What would the world look like if more of us cared for more people? What if we were vulnerable in sharing our whole story, the good and the bad, and not just the highlight reel? How could our stories, if authentically told, help others through their pain, grief, or depression? In his new memoir, NO LUCKS GIVEN, Chef Brother Luck shares the dramatic story of his childhood, the life lessons he learned on the streets, in kitchens, and in counseling sessions, and compels us to both ask for help and do the hard work of helping others. Through the lens of his own prioritiesfaith, family, and foodBrother sets the table for meaningful conversation by acknowledging his pain, being vulnerable, and sharing the wisdom he has learned from his mentors.

Sheila Mills's story is a unique perspective of the Second World War. She is a clever, middle-class Norfolk girl with a yen for adventure and joins the WRNS in 1940 to escape the shackles of secretarial work in London, her unhappy childhood and her social-climbing mother. From a first posting in Scotland in 1940, she progresses through the ranks, first to Egypt and later to a vanquished Germany. Extraordinary and fascinating encounters and personalities are seen through the eyes of a young Wren officer: Admiral Ramsay, the Invasion of Sicily and Operation Mincemeat that triggered it, The Flap, the sinking of the Medway, the surrender of the Italian fleet and the Belsen Trials. These observations are peppered with humorous insights into the humdrum preoccupations of a typical Wren - boys, appearance and having fun, while worrying about home and family. This treasure trove of hundreds of letters, along with scrapbooks and memorabilia, some of which are reproduced here, was discovered in bin liners shortly after Sheila died. Her daughter, Vicky, has pieced together a fascinating and unusual record of the Second World War from a woman's perspective.

This gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old for over half a century and is now a modern classic. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captures a child's-eye view and an adult's fond memories of a magical time of presents, aunts and uncles, the frozen sea, and in the best of circumstances, newly fallen snow.

The letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) illuminate the career and opinions of one of the most prominent and controversial clergymen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His petitions for liberalism within the Church of England in 1772-3, his subsequent resignation from the church and his foundation of a separate Unitarian chapel in London in 1774 all provoked profound debate in the political as well as the ecclesiastical world. His chapel became a focal point for the theologically and politically disaffected and during the 1770s and early 1780s attracted the interest of many critics of British policy towards the American colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley and Richard Price were among Lindsey's many acquaintances.BR The second and final volume of this edition covers the period from the regency crisis and the early stages of the French Revolution to Lindsey's death nineteen years later, at the height of the Napoleonic War. His letters from this period reveal in depth Lindsey's central role in the formation of Unitarianism as a distinctive denomination, his involvement in movements for religious and political reform, his close friendship with Joseph Priestley and the tribulations of dissenters during the 1790s. From his vantage point in London, Lindsey was a well-informed and well-connected observer of the responses in Britain to the French Revolution and the war of the 1790s, and he provides a lucid commentary on the political, literary and theological scene. As with Volume I, the letters are fully annotated and are accompanied by a full contextual introduction. G.M. DITCHFIELD is Professor of Eighteenth-Century History, University of Kent at Canterbury.

On October 13, 2016, it was announced that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, recognizing his countless contributions to music and letters over the last fifty years. Some months later, he delivered a lecture that will now be available in book form for generations to come. In it, he reflects on his life and experience with literature, giving readers a rare and intimate look at an American icon. From being inspired by Buddy Holly to the novels that helped shape his own approach to writing (The Odyssey, Moby Dick, and All Quiet on the Western Front), this is Dylan like you've never seen him before.

Caught in the no man's land between being a key figure in Downing Street and the relative anonymity of the world outside politics, Alastair Campbell finds himself being torn in several directions. Having succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown wants Campbell at his side. Campbell resists, flooding his reservoir of guilt as a general election looms and Brown's indecision and fluctuating moods suggest the Labour administration is seriously threatened by the Tory `posh boy', David Cameron. Soon Campbell is earning not only praise but big money from motivational speaking and writing novels which darkly reflect the personal mood swings that continue to concern to both him and his family. Serious journalism across platforms old and new puts him back in the public eye and together with live appearances and a love of sport - his enduring love affair with Burnley Football Club still smoulders - sees him board a celebrity merry-go-round that often leaves him far from his comfort zone. With politics constantly tugging his sleeve, he eventually returns to the front line to marshal a party in disarray. The intensity of the months leading up to 6 May 2010 is as dramatic as any screenplay, with Campbell chronicling Brown's struggle to win over a disillusioned nation and then his dignified departure from the main stage. For Campbell, another chapter closes. So what next?

Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London.

In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.

Before becoming the patron of Lost Generation artists, Gertrude Stein established her reputation as an innovative author whose style was closer to painting than literature. Stein's strong influence on 20th-century literature is evident in this 1915 work of highly original prose rendered in thought-provoking experimental techniques.

In 2002 Lucy Newlyn found herself incarcerated in a mental hospital in Leeds. She had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act as a danger to herself and others during a psychotic episode after several nights without sleep. The psychosis was triggered by nearly three years of grieving for a dead sister, followed by a vigil at her father's deathbed during which she hallucinated that his hospital ward was a trench in the First World War. The episode uncovered psychiatric problems, which led in due course to a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (manic depression). This condition, which involves extreme mood swings, is classified as a disability and requires medication; but it is also a source of creativity, giving access to some unusual dimensions of human experience. In her fifteen-year diary, Lucy Newlyn discloses recurring episodes of mania, depression, hallucination and paranoid delusion. Describing her struggles with family life and the workplace, she de-mystifies bipolarity and critiques an environment which still, even in the twenty-first century, is suspicious of mental illness. Above all, she celebrates the discovery that writing poetry enables a cathartic engagement with her own condition. Diary of a Bipolar Explorer is not a self-help manual but a candid confessional memoir which offers no easy solutions. It involves a mixture of observation and reflection, interspersing poetry with prose. Written accessibly, it will appeal to anyone interested in mental illness, creative process and the life of the mind.

'A Change of Season' is Cullup's first major poetry collection in nearly a decade.

Notable writers-including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow-celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past What can a house tell us about the person who lives there? Do we shape the buildings we live in, or are we formed by the places we call home? And why are we especially fascinated by the houses of the famous and often long-dead? In Lives of Houses, notable biographers, historians, critics, and poets explores these questions and more through fascinating essays on the houses of great writers, artists, composers, and politicians of the past. Editors Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee are joined by wide-ranging contributors, including Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, David Cannadine, Roy Foster, Alexandra Harris, Daisy Hay, Margaret MacMillan, Alexander Masters, and Jenny Uglow. We encounter W. H. Auden, living in joyful squalor in New York's St. Mark's Place, and W. B. Yeats in his flood-prone tower in the windswept West of Ireland. We meet Benjamin Disraeli, struggling to keep up appearances, and track the lost houses of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. We visit Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, England, and Jean Sibelius at Ainola, Finland. But Lives of Houses also considers those who are unhoused, unwilling or unable to establish a home-from the bewildered poet John Clare wandering the byways of England to the exiled Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera living on the streets of London. With more than forty illustrations, Lives of Houses illuminates what houses mean to us and how we use them to connect to and think about the past. The result is a fresh and engaging look at house and home. Featuring Alexandra Harris on moving house Susan Walker on Morocco's ancient Roman House of Venus Hermione Lee on biographical quests for writers' houses Margaret MacMillan on her mother's Toronto house a poem by Maura Dooley, "Visiting Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts"-the house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote and set her novel Little Women Felicity James on William and Dorothy Wordsworth's Dove Cottage Robert Douglas-Fairhurst at home with Tennyson David Cannadine on Winston Churchill's dream house, Chartwell Jenny Uglow on Edward Lear at San Remo's Villa Emily Lucy Walker on Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh, England Seamus Perry on W. H. Auden at 77 St. Mark's Place, New York City Rebecca Bullard on Samuel Johnson's houses a poem by Simon Armitage, "The Manor" Daisy Hay at home with the Disraelis Laura Marcus on H. G. Wells at Uppark Alexander Masters on the fear of houses Elleke Boehmer on sites associated with Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera Kate Kennedy on the mental asylums where World War I poet Ivor Gurney spent the last years of his life a poem by Bernard O'Donoghue, "Safe Houses" Roy Foster on W. B. Yeats and Thoor Ballylee Sandra Mayer on W. H. Auden's Austrian home Gillian Darley on John Soane and the autobiography of houses Julian Barnes on Jean Sibelius and Ainola

This title was first published in 1982. The authors deal with the experiences of modern women with penetrating sincerity and honesty, but their philosophic profundity in understanding modern life, their intellectual capacity to view their experience in a historical and social context, and their mastery of the art of fiction render the traditional category of 'female school literature' totally inadequate to characterize their works. Indeed, they stand at the core of modern Japanese literature as a whole.

