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.

"Just pick up a copy and set off. You'll be amazed at what you've missed." - Sir Michael Palin MARCH, 2020: A columnist watches as London locks down, facing a conundrum as his weekly deadline for his newspaper diary approaches. With the city shutting up shop and column inches to fill, journalist Dan Carrier takes to the deserted streets of Central London to uncover the forgotten stories the heart of the UK capital holds. Untold London is a consideration and celebration of a city whose famous landmarks and thoroughfares are often taken for granted. Setting out to find lingering evidence of days gone by, Dan reveals unexpected delights, triumphs and tragedies alongside plenty of skulduggery and scandal in the greatest city in the world.

_______________ '[An] acutely observed collection of occasional pieces that pick at absurdist life and reveal him to be a quiz, a cultural critic gifted with precise comic timing' - The Times 'Yes, Jacobson is an entertainer ... And he does indeed entertain, but in a way that stimulates rather than simply amuses' - Sunday Telegraph 'Nobody does it better than Jacobson' - Observer _______________ It takes a particular kind of man to want an embroidered polo player astride his left nipple. Occasionally, when I am tired and emotional, or consumed with self-dislike, I try to imagine myself as someone else, a wearer of Yarmouth shirts and fleecy sweats, of windbreakers and rugged Tyler shorts, of baseball caps with polo players where the section of the brain that concerns itself with aesthetics is supposed to be. But the hour passes. Good men return from fighting Satan in the wilderness the stronger for their struggle, and so do I. The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Howard Jacobson, brims with life in this collection of his most acclaimed journalism. From the unusual disposal of his father-in-law's ashes and the cultural wasteland of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the melancholy sensuality of Leonard Cohen and desolation of Wagner's tragedies, Jacobson writes with all the thunder and joy of a man possessed. Absurdity piles upon absurdity, and glorious sentences weave together to create a hilarious, heartbreaking and uniquely human collection. This book is not just a series of parts, but an irresistible, unputdownable sum which triumphantly out-Thurbers Thurber. _______________ 'The no-nonsense tone, coupled with a coherent defence of truth, even in uncomfortable circumstances, shows the essayist as a natural comedian' - Prospect 'Jacobson is one of the great sentence-builders of our time. I feel I have to raise my game, even just to praise ... In short, he is one of the great guardians of language and culture - all of it. Long may he flourish' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Fully updated from the original edition. As the retreat from Kabul shows, America goes to war not to bring democracy, or glory, but in the pursuit of profit. In The Spoils of War, leading Washington reporter, Andrew Cockburn, reveals the extent of the rot that stretches from the Pentagon and the White House, to Wall St and Silicon Valley. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the "private passions" and "interests" of those who control it - principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 "because it will do us good at budget time." Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time terrifyingly dangerous.

From the very first mouthful, 'Lunch with the FT' was destined to become a permanent fixture in the Financial Times. One thousand lunches later, the FT's weekly interview has become an institution. From film stars to politicians, tycoons to writers, dissidents to lifestyle gurus, the list reads like an international Who's Who of our times. Lunch with the FT is a selection of the best: 52 classic interviews conducted in the unforgiving proximity of a restaurant table. From Angela Merkel to Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs, Martin Amis to one of the Arab world's most notorious sons, this book brings you right to the table to decide what you think of or world's most powerful players.

'Journalists are said to write the first rough drafts of history. But I was only the messenger.' When Argentine troops surged onto the shores of the Falkland Islands, it was Harold Briley who broke the news to Britain and the rest of the world. As the BBC World Service's Latin America Correspondent, he was perfectly placed both metaphorically and physically: not only was he reporting from his base in Buenos Aires, but he had first-hand knowledge of the countries, their politics and their cultures. In Fight for Falklands Freedom: Reporting Live from Argentina and the Islands, Briley returns to the Islands to tell the full story in a breathless play-by-play account. Drawing on hundreds of his own reports, as well as interviews with political and military leaders from both sides, this is a fascinating insight into what happened, when it happened - and why.

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.

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.

The biggest and most comprehensive volume on Steve McCurry published to date and the final word on forty years of McCurry's incredible work. Written and compiled by Bonnie McCurry, Steve's sister and President of the McCurry Foundation, Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the ultimate book of McCurry's images and his approach to photography. The book brings together all of McCurry's key adventures and influences, from his very first journalistic images taken in the aftermath of the 1977 Johnstown floods, to his breakthrough journey into Afghanistan hidden among the mujahideen, his many travels across India and Pakistan, his coverage of the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War and the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, up to his most-recent work. Totalling over 350 images, the selection of photographs includes his best-known shots as well as over 100 previously unpublished images. Also included are personal notes, telegrams and visual ephemera from his travels and assignments, all accompanied by Bonnie McCurry's authoritative text - drawn from her unique relationship with Steve - as well as reflections from many of Steve's friends and colleagues. Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the complete, definitive volume on McCurry

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.

Ausgehend von der Idee des Glasperlenspiels, die Hermann Hesse in seinem gleichnamigen Roman entwirft, haben die Autoren in diesem Band die Moglichkeiten und Grenzen eines solchen Spiels im Umgang mit Wissen ausgelotet. Sie zeigen neue Methoden fur das Wissensmanagement auf und verbinden dafur Erkenntnisse verschiedener Wissenschaftsgebiete wie Logik, System- und Erkenntnistheorie sowie Semiotik, Kognition und Kommunikation. Das begleitende Computerprogramm unterstutzt Leser beim Experimentieren mit Wissen."

