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  Wellington: Waterloo and the...

  Rory Muir

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  The preeminent Wellington biographer presents a fascinating reassessment of the Duke’s most famous victory and his political career after Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington’s momentous victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of a brilliant military career. Yet Wellington’s achievements were far from over. He commanded the allied army of occupation in France to the end of 1818, returned home to a seat in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet, and became prime minister in 1828. He later served as a senior minister in Robert Peel’s government and remained Commander-in-Chief of the Army for a decade until his death in 1852.   In this richly detailed work, the second and concluding volume of Rory Muir’s definitive biography, the author offers a substantial reassessment of Wellington’s significance as a politician and a nuanced view of the private man behind the legendary hero. Muir presents new insights into Wellington’s determination to keep peace at home and abroad, achieved by maintaining good relations with the Continental powers, resisting radical agitation, and granting political equality to the Catholics in Ireland. Countering one-dimensional image of Wellington as a national hero, Muir paints a nuanced portrait of a man whose austere public demeanor belied his entertaining, gossipy, generous, and unpretentious private self.

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  The Boy Who Never Gave Up - A...

  Emmanuel Taban

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  In 1994, 16-year-old Emmanuel Taban walked out of war-torn Sudan with nothing and nowhere to go after he had been tortured at the hands of government forces, who falsely accused him of spying for the rebels. When he finally managed to escape, he literally took a wrong turn and, instead of being reunited with his family, ended up in neighbouring Eritrea as a refugee.
  Over the months that followed, young Emmanuel went on a harrowing journey, often spending weeks on the streets and facing many dangers. Relying on the generosity of strangers, he made the long journey south to South Africa, via Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, travelling mostly by bus and on foot.
  When he reached Johannesburg, 18 months after fleeing Sudan, he was determined to resume his education. He managed to complete his schooling with the help of Catholic missionaries and entered medical school, qualifying as a doctor, and eventually specialising in pulmonology.
  Emmanuel's skills and dedication as a physician, and his stubborn refusal to be discouraged by setbacks, led to an important discovery in the treatment of hypoxaemic COVID-19 patients. By never giving up, this son of South Sudan has risen above extreme poverty, racism and xenophobia to become a South African and African legend. This is his story.

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  The Friedkin Connection - A Memoir

  William Friedkin

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  An acclaimed memoir from an American cinema maverick and Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection and The Exorcist. 
   
  The Friedkin Connection takes readers from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today, with autobiographical storytelling as fast-paced and intense as any of the auteur’s films. 
   
  Friedkin’s success story has the makings of classic American film. He was born in Chicago, the son of Russian immigrants. Immediately after high school, he found work in the mailroom of a local television station, and patiently worked his way into the directing booth during the heyday of live TV. 
   
  An award-winning documentary brought him attention as a talented new filmmaker and an advocate for justice, and it caught the eye of producer David L. Wolper, who brought Friedkin to Los Angeles. There he moved from television to film, displaying a versatile stylistic range. In 1971, The French Connection was released and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and two years later The Exorcist received ten Oscar nominations and catapulted Friedkin’s career to stardom. 
   
  Penned by the director himself, The Friedkin Connection takes readers on a journey through the numerous chance encounters and unplanned occurrences that led a young man from a poor urban neighborhood to success in one of the most competitive industries and art forms in the world. In this fascinating and candid story, he has much to say about the world of moviemaking and his place within it. 
   
  “Friedkin’s against-all-odds success story is compelling reading from the start.” —LA Weekly

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  My Parents: An Introduction This...

  Aleksandar Hemon

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  Two audiobooks in one in a flip dos-à-dos format: The story of Aleksandar Hemon’s parents’ immigration from Sarajevo to Canada and a collection of short memories of the author’s family, friends, and childhood in Sarajevo.In My Parents, Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his parents’ immigration to Canada—of the lives that were upended by the war in Bosnia and siege of Sarajevo and the new lives his parents were forced to build. As ever with his work, he portrays both the perfect, intimate details (his mother’s lonely upbringing, his father’s fanatical beekeeping) and a sweeping, heartbreaking history of his native country. It is a story full of many Hemons, of course—his parents, sister, uncles, cousins—and also of German occupying forces, Yugoslav partisans, royalist Serb collaborators, singing Ukrainians, and a few befuddled Canadians.My Parents is Hemon at his very best, grounded in stories lovingly polished by retelling, but making them exhilarating and fresh in writing, summoning unexpected laughs in the midst of the heartbreaking narratives. This Does Not Belong to You, meanwhile, is the exhilarating, freewheeling, unabashedly personal companion to My Parents—a perfect dose of Hemon at his most dazzling and untempered in a series of beautifully distilled memories and observations and explosive, hilarious, poignant miniatures. Presented dos-à-dos  with My Parents, it complements and completes a major work from a major writer.In the words of Colum McCann, “Aleksandar Hemon is, quite frankly, the greatest writer of our generation.” Hemon has never been better than here. And the moment has never been more ready for his voice, nor has the world ever been more in need of it.

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  Bandit - A Daughter's Memoir

  Molly Brodak

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  One woman’s “raw, poetic and compulsively readable” account of growing up with a bank robber for a father (Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help).   In the summer of 1994, when Molly Brodak was thirteen years old, her father robbed eleven banks, until the police finally caught up with him. Dubbed the “Mario Brothers Bandit” by the FBI, he served seven years in prison and was released, only to rob another bank several years later and end up back behind bars.   In her powerful and provocative memoir, Molly Brodak recounts her childhood and attempts to make sense of her complicated relationship with her father, a man she only half knew. At some angles he was a normal father: there was a job at the GM factory, a house with a yard, birthday treats for Molly and her sister. But there were darker glimmers, too: another wife he never mentioned to her mother, late-night rages directed at the TV, the red Corvette that suddenly appeared in the driveway, a gift for her sister. In Bandit, Brodak unearths and reckons with the fracturing impact her father had on their family and in the process attempts to make peace with the parts of herself that she inherited from this bewildering, beguiling man.   “With unwavering candor and remarkable grace, Brodak pieces together the years she spent trying to make sense of a volatile, complicated man her family never really knew.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (online)   “A poet by training, Brodak writes with great precision and grace, distilling some memories, expanding others; many of her short chapters feel like prose poems.” —The Boston Globe

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  Max Factor and Hollywood - A...

  Erik Thomas

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  The story of the makeup artist who changed the film industry—and the world of modern cosmetics. Includes photos.   When Polish wigmaker and cosmetician Max Factor arrived in Los Angeles at the dawn of the motion picture industry, “make-up” had been associated only with stage performers and ladies of the oldest profession. Appalled by the garish paints worn by actors, Factor introduced the first “flexible” greasepaint for film in 1914. With a few careful brush strokes, a lot of innovation, and the kind of luck that can happen only in Hollywood, Max Factor changed the meaning of glamour. His innovations can be experienced in every tube of lipstick, palette of eye shadow, and bottle of nail lacquer used today.    Join author Erika Thomas as she reveals the makeup guru's expert beauty tips and the story of how he created the most iconic golden-era looks that are as relevant today as they were nearly a century ago.

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