Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous and searing study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa--and it is now available as a Signal deluxe paperback.
A Nobel Peace Prize recipient canonized by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions--not the other way around.
With characteristic elan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary in a light she has never before been seen in. Views: 566
George Orwell was a tireless and lively correspondent. He communicated with family members, friends and newspapers, figures such as Henry Miller, Cyril Connolly, Stephen Spender and Arthur Koestler, and strangers who wrote to him out of the blue. This carefully selected volume of his correspondence provides an eloquent narrative of Orwell's life, from his schooldays to his final illness.
Orwell's letters afford a unique and fascinating view of his thoughts on matters both personal, political and much in between, from poltergeists, to girls' school songs and the art of playing croquet. In a note home to his mother from school, he reports having 'aufel fun after tea'; much later he writes of choosing a pseudonym and smuggling a copy of *Ulysses *into the country.
We catch illuminating glimpses of his family life: his son Richard's developing teeth, the death of his wife Eileen and his own illness. His talent as a political writer comes to the fore in his descriptions of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, his opinions on bayonets, and on the chaining of German prisoners. And of course, letters to friends and his publisher chart the development and publication of some of the most famous novels in the English language, providing unparalleled insight into his views on his own work and that of his contemporaries.
*A Life in Letters* features previously unpublished material, including letters which shed new light on a love that would haunt him for his whole life, as well as revealing the inspiration for some of his most famous characters. Presented for the first time in a dedicated volume, this selection of Orwell's letters is an indispensible companion to his diaries. Views: 560
You run London's Cultural Olympiad and 3 weeks before the Games, the Olympic Torch has failed to ignite the country. Can you London really excited about the Games? Recalling 7/7 – the suicide bombings that followed London’s selection as host city – was when Londoners last came together as one, nothing can stop you trying to recreate that feeling. If only you could stop yourself...You are Director of the Cultural Olympiad. Three weeks before the opening ceremony and you are panicking: the Olympic Torch has failed to ignite the country, and London 2012 is shaping up to be a Mega-Non-Event. Surely you can do something to make London really excited about the Games? On a night out on the town with your long-lost friend, you recall that 7/7 – the suicide bombings that followed London’s selection as host city – was the last time Londoners came together as one. With the Olympic clock ticking towards Games Time, nothing can stop you trying to recreate that feeling of togetherness. If only you had been able to stop yourself…… Games Makers: A London Satire chronicles the attempt to bomb London back to the Blitz spirit Andrew Calcutt is the original ‘hackademic’ (journalist turned academic). He has written a dozen non-fiction books. Games Makers is his first novel. Views: 539
Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Burmese Days describes both indigenous corruption and Imperial bigotry, when 'after all, natives were natives - interesting, no doubt, but finally only a 'subject' people, an inferior people with black faces'. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Dr Veraswami, a black enthusiast for Empire. The doctor needs help. U Po Kyin, Sub- divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is European patronage: membership of the hitherto all-white Club. While Flory prevaricates, beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen arrives in Upper Burma from Paris. At last, after years of 'solitary hell', romance and marriage appear to offer Flory an escape from the 'lie' of the 'pukka sahib pose'. Views: 539
Cassie finally had enough with her step-father's unwanted attentions. But life on the street wasn't any easier. Especially when it rained. Frank spotted Cassie from his hotel window and decided she needed help. But neither of them were really expecting that they'd be married the following day."So the story really is about the responsible orphan from the unfortunate background who overcomes the odds and marries the billionaire’s grandson. The press will think it’s terribly romantic. I know I do." Cassie Marcussen finally had enough with her step-father's unwanted attentions. But life on the street wasn't any easier. Especially when it rained.Frank Ellis was worrying holes in the carpet of his hotel room, trying to figure out how to report a fraud to the owner of the company; a fraud led by his supervisor. When he looked out the window, he spotted Cassie again and decided she needed help.But neither of them were really expecting that they'd be married the following day.Warning: Contains profanity. Views: 528
Forty Scrubs is an intelligent and intense true to life short novel which delves into the world of sixteen year old Keisha Morgan. Keisha is suffering from an obsessive thought disorder. We follow her through the trials and tribulations of her journey to self-discovery while she stumbles upon numerous familial discoveries.Forty Scrubs is an intelligent and intense true to life short novel which delves into the world of sixteen year old Keisha Morgan. Keisha suffers from obsessive thought patterns, a disorder that controls her life. We follow her through the trials and tribulations of her journey to self-discovery while she stumbles upon numerous familial discoveries. Keisha is a caring yet complex girl who undertakes the challenging pursuit of learning where she has come from, where she is going and most importantly, who she is. Can she overcome the obstacles that impede on her disorder and reach her goals to happiness and self-acceptance? Views: 509
A harrowing and thorough account of the massacre that upended Norway, and the trial that helped put the country back together
On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed sixty-nine more, most of them teenage members of Norway’s governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and what led up to it. What made Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become a terrorist?
