The life of a young lad during the depression of the 1930's who was at times a 'Huckleberry Finn' or a 'Dennis the Menace' but always of independent spirit.
In 1776 and 1777, during the American Revolution, a young Scot known only as John the Painter took his war to England by committing acts of terror in the dockyards of the mighty British navy. This is the first full-length biography of that brilliant but disturbed young man. His story offers chilling parallels to the present – and insights into why certain young men are driven to commit unspeakable crimes. Warner has written a book of history that reads like a picaresque novel, but always with a modern twist. Its hero travels to France and receives the blessing of the American envoy there. King George III offers a reward for his capture. Bow Street Runners are sent out inpursuit. Newspapers print sensational stories. A bill to suspend habeas corpus is rushed through Parliament and American privateers – the unlawful combatants of their day – are held without being charged. The Incendiary takes readers on a fascinating journey from Europe to colonial America and finally to the gallows at Portsmouth. In this atmospheric and deftly researched tale of a young man who tried to bring down a superpower, Warner has crafted a popular history with contemporary implications.
'I never knew I could do this as a job' National Geographic conservationist and chopper pilot Matt Wright was born for a life of action and adventure. Raised in the wilds of Far North Queensland, Papua New Guinea and outback Australia, as a child he would catch deadly snakes for fun or lizards and turtles for show and tell at school. From his early years working in the outback to a short stint in the army, Matt’s life reads like a boy’s own adventure story, but he was always one to go his own way – sometimes making up the rules as he went along. Today he is the star of his own international television show on National Geographic, a renowned outback adventurer and a wrangler of deadly animals. Giant saltwater crocodiles are a big part of Matt’s story but jumping in his chopper and rounding up wild buffalo, brumbies and Brahman cattle keeps him pretty busy too! The Outback Wrangler takes you on a wild ride, where that special outback flavour of danger, adrenaline and adventure comes together in the personal stories of a unique Australian.
From the acclaimed author and columnist: a laugh-out-loud journey into the world of real estate—the true story of one woman’s “imperfect life lived among imperfect houses” and her quest for the four perfect walls to call home. After an itinerant suburban childhood and countless moves as a grown-up—from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska; from the Midwest to the West Coast and back—Meghan Daum was living in Los Angeles, single and in her mid-thirties, and devoting obscene amounts of time not to her writing career or her dating life but to the pursuit of property: scouring Craigslist, visiting open houses, fantasizing about finding the right place for the right price. Finally, near the height of the real estate bubble, she succumbed, depleting her life’s savings to buy a 900-square-foot bungalow, with a garage that “bore a close resemblance to the ruins of Pompeii” and plumbing that “dated back to the Coolidge administration.” From her mother’s decorating manias to her own “hidden room” dreams, Daum explores the perils and pleasures of believing that only a house can make you whole. With delicious wit and a keen eye for the absurd, she has given us a pitch-perfect, irresistible tale of playing a lifelong game of house.
THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE HIT NETFLIX SERIES "I laughed so hard I choked on a donut reading this book."—Jen Mann, NYT-bestselling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat Tired of late-night parties and all-day hangovers, thirty-something-year-old journalist Brigid Delaney decides to test the things that are supposed to make us healthy and whole, looking (with skepticism) to the trillion dollar wellness industry as her guide. She begins with a controversial and brutal 101-day fast, which leaves her glowing and "giddy," but also unemployed, bed-ridden, and strangely stinky. Next, she tries yoga classes, meditation, CBT, Balinese healing, silent retreats, group psychotherapy, and more, sorting through the fads and expensive hype to find out what works, while asking, "What does all this say about us?" With refreshing honesty and biting wit, Wellmania is an all too relatable book about the lengths we go to achieve optimal health—and whether it’s really worth it. As The Cut's Katey Heaney said: "Reading about all these impossible, expensive, scientifically unsupported self-improvement projects piled end on end, I wanted to shake Delaney, as I might shake myself, were I brave enough to tally all the money I've spent on green juice and witchy crap." According to comedian Judith Lucy, the result of Delaney's harrowing wellness journey is "a bloody entertaining read that leaves you wondering whether you want to do yoga or get mindlessly drunk and despair at the state of the world."
