A highly readable book about architecture, lavishly illustrated with sixteen intricate cross sections.

From straw huts to skyscrapers, palaces to arts centres, The Story of Buildings takes us on a journey across continents and over centuries. Patrick Dillon selects sixteen of the most iconic buildings from around the world including the Parthenon, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City, the Bauhaus, Crystal Palace, the Sydney Opera House and the Pompidou Centre, and tells the remarkable human story behind each of them. Stephen Biesty's detailed, intricate cross-sections allow us to see inside these incredible structures and appreciate the inspiration of their creators. Technical information and architectural terms are explained in labels and there is an extensive index and timeline at the end of the book.

Aspiring architects will be in their element Explore this illustrated narrative history of buildings for young readers, an amazing construction in itself.
We spend most of our lives in buildings. We make our homes in them. We go to school in them. We work in them. But why and how did people start making buildings? How did they learn to make them stronger, bigger, and more comfortable? Why did they start to decorate them in different ways? From the pyramid erected so that an Egyptian pharaoh would last forever to the dramatic, machine-like Pompidou Center designed by two young architects, Patrick Dillon's stories of remarkable buildings -- and the remarkable people who made them -- celebrates the ingenuity of human creation. Stephen Biesty's extraordinarily detailed illustrations take us inside famous buildings throughout history and demonstrate just how these marvelous structures fit together.

'Life in Poetry' is a collection of poetry and prose, spanning more than ten years. "I am a student of human behavior, although I consider myself a layman in the field. My journey has taken me from the bottom to the top of humanity, and this book tells the sometimes-darker story of the individual." By expressing that curiosity about each other's thoughts and wonders, this book becomes a must read for the little voice in all of us.

"Circle of Greed" is the epic story of the rise and fall of Bill Lerach, once the leading class action lawyer in America and now a convicted felon. For more than two decades, Lerach threatened, shook down and sued top Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Apple, Time Warner, and--most famously--Enron. Now, the man who brought corporate moguls to their knees has fallen prey to the same corrupt impulses of his enemies, and is paying the price by serving time in federal prison.
If there was ever a modern Greek tragedy about a man and his times, about corporate arrogance and illusions and the scorched-earth tactics to not only counteract corporate America but to beat it at its own game, Bill Lerach's story is it.

"From the Hardcover edition."

On February 3, 1983, the men aboard Americus and Altair, two state-of-the-art crabbing vessels, docked in their home port of Anacortes, Washington, prepared to begin a grueling three-month season fishing in the notorious Bering Sea. Eleven days later, on Valentine's Day, the overturned hull of the Americus was found drifting in calm seas, with no record of even a single distress call or trace of its seven-man crew. The Altair vanished altogether. Despite the desperate search that followed, no evidence of the vessel or its crew would ever be found. Fourteen men were lost. And the tragedy would mark the worst disaster in the history of U.S. commercial fishing.

With painstaking research and spellbinding prose, acclaimed journalist Patrick Dillon brings to life the men who were lost, the dangers that commercial fishermen face, the haunting memories of the families left behind...and reconstructs the intense investigation that ensued, which for the first time exposed the dangers of an industry that would never again be the same.