Against the backdrop of the great Bristol Bay salmon fishery, thirteen-year-old Zoey Morley struggles with her parents divorce, her moms bush-pilot boyfriend, and the pangs of growing up during her summer in the real Alaska. Author Annie Boochever tells a compelling tale of a divided family living a remote lifestyle where getting along as a team is a matter of survival. Zoey learns to trust the artist inside her and finds she and her new friend Thomas have something in common. Readers will live the lessons learned and taught by this young girl who finds that hard work, compassion, and the ability to see things in her own special way lead her toward happiness in a place that at first seems just too far away. Views: 29
Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world's largest body of water, and – in matters economic, political and military – the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey. It is the place of Paul Gauguin and the explosion of the largest-ever American atomic bomb, on Bikini atoll, in 1951. It has an astonishing recent past, an uncertain present and a hugely important future. The ocean and its peoples are the new lifeblood, fizz and thrill of America – which draws so many of its minds and so much of its manners from the sea – while the inexorable rise of the ancient center of the world, China, is a fixating fascination. The presence of rogue states – North Korea most notoriously today – suggest that the focus of the... Views: 29
There is no lower rank than cabin boy on the warship Invincible. But Dantar knows he is important, because anyone who threatens his life gets turned into a pile of ashes. His older sister Velza is a shapecasting warrior, in a world where only men fight. Until now. Together they must solve the mystery of broken magic and escape the dragon. Views: 29
Join Bertie in three hilarious new stories, "Germs!", "Stomp!" and "Babysitter!", as he attempts to catch sister Suzy's horrible illness, finds himself partnering Gran at a dancing competition and meets his match in the new babysitter who's even grubbier than he is! Views: 29
Ulrik is desperate to be on the school football team, but he doesn't really understand the rules, and his neighbour Warren Priddle certainly isn't about to explain to the troll next door that wellington boots are not the right footwear, and being Fierce and Scaresome will only get you a red card! Views: 29
Calling all Dirty Bertie fans! Dirty Bertie – the boy with nose-pickingly disgusting habits – is back for another helping of comic chaos! With ever-increasing madcap schemes and crazy capers, Bertie continues to delight his legions of fans who revel in his revolting ways. Join Bertie in Rats! his 23rd adventure, as he crosses paths with a cheeky rodent, takes part in a chaotic cross-country run, and tries to get his dog Whiffer to eat healthily – with disastrous results! Views: 29
The internationally acclaimed last work by the legendary Latin American writerMaster storyteller Eduardo Galeano was unique among his contemporaries (Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa among them) for his commitment to retelling our many histories, including the stories of those who were disenfranchised. A philosopher poet, his nonfiction is infused with such passion and imagination that it matches the intensity and the appeal of Latin America's very best fiction.Comprised of all new material, published here for the first time in a wonderful English translation by longtime collaborator Mark Fried, Hunter of Stories is a deeply considered collection of Galeano's final musings and stories on history, memory, humor, and tragedy. Written in his signature style—vignettes that fluidly combine dialogue, fables, and anecdotes—every page displays the original thinking and compassion that has earned Galeano decades and continents of... Views: 29
Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods--that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient... Views: 29
In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland’s famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life. A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed aboard Farley’s beloved but jinxed schooner as it lay on the St. Pierre docks, once again in a cradle for repairs, and changed both their lives forever. This is the story of that love affair, of summers spent sailing the Newfoundland coast, and of their decision to start their life together in Burgeo, one of the province’s last remaining outports. It is also an unforgettable portrait of the last of the outport people and a way of life that had survived for centuries but was now passing forever. Affectionate, unsentimental, this is a burnished gem from an undiminished talent.*I was inside my vessel painting the cabin when I heard the sounds of a scuffle nearby. I poked my head out the companionway in time to see a lithesome young woman swarming up the ladder which leaned against Happy Adventure’s flank. Whining expectantly, the shipyard dog was endeavouring to follow this attractive stranger. I could see why. As slim and graceful as a ballet dancer (which, I would later learn, was one of her avocations), she appeared to be wearing a gleaming golden helmet (her own smoothly bobbed head of hair) and was as radiantly lovely as any Saxon goddess. I invited her aboard, while pushing the dog down the ladder.“That’s only Blanche,” I reassured my visitor. “He won’t bite. He’s just, uh . . . being friendly.”“That’s nice to know,” she said sweetly. Then she smiled . . . and I was lost.*–From Bay of SpiritsFrom the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklyIn this ruminative memoir, Mowat chronicles the disappearance of a way of life in Newfoundland and the chance encounter that brought him the love of his life. As a young writer in 1957, Mowat decided to travel on a tramp steamer among the small fishing villages known as outports that dotted the Newfoundland coast. These outports were the home of hardy and colorful fisherfolk of Basque, English, Irish and French descent. Government policy and the depletion of the regional fisheries by huge commercial trawlers were slowly forcing the locals out of their centuries-old homes. Mowat enjoyed the area so much that he bought a schooner for further exploration. Soon afterward, a young woman fleeing the overeager attentions of an amorous mutt stumbled on board his ship and romance quickly followed. Mowat and Claire Wheeler spent the next decade sailing in the rocky bays, thick fogs and sudden squalls of the region. The author of 40 books, mostly on nautical and adventure themes, Mowat has a deep understanding of the sea and the natural world. His observations of the outporters are equally perceptive and provide a fascinating window into a little known corner of North America. In this tender elegy to a lost Newfoundland, Mowat shows an amused tolerance for almost everything except the human greed that has inexorably destroyed his adopted home's cultures and environment. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistCanada's most idiosyncratic province is as large a presence as Canada's most idiosyncratic writer in this moving memoir of the love of a woman and the love of a particular place. In 1957, Mowat boarded a steamer that plied Newfoundland's rugged coastline. It was love at first sight, and Mowat would revisit often until he bought his Happy Schooner. On one Newfoundland nautical adventure he met Claire Wheeler. He was married to another then and had two small children. Never trying to justify his behavior, Mowat presents how he transferred his affections and his domicile matter-of-factly. The emotional heart of the story lies in remote Burgeo, Newfoundland, where he and Claire settled. The book concludes bittersweetly when the killing of a trapped whale nearly becomes an international incident with Mowat in the thick of it. Mowat has visited whale killing before (A Whale for the Killing, 1972) but here offers a more personal perspective. In Newfoundland, he realized that, no matter how he loved this orneriest of provinces, he would forever remain a stranger. June SawyersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 29
FB2Library.Elements.CiteItem From Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest empire the world has ever known. Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world’s preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome’s rise to glory into an erudite page-turner filled with lasting lessons for our time. He chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd strategy of offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left triumphant everywhere except within its own borders. Everitt paints indelible portraits of the great Romans—and non-Romans—who left their mark on the world out of which the mighty empire grew: Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington, the very model of the patrician warrior/aristocrat; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned back a challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and Alexander the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who became a role model for generations of would-be Roman rulers. Here also are the intellectual and philosophical leaders whose observations on the art of government and “the good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity to the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible statesman who spoke out against the decadence of his times, and Cicero, the consummate orator whose championing of republican institutions put him on a collision course with Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and liberty continue to inform our political discourse today. Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. With The Rise of Rome , one of our most revered chroniclers of the ancient world tells that tale in a way that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern readers. Views: 29
When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published. Views: 29