THE THUNDERING SMOKE - BOOK 2, THE DUTCHMAN’S PLAN IS A CONTINUING EVOCATIVE TALE OF REDEMPTION, RESILIENCE, AND THE ENDURING BONDS OF FAMILY SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE AFRICAN WILDERNESS AND THE TUMULTUOUS HISTORY THAT SHAPES ITS INHABITANTS' LIVES. TOM SUTTON'S JOURNEY FROM GRIEF AND DESPAIR TO PURPOSE AND HOPE IS A TESTAMENT TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT'S CAPACITY FOR TRANSFORMATION IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY. AS TOM GRAPPLES WITH THE AFTERMATH OF A TRAGIC MINE ACCIDENT, HE FINDS SOLACE AND PURPOSE IN THE COMPANIONSHIP OF HEIDI, A YOUNG ORPHAN GIRL WHOSE RESILIENCE MIRRORS HIS OWN. THEIR RELATIONSHIP BLOSSOMS INTO A BOND OF FATHER AND DAUGHTER, ANCHORED BY LOVE AND MUTUAL HEALING. YET, THEIR NEWFOUND FAMILY FACES CHALLENGES AND OBSTACLES AT EVERY TURN. TOM'S DETERMINATION TO ADOPT HEIDI IS COMPLICATED UNTIL THE REVELATION OF A LETTER FROM THE GRAVE, THE DUTCHMAN’S PLAN FOR THE FUTURE OF HIS DAUGHTER IS CAST IN STONE AND UNRAVELS SECRETS OF A VAST INHERITANCE IN THE FORM OF DEMBERRA, A SPRAWLING CATTLE RANCH. WITH THE SUPPORT OF HIS LOYAL FRIEND TIM AND THE GUIDANCE OF SIMALALA, AN AFRICAN ALLY FROM HIS PAST, TOM EMBARKS ON A JOURNEY TO CARVE A FUTURE OUT OF THE UNTAMED WILDERNESS. HOWEVER, THEIR DREAMS ARE THREATENED BY THE MACHINATIONS OF BRADLEY, A CUNNING ANTAGONIST HELL-BENT ON SEIZING DEMBERRA AND THE HIDDEN FORTUNE OF STOLEN GOLD IT HARBORS. BRADLEY ENGAGES JOHN SUTTON, TOM’S ESTRANGED SON TO ASSIST IN HIS PLANS. TOM'S RESILIENCE IS PUT TO THE TEST AS HE NAVIGATES A TREACHEROUS LANDSCAPE OF BETRAYAL, GREED, AND VENGEANCE. AMIDST THE TURMOIL, A NEW CHALLENGE EMERGES IN THE FORM OF ANOTHER WOMAN VYING FOR TOM'S AFFECTION, TESTING THE BONDS FORGED BETWEEN FATHER AND DAUGHTER. AS PAST AND PRESENT COLLIDE, TOM MUST CONFRONT HIS OWN DEMONS AND RECONCILE WITH HIS ESTRANGED SON, WHOSE THIRST FOR REVENGE THREATENS TO TEAR THEIR FRAGILE FAMILY APART. "THE THUNDERING SMOKE" IS A CONTINUING GRIPPING SAGA OF PERSEVERANCE, SACRIFICE, AND THE ENDURING POWER OF LOVE TO CONQUER EVEN THE DARKEST OF SHADOWS. THROUGH TOM'S UNWAVERING RESOLVE AND HEIDI'S INDOMITABLE SPIRIT, IT EXPLORES THEMES OF FORGIVENESS, REDEMPTION, AND THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF SECOND CHANCES. SET AGAINST THE MAJESTIC BACKDROP OF AFRICA'S RUGGED TERRAIN AND HAUNTED BY ITS TROUBLED HISTORY, IT IS A TIMELESS TALE OF HOPE AND REDEMPTION THAT WILL RESONATE WITH READERS LONG AFTER THE FINAL PAGE IS TURNED.
In The Genealogical Imagination Michael Jackson juxtaposes ethnographic and imaginative writing to explore intergenerational trauma and temporality. Drawing on over fifty years of fieldwork, Jackson recounts the 150-year history of a Sierra Leone family through its periods of prosperity and powerlessness, war and peace, jihad and migration. Jackson also offers a fictionalized narrative loosely based on his family history and fieldwork in northeastern Australia that traces how the trauma of wartime in one generation can reverberate into the next. In both stories Jackson reflects on different modes of being-in-time, demonstrating how genealogical time flows in stops and starts—linear at times, discontinuous at others—as current generations reckon with their relationships to their ancestors. Genealogy, Jackson demonstrates, becomes a powerful model for understanding our experience of being-in-the-world, as nobody can escape kinship and the pull of the past. Unconventional and evocative, The Genealogical Imagination offers a nuanced account of how lives are lived, while it pushes the bounds of the forms that scholarship can take.
Gathered for the first time: one of America's great humorists revisits the books and movies from his youth—often with some embarrassment—in this complete, 22-piece collection From October 1948 to October 1953, The New Yorker published humorist S. J. Perelman’s “Cloudland Revisited” series: 22 reviews of once-popular books and silent films whose expiration dates had passed. All but forgotten even at the time, they were nonetheless part of Perelman’s youth and made an indelible mark on him. In the comic genius’s biting satire they live once again: Gertrude Atherton’s sensationalist fantasy Black Oxen Sax Rohmer’s supervillain blockbuster The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu the “underwater” silent film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea Edgar Rice Burrough’s 1914 novel Tarzan of the Apes and George Barr McCutcheon’s 1901 historical fantasy novel Graustark—the Game of Thrones of its era—which launched numerous sequels and film adaptations The complete series is collected here for the first time. With self-deprecating humor and frequent embarrassment, Perelman reflects on how rereading and rewatching brings us in contact with how we, like an old book or film, have both changed and remained the same. This paperback includes a tribute to Perelman’s art by another beloved New Yorker writer, Adam Gopnik.
The power of embodied ritual performance to constitute agency and transform subjectivity are increasingly the focus of major debates in the anthropology of Christianity and Islam. They are particularly relevant to understanding the way transnational women migrants from South and South East Asia, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists, who migrate to Asia, Europe and the Middle East to work as carers and maids, re-imagine and recreate themselves in moral and ethical terms in the diaspora. This timely collection shows how women international migrants, stereotypically represented as a ‘nation of servants’, reclaim sacralised spaces of sociality in their migration destinations, and actively transform themselves from mere workers into pilgrims and tourists on cosmopolitan journeys. Such women struggle for dignity and respect by re-defining themselves in terms of an ethics of care and sacrifice. As co-worshippers they recreate community through fiestas, feasts, protests, and shared conviviality, while subverting established normativities of gender, marriage and conjugality; they renegotiate their moral selfhood through religious conversion and activism. For migrants the place of the church or mosque becomes a gateway to new intellectual and experiential horizons as well as a locus for religious worship and a haven of humanitarian assistance in a strange land. This book was published as a special issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology.