A Raisin in the Sun is a classic American play: a groundbreaking 1950s civil rights drama and has a strong claim to be the greatest play of the black American experience. Deeply committed to the black struggle for equality and human rights, Lorraine Hansberry's brilliant career as a writer was cut short by her death when she was only 34. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Hansberry was the youngest and the first black writer to receive this award. She was also the first person to be called 'young, gifted and black'. The play is set in south side Chicago, where Walter Lee, a black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father's life insurance money to open a liquor store. Humane and heart-rending, the play depicts characters and a whole society with complexity and reality. This Student Edition features expert and helpful annotation, including a scene-by-scene summary, a detailed commentary on the dramatic, social and political context, and on the themes, characters, language and structure of the play, as well as a list of suggested reading and questions for further study and a review of performance history.

Gloucestershire's strategic location straddling the Severn is reinforced by Bristol's importance as a port. The Forest of Dean and the Cotswolds are densely populated by prehistoric hillforts and Gloucester, Cirencester and Winchcombe were important throughout the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods. The Normans built substantial castles at Bristol, Gloucester and Berkeley, scene of Edward II's murder, with many more of earth and timber. Many figured in the conflicts between rival factions culminating in the Battle of Tewkesbury. In the Civil War, Bristol underwent two sieges and Gloucester another and one of the last battles, at Stow, followed continuous skirmishing. The next centuries saw volunteer forces established, formalised by the State by the end of Victoria's reign, to counter threats external and internal. A nascent aircraft industry would develop into aircraft factories and airfields in the First World War with further development of training and aircraft storage facilities for the newly formed RAF during the inter-War period. Anti-invasion defences were constructed in the Second World War, but the primary effort was in logistics: bases for arriving US troops; RAF and USAAF training airfields and depots; and communications facilities. This last aspect, along with intelligence gathering, continued into the Cold War and beyond.

The Best in Show series is an outstanding global success. Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne are back - this time with designs for 25 wild animals. There is something here for everyone, with instructions for knitting spots, stripes, fur, scales, trunks, wings and beaks! The animals are surprisingly easy to make. It will only take a few evenings to create yourself an exotic pet or reproduce your favourite species. These knitted animals in miniature are much easier to look after than the real things - they don't need feeding, they won't make a mess and they take up hardly any room. This book is a real zoological tour of the globe with animals from all over the world. Patterns include tiger, crocodile, penguin, cheetah, anteater, ring-tailed lemur, camel, giraffe, panda and kangaroo. Idiosyncratic descriptions of the various species accompany beautiful photography, making this book irresistible for both keen knitters and wildlife enthusiasts.

Veteran instructional coaches A. Keith Young and Tamarra Osborne provide practical advice for trainers seeking high-leverage strategies for successful professional trainings.How do you see yourself as a trainer? Are you occasionally extraordinary, or do you flail about a bit? Are you connected to a helpful community of other trainers, or are you just starting out and feeling isolated and alone in your job? Do your workshops end with thunderous applause, or do you have nightmares about participants gazing into the middle distance and leaving with little more than they started with? Odds are, you've experienced multiple successes and failures—and that's OK! Regardless of your starting point or previous experiences, Training Design, Delivery, and Diplomacy outlines the essential components you need to build a powerful training program. Young and Osborne (coauthors of The Instructional Coaching Handbook) present dozens of strategies to help both novice and expert trainers avoid common (and not-so-common) training pitfalls, enabling the design and delivery of powerful sessions where folks walk away energized with new skills and understanding. They also introduce valuable tips for engaging participants and managing challenging behavior with diplomacy. Finally, they offer guidance on building and maintaining an effective train-the-trainer program and suggestions for conducting virtual activities in an online setting. If you feel a bit lost in your own workshop planning, this is exactly the little presentation skills book you've been looking for!

A double bill of fast-paced action thrillers. In 'Taken' (2008), Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, a former CIA secret agent living in the US, who is obliged to resurrect the skills he learned in his old job after his estranged 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped by sex slave traffickers while travelling with a friend in Europe. In the sequel 'Taken 2' (2012), Murad (Rade Serbedzija), the father of a kidnapper killed by Mills (Neeson) in the first film, makes a bid for retribution by taking Mills and his wife (Famke Janssen) hostage in Istanbul. Now their daughter, Kim (Grace), must swing into action and act swiftly to save her parents.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Over the past decade, digital geographies has emerged as a dynamic area of scholarly enquiry, critically examining how the digital has reshaped the geography of our world. Bringing together authors working at the cutting-edge of the field, and grounding abstract ideas in case studies, this Research Agenda looks at the ways in which technology has altered all aspects of society, culture and the environment. Chapters explore four key themes: the role of technology infrastructures; the ways that winners and losers are created at the digital margins; the power of the digital to create new spaces; and the ways that the digital is changing research methods. Critically outlining the state of play around these topics, each chapter unpacks a case study related to pioneering research, suggesting possible avenues for research that digital geographers might pursue. The Research Agenda concludes with an identification of three priority areas for future work: the intimate nature of our relations with technology; approaches to resisting the power of technology companies; and finally, the need for more interdisciplinary approaches to examining digital geographies. Rooted in the subject areas of technology, geography, sociology and political science, A Research Agenda for Digital Geographies will be greatly valuable to human and socio-cultural geographers, and digital social scientists with an interest in how the digital affects society and space.