As in her bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, Seierstad excels at the vivid portraiture of lives under stress. She delves deep into Breivik’s troubled childhood, showing how a hip-hop and graffiti aficionado became a right-wing activist and Internet game addict, and then an entrepreneur, Freemason, and self-styled master warrior who sought to “save Norway” from the threat of Islam and multiculturalism. She writes with equal intimacy about Breivik’s victims, tracing their political awakenings, aspirations to improve their country, and ill-fated journeys to the island. By the time Seierstad reaches Utøya, we know both the killer and those he will kill. We have also gotten to know an entire country—famously peaceful and prosperous, and utterly incapable of protecting its youth. Views: 505
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book in two parts: the first half is Orwell's description of working-class life in industrial communities of the north of England, the second examines his own political views.Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Amelia Gentleman.The Road to Wigan Pier is an insightful and powerful account of lives lived in poverty and deprivation in a time of low wages and meagre government support. Orwell describes dismal housing (including the lodging house where he stays), harsh working conditions and the devastating effects of unemployment. And he also vividly describes the courage and dignity of the people he meets. In the second half of the book, Orwell examines his own political and social affiliations with an impressive ability to... Views: 492
A modern medieval tale of craven ambition, grasping opportunism and the unconstrained pursuit of self-interest. Abelard's 650 year gap in his recall confers on him a huge advantage as he successfully claws his way up the corporate food chain. The memories he does have are awash in medieval warfare, murderous vengeance and brigandage on the highways of 14th century Europe.“The Perfect Human” is a tale of craven ambition, grasping opportunism, modern corporate greed and epic medieval violence. It is played out through the adventures of Abelard Bush, an ambitious, deeply ruthless executive with all the ethical standards and negotiating acumen necessary for the successful medieval nobleman. What might seem to be a handicap, a 650 year gap in his recall, provides Abelard with an overwhelming advantage as he claws his way up the corporate food chain. Abelard, is a man whose good fortune is to have no memories other than a life lived during the Middle Ages to guide him in his relentless pursuit of self interest. Urbane, civilized Felicity and Oliver had no reason to dwell on the brutality, mistrust and casual violence that polite society has for so long ago left behind. That is, until they find Abelard. He is an enigma created by the only recall he possesses: a childhood in medieval Gascony, followed by a captain’s career in the Black Prince’s armies during the Hundred Years War, a successful run as a brigand on the highways of Fourteenth Century Europe, and as a Condottiere to the Italian city states.All the more baffling is his ease with everyone he meets, from CEOs of large corporations, through dodgy characters who run timeless criminal organizations to the people who care most deeply for him. How could a man whose golden rule is to do unto others before they do unto him fit so snugly into Felicity’s orderly, civilized world? Abelard is a man apparently unhampered by empathy, who relies mainly on duplicity and violence. Is Abelard an amnesiac who has lost his moral way, a psychopath who has lost his memory or, astonishingly, is he just an ordinary human with an extraordinary story?The soon-to-be-dead, believing him to know the location of a fabulous, long lost fortune, as well as to possess the secret of very long life, pursue Abelard over two continents. The police are never far behind. Views: 464
When her strict Moslem uncle finds her Bible, Miriam Nadif is locked in her room to await punishment. But she escapes and runs to her former best friend, Jerry Ernst, in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, who she hasn't contacted in six years. Will the spark between them still exist? Will her troubles follow her across the ocean? Will he even want to help her?Miriam Nadif, head buyer for her family's grocery stores in Lebanon, had thought she would be the spinster aunt, content to support her father and help him build up the family business. But her father's untimely death transferred her guardianship to her uncle, a Hezbollah supporter who refuses to allow her out of his house. When they find her Bible, she is threatened with stoning and is forced to flee. She thinks immediately of her best friend from university in Canada, Jerry Ernst, whose gentle example led to her conversion to Christianity. Will the spark between them still exist? Will her troubles follow her across the ocean? Will he even want to help her?But Jerry has his own problems raising his daughter as a single dad after his wife abandoned them and starting his career as a high school teacher. If you enjoy this book please consider rating it or writing a review. Views: 459
Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life. Views: 450
Horror was my familiar.
Published the same year as her first novel, Adam Bede, this overlooked work displays the gifts for which George Eliot would become famous—gritty realism, psychological insight, and idealistic moralizing. It is unique from all her other writing, however, in that it represents the only time she ever used a first-person narrator, and it is the only time she wrote about the supernatural.
The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense.
**The Art of The Novella Series
**Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. Views: 449
This collection of fifty essays spans the 1930s and 1940s and covers the broad range of Orwell's interests: political, social and literary. As well as extracts from well-known books such as 'Down and out in Paris and London' and 'The Road to Wigan Pier', this volume includes classic articles such as 'Killing an Elephant' and 'Good Bad Books, ' as well as lesser known pieces. Whether or not readers are familiar with his work or sympathatic to his views, they are sure to be seduced by Orwell's logical mind and lucid prose in this handsome new edition of his wide-ranging and stimulating essays. Contents: The Spike; A Hanging (1931); Bookshop Memories (1936); Shooting an Elephant (1936); Down the Mine (1937) (from "The Road to Wigan Pier"); North and South (from "The Road to Wigan Pier") (1937); Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937); Marrakech (1939); Boys' Weeklies and Frank Richards's Reply (1940); Charles Dickens (1940); Charles Reade (1940); Inside The Whale (1940); The Art of Donald Mcgill (1941); The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941); Wells, Hitler And The World State (1941); Looking Back On The Spanish War (1942); Rudyard Kipling (1942); Mark Twain - the Licensed Jester (1943); Poetry and the Microphone (1943); W. B. Yeats (1943); Arthur Koestler (1944); Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali (1944); Raffles and Miss Blandish (1944); Antisemitism in Britain (1945); Freedom of the Park (1945); Future of a Ruined Germany (1945); Good Bad Books; In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse (1945); Nonsense Poetry; Notes on Nationalism (1945); Revenge is Sour (1945); The Sporting Spirit; You and the Atomic Bomb (1945); A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray; A Nice Cup of Tea (1946); Books vs. Cigarettes; Confessions of a Book Reviewer; Decline of the English Murder; How the Poor Die; James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution; Pleasure Spots; Politics and the English Language; Politics vs. Literature: an Examination of Gulliver's Travels; Riding Down from Bangor; Some Thoughts on the Common Toad; The Prevention of Literature; Why I Write (1946); Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool; Such, Such Were the Joys (1947); Writers and Leviathan (1948); Reflections on Gandhi. Views: 449
