'Epic... Wilson writes captivatingly with humour...anyone with an interest in eastern European sport will be consulting this book for years to come' FINANCIAL TIMES 'This fascinating and perceptive travelogue includes a fine collection of anecdotes too colourful for fiction' SUNDAY TIMES 'A blissful book, lovingly and stylishly written' DAILY TELEGRAPH From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskás and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England, the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism. Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of football. Where once the state-controlled teams of the Eastern bloc passed their way with crisp efficiency - a sort of communist version of total football - to considerable success on the European and international stages, today the beautiful game in the East has been opened up to the free market, and throughout the region a sense of chaos pervades. The threat of totalitarian interference no longer remains; but in its place mafia control is generally accompanied with a crippling lack of funds. In BEHIND THE CURTAIN Jonathan Wilson goes in search of the spirit of Hungary's 'Golden Squad' of the early fifties, charts the disintegration of the footballing superpower that was the former Yugoslavia, follows a sorry tale of corruption, mismanagement and Armenian cognac through the Caucasuses, reopens the case of Russia's greatest footballer, Eduard Streltsov, and talks to Jan Tomaszewski about an autumn night at Wembley in 1973...
"My all-time favorite. Astonishing." (Stephen King) Down the Rabbit Hole is the first book in the Echo Falls mystery series by bestselling crime novelist Peter Abrahams. Perfect for middle school readers looking for a good mystery. Welcome to Echo Falls, home of a thousand secrets. In Down the Rabbit Hole, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or at least her shoes are. And getting them back will mean getting tangled up in a murder investigation as complicated as the mysteries solved by her idol, Sherlock Holmes. With soccer practice, schoolwork, and the lead role in her town's production of Alice in Wonderland, Ingrid is swamped. But as things in Echo Falls keep getting curiouser and curiouser, Ingrid realizes she must solve the murder on her own—before it's too late. "Deft use of literary allusions and ironic humor add further touches of class to a topnotch mystery," said School Library Journal. "Intriguing twists." Publishers Weekly agreed: "The fresh dialogue and believable small-town setting will tempt fans to visit Echo Falls again." The next book in this Edgar Award-nominated series in Behind the Curtain, followed by Into the Dark.
Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, "behind the curtain"--the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film music industry. On the basis of a fascinating set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creator and performers. Booth also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India. Featuring an extensive companion website with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain is a powerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry.
Embark on a medley of short stories, essays, and poems with an author like no other. Delve into humanitarian adventures, expeditions of the sea, and personal essays and poems of the contemporary era. Some pieces have been published in literary journals and others have yet to be discovered. Variety is king here and your imagination awaits you. Enjoy!
The expatriate, one of America's greatest black writers, giving a bold assessment of the world's outlook on race, a report of the Bandung Conference of 1955.
Behind the Red Curtain, a Memoir is a true-life account told in the voice of a growing teenager. In this harrowing tale of coping and survival, the author walks readers into the metamorphosed world of a Vietnamese family inside fallen Saigon during the period following the end of the Vietnam War. No details were spared within and without this broken world after an abrupt change of regimes of international consequences. Within the context of this bigger drama is the author's private journey of coming of age in an uncertain time.
Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas when she was seventeen, sent away because she was gay. Her family was the largest employer in the county, owning Pine Springs Lumber, and her father was mayor of this small town. Her mother could not accept the fact that her only child was gay, could not tolerate the gossip about her family. So, with a hundred dollars in her pocket and a one-way bus ticket out of town, Jacqueline was told not to come back until she had come to her senses. And that included being prepared to marry the son of a business associate of the family. Fifteen years later—long after she'd hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, long after she'd worked nights to put herself through college, and long after she'd written her first best seller, No Place For Family—Jacqueline is persuaded to go back to the tiny town of Pine Springs after her father's death. The quick trip she'd envisioned for the funeral turns into weeks as she learns her father's business is suddenly hers to manage. And she is also again face-to-face with the woman who, as a teen, had been Jackie's first crush. She and Kay had been inseparable as kids, and later as teens. They find themselves falling back into their old habits, and Jackie is soon fighting the same feelings she'd had when she was seventeen. But living behind the pine curtain, Kay is afraid of her love for Jackie, afraid of what her family will say, afraid of how the town will react. Jackie refuses to hide, refuses to crawl back into the closet, so once again, she leaves Pine Springs...alone.
