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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > From 1900 > Reportage & collected journalism
A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century
invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world. 'The
real feat of this book is that it takes us on a ride-across the
centuries and around the globe, through startling history and vivid
first-person reporting.' - Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times
bestselling author of Empire of Pain The bicycle is a vestige of
the Victorian era, seemingly out of pace with our age of
smartphones and ridesharing apps and driverless cars. Yet across
the world, more people travel by bicycle than by any other form of
transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike - and nearly
everyone does. In Two Wheels Good, writer and critic Jody Rosen
reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an
ever-present force in humanity's life and dreamlife, and a
flashpoint in culture wars for more for than two hundred years.
Combining history, reportage, travelogue, and memoir, Rosen unfolds
the bicycle's saga from its invention in 1817 to its present-day
renaissance as a 'green machine' in a world afflicted by pandemic
and climate change. Readers meet unforgettable characters: feminist
rebels who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a
Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas,
astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity aboard the
International Space Station. Two Wheels Good examines the bicycle's
past and peers into its future, challenging myths and cliches,
while uncovering cycling's connection to colonial conquest and the
gentrification of cities. But the book is also a love letter: a
reflection on the sensual and spiritual pleasures of bike riding
and an ode to an engineering marvel - a wondrous vehicle whose
passenger is also its engine. 'Love for two-wheeled transport runs
through every sentence in the book' - Economist 'The best thing
I've ever read on a single subject' - Lauren Collins, author of
When in French 'This is social history as it ought to be written:
funny, precise, surprising, anti-dogmatic and unafraid of following
a story' - Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon
The first edited volume of work by the legendary undercover
journalist
Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran, Nellie Bly was one of the first and
best female journalists in America and quickly became a national
phenomenon in the late 1800s, with a board game based on her
adventures and merchandise inspired by the clothes she wore. Bly
gained fame for being the first "girl stunt reporter," writing
stories that no one at the time thought a woman could or should
write, including an expose of patient treatment at an insane asylum
and a travelogue from her record-breaking race around the world
without a chaperone. This volume, the only printed and edited
collection of Bly's writings, includes her best known works--"Ten
Days in a Mad-House," "Six Months in Mexico," and "Around the World
in Seventy-Two Days"--as well as many lesser known pieces that
capture the breadth of her career from her fierce opinion pieces to
her remarkable World War I reporting. As 2014 marks the 150th
anniversary of Bly's work, this collection celebrates her work,
spirit, and vital place in history.
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Gomorrah
(Paperback)
Roberto Saviano; Translated by Virginia Jewiss; Introduction by Misha Glenny
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R423
Discovery Miles 4 230
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano's gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal. Known by insiders as the System, the Camorra affects cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast, and is the deciding factor in why Campania, for instance, has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and whycancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years.
Saviano tells of huge cargoes of Chinese goods that are shipped to Naples and then quickly distributed unchecked across Europe. He investigates the Camorra's control of thousands of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates the chilling details of how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia. In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, a waiter at a Camorra wedding, and on a construction site. A native of the region, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to aid an eighteen-year-old victim who had been left for dead in the street.
Gomorrah is a bold and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.
Six years after the Marikana massacre we have still seen minimal change for mine workers and mining communities. Although much has been written about how little has been done, few have looked into how, in 2012, such tragedy was even possible. Lonmin Platinum Mine and the events of 16 August are a microcosm of the mining sector and how things can go wrong when society leaves everything to government and “big business”.
Business As Usual After Marikana is a comprehensive analysis of mining in South Africa. Written by respected academics and practitioners in the field, it looks into the history, policies and business practices that brought us to this point.
Translated from the German Zum Beispiel: BASF – Uber Konzernmacht und Menschenrechte, it also examines how bigger global companies like BASF were directly or indirectly responsible, and yet nothing is done to keep them accountable.
One of the most important voices in contemporary American
journalism - Independent Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists
in America who speaks truth to power - Bernie Sanders Matt Taibbi
is the best polemic journalist in America - Felix Salmon NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLER "The thing is, when you actually think about it,
it's not funny. Given what's at stake, it's more like the opposite,
like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a
global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we're all living
like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks, we'll
probably look back at this moment as the beginning of the end." In
this groundbreaking battery of dispatches from the heartland of
America, Matt Taibbi tells the full story of the Trump phenomenon,
from its tragi-comic beginnings to the apocalyptic election. Full
of sharp, on-the-ground reporting and gallows humour, his incisive
analysis goes beyond the bizarre and disturbing election to tell a
wider story of the apparent collapse of American democracy. Taibbi
saw the essential themes right from the start: the power of
spectacle over truth; the end of a shared reality on the left and
right; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the
death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new,
explicit form of white nationalism. From the thwarted Bernie
Sanders insurgency to the aimless Hillary Clinton campaign, across
the flailing media coverage and the trampled legacy of Obama, this
is the story of ordinary voters forced to bear witness to the whole
charade. At the centre of it all, "a bumbling train wreck of a
candidate who belched and preened his way past a historically weak
field" who, improbably, has taken control of the world's most
powerful nation. This is essential and hilarious reading that
explores how the new America understands itself, and about the
future of the world just beyond the horizon.
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