From having three top-forty hits before he was twenty, to being an in-demand studio musician recording with hit artists, Jimmy Ryan tells about his early years with The Critters, sharing the playbill with pioneers of rock 'n roll like The Rascals, The Ronettes, Little Anthony & the Imperials, Jay and the Americans; and, later, collaborating and recording with megastars such as Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Elton John, The Doors, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart and many others. Behind is an adventure told in a series of revealing, entertaining, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic tales that take the reader into the minds of pop stars, the shadier side of the music business, the struggle with setbacks, and the joys of success. From partying at the Playboy Mansion to panicking in a local prison with his bandmates, Ryan shares the experience of over six decades in the upper echelons of the music business. Behind is an insider's look into the people and business of the music industry. It examines how superstars and their musicians handle stress, their humanity, frailty, insecurities, and neuroses. It chronicles one musician's lifetime in the profession, sometimes in the spotlight, more often behind it, and most often in the recording studio as a composer, arranger, musician, producer, and engineer. And, though by no means a tell-all hit piece, it instead employs humor, humility, occasional touches of gentle sarcasm, and masterful storytelling to craft a portrait of those who achieved stardom, their rewards, and their excesses, the alcohol and drugs, the emotional breaks, and self-destruction that befell so many, as well as those who failed in its pursuit. Ultimately, Behind is a light hearted and joyful narrative that documents important moments in rock history. At the same time, its colorful stories and collection of personal photographs evoke memories of youth, concerts with friends, turbulent times of social change, and the delight of hits that mark unforgettable moments in of our lives. I invite you to take a first-hand look into the wonderful, often insane world of music through the eyes of a lifer, a musician who has found success and fulfillment by shape-shifting his way through a lifetime Behind the stars.

An entertaining, revealing and beautifully illustrated walking guide to London's horrific history, Bloody London features walks that take in everything from Jack the Ripper's haunts, to the site of John Christie's house of horrors, to the plague outbreak hotspots and burial pits, to the key places involved in the Great Fire of London, plus many many more iconic and delightfully gruesome moments in London's history. Each walk is beautifully illustrated with a map and gorgeous illustrations, and the book is perfectly pocket-sized so you can easily take it around with you as you go. David Fathers is the king of London walking guides, and Bloody London will delight both those who live in London and those visiting who are looking for a walking guide that's a little bit different.

How do I give myself to God completely? What happens when I do? I Dared to Call Him Father is a book for everyone who has ever asked these questions. It is the fascinating true story of Bilquis Sheikh, a prominent Muslim woman in South Asia who faced these questions at the crossroads of her life-and found the astonishing answers. Her entire life turned upside down as a series of strange dreams launched her on a quest that would forever consume her heart, mind and soul. This 25th anniversary edition contains a new afterword by a Western friend of Bilquis and a new appendix on how the East enriches the West.

Come On Shore and We Will Kill And Eat You All is a sensitive and vibrant portrayal of the cultural collision between Westerners and Maoris, from Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 to the author's unlikely romance with a Maori man. An intimate account of two centuries of friction and fascination, this intriguing and unpredictable book weaves a path through time and around the world in a rich exploration of the past and the future that it leads to.

"A Year Without "Made in China"" provides you with a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining account of how the most populous nation on Earth influences almost every aspect of our daily lives. Drawing on her years as an award-winning journalist, author Sara Bongiorni fills this book with engaging stories and anecdotes of her family's attempt to outrun China's reach-by boycotting Chinese made products-and does a remarkable job of taking a decidedly big-picture issue and breaking it down to a personal level.

A guide to all things aphrodisiac, Edible Pleasures is the perfect book to whet the appetite and satiate the senses. aimed at the more discerning gourmand, Edible Pleasures offers an irresistible guide to the unbreakable bond between food and love. From the poetic to the philosophical, the absurd to the abstruse, indulge in scientific, gastronomic and cultural histories, accompanied by an a-z of aphrodisiacs with a side order of seductive recipes. lovingly combining delicacies from The Taste of a Kiss by Martial to Madame Pompadour's Asparagus Tips, by way of South Park's Hot Salty Chocolate Balls, Edible Pleasures is bound to be the definitive textbook on food, passion, love and desire.

'Comfort Food for Breakups' is a beautifully written food memoir with a queer bent in which the author comes to terms with her Ukranian heritage and her lesbian identity by way of their connections to food: as sustenance, as coping mechanisms, as reminders of family history, and as objects of desire.

