This intimate account of what it was like to fly open-cockpit, single engined aircraft over the length and breadth of primitive Africa in the early 1930s has been written by one of the pioneers of the African air-routes, Victor Smith. Smith is in fact the last of that intrepid breed of pilots who risked their lives, and their machines, in a determined bid to open up the Darkest Continent and to reduce traveling times between Africa and Europe.
A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed. The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine what we—both as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.
A grand historical novel of romance and high adventure that roils in cosmopolitan Cairo and sprawls across the highlands of East Africa. A Café on the Nile It is 1935 in East Africa. Mussolini's armies are streaming by the hundreds of thousands through Suez on a march to Ethiopia. In the desert the Italian Air Force, equipped with bombs and poison gas, prepares for invasion. Abyssinia sits on the edge of a nightmare that will alter modern history, while safaris in the African highlands cater to the excesses of the wealthy and disenchanted. And in Cairo, on the Nile, the cosmopolitan crowd gathers at the Cataract Café to gamble with destiny. All paths cross at the Cataract Café. There, with a single word, a simple gesture, an extravagant gift, alliances are drawn, deals made, and fates unwittingly determined for the memorable cast of characters that people this tale of high adventure. There professional hunter Anton Rider's Gypsy blood runs cold when he spies his estranged wife, Gwenn, with her lover, the Italian count and aviator Lorenzo Grimaldi. There the spoiled, rich American twins from Lexington, Bernadette and Harriet Mills, contract Rider for an ill-fated safari across East Africa with Ernst von Decken, a German freebooter who has stolen a fortune in silver from the Italian army. There Olivio Alavedo, the Goan proprietor of the Cataract Café, celebrates the fifty years that have blessed him with the friendship of the down-at-the-heel English lord Adam Penfold, with a good wife, six daughters, an exotic mistress, and useful political connections. A dwarf, Olivio also suffers his age and knows he won’t see fifty-five. But no one knows just how dangerously the days are numbered at the Cataract Café. Praise for Bartle Bull “You finish this book almost out of breath . . . appreciative of Mr. Bull’s spirited, sensuous, hot-blooded evocation of a rich and eventful historical world.” —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “A rip-roaring yarn . . . chock-full of fine ingredients: a cupful of Casablanca, a dollop of Isak Dinesen, a pinch of Indiana Jones and a touch of Tender Is the Night. Bull enriches the mix with a white-hot plot and genuinely dashing descriptive writing.” —USA Today
Children ask the best questions—and this book has the answers! This timeless encyclopedia covers children's favorite topics, all in a friendly, easy-to-read Q&A format, perfect to dip into and browse. If your child is always asking questions, from "how do airplanes fly?" to "why do zebras have stripes?" and everything in between, this is the book for them. Shaped by children's interests and their insatiable curiosity, this is a book that children will read again and again. Alongside the children's questions and the expert answers are beautiful illustrations, photographs, and diagrams to bring every topic to life in rich detail and with perfect clarity. Question Everything! is essential reading to encourage curious kids to keep questioning the world around them.
The horrifying story of the official British war policy toward the Orange Free State in the Anglo-Boer War. All but ignored in most histories, the British followed a scorched earth policy of total war in which more than 27,000 civilians, mainly women and children, were herded into concentrations camps where they died in the most barbaric conditions. A shocking expose.
Kel Palmer is a proud Mancunian. On retirement in 2000, he and Rosemarie planned to move from their 17th century haunted Sussex cottage to the sunshine of Cyprus or Kauai, but chose Wales! This memoir, covering the 76 years he can remember, is written so that chapters may be read in isolation avoiding autobiographic boredom. It depicts life during WW2 as seen through the eyes of a young boy, via roller-coaster days at Grammar School, spurning a sporting career to join the RAF leading to commissioning and flying training. His first superiors were men wearied by war, facing new challenges as the jet replaced the piston and the WP replaced Nazism. It was a time before aircraft technology had mushroomed, before ejection seats, and electronic wizardry, but in which the flying was immensely exciting and life as a young officer was about fun and fulfillment. He flew mainly fighters with a mix of frontline squadrons, Operational conversion, Flying College, and service with the USAF and US Navy. He was a pioneer of fighter in-flight refueling in the heady days when RAF squadrons deployed worldwide. Later he held Command posts, served in MOD Operational Requirements, Directed the Air Warfare College, and was Chief of Nuclear Plans at SHAPE, leading to his career in the defence industry. On cancellation of Nimrod AEW he left air defence switching to maritime patrol and battlefield surveillance as those roles became increasingly important. During the 90s life caught up with him and he enjoyed a triple heart bypass, divorced and re-married, and watched his four children complete their education and grow into adulthood. He retired in 2000 to become involved in Community affairs, Youth, the environment and social housing, receiving The Queens Award for Voluntary Service. He has lived in the USA, Germany, Belgium and Cyprus, travelled to 111 countries, and been an accomplished and versatile sportsman playing his last game of rugby at 46 and soccer at 61.An enthusiastic dancer, Kel is a great lover of music and of furry friends. He published his memoirs in 2005 ,updating them in the light of much reflection and some repercussions.
This often touching, sometimes hilarious book does not focus on dates or military strategy, nor does it attempt to condemn or vindicate the people involved. Rather, it focuses on the human interest stories that flavored this, "The Last of the Gentlemen's Wars". From the humorous story of the Boers firing shells laden with plum pudding on Christmas day into the beseiged town of Ladysmith to the tragic Legend of the Flowers, this volume is sure to entertain, educate and inspire.
