Two O levels. Three convictions for smash and grab in off licenses. Two for drunk driving. One for possession of amphetamine sulphate. General labouring and factory work. Attended charismatic Baptist church. Made girlfriend pregnant. Resigned from job as refuse collector, resigned church membership, returned library books, sold house, went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire. Came back altered. Conscious decision to join bourgeoisie. Night classes for a year in Torquay, then three at School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Institute of Kiswahili, Zanzibar. Reviewed book by the late, great Dr Brian Plummer on ferret husbandry for University College London student literary magazine. Taken on by legendary editor Dr Karl Miller as his latest great white hope . Book deal. Fifty grand advance. Spent advance. Failed to write book. Now, author of the Low Life column in the Spectator. 53 years old and a grandfather. Unmarried. Currently coughing and sneezing in a remote cottage on Dartmoor. Meet Jeremy Clark...
'Every page of this book is fascinating, glorious, and profound. This is one of the great frontiers of science for our age' Daniel M. Davis, author of The Beautiful Cure and The Secret Body 'Professor Max Nieuwdorp has written a delightfully readable book . . . A deep and fascinating look into a critical aspect of what makes us human and points the way to becoming our better selves' Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art, author of The Night Shift and The Power of Kindness, and ER doctor From a world-leading hormones specialist, the definitive book on the science of hormones and how understanding the secrets of our body’s messengers can revolutionise our health and wellbeing Hormones are the messengers that drive every process in our body. They are essential to how we grow, fight disease and digest food; why we struggle to sleep, lose weight and manage stress – and so much more. When our hormones are imbalanced this can wreak havoc on our health, leading to conditions as far reaching as diabetes, infertility and heart disease. They also influence our personalities, how we feel and even the decisions we make. And yet for too long the power of our body’s messengers has been overlooked. In this vital and myth-busting book, world-leading hormones expert Dr Max Nieuwdorp transforms our understanding of our bodies. Combining stories from his daily life treating his patients with amazing, cutting-edge new science, he reveals the crucial role that hormones play from our early years through to old age, exploring everything from the effect that smartphones have on our sleep and longevity to how our gut bacteria produce ‘happy’ hormones. As Nieuwdorp reveals, hormones are central to our moods, our relationships and so much of what makes us who we are. Demystifying the signals of our bodies, he explores how we can rebalance our hormones for happier and healthier lives.
The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Jeremy Clarke made his girlfriend pregnant, resigned from his job as a refuse collector, resigned his church membership, sold his house, went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, then came back altered. Now the author of the 'Low Life' column in the Spectator, Clarke tells his story.
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.
