![]() ![]() ![]() When we seek an example of great leaders with unalloyed courage, the person who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the iconic, visionary war leader immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. ![]() In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman, and leader can finally be fully seen and understood - by the best-selling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Storm of War A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain’s savior." ( Wall Street Journal) "Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill. One of The New York Times' notable books of 2018 One of The Economist's best books of 2018 One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 best books of 2018 ![]()
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![]() I really loved the classic, cartoony look of the art. ![]() The ending definitely reinforces the fact that regardless of what path is taken in life, death will arrive at your doorstep when you least expect it. Death is the great equalizer, the final occupation. However, one theme that is consistent is death and how indifferent it is. So, just in that, I can't exactly connect with the mangaka's intentions. I don't really agree with that, considering one person's life can suck and another's can be great, but even so, there are people with sucky lives who enjoy life nonetheless. Does it make for a good story? Not necessarily, since there isn't a shred of hope, but there is a lesson, that lesson being that the world I felt like this was a mix between Dante's Inferno and Eraserhead, where everything is symbolic and cruel. It's a dialogue started by a painter who paints horrific images that are absolutely petrifying. There isn't so much a story as it is a conversation. ![]() I don't exactly know if I can respond to this work with my usual format. This is one of those works that I'm having a lot of difficulties comprehending. ![]() ![]() ![]() Jude-broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness-has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. ![]() ![]() YA)īlack is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy. Few readers will mind reaching the end with the protagonists still separated by hundreds of miles only to realize it was naught but prelude to the real action instead, they will clamor for the sequel. Dozens of characters, complex and distinct in personality, are placed with jewel-like precision, set off by dark glints of villainy. Chima forges an intricate world, alloying standard genre tropes in unexpected ways and inlaying intrigue amid a delicately crafted setting of history and legend. Now ancient talismans and grim portents herald murder and treason, and both Han and Raisa are forced to embrace heritages they can scarcely imagine. Their paths should never have intersected, had not both become enmeshed in the schemes of the wizards seeking to regain powers curbed for the crimes of the Demon King, a thousand years past. Raisa is the Princess Heir, last in a long line of fabled warrior Queens. Han Alister is a fatherless street rat, former thief lord and runner for the Clan tribes. ![]() Rich characterization and exquisite world building make up for a leisurely pace in the dense first volume of a new epic-fantasy trilogy. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was always a strong desire of Jimi Hendrix to garner a more diverse fan base. Washington seeks to add to Jimi's overall legacy, by embracing Jimi's Black culture, including the well known people in Jimi's life, as well as the voices that many do not get to hear from in your traditional Jimi Hendrix biographies. Hendrix was often seen by many to have transcended race, which is a slap in the face to his deep cultural roots, concerning not only his Black musical traditions, but simply growing up as a Black person in the 40's-60's. Jimi's life has been featured in numerous biographies over the years, but very little has been properly documented, when it comes to his influence on people of color. Jimi Hendrix - Black Legacy (A Dream Deferred) is the culmination of a two decade journey of author Corey Washington's exploration of Jimi Hendrix's complex and misunderstood relationship and impact, on the Black Community. ![]() ![]() ![]() “In fact, slavery’s expansion shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of the new nation…” “The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy,” Baptist writes. But with the spread of the Industrial Revolution, cotton became the world’s most traded commodity. The cotton boom that started just after 1800 changed the American economy, Baptist argues. This ambitious new economic and social history of antebellum America suggests that the bondage of African Americans is just another chapter in the rise of the global economy. Plantations (“slave labor camps,” he calls them) were run with the ruthless efficiency of your average sweatshop. ![]() Baptist makes a persuasive case that slavery wasn’t like that at all. In “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” Cornell professor Edward E. ![]() Being lord of the manor was its own reward. For slave owners, profit was a secondary concern. Slavery was an economically inefficient institution, they argued. Life on the antebellum plantation, they led us to believe, was as languid as a slow-moving river winding through magnolia trees.Īt about the same time, American historians were writing the first analyses of slave-centered Southern society. The image of the genteel, benevolent Southern slave owner was the creation of early 20th century artists and writers like D.W. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Wittings become attached to her, even though Caleb constantly worries that their home is not enough for her and that she misses the sea. ![]() She is stubborn and persistent, and she gradually wins over Jacob with her insistence on learning and helping out with farm tasks. ![]() When she departs conditionally for one month, Anna notices that she is lonely and misses the sea. While Anna is initially apprehensive about Sarah as she still has memories of her late mother, Caleb is excited and deeply hopes that she will stay. Sarah Wheaton of Maine answers it and travels out to become his wife. He writes an ad in the newspaper for a mail-order bride. Jacob Witting, a widowed farmer who is still saddened by the death of his wife during childbirth several years before, finds that the task of taking care of his farm and two children, Anna and Caleb, is too difficult for him to handle alone. The story is set in the Midwestern United States during the late 19th century. The book was followed by four sequels exploring the Witting family after Sarah's arrival: Skylark, Caleb's Story, More Perfect Than the Moon, and Grandfather's Dance. It explores themes of loneliness, abandonment, and coping with change. Sarah, Plain and Tall is a children's book written by Patricia MacLachlan and the winner of the 1986 Newbery Medal, the 1986 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and the 1986 Golden Kite Award. ![]() ![]() ![]() The novel alternates between three stories whose links gradually emerge, in a tiny community of 600 people where, as one perplexed newcomer remarks: "Everybody within 16 miles of here is uncle or cousin to you someways." From a mountain log cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a 47-year-old biologist with a "hillbilly accent" and a serious education, scours National Forest land for poachers while keeping fond tabs on the coyotes new to her territory. In Prodigal Summer she returns in a sense to her own back yard, although her marvellously subtle and compelling tale of a southern Appalachian farming community in tense interplay with the wilderness on its doorstep contains a deft parable of humankind's place in nature. Barbara Kingsolver's fiction has achieved bestselling status in the US with surprisingly ambitious themes, from Native American culture in The Bean Trees and its sequel Pigs in Heaven, through the Nicaraguan war of Animal Dreams, to evangelism and American foreign policy in the Belgian Congo of The Poisonwood Bible. ![]() ![]() James lives in Hertfordshire with his family. He has given performances at many illustrious venues and festivals including The Royal Opera House, The Cheltenham Music Festival and Lichfield Cathedral. From Peter and the Wolf, to Scheherazade, James has worked with many different orchestras and musicians, including the acclaimed Orchestra of the Music Makers from Singapore. ![]() In particular he has devised and performed in a hugely successful series of concerts for children, combining live classical music, storytelling and live art. Katie and the Mona Lisa Kindle Edition by James Mayhew (Author) Format: Kindle Edition 145 ratings Hardcover from 121.93 1 New from 121. Alongside his work in publishing, James has collaborated on many ambitious and imaginative projects for children. Many more titles have followed, and the series sells in museums and galleries all over the world, from the Met in New York, to the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre in Paris and beyond. ![]() It's been firmly in print ever since, recognised universally as the original and best introduction to art for children. James Mayhew trained at Maidstone College of Art and his first children's book, Katie's Picture Show was published in 1989. Katie: Katie and the Mona Lisa by James Mayhew Paperback 10. ![]() ![]() ![]() I worked an early shift at a bakery, and I’d ride there on my bike before dawn, the whoosh of the darkness soft and creaturely around me. I was seventeen, I think, eighteen maybe. Everything seemed connected to everything else, but in ways I didn’t dare try to explain. My brain buzzed and whirred in terrifying ways. I didn’t need to sleep anymore, it seemed. ![]() The middle register of experience had abruptly fallen away. Some dark wing was crossing over me that fall. The first time I read Virginia Woolf, it was for extraliterary reasons. In between these modest plot points, Clarissa Dalloway wanders around London, lies down for a rest, and takes note of Big Ben striking out the hours again and again.īut, wait, I am leaving out everything. In the midst of all this, she hears news of a stranger’s violent death. Later, guests pour into her house for the party. She remembers an alluring girl she once kissed. A man she almost married drops by for a visit. In a posh part of London, a middle-aged woman plans a party. The Great War is over, but the memory of its unprecedented destruction still hangs over England. The novel depicts a single day in June from the perspective of a number of characters. In fact, on the surface, it sounds suspiciously dull. Nothing you might read in a plot summary prepares you for the multitudes it contains. Dalloway” is a remarkably expansive and an irreducibly strange book. New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I would recommend this book to any person that enjoys adventure and survival. The novel does not have any super deep themes and rather opts to just tell a straightforward story, unlike many modern island survival novels that attempt to be thought-provoking. Robinson Crusoe a ( / kruso /) is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. ![]() It is at this point where the book starts to shine, and Robinson's island survival starts to mix supernaturalism and realism. Around a third into the book, Robinson Crusoe simply states that he would focus on only the important parts of his adventure due to his lack of ink. The book starts slow, however, the pacing of the book almost depicts the exact development of Crusoe through his stagnant start and then a life of adventure later on. While the book does use some confusing language at times, the creative results it produces are greatly entertaining. It is a fictional autobiography about the character Robinson Crusoe and his adventures while shipwrecked on an island. The writing is amateurish, the narrative poorly paced, the plot implausible and the characters sketchy, if not. It is generally considered to have been the first novel to have been written in the English language. Robinson Crusoe is an incredibly fun novel to read. As novels go, this is one dreadful piece of work. It was first published on April 25, 1719. ![]() |