"Thomson Exam Essentials: First Certificate Practice Tests" have been fully updated to the specifications of the new FCE exam starting in December 2008. It features: 2 fully guided Tests with Essential Tips; 6 complete tests; all the essential information on the exam at-a-glance on a special cover flap for easy reference; quick guide to encourage self-study; special section on the Speaking Paper in full colour, includes additional helpful phrases and expressions; Separate Writing Bank with fully writtenout model compositions, useful language and notes on content and organisation; Objective Mark Sheets that enable students to practice copying their answers as in the actual exam; and, additional practice by using ExamView[registered]Pro CD-ROM.

With a series of 'music in care' books aimed at supporting adults through a range of life's situations using music, John Osborne has collaborated with a new young author to bring fresh perspective on how the power of music can affect a young person's life. Coping with moving to a new school can be a difficult and challenging time for any young person but it can be even more problematic if you are on the autistic spectrum. This book tells the story of Luke Fiddes a remarkable young man and talented musician. It explains how Luke became aware of his different and special status and how he learnt to manage this. It also contains a self help manual for all young people which is designed to help deal with the struggles of adolescence using personalised music. This heartwarming, funny and frank account of Luke's journey gives a remarkable insight into some of the challenges but also the surprising benefits of living with Asperger syndrome. "I love my autism because I love music." Luke Fiddes

This live-action, big-budget family blockbuster brings Gerry Anderson's cult classic 1960s puppet sci-fi TV series to the big screen. Directed by Jonathan Frakes, the film follows the intergalactic adventures of the Tracy family, headed by former astronaut Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton), who lives with his five sons on the top-secret Tracy Island, which also houses the headquarters of the top-secret International Rescue organisation. When villainous criminal 'The Hood' (Ben Kingsley) orchestrates an elaborate plan to remove Jeff and his four eldest sons temporarily from home, so that he can invade the island and attempt to steal some of the organisation's most valuable equipment, it is left to Jeff's youngest son Alan (Brady Corbet) to save the day...

Music is central to our experience of the world around us. it is a primary source of the way we experience, understand and interpret the world in which we live. It is one of the core experiences that define us, unite us and enrich us. This book arose out of John's professional care experience and personal experience as a carer for his father who had dementia. As a musician he understood the power of music to enrich the quality of life. This practical, fun and interactive book is designed to help people to draw together those pieces of music that are most significant to them. These become a compilation that can travel with them on their dementia journey and can be used in therapeutic ways to reconnect to their memories and impact on current mood.

Having been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer John realised that specially chosen pieces of music have a major role in supporting people who are going through complex medical procedures. This book is practical, fun and interactive. It helps people to choose music that will support them in particular aspects of their treatment and to apply this therapeutically, to help cope through diagnosis, treatment and to aid healing and recovery.

A young man, broken down in the fog, witnesses a murder he is asked to conceal... A full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie's acclaimed play. When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story. But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The victim's young half-brother or his dying matriarchal mother? Laura's lover? Perhaps the father of the little boy killed in an accident for which Warwick was responsible? The house seems full of possible suspects... THE UNEXPECTED GUEST is considered to be one of the finest of Christie's plays. Hailed as 'another Mousetrap' when it opened on 12 August 1958 in the West End, it ran for 604 performances over the succeeding 18 months and has been staged many times around the world over the last 40 years.

A full-length novel by Charles Osborne adapted from Agatha Christie's stage play, in which a diplomat's wife finds a body that mustn't be discovered... Following BLACK COFFEE and THE UNEXPECTED GUEST comes the final Agatha Christie play novelisation, bringing her superb storytelling to a new legion of fans. Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. 'Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?' she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices. It seems that the murdered man was not unknown to certain members of the house party (but which ones?), and the search begins for the murderer and the motive, while at the same time trying to persuade a police inspector that there has been no murder at all...

Located in the exact geographical center of Los Angeles County's South Bay district, Lawndale was originally barley fields, then chicken ranches and small farms, growing vegetables for sale in nearby Inglewood and Redondo Beach. Retaining some of its rural character even after World War II, Lawndale gradually transformed into suburbia along with nearby communities, fighting all the while to retain its own identity and staving off aggressive annexation bids by surrounding cities. Finally in 1959, Lawndale incorporated, ending civic contentiousness. Despite the bustle of the high-end Galleria at South Bay, as well as Lawndale's close proximity to some of the most tourism-friendly beach cities in California and its bisection by L.A.'s busiest freeway, the I-405, the city's neighborhoods on the outskirts of Los Angeles International Airport retain the quiet ambiance evinced by its bedroom-community name.