The book contains eleven dramatic and often horrifying stories, each describing the life of a different prisoner in the camps and prisons of communist Albania. The prisoners adapt, endure, and generally survive, all in different ways. They may conform, rebel, construct alternative realities of the imagination, cultivate hope, cling to memories of lost love, or devise increasingly strange and surreal strategies of resistance. The characters in different stories are linked to one another, and in their human relationships create a total picture of a secret and terrifying world. In the prisoners' back stories, the anecdotes they tell, and their political discussions, the book also reaches out beyond the walls and barbed wire to give the reader a panoramic picture of life in totalitarian Albania.

This epic saga of brotherhood and rivalry, of loyalty and treachery, of victory and death forms part of the indelible core of classical Chinese culture and continues to fascinate modern-day readers. In 220 EC, the 400-year-old rule of the mighty Han dynasty came to an end and three kingdoms contested for control of China. Liu Pei, the legitimate heir to the Han throne, elects to fight for his birthright and enlists the aid of his sworn brothers, the impulsive giant Chang Fei and the invincible knight Kuan Yu. The brave band faces a formidable array of enemies, foremost among them the treacherous and bloodthirsty Ts'ao Ts'ao. The bold struggle of the three heroes seems doomed until the reclusive wizard Chuko Liang offers his counsel, and the tide begins to turn. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is China's oldest novel and the first of a great tradition of historical fiction. Believed to have been compiled by the play-wright Lo Kuan-chung in the late fourteenth century, it is indebted to the great San-kuo chi (Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms) completed by the historian Ch'en Shou just before his death in 297 CE. The novel first appeared in print in 1522. This edition, translated in the mid-1920s by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, is based on a shortened and simplified version which appeared in the 1670s. An Introduction to this reprint by Robert E. Hegel, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Washington University, provides an insightful commentary on the historical background to the novel, its literary origins and its main characters.

Huntington's Disease (HD) is a hereditary illness passed on via a defective gene. There is a fifty per cent chance of inheriting it from a parent and there is yet no cure. Learning to Live with Huntington's Disease is one family's poignant story of coping with the symptoms, the diagnosis and the effects of HD. This book presents the struggles and strengths of the whole family when one member loses their future to a terminal illness. Told by the sufferer and other significant family members, the individuals describe the burden of watching yourself and others for symptoms of HD, including involuntary movements, depression, clumsiness, weight loss, slurred speech and sometimes violent tendencies. The family recounts the challenge to remain united and describes how they approached issues such as whether or not to be tested for HD, how much information to disclose to relatives, whether to have children or not and guilt if one sibling inherits the illness and one does not. Both honest and positive, the author stresses the importance of re-inventing yourself and your present, prioritizing relationships and retaining a sense of humor.

Emergency is a collection of true stories about events where disaster seems imminent. Yet each situation is concluded without loss of life thanks to the skill of the pilots and their crews, whose bravery and resourcefulness have earned them well deserved commendations.

Tonika Rinar believes that everybody is capable of time travel. We can access history as it really happened, without later exaggeration or bias. We can also heal ourselves by coming to terms with our experiences in past lives. Tonika escorts the reader into other worlds and dimensions, explaining her own remarkable experiences with an easy-to-read approach. At one level the book can simply be taken as a series of fascinating experiences with the paranormal, embracing past life regression, ghosts, angels and spirit guides. But it also encourages the reader along their own journey of self-discovery and understanding. A journey in which you can discover your own connection with the Universe and the many different dimensions contained within Creation. Journey Home offers a multitude of insights, and along the way looks at some of the fundamental questions asked by all cultures around the world. Where do we come from? Why are we here? What is the point of our life? What happens when we die?

Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and emigres, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century.

As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives."

It's not just a war over horses. It's a battle for the soul of Australia. This is a book about the intense culture war raging around Australia's wild horses, known as brumbies. It pits a vision of the legendary Man from Snowy River and the iconic ANZAC Light Horse against the spectre of ecosystems destroyed by feral pests. The debate involves powerful politicians and media commentators, and stars an animal mythologised in Australian poetry and prose. But in essence, this is about us. The Brumby Wars is about Australians at war with each other over their vision of an ideal Australia. To ecologists and people who ski, walk and fish in the High Country and other areas where the brumbies proliferate, they are a feral menace which must be removed to save delicate alpine landscapes. To the descendants of cattle families and many Australians in urban and regional areas, brumbies are untouchable, a symbol of wildness and freedom. Something has to give. But what? The land or the horses? This war is set to escalate dramatically before we have an answer. Featuring interviews with characters from all sides of the debate, The Brumby Wars is the riveting account of a major national issue and the very human passions it inspires. It is also a journey, a quest to understand what makes us tick in our increasingly polarised country. Praise for Anthony Sharwood's From Snow to Ash 'Makes for inspirational reading' West Australian 'A distinctive, charming narrative ... a thinking, caring man's trek' Canberra Times 'A joyous read with personality in spades ... A book for the adventurer in us all' Australian Geographic