This collection from Hannah More reveals a creative conflict that advocates the values of the prevailing ideology while at the same time seeking to modify them.

Bess of Hardwick's Letters is the first book-length study of the c. 250 letters to and from the remarkable Elizabethan dynast, matriarch and builder of houses Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527-1608). By surveying the complete correspondence, author Alison Wiggins uncovers the wide range of uses to which Bess put letters: they were vital to her engagement in the overlapping realms of politics, patronage, business, legal negotiation, news-gathering and domestic life. Much more than a case study of Bess's letters, the discussions of language, handwriting and materiality found here have fundamental implications for the way we approach and read Renaissance letters. Wiggins offers readings which show how Renaissance letters communicated meaning through the interweaving linguistic, palaeographic and material forms, according to socio-historical context and function. The study goes beyond the letters themselves and incorporates a range of historical sources to situate circumstances of production and reception, which include Account Books, inventories, needlework and textile art and architecture. The study is therefore essential reading for scholars in historical linguistics, historical pragmatics, palaeography and manuscript studies, material culture, English literature and social history.

Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905) was a major force for social, legal, and literary transformation in the second half of the nineteenth century. Best known for his Reconstruction novels A Fool's Errand (1879) and Bricks without Straw (1880), and for his key role in the civil rights case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), challenging Louisiana's law segregating railroad cars, Tourgee published more than a dozen novels and a volume of short stories, as well as nonfiction works of history, law, and politics. This volume is the first collection focused on Tourgee's literary work and intends to establish his reputation as one of the great writers of fiction about the Reconstruction era arguably the greatest for the wide historical and geographical sweep of his novels and his ability to work with multiple points of view. As a white novelist interested in the rights of African Americans, Tourgee was committed to developing not a single Black perspective but multiple Black perspectives, sometimes even in conflict. The challenge was to do justice to those perspectives in the larger context of the story he wanted to tell about a multiracial America. The seventeen essays in this volume are grouped around three large topics: race, citizenship, and nation. The volume also includes a Preface, Introduction, Afterword, Bibliography, and Chronology providing an overview of his career. This collection changes the way that we view Tourgee by highlighting his contributions as a writer and editor and as a supporter of African American writers. Exploring the full spectrum of his literary works and cultural engagements, Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion Tourgee reveals a new Tourgee for our moment of renewed interest in the literature and politics of Reconstruction.

This book was the first sign of the gorgeous Indian summer which was to diffuse its golden splendours over the remainder of Alfred Tennyson's career, and to end only with his life.

The Art of the Black Essay unveils the power of the African American essay to bring about a meditative shift in the minds of readers, to catapult them beyond racial ideology - by immersing them in it - and to elicit in them, ultimately, democratic change. This title outlines the specific tools of the trade, literary techniques through which the democratization process works: the uncanny, meditative moment of transcendency. This title also describes a psychological journey experienced by the essayist him/herself. Essay writing or life-writing is the vehicle to release the pull of ideology - the root of the "hierarchy of race" idea. In this book, the author makes a clear distinction between race as biology and race as ideology in order to align race with the culture, values, traditions and art of a people. The Art of theBlack Essay shows how African American essayists have transcended the pull of two cultural identities and achieved democratic change.

If so, you might be experiencing your Saturn Return! The Saturn Return is an astrological event that occurs approximately every 29 years, when the karmic ringed planet returns to where it was in the sky at the time when you were born. Depending on your birth chart, the period lasts about two years. It has a reputation for being a difficult or even grueling time, when major life changes abound as the shifts in the universe reveal shifts in oneself. . . Surviving Your Saturn Return is a charming hardcover journal that includes guided prompts for reflecting on the past, staying mindful of the present, and manifesting good vibes for the future, along with specific advice for navigating this coming-of-age based on your zodiac sign. With questions that explore different topic areas like health, wealth, relationships, and community, this journal will help you assess what to take with you and what to leave behind as you emerge into cosmic adulthood. The stunning original artwork and gold foil stars on the cover make this the true keepsake by which to remember your celestial journey--once you have reached the other side.