David and Michael Sanderson are brothers, inseparable since childhood from each other and from their neighbor Kay Richards, a complicated young woman involved in a passionate and obsessive love affair with David. One spring night, while at home on a break from college, the threesome embarks on a night of adventure and experimentation, driving recklessly through the Connecticut Valley. Stopping at the French King Bridge, David -- full of hubris and hallucinogens -- dares to jump, mistakenly believing he'll be able to swim ashore. With this one act, he sets in motion an inexorable chain of events that indelibly alters the lives of everyone involved.

Told through the alternating voices of Kay, Michael, and David's father, Kevin, The River Road is a closely observed and psychologically penetrating narrative of the accusations, murder investigation, and courtroom battle that follow.

"Young people now more than ever need the tools and resources to support their mental wellbeing and help fulfil their potential. This book will be invaluable in helping them achieve this." --DAME KELLY HOLMES "This is truly a brilliant book! Having worked with young people for over 25 years in both sport and education, this is quite simply a MUST read!" --DREW POVEY from Channel 4's Educating Greater Manchester "Paul's wonderful book, crammed with insight, action, humour and hope will help you create a better future, not only for yourself but for all of us." --RICHARD GERVER, Speaker, author and education expert "A hugely helpful book for both young people and adults alike. I loved it." --DR KATE MIDDLETON, Psychologist and director of the Mind & Soul Foundation Discover how to make the most of being You! YESSS! The SUMO Secrets to Being a Positive, Confident Teenager uncovers the secrets of overcoming the challenges and also embracing the opportunities of one of life's most difficult stages: the teenage years. YESSS! is full of vibrant, exciting advice that will motivate and equip readers to overcome the insecurities and confusion that can often characterize our teenage years. Sunday Times bestselling author and speaker, Paul McGee aka The SUMO Guy, shows teenagers (and the people who both care for and support them) how to harness practical strategies to: Take responsibility for their lives Own and understand their feelings Build a more positive mindset Develop a healthy image of themselves Realize that it's OK to not always feel OK Recover from setbacks and develop perseverance Aspire, set goals, and dare to dream Perfect for every teenager and all those involved in supporting them, YESSS! shows young people what it's like to live with confidence, resilience, hope, and happiness.

A full-length Hercule Poirot novel, adapted from Agatha Christie’s stage play by Charles Osborne Sir Claud Amory’s revolutionary new formula for a powerful explosive is stolen. Locking his house-guests in the library, Sir Claud switches off the lights to allow the thief to replace the formula, no questions asked. When the lights come on, he is dead, and Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings have to unravel a tangle of family feuds, old flames and suspicious foreigners to find the killer and prevent a global catastrophe. BLACK COFFEE was Agatha Christie’s first playscript, originally performed in 1930 and made into a now rarely-seen film the following year. Combining her typically beguiling plot and sparkling dialogue with his own faithful narrative, Charles Osborne’s novelisation is ‘A worthy addition to the Christie canon’ (The Spectator)

When Christmas-hating Sam moves to Holly Cross, he thinks he's found the perfect home, until he discovers that, each year, Holly Cross transforms into the most Christmassy village in the whole country... Blythe is just one sale away from being Real Estate Agent of the Month, so she twists the truth to sell a home to city boy Sam, who is looking for the perfect house in the perfect location. Little does he know he's just bought a cottage in the middle of the most Christmassy village in the country. And if there's one thing Sam loathes, it's Christmas. Sam's arrival puts Holly Cross's chance to win the title of Britain's Most Perfect Christmas Village now in jeopardy, and the villagers are soon up in arms. Meanwhile, Sam is in his own personal hell surrounded by fairy lights and everyone is looking to Blythe to fix things. But as the festive season looms, maybe there's more than just Christmas in Holly Cross for Sam to fall in love with...

The #1 bestselling chapter book series is now available as graphic novels! Magic. Mystery. Time-travel. Get whisked away to the Amazon rainforest on a high-stakes adventure with brother-and-sister team Jack and Annie! Watch out for that crocodile! Get ready for a wild ride as Jack and Annie find themselves in the Amazon Rainforest on a dangerous journey. From killer ants to vampire bats, they never know what they'll run into next! Soon, they're hopelessly lost (and a monkey seems to be stalking them. . . what's that about?). Can they find their way through the jungle before it gets dark?  For the first time experience this gripping adventure as a graphic novel, bursting with vibrant full-color art that brings the magic to life! Get whisked away with Jack and Annie in more Magic Tree House Graphic Novels! Knight at Dawn: The Graphic Novel Mummies in the Morning: The Graphic Novel Pirates Past Noon: The Graphic Novel Night of the Ninjas: The Graphic Novel

If, as Walter Benjamin believed, 'historical understanding is to be viewed primarily as an afterlife of that which is to be understood', what are the afterlives of the central concepts of modern European philosophy today? These essays reflect on the afterlives of three such concepts - 'the transcendental', 'the universal' and 'otherness' - as they continue to animate philosophical discussion at and beyond the limits of the discipline. Anthropology, law, mathematics and politics each provide occasions for testing the historical durability and transformative capacity of these concepts.