Scotland from the Sky
Scotland from the Sky

Author: James Crawford

Publisher:

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781849172523

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'In this book, you will travel in both space and time, starting in the years around the First World War and moving all the way up to the present day. As you go, you will see just what our pioneering aviators saw as they stared out from their cockpits. And, more than that, you will explore what they were trying to find. Because, from above, Scotland can be many different things, depending on what you choose to look at - and who is doing the looking.'Accompanying the BBC documentary series Scotland from the Sky, this lavishly illustrated book draws on the vast collection of aerial photography held in the archives of Historic Environment Scotland. Historian and series presenter James Crawford opens an extraordinary window into our past to tell the remarkable story of a nation from above - taking readers back in time to show how our great cities have dramatically altered with the ebb and flow of history, while whole communities have vanished in the name of progress. The book shows how aerial imagery can reveal treasures from the ancient past, uncovering secrets buried right beneath our feet. And it demonstrates how the view from above has been at the heart of the postwar transformation of both our countryside and our urban landscapes.This is a fascinating - and little known - story of war, innovation, adventure, cities, landscapes and people. This is the story of Scotland, from the sky.

Hidden in Plain Sight
Hidden in Plain Sight

Author: Jeffrey Archer

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1509851356

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Filled with Jeffrey Archer’s trademark twists and turns, Hidden in Plain Sight is the gripping second instalment in the life of William Warwick. Newly promoted, Detective Sergeant William Warwick has been reassigned to the drugs squad. His first case: to investigate a notorious south London drug lord known as the Viper. But as William and his team close the net around a criminal network unlike any they have ever encountered, he is also faced with an old enemy: Miles Faulkner. It will take all of William’s cunning to devise a means to bring both men to justice – a trap neither will expect. One that is hidden in plain sight . . . Though it can be read on its own, Hidden in Plain Sight is the second volume of Jeffrey Archer's William Warwick series, following Nothing Ventured. The story continues with Turn a Blind Eye.

Fallen Glory
Fallen Glory

Author: James Crawford

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1250118301

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“A narrative that spans seven millennia, five continents and even reaches into cyberspace. . . . I savored each page.” —Henry Petroski, Wall Street Journal In Fallen Glory, James Crawford uncovers the biographies of some of the world’s most fascinating lost and ruined buildings, from the dawn of civilization to the cyber era. The lives of these iconic structures are packed with drama and intrigue, featuring war and religion, politics and art, love and betrayal, catastrophe and hope. They provide the stage for a startling array of characters, including Gilgamesh, the Cretan Minotaur, Agamemnon, Nefertiti, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, and even Bruce Springsteen. The twenty-one structures Crawford focuses on include The Tower of Babel, The Temple of Jerusalem, The Library of Alexandria, The Bastille, Kowloon Walled City, the Berlin Wall, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Ranging from the deserts of Iraq, the banks of the Nile and the cloud forests of Peru, to the great cities of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, London and New York, Fallen Glory is a unique guide to a world of vanished architecture. And, by picking through the fragments of our past, it asks what history’s scattered ruins can tell us about our own future. “Witty and memorable . . . moving as well as myth-busting.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK) “[An] elegant, charged book . . . A well-written prize for students of history, archaeology, and urban planning.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Astute, entertaining, and affecting.” —Booklist “A lovely, wise book.” —Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman (UK) “A cabinet of curiosities, a book of wonders with unexpected excursions and jubilant and haunting marginalia.” —Spectator (UK)

Cities of the Plain
Cities of the Plain

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0679423907

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The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands. To the North lie the proving grounds of Alamogordo; to the South, the twin cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. It is a life that is about to change forever, and John Grady and Billy both know it. The catalyst for that change appears in the form of a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute. When John Grady falls in love, Billy agrees--against his better judgment--to help him rescue the girl from her suavely brutal pimp. The ensuing events resonate with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy

Plain Kate
Plain Kate

Author: Erin Bow

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0545328764

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A debut novel that's as sharp as a knife's point. Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver's daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call her "witch-blade" -- a dangerous nickname in a town where witches are hunted and burned in the square.

The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World
The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World

Author: James Crawford

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2023-01-10

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1324037059

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A wide-ranging journey through the history of borders and an exploration of their role in shaping our world today. Since the earliest known marker denoting the edge of one land and the beginning of the next—a stone column inscribed with Sumerian cuneiform—borders have been imagined, mapped, moved, and fought over. In The Edge of the Plain, James Crawford skillfully blends history, travel writing, and reportage to trace these borderlines throughout history and across the globe. What happens on the ground when we impose lines on a map that contradict how humans have always lived—and moved? Crawford confronts that question from bloody territorial disputes in Mesopotamia, to the Sápmi lands of Scandinavia, the shifting boundaries of the Israel-Palestine conflict, efforts to build a wall on the United States-Mexico border, and the dangerous border crossings pursued by migrants into Europe. And yet the role of borders extends beyond specific sites of conflict. On the largest scale, borders define the limits of empire—the two walls in Britain that once represented the northwestern edge of the Roman Empire; the mythological eastern gate supposedly closed off by Alexander the Great; China’s virtual “Great Firewall.” On the smallest, human scale, cell walls are the last physical barrier against disease, after lines of quarantine have failed. Finally, as The Edge of the Plain reveals, humans have not only made their mark on the landscape: the landscape itself is now changing, more and more rapidly due to climate change. Crawford introduces us to both the Alpine watershed—one such shifting, natural borderline—and the “Great Green Wall” in Africa, envisioned as an international, community-built bulwark against desertification. Borders are as old as human civilization, and focal points for today’s colliding forces of nationalism, climate change, globalization, and mass migration. The Edge of the Plain illuminates these lines of separation past and present, how we define them—and how they define us.

The Border Trilogy
The Border Trilogy

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2018-07-12

Total Pages: 1083

ISBN-13: 1509852034

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Beautiful and brutal, two young cowboys come of age in The Border Trilogy – Cormac McCarthy's award-winning requiem for the American frontier. 'A landmark in American literature' – Guardian With an introduction from Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room. During the middle of the twentieth century, two teenage boys leave their childhoods behind across the US-Mexico border. John Grady Cole will search for his future to the south, a friend by his side, finding adventure and barbarism in the vanishing world of the Old West. Billy Parnham, after deciding not to kill her, will be drawn to the mountains of Mexico accompanied by a lone, pregnant wolf. When the two boys come together as men, in the trilogy's final volume, a dangerous chain of events will bring this story to its savage, inevitable conclusion. A stunning saga of loyalty and love, filled equally with sorrow and humour, The Border Trilogy is a powerful story of two friends growing up in a world where blood and violence are conditions of life. 'In these three fierce, desolate, beautiful novels, McCarthy has created a masterpiece' – Sunday Times This edition collects all three novels in the Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. Praise for Cormac McCarthy ‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren 'His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power' – Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series '[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence' – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain

Random Winds
Random Winds

Author: Belva Plain

Publisher: Dell

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0307575063

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A tragedy on a cold Adirondack day robbed country doctor Enoch Farrell of his three oldest children. Then all his hopes rested with his son, Martin, who dreamed of becoming a doctor too. Intelligent, gifted Martin could have a brilliant future. All that stood in his way was his family's poverty—until he met wealthy, beautiful Mary Fern Meig and her sister, Jessie, and everything changed forever. Moving from a teeming New York hospital to the elite operating theaters of London, Martin Farrell is about to learn the price of success—a secret bargain with the Meigs that could resonate into the next generation . . . and test the strength of a man and a woman's passion across the coming years . . . Praise for Random Winds “Wonderful . . . A convincing, sweeping novel . . . A real page-turner.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Impossible to put down.”—South Bend Tribune “Engrossing.”—Publishers Weekly “Richly woven. . . . A twisting and complex story that touches the lives of everyone.”—UPI