This journal of the invasion, a collection of Andrey Kurkov's writings and broadcasts from Kyiv, is a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war. Andrey Kurkov has been a consistent satirical commentator on his adopted country of Ukraine. His most recent work, Grey Bees, is a dark foreshadowing of the devastation in the eastern part of Ukraine in which only two villagers remain in a village bombed to smithereens. The author has lived in Kyiv and in the remote countryside of Ukraine throughout the Russian invasion. He has also been able to fly to European capitals where he has been working to raise money for charities and to address crowded halls. Kurkov has been asked to write for every English newspaper, as also to be interviewed all over Europe. He has become an important voice for his people. Kurkov sees every video and every posted message, and he spends the sleepless nights of continuous bombardment of his city delivering the truth about this invasion to the world.

This book commemorates the enduring legacy of the world's most famous ship - TITANIC. Her story is one of all those bound together on that fateful voyage. On board were: writers, artists, honeymooners, sportsmen, priests, reverends, fashion designers, aristocrats, millionaires, children, crew and emigrants looking for a better life. This book tells of their lives, and shines the spotlight on: Some of the great ship's surprising treasures Her feted voyage from Belfast's Harland & Wolff shipyard The fascinating museums devoted to her memory, including Titanic Belfast The iconic music and movies Her winged and four-legged passengers The sister ships of Olympic and Britannic Tales of heroism Theories surrounding Titanic's fatal collision The lifeboats and just how close the SS Californian was on that tragic night How Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and the inquiries viewed events These stories and much more lie inside.

In the tradition of Krakauer's Into the Wild, The Golden Spruce tells an astonishing true story of a furious man's obsessive mission against an industrial juggernaut, the struggle of the Haida people to save their world, and the mysterious golden tree that binds them all together.
When a kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited Alaskan island just north of the Canadian border, they re-ignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest that made international news. On a winter night in 1997, a logger-turned-activist named Grant Hadwin plunged into the frigid waters of the Yakoun River in the Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw behind him. When he was done, a unique spruce tree -- 50 meters tall and covered with luminous golden needles -- was teetering on its massive stump.
The tree, which baffled scientists, was sacred to the Haida on whose land it had stood for over 300 years. It was also beloved by local loggers who singled it out for protection in the midst of vast clear cuts. Since the 1970s, the mist-shrouded archipelago -- one of the continent's most pristine and vibrant ecosystems -- has been a battleground with government officials and logging companies squaring off against the Haida and environmental groups. The loss of the mythic golden spruce united loggers, natives and environmentalists in sorrow and outrage. But while heroic efforts were made to revive the tree, Grant Hadwin, the tree's confessed killer, disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
John Vaillant's article on the death of the golden spruce was published in 2002 in "The New Yorker, and this book has grown out of it, dramatizing the destruction of a deeply conflicted man and thewilderness he loved; in so doing, it traces the rise, fall and rebirth of the Haida nation, and exposes the logging industry -- the most dangerous land-based job in North America -- from a point of view never explored in contemporary non-fiction.

"To look at this seedling -- if one could see it at all -- and believe that it had every intention of growing into one of the towering columns that blot out so much of the northwestern sky, would have seemed far-fetched at best. In its first year, the infant tree would have been about two inches tall and sporting a half dozen or so pale green needles. It would have been appealing in the same abstract way that baby snapping turtles are, its alien appearance transcended by the universal indicators of wild babyhood: utter helplessness and primordial determination in equal measure. Despite its bristling ruff and a stem as straight as a sunbeam, the seedling was still as vulnerable as a frog's egg; a falling branch, the footstep of a human or an animal -- any number of random occurrences -- could have finished it there and then.
Down there, in the damp darkness of the under story, the sapling's wonderful flaw was a well-kept secret. With each passing year, it dug its roots deeper into the riverbank, strengthening its grip on life and on the land. In spite of the odds, it became one of a handful of young trees that would survive to shoulder their way into the sunlight, competing with giants a dozen feet wide and hundreds of feet tall. In the end, it would be the sun that exposed this tree's secret for all to see and, by the middle of the 1700s, it would have been abundantly clear that something extraordinary was growing on the banks of theYakoun. It was a creature that seemed more at home in a myth or a fairy tale: a spruce tree with golden needles.
--excerpt from The Golden Spruce