Vade Mecum brings together Richard Skinner's best essays, reviews and interviews from 1992-2014. There are close critical engagements with writers (Kazuo Ishiguro, Italo Calvino, Shakespeare's The Tempest) and composers (Erik Satie, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari), meditations on films and filmmakers (Antonioni, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Chinatown) and idiosyncratic reflections on Werner Herzog's Of Walking in Ice and Steely Dan.

His first new collection of short humor in fifteen years is classic Woody Allen. Zero Gravity is the fifth collection of comic pieces by Woody Allen, a hilarious prose stylist whose enduring appeal readers have savored since his classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy. This new work combines pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker along with ten written exclusively for this book, each a comic inspiration. Whether he's writing about horses that paint, cars that think, the sex lives of celebrities, or how General Tso's Chicken got its name, he is always totally original, broad yet sophisticated, acutely observant, and most important, relentlessly funny. Along with titles like "Buffalo Wings Woncha Come Out Tonight" and "When Your Hood Ornament Is Nietzsche," included in this collection is his poignant but very funny short story, "Growing Up in Manhattan." Zero Gravity implies writing not to be taken seriously, but, as with any true humor, not all the laughs are weightless

"It is first and foremost an eyewitness account of an everyman and a true humanist. He was there during the Operation 'Cast Lead' and so his daily dispatches came directly from the killing fields of Gaza, and are therefore free of any media distortion or manipulation."--Ilan Pappe, professor of history, University of Exeter

An authoritative and deeply moving eyewitness account of the terrible twenty-two-day Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009. These daily dispatches were written in precarious conditions, between bombing raids and intermittent Internet access. Vittorio Arrigoni ends his dispatches with the plea "stay human," which became the motto of the peace protests in his native Italy. This English translation is updated with new entries reflecting on life in Gaza after the offensive and also features an introduction by famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.

Vittorio Arrigoni was an internationally renowned human rights activist who served as a volunteer with the pacifist International Solidarity Movement and worked closely with fishermen and farmers in Gaza. During the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, Arrigoni acted as a human shield while working with the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances. Working as a freelance journalist for the Italian daily "Il Manifesto," Arrigoni's daily dispatches, written between bombing raids and patchy internet access, ended with the plea, "stay human," which became the motto of the anti-Israeli peace protests in his native Italy. His authoritative and deeply moving eyewitness account was later published in 2010 in Italian, French, German, and English, which the historian Ilan Pappe described as the "account of an everyman and a true humanist." On April 14, 2011, Arrigoni was kidnapped and brutally murdered by militants in Gaza, which caused an international outcry and was unanimously condemned by Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority.

There are now many studies of family letters in Europe, but most of them focus on marital letters and letters between parents, especially mothers, and their sons. Little attention has been paid to the letters to and from daughters. This volume seeks to begin filling that gap by exploring the continuities and changes evident in the letters written between mothers and daughters over several centuries. Some of these changes reflect the history of letters and the ways that they were written and delivered, especially the move from the use of scribes and couriers in the medieval and early modern period, which made both the writing and reading of letters a public affair, to the use of pens and the situation in which letters were able to be written in private and read only by the person to whom they were addressed. But the letters also reveal the changing nature of the mother and daughter relationship, as the formal and more distant ties evident in the early period, in which dynastic and other matters were often more important to a mother than her daughter's personal happiness, were replaced by closer and more intimate ties and a concern with particular personalities and individual needs. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

In mid-July 1765, Voltaire produced a twenty-page pamphlet entitled "Questions sur les miracles a M. le professeur Cla*** par un proposant", hoping at best for a reply from the said pastor, little thinking that it would lead to the publication eleven months later, in May 1766, of a 232-page volume entitled "Collection des lettres sur les miracles", composed of various short writings from the period. Voltaire's series of twenty imaginary letters might at first glance be seen as one chronological sequence, as superficial as the fickle and fleeting question they address. But the "Collection" is at the same time an attack on Christianity; an attack on John Turberville Needham, a new anti-philosophical adversary for Voltaire; and a political wrangle which questions the relationship between church authorities and civil government, challenged by the situation in Switzerland at the time.