatists fighting for a new nation, The New Spanish Revolutions meets those struggling at the heart of historic change. Spain today finds itself in the grip of immense social upheaval, still shaken by the financial crash of 2008 and still struggling with its fascist past. Against a fragmented and polarised backdrop, Christopher Finnigan discovers how individuals and ideas that were once outside the mainstream are now shaping the nation's future.

Jordan's diverse socioeconomic make-up encapsulates, like no other Middle Eastern state, both the array of pressing short-term problems facing the region, and the underlying challenges that Arab states will need to face once the current spate of civil conflicts is over: meaningful youth employment, female participation in politics, and integration of refugees into society. This book tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including a political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a Jihadist and a female parliamentarian. The raw voices and everyday struggles of these people shine a fresh light on the politics, religion, and society of a culture coming to terms with the harsh reality of modernisation and urbanisation at a time of regional upheaval. With her deep knowledge of Jordan's landscape, language and culture, Rana Sweis sketches an intimate portrait of the intricacies and complexities of life in the Middle East. Rather than focusing on how individuals are affected by events in the region, she reveals a cast of characters shaping their own lives and times. Voices of Jordan shares those stories in all of their rich detail, offering a living, breathing social and political history.

Lunch with the Financial Times has been a permanent fixture in the Financial Times for almost 25 years, featuring presidents, film stars, musical icons and business leaders from around the world. The column is now as well-established institution which has reinvigorated the art of conversation in the convivial, intimate environment of a long boozy lunch. On its 25th anniversary, Lunch with the Financial Times 2 will showcase the most entertaining, incisive and fascinating interviews from the past five years including those with Edward Snowden, Bernie Ecclestone, Hilary Mantel, Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Rebecca Solnit, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Jordan Peterson, Nigel Farage, Woody Harrelson, Sepp Blatter, (pre-election) Donald Trump and Zoella, illustrated in full colour with James Ferguson's famous portraits.

My father, the monster of the Springs house of horrors

“I kneel on the foot piece next to the bed and lower my head. A piercing, burning pain engulfs my entire face. Dad has kicked me. Blood is gushing from my nose. Then I feel cold water being poured all over my body. Electrical wires shock me, I can’t see through the blood. God, help me.” (Translated)

Landi is the eldest of five children who were rescued from the so-called Springs house of horror. She is now 21 years old and tells her astonishing story for the very first time. In May 2014, police raided the house where a sadistic father had imprisoned, abused and tortured his wife and five children in a rat-infested den of sleaze.

In chilling detail, Landi recalls how their father assaulted them by tasering them, shooting them with a gas pistol and burning them with a blowtorch, how he researched torture methods and nearly drowned them in a bathtub.

She relates her memories to Susan Cilliers, an experienced journalist, who documents it with compassion, skilfully combining it with facts that emanated from the police investigation and court case.

House of Horrors is the shocking tale of a father who took everything from his family in the cruellest possible way, but it is also a story of hope about a brave young girl who eventually finds happiness and healing.