In 1993, JosE MedellIn, an eighteen-year-old Mexican national who lived most of his life in the United States, was arrested for his participation in the gang rape and murder of two girls in Houston, Texas. Despite telling police that he was born in Mexico, he was never informed of his rights to contact the Mexican Consulate, a right guaranteed to him by Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Mexican government filed suit against the United States in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled that the United States had violated the rights of both Mexico and MedellIn, along with fifty-one other Mexican nationals in other cases. The ICJ instructed the United States to provide "review and reconsideration" of the convictions and sentences of the fifty-two Mexican nationals.Armed with this new decision, MedellIn sought a writ of habeas corpus, which was denied by the lower courts. He petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted, twice. While President George W. Bush sided with the ICJ, the State of Texas, under Solicitor General Ted Cruz, argued against the president. Despite a nearly universal belief among court watchers and legal scholars that Texas would lose, the Court in a 6-3 decision ruled in favor of Texas and against MedellIn in June 2008. MedellIn was executed just two months later. In this volume Alan Mygatt-Tauber tells the story of MedellIn v. Texas, showing how the Court's 2008 ruling grappled with the complex question of how a united republic that respects the dual sovereignty of its constituent parts struggles to comply with its international obligations. But this is also a story of international human rights and the anomalous position of the United States regarding the death penalty compared to other nations. In the closing chapters, the author explores the aftermath of the execution, including the continued effort of Mexico to seek justice for its nationals. Mygatt-Tauber offers a detailed examination of the case at every stage of proceedings-trial, appeal, at the International Court of Justice, and in both trips to the Supreme Court. He provides never-before-revealed information about the thinking of the Bush White House in the decision to comply with the ICJ's judgment and to withdraw from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention which granted the ICJ jurisdiction.

Charmain Bynoe, a council housing officer for the London borough of Southwark, inspired the nation when she appeared on the TV series Council House Britain. Now, in The Estate, she shines a light on the challenges faced by so many of our citizens and provides heartwarming and inspirational stories of how they have been helped to help themselves. The role of our council housing officers is often overlooked and forgotten about. But their work is vital and, for some, the officers are their best hope for a better quality of life. Sometimes, Charmain works with those who are struggling to cope, finding it hard to keep a roof over their heads or to deal with day-to-day challenges. All they may need is some hope, and she is there to suggest a way forward. In Charmain's powerful new book, she looks back at some of the people she's worked with, from the old man who lives in squalor because he can no longer keep his flat tidy and needs support, to the young Ghanaian woman in a coercive relationship who fears that if she speaks out she will be deported. Britain's housing crisis remains an enormous issue for the country, which was only further highlighted by the Grenfell Tower disaster. But, as Charmain shows, with humanity and consideration for others, we can make things better in ways that don't have to cost a fortune but can deliver results that are truly priceless.

The authors, both experienced field workers in the region, spent their honeymoon collecting 14 narratives of ordinary people who survived multiple invasions and civil violence, only to endure a medieval theocracy that stepped into the resulting vacuum of governance. While edicts that denied basic human rights were imposed and enforced, these people

Each day, someone is given a dire diagnosis or forced to face a great hardship. And each day someone who cares for the afflicted wonders what he or she can do. This is why Bernie S. Siegel's works are perennial classics. Siegel's groundbreaking methods of "carefrontation" help sufferers discover their own physical, spiritual, and psychological healing potential, expanding the sense of what is possible not only for patients but also for their loved ones and caregivers. These riveting true stories don't gloss over grief or minimize pain but instead highlight the possibilities available even in adversity. They show that the unexpected and inexplicable -- the miraculous -- are as much a part of life as pain -- and that they can be invited into any life at any time.

'A beacon of hope in a dark world' Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Pool One night in November 2015, when Antoine Leiris was at home looking after his baby son, his wife Helene was killed, along with 88 other people, at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris. Three days later, Antoine wrote an open letter to his wife's killers on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his baby son's life be defined by their acts. 'For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom,' he wrote. Instantly, that short post caught fire and was shared thousands of times around the world. An extraordinary and heartbreaking memoir, You Will Not Have My Hate is a universal message of hope and resilience in our troubled times.