The Gap in the Curtain John Buchan is remembered for his spy thrillers like "The 39 Steps" but he also wrote tales of the supernatural. Whether The Gap in the Curtain is a supernatural tale, or science fiction, or horror, is difficult to say. A brilliant but possibly slightly unbalanced scientist discovers a means of lifting the curtain for a moment and gaining a glimpse of the future. This discovery allows six guests in his country house to see, for a brief instant of time, a page from a newspaper from one year in the future. The book then follows the life of each of the six people up to that date a year in the future, and examines the way they deal with the knowledge they have gained. The trick to it is that what they each see is an isolated fact, taken out of context. It can enlighten, but it can just as easily mislead. They know one thing that is going to happen, but they don't know how and why it will happen. The knowledge turns out to be surprisingly dangerous.
Behind The Curtain: Volume 2 Please note, this is Volume 2 December 1968 saw a landmark court case in the appropriately named township of Credit River, Minnesota, USA. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly was an epic courtroom drama and although unsurprisingly, not widely reported either at the time or subsequently, is actually extremely significant. Jerome Daly a lawyer by profession, defended himself against the bank's attempted foreclosure on his $14,000 mortgage on the grounds that there was no 'consideration' for the loan. 'Consideration' in legalese, refers to 'the item exchanged' and is an essential element of any legal contract. Daly contended that the bank offered 'no consideration' for his loan on the grounds that they had 'created the money out of thin air' by bookkeeping entry and had therefore not suffered a loss (another relevant point of law) by his refusal or inability to pay back the money. The proceedings were recorded by Justice William Drexler, who had given no credence whatsoever to the defence, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took to the witness stand. To Drexler's and indeed everyone else present's great surprise, Morgan casually admitted under questioning from Daly's lawyer, that the bank routinely 'created money out of thin air' for all its loans and mortgages and that this indeed was standard practice in all banks. Presiding Justice, Martin Mahoney declared that, "It sounds exactly like fraud to me," accompanied by nods and murmurs of assent from all around the courtroom. In his summation of the case, Justice Mahoney reported that... "Plaintiff (the bank) admitted that it, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, did create the entire $14,000.00 in money and credit upon its own books by bookkeeping entry. That this was the consideration used to support the Note dated May 8, 1964 and the Mortgage of the same date. The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Morgan admitted that no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful 'consideration' must exist and be tendered to support the Note." So, the court duly rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and the defendant kept his house. The implications of this case therefore, should have been far-reaching. If bankers are indeed extending credit without consideration (which they most definitely are) i.e. without backing their loans with real money they actually have stored in their vaults and were entitled to lend, any judicial decision declaring their loans void, would topple the entire worldwide financial and banking system. Since this precedent, many other defendants have attempted to have mortgages and loans nullified using the same defence as Daly, but there has been extremely limited success only. In fact, one judge said, strictly 'off the record, ' "If I let you do that, you and everyone else, it would bring the whole banking system down. I cannot let you go behind the bar of the bank. . . . We are not going "behind that curtain!"" Well suffice to say, we certainly are going on a highly revealing trip ' "behind the curtain!," ' so strap-in and be prepared for the ride of your life, as we investigate the sordid and murky history of the world of banking and high finance and the people who run it... with an iron fist encased in a velvet glove. This book is an indictment, not just of the totally corrupt financial system that today permeates the whole world, but also of the people that control it. Their crimes against humanity are legion and so far-reaching that their insidious influence now extends into and corrupts virtually every element of society and it is these so-called 'banksters' - banker-gangsters, who are responsible for all the death, destruction and misery in the world today.
