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Books > Biography > Historical, political & military
Sankara's legacy, unclear as it may be, still lives and he remains immensely popular. If you travel through Africa his image is unmistakable. His picture, with beret and broad grin, is pasted on run-down taxis and is found on the walls of local bars. Internationally Sankara is often referred to as the `African Che Guevara' and like his South American counterpart; it is his perseverance, dedication and incorruptibility that appeal to the imagination. Voices of liberation: Thomas Sankara starts with a comprehensive timeline covering Thomas Sankara's life and major events in the history of the continent and region. His Life section provides the most critical and fraternal assessment of the 1980s radical experiment within the broader history of the country, the region and continent. His Voice section succinctly provides a selection of Sankara's speeches, broadcasts and interviews and gives us insight to his outlook on the world. His Legacy section combines an almost poetic tribute to the flawed through heroic period of Sankara's `revolution' with an incredibly relentless and honest analysis. This is done through the story of last year's uprising against Compaore - with haunting lessons for South Africa. The Postscript is an indispensable update to the extraordinary events in Burkina Faso during 2015, chiefly the resistance to the coup in September. The authors look at Sankara's influence on the popular movements and its wider significance for Africa.
From one of our most acclaimed new biographers--the first full life
of the leader of Lincoln's "team of rivals" to appear in more than
forty years.
Veering from the hilarious to the tragic, Andrew Mitchell's tales from the parliamentary jungle make for one of the most entertaining political memoirs in years. From his prep school years, straight out of Evelyn Waugh, through the Army to Cambridge, the City of London and the Palace of Westminster, Mitchell has passed through a series of British institutions at a time of furious social and political change - in the process becoming rather more cynical about the British Establishment. Here, he reflects on the perils and pleasures of loyalty, whether to a party, to individuals or to one's own principles. He brilliantly lifts the lid on the dark arts of the government Whips' Office ('Whipping, like stripping, is best done in private') and reveals how he accidentally started Boris Johnson's political career and later naively backed him to be Prime Minister - an act which rebounded on him spectacularly. Mitchell also writes candidly about the Plebgate fiasco, which led to four police officers being sacked for gross misconduct and in one case imprisoned, while Mitchell himself faced a bill of millions of pounds in legal fees after losing his libel case. Engagingly honest about his ups and downs in politics, Beyond a Fringe is crammed with hilarious political anecdotes and irresistible insider gossip from the heart of Westminster.
One of the oldest living Holocaust survivors recounts her family’s imprisonment at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen in this moving memoir of love, loss, courage, and hope. When German soldiers invaded Poland in September 1939, it began a six year journey for then-ten-year-old Renee Salt and her mother Sala. Until their liberation in 1945, Renee and Sala were imprisoned in ghettos and concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. The only light in the darkness and brutality for Renee was the unwavering grasp of her mother’s hand in hers–enduring, against all odds. It was this unbreakable bond, along with a few miracles, that kept Renee alive. Sala’s staggering courage to defy the will of SS guards saved both her and her daughter from the gas chambers, and the pair survived the deadliest days in Auschwitz’s history. After suffering the nightmarish conditions at Bergen-Belsen, Renee and her mother were liberated in April 1945–but Sala died soon after they were saved. To this day, Renee attributes her survival to the love and bravery of her beloved mother. Do Not Cry When I Die is an incredibly moving and deeply crucial book that tells the shocking story of one of the oldest Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen survivors–and the mother’s love that saved her life.
Winner of the Bancroft Prize""
An incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Horace Greasley escaped over 200 times from a notorious German prison camp to see the girl he loved. This is his incredible true story. A Sunday Times Bestseller - over 60,000 copies sold. Even in the most horrifying places on earth, hope still lingers in the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to take flight. When war was declared Horace Greasley was just twenty-years old. After seven weeks' training with the 2/5th Battalion, the Royal Leicestershire Regiment, Horace found himself facing the might of the German Army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in northern France, with just thirty rounds in his ammunition pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. . . On 25 May 1940 he was taken prisoner and so began the harrowing journey to a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland. Those who survived the gruelling ten-week march to the camp were left broken and exhausted, all chance of escape seemingly extinguished. But when Horace met Rosa, the daughter of one of his captors, his story changed; fate, it seemed, had thrown him a lifeline. Horace risked everything in order to steal out of the camp to see his love, bringing back supplies for his fellow prisoners. In doing so he offered hope to his comrades, and defiance to one of the most brutal regimes in history.