'The truth which we arrive at by means of mathematical proofs is the same truth that is known to divine wisdom.' Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Greatest World Systems, the most brilliant and persuasive defence of the Copernican theory that the Earth goes around the Sun to have been written in the seventeenth century, is one of the foundation texts of modern science. This new translation renders Galileo's lively Italian prose in clear modern English, making the whole of Galileo's text readily accessible to modern readers, while William Shea's introduction and notes give a clear overview of Galileo's career and draw on the most recent scholarship to explain the scientific and philosophical background to the text. This volume provides everything necessary for an informed reading of Galileo's masterpiece. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

News organizations have always sought to deliver information faster and to larger audiences. But when clicks drive journalism, the result is often simplistic, sensational, and error-ridden reporting. In this book, Seong Jae Min argues in favor of "slow journalism," a growing movement that aims to produce more considered, deliberate reporting that better serves the interests of democracy. Min explores the role of technology in journalism from the printing press to artificial intelligence, documenting the hype and hope associated with each new breakthrough as well as the sometimes disappointing-and even damaging-unintended consequences. His analysis cuts through the discussion of clickbait headlines and social-media clout chasing to identify technological bells and whistles as the core problem with journalism today. At its heart, Min maintains, traditional shoe-leather reporting-knocking on doors, talking to people, careful observation and analysis-is still the best way for journalism to serve its civic purpose. Thoughtful and engaging, Rethinking the New Technology of Journalism is a compelling call for news gathering to return to its roots. Reporters, those studying and teaching journalism, and avid consumers of the media will be interested in this book.

This short book calls to account the government misrulers and corporate criminals who made suffering from the global coronavirus pandemic more acute. Modeled on a famous 1940 bestseller--a pamphlet exposing appeasers of Nazi Germany--Guilty Men shows how the crisis has been stoked by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful men. The rogues gallery begins with Donald Trump, who deliberately downplayed the crisis despite knowing its dangers, as well as his international political allies, above all Boris Johnson. Billionaire politicians like Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler moved stocks at the same time they were telling Americans all was well . Political charlatans like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos undermined public safety in order to advance their agenda, Trump-controlled agencies, led by the ever-crooked Federal Reserve, bailed out Wall Street while failing to provide basic relief for workers. Libertarian "think tanks" like the Ayn Rand Institute decried public expenditures but were first in line to get bailout checks. Pharmaceutical companies gamed the vaccine race, and the most rapacious global corporations like Facebook, Visa, and Pfizer have found the pandemic to be very profitable indeed, vastly enriching the already grotesquely bloated fortunes of trillionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Koch. Guilty Men closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, initiated by newly elected Franklin Roosevelt, that took aim at what FDR called "speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering" that stoked the Depression. The commission led to some of the most far-reaching reforms in US history, as well as sensational hearings that led to the fall of the leading bankers and financiers of that era.

This first-ever anthology of the war reporting and commentary of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg is drawn from more than four decades of reporting at home and abroad for the "New York Times, Newsday," the "Village Voice," and various magazines. The centerpiece of the collection is his signature work, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, which appeared in the "New York Times Magazine." This became the foundation of Roland Joffe s acclaimed film "The Killing Fields" (1984), which explored the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia during the late 1970s.Although Schanberg may be best known for his work on Cambodia, he also reported on the India-Pakistan war that ended Pakistan s brutal attempt to crush the Bangladesh freedom movement in the 1970s. His striking coverage of the Vietnam conflict recounts Hanoi s fierce offensive in 1972 that almost succeeded. Years later, citing official documents and other hard evidence that a large number of American POWs were never returned by Hanoi, Schanberg criticized the national press for ignoring these facts and called for Washington to release documents that had been covered up since 1973.As the media critic for the "Village Voice," Schanberg offered a unique and searing viewpoint on Iraq, which he called America s strangest war. His criticism of the Bush administration s secrecy brings his war reportage into the present and presents a vigorous critique of what he considers a devious and destructive presidency. "Beyond the Killing Fields" is an important work by one of America s foremost journalists.

Event structures are central in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence research: people can easily refer to changes in the world, identify their participants, distinguish relevant information, and have expectations of what can happen next. Part of this process is based on mechanisms similar to narratives, which are at the heart of information sharing. But it remains difficult to automatically detect events or automatically construct stories from such event representations. This book explores how to handle today's massive news streams and provides multidimensional, multimodal, and distributed approaches, like automated deep learning, to capture events and narrative structures involved in a 'story'. This overview of the current state-of-the-art on event extraction, temporal and casual relations, and storyline extraction aims to establish a new multidisciplinary research community with a common terminology and research agenda. Graduate students and researchers in natural language processing, computational linguistics, and media studies will benefit from this book.

Since its relaunch in 1979, "Granta" magazine has championed the art and craft of reportage - journalism marked by vivid description, a novelist's eye to form and eyewitness reporting that reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know. This updated edition of "The Granta Book of Reportage" collects a dozen of the finest and most lasting pieces Granta has published. Featuring distinguished writers and reporters: John Simpson, James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Germaine Greer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, John le Carre, as well as new talents Elana Lappin, Suketu Mehta and Wendell Steavenson, the book covers some of the signal events of our time: the fall of Saigon, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the massacre in Tiananmen Square, and the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq.