Editorial: Joshua Slocum
Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. The book was an immediate success and highly influential in inspiring later travelers.
• Which explorer found the lost site of Jesus' first miracle?• Who was first to the top of the highest mountain in Peru?• Who was the first Westerner to visit the Ottoman harem in Constantinople?• Who held the world record as the only person to fly from Britain to Australia for 44 years? You'll find the answers to these questions and more in Mick Conefrey's charming new book (a hint: none of them had beards). In 1870, New York mountaineer Meta Brevoort climbed Mt. Blanc in a hoop skirt. Pausing at the summit only long enough to drink a glass of champagne and dance the quadrille with her alpine guides, she marched back down the mountain and into history as one of the first female mountain explorers. Here, Mick Conefrey weaves together tips, how-tos, anecdotes, and eccentric lists to tell the amazing stories of history's great female explorers—women who were just as fascinating and inspiring as all the Shackletons, Mallorys, and Livingstones. Most were brave, some were reckless, and all were fascinating. From Fanny Bullock Workman, who was photographed on top of a mountain pass in the Karakoram, holding up a banner calling for "Votes for Women" to Mary Hall, the Victorian world traveler, whose motto was, "take every precaution and abandon all fear," How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt is uproariously funny and occasionally downright strange.Ver libro
Despatches in this volume include the despatch fo the campaign from Alamein to Tunis, by Field Marshal the Viscount Alexander of Tunis. Deputy Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces North Africa; despatch on operation in the Western Desert December 1940 to February 1941, by General Sir Archibald P. Wavell, Commander-in-Chief British land Forces, Middle East; despatch on Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew B. Cunningham; and the despatch in operations in North Africa November 1942 to May 1943, by Lieutenant-General K.A.N. Anderson, General Officer Commander-in-Chief, 1st Army. This unique collection of original documents will provide to be an inevitable resource for historians, students and all those interested in what was one of the most significant periods in British Military history.Ver libro
If you’ve ever listened to music created by Cellus Hamilton, you are aware that he is much more than a rapper. His lyrics are multidimensional, revealing him to be a sort of scholarly visionary. Because music is often subject to the listener’s interpretation, interviews have been the closest outlet we have towards understanding the complexities that exist within Mr. Hamilton. Here in his book, “If Jesus Was a Rapper”, he lays his heart bare. As the businessman, family-man, and clergyman aspects of Hamilton are revealed in his memoir, his life and journey through the music industry teach us more about Jesus than many straightforward theologians have. His personality, creativity, and boldness work together to present him as a wholistic human artist who is deeply in love with Jesus. While Hamilton seems to intentionally target the Christian creative, his rags-to-riches story easily connects to us all. By the end of the book, Jesus will likely be your new favorite rapper.Ver libro
On February 15, 1991, Captain Steve Phillis was leading his wingman, Lieutenant Rob Sweet, on their thirtieth combat mission of Desert Storm flying the A-10 Warthog. They were tasked with attacking Iraq's vaunted Medina Division of the Republican Guards—by far their most dangerous mission of the war. Near the end of their attacks, Rob was forced to eject from his aircraft and began a five-minute parachute ride down to the troops he and Steve had just finished bombing. Steve, an experienced combat search and rescue pilot and distinguished graduate of the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, immediately sprang into action to save the life of his wingman. After spending three minutes and forty-five seconds circling Sweet, Steve's A-10 was hit by an enemy surface-to-air missile. Five Nickels: True Story of the Desert Storm Heroics and Sacrifice of Air Force Captain Steve Phillis is a love story. Steve loved his family, fiancée, fellow fighter pilots, country, wingman, and life. Yet he was willing to risk them all to fight—and if necessary, die—for what he believed in. Steve's story—from Rock Island, Illinois, to the Air Force Academy, to his life as an A-10 fighter pilot—is the stuff of heroes.Ver libro
From the bestselling author of The Outsider, an exhaustive historical true crime survey. Colin Wilson, co-author of the bestselling Encyclopedia of Murder, has written a definitive volume on the world’s major cases of violent murder. In doing so, he traces the history of violence from its beginnings. From Sawney Bean and his cannibal family to Ed Gein, the Wisconsin Necrophile, Wilson illustrates the “changing fashions of murder” and indicates some hope for the future.Ver libro
Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives--biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities--including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and periods. What emerges is a provocative rendering of China's moral landscape, featuring characters who have resonated in the historical imagination as examples of villainy, heroism, wisdom, spiritual vision, political guile, and complex combinations of all of these. Investigating both the legends and the facts surrounding these figures, Wills reveals the intense interest of the Chinese in the brilliance and in the frail complexities of their heroes. Included, for instance, is a description of the frustrations and anxieties of Confucius, who emerges as a vulnerable human being trying to restore the world to the virtue and order of the sage kings. Wills recounts and questions the wonderfully shocking stories about the seventh-century Empress Wu, an astute ruler and shaper of an increasingly centralized monarchy, who has since assumed a prominent position in the Chinese tradition's rich gallery of bad examples--because she was a woman meddling in politics. The portrayal of Mao Zedong, which touches upon this leader's earthy personality and his reckless political visions, demonstrates the tendency of the Chinese not to divorce ideology from its human context: Maoism for them is a form of "objective" Marxism, inseparable from one man's life and leadership. Each of the twenty chapters provides a many-sided exploration of a "slice" of Chinese history, engaging the general reader in a deep and personal encounter with China over the centuries and today. The biographies repeatedly mirror the moral earnestness of the Chinese, the great value they place on the ruler-minister relationship, and their struggles with tensions among practicality, moral idealism, and personal authenticity. Culminating in a reflection on China's historical direction in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, the biographies show the modern Chinese still inspired and frustrated by a complex heritage of moral fervor and political habits and preconceptions. As absorbing as it is wide ranging, this history is written for the general public curious about China and for the student beginning to study its rich cultural heritage. This new edition highlights important figures that have emerged in China since the book's initial publication and provides updated suggestions for further reading.Ver libro