'Let me say to Mr Botha: apartheid is doomed! It has been condemned in the Councils of God, rejected by every nation on the planet and is no longer believed in by the people who gave it birth. Apartheid is the god that has failed.' So preached Bishop Peter Storey in 1986. Challenging apartheid wherever he could, he led the SA Methodist Church into what many whites saw as uncomfortable 'political' territory. Join him in his inspiring journey from sailor-turned-minister to the South African Council of Churches leadership in its darkest hour, from tending to Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, through the forced removals of District Six and the storm surrounding Stompie Seipei's murder. I Beg to Differ spans a parish minister’s sorrows and joys, founding Life Line SA, the bombing of Khotso House and a close shave with death with Desmond Tutu. Storey shares the convictions that inspired him to minister amid the teargas, violence and intimidation of the apartheid regime.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes a dark but ultimately uplifting tale of a woman whose incredible journey still resonates today. Elizabeth Packard was an ordinary Victorian housewife and mother of six. That was, until the first Woman's Rights Convention was held in 1848, inspiring Elizabeth and many other women to dream of greater freedoms. She began voicing her opinions on politics and religion - opinions that her husband did not share. Incensed and deeply threatened by her growing independence, he had her declared 'slightly insane' and committed to an asylum. Inside the Illinois State Hospital, Elizabeth found many other perfectly lucid women who, like her, had been betrayed by their husbands and incarcerated for daring to have a voice. But just because you are sane, doesn't mean that you can escape a madhouse ... Fighting the stigma of her gender and her supposed madness, Elizabeth embarked on a ceaseless quest for justice. It not only challenged the medical science of the day and saved untold others from suffering her fate, it ultimately led to a giant leap forward in human rights the world over.
At last we can know who 'king' Arthur was, when he lived and what he did. This is the first work on the legendary hero started without any axe to grind. Here it is demonstrated that Arthur was a Coeling - a prince directly descended from Old King Cole - selected as a very young age by the kings of the 'Hen Ogled' (The Old north, which had been a magor subdivision of Roman Britannia) to be 'Pendragon' (Army Commander in Chief) of the alliance of forces tasked to put an end to raids into their lands by Picts and Scots once and for all. The sites of the 12 famous battles are identified, Arthur's pedigree is specified and the circumstances of his death examined. Such well know elements of Arthurian legend as 'Excalibur', Camelot, Karduel and the 'Isle of Avalon' are all identified, explained and put in context. This book then goes on to suggest where the boundary between history and legend lies, identifying the relationship between the two and showing how the legend developed in the first place. Finally Arthur's legacy is assessed.
At last we can know who 'king' Arthur was, when he lived and what he did. This is the first work on the legendary hero started without any axe to grind. Here it is demonstrated that Arthur was a Coeling - a prince directly descended from Old King Cole - selected as a very young age by the kings of the 'Hen Ogled' (The Old north, which had been a magor subdivision of Roman Britannia) to be 'Pendragon' (Army Commander in Chief) of the alliance of forces tasked to put an end to raids into their lands by Picts and Scots once and for all. The sites of the 12 famous battles are identified, Arthur's pedigree is specified and the circumstances of his death examined. Such well know elements of Arthurian legend as 'Excalibur', Camelot, Karduel and the 'Isle of Avalon' are all identified, explained and put in context. This book then goes on to suggest where the boundary between history and legend lies, identifying the relationship between the two and showing how the legend developed in the first place. Finally Arthur's legacy is assessed.
A new edition with a new introduction, this is a deeply personal record of Orwell's growing despair and disillusionment with the Spanish Civil War, gathering themes he would later explore to perfection in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Having joined the international leftist forces in Barcelona, Orwell grew frustrated by the repressive totalitarianism of Stalin's brand of communism.
"Garry Curtis is a solider, whom some might say is of misfortune, rather that the opposite. Yet, he is a man, who has lived not one but several lives in an existence of remarkable colour and variance. His story is frank and heartfelt, expressed in a street language that he knows intimately. From his earliest childhood memories to the career direction that shaped his livelihood, he expresses his emotions with intensity and sparkling wit. He has been in the front-line. He has worked behind the scenes. However, Garry is never the less that forthright and unafraid of pertinent invective. This superbly well-expressed work is both dramatic and tragic. It deals with with life and death in equal measure and displays and energy that will fill you with laughter and hope." Garry is a rare breed of man, he is a man of high standards and for the most part a decent, caring lad who always looking out for those around him. A once promising boxer, a former Royal Marines commando, an elite firefighter in the fire rescue unit in London and for a couple of decades as close protection and a hostile environment consultant has been constantly putting himself in harms way to look after those persons he has been given the privilege to look after, as well as looking after others that have been in a bad place during some kind of attack. Many lives saved also much death around him. A family man, a father of four beautiful, adoring children and his world is his grandson Ralph Garry has been asked by so many people over the years to write a book and always pushed it to one side. However, after a breathtaking daring escape whilst held against his will in Libya 2011 by colonel Gaddaffis loyalist gunmen, not only had Garry successfully escaped with the ITN media team, he then returned to carry out what could have been a daring rescue. A chain reaction of bad luck followed and lies as well as embarrassment from an individual caused Garry's world to come crashing down around him. During a four year period the man that so many had entrusted their lives run out of fight and almost succumbed to death not only from injury in Afghanistan, which led to four huge surgeries where he contracted blood poisoning, also the darkest place he has been his own war. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, once you read what he has been through he almost died at his own hand an attempted suicide. Then the love of his life along with the dramas from a former lover in Ukraine. Garry's world comes crashing down. The pride of this man was so great and the financial ruin caused by just a very few and what he describes as his perfect storm, the culmination of all this, wreaked havoc and the trigger for Garry to step down that dark road. Garry being Garry is back stronger than ever and rebuilding his life. This is the powerful no warts brutal truth of a sometimes larger than life ordinary down to earth guy some call a hero. Garry would always say I am not a hero it's just a job, it's just me, I love my job. Gary supports mental health charities such as Rock2Recovery a charity set up to support men, women and families of the armed forces. Also the London Air Ambulance as they flew Garry to Hospital when he tried to commit suicide. Proceeds from "incoming" will go towards helping these charities help people all over the U.K.
Terry Gardiner ran a business in the Middle East for more than 30 years, and was living and working in Baghdad when America and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003. During the months that followed he experienced the full horrors of war, and witnessed appalling abuse by certain sections of the coalition forces. A member of his staff was abducted and decapitated by the insurgents, while another died under torture at the hands of the British. Gardiner was even kidnapped himself at one point, escaping with his life only because he was able to convince his captors that he was pro-Iraqi. And he knows the truth about how, where and when Saddam Hussein was really captured. The book reveals in detail the truth about how Iraq / Syria and Libya's fate was decided in 2001 as part of Blair and Bush's Foreign Policy. It also shows how greedy Western interests have led to the rape and near destruction of a country and helped to provoke a terrible terrorist backlash
“A brilliant biography that will transform your understanding of this young, charismatic leader” — Joseph Nhini, BooksLive, Sunday Times “Deeply thought-provoking” — Tyrone August, Cape Times “Makes a good job of weaving together a number of strands that make the totality of the powerful persona Biko became ... Sheds new light on more than just Biko” — Sam Mkokeli, Business Day Interest in the iconic Steve Biko has strongly revived, as the current generation of activists calls on his legacy and thoughts. Biko is cited and disputed particularly in the #RhodesMustFall and decolonisation movements. This comprehensive biography, shortlisted for the Alan Paton award, explores Biko's life, the people and ideas that shaped him, and his part in Black Consciousness and the struggle. Updated in an affordable new edition, Biko: A Biography presents a new generation with nuanced insights into the life and thought of a South African hero.
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a Sunday Independent Book of the Year A deeply researched, superbly crafted biography of America’s most complex president. Award-winning biographer John A. Farrell examines the life and legacy of one of America’s most controversial political figures, from Nixon’s early days in the Navy to his political career as senator, vice president, and finally president, and his downfall in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixon is a magisterial portrait of the man who embodied post-war American political cynicism ― and was destroyed by it. |
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