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Into Thin Air
Brief summary
One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley.
Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.
In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead.
Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape.
As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.
ISBN:9781447200185
Author:Jon Krakauer
Slave My True Story
Brief summary
Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village, murdering the adults and rounding up thirty-one children, including Mende.
Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of enslavement. Her Arab owners called her "Yebit," or "black slave." She called them "master." She was subjected to appalling physical, sexual, and mental abuse. She slept in a shed and ate the family leftovers like a dog. She had no rights, no freedom, and no life of her own.
Normally, Mende's story never would have come to light. But seven years after she was seized and sold into slavery, she was sent to work for another master—a diplomat working in the United Kingdom. In London, she managed to make contact with other Sudanese, who took pity on her. In September 2000, she made a dramatic break for freedom.
Slave is a story almost beyond belief. It depicts the strength and dignity of the Nuba tribe. It recounts the savage way in which the Nuba and their ancient culture are being destroyed by a secret modern-day trade in slaves. Most of all, it is a remarkable testimony to one young woman's unbreakable spirit and tremendous courage.
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ISBN:9781844081165
Author:Mende Nazer & Damien Lewis
A Gift of Love
Brief summary
A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
The classic collection of sixteen sermons preached and compiled by Dr. King
As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962.
Having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for fifteen days that was, according to King, ‘‘dirty, filthy, and ill-equipped’’ and "the worse I have ever seen.” While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for classic sermons such as "Loving Your Enemies,” "Love in Action,” and "Shattered Dreams,” and continued to work on the volume after his release.
A Gift of Love includes these classic sermons, along with two new preachings. Collectively they present King’s fusion of Christian teachings and social consciousness, and promote his prescient vision of love as a social and political force for change.
ISBN:9780141985183
Author:Martin Luther King Jr.
Empires in the Sun
Brief summary
Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa.
In this compelling history of the men and ideas that radically changed the course of world history, Lawrence James investigates and analyses how, within a hundred years, Europeans persuaded and coerced Africa into becoming a subordinate part of the modern world.
His narrative is laced with the experiences of participants and onlookers and introduces the men and women who, for better or worse, stamped their wills on Africa. The continent was a magnet for the high-minded, the philanthropic, the unscrupulous and the insane.
Visionary pro-consuls rubbed shoulders with missionaries, explorers, soldiers, adventurers, engineers, big-game hunters, entrepreneurs and physicians. Between 1830 and 1945, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the United States exported their languages, laws, culture, religions, scientific and technical knowledge and economic systems to Africa.
The colonial powers imposed administrations designed to bring stability and peace to a continent that seemed to lack both. The justification for occupation was emancipation from slavery - and the common assumption that late nineteenth-century Europe was the summit of civilisation.
By 1945 a transformed continent was preparing to take charge of its own affairs, a process of decolonisation that took a mere twenty or so years. There remained areas where European influence was limited (Liberia, Abyssinia) - through inertia and a desire for a quiet time, Africa's new masters left much undisturbed. This magnificent history also pauses to ask: what did not happen and why?
ISBN:9781474604383
Author:Lawrence James
Hells Corner
Brief summary
Oliver Stone and the Camel Club return in #1 bestselling author David Baldacci's most stunning adventure yet.
An attack on the heart of power . . .
In sight of the White House . . .
At a place known as . . .
HELL'S CORNER
John Carr, aka Oliver Stone-once the most skilled assassin his country ever had-stands in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, perhaps for the last time.
The president has personally requested that Stone serve his country again on a high-risk, covert mission. Though he's fought for decades to leave his past career behind, Stone has no choice but to say yes.
Then Stone's mission changes drastically before it even begins. It's the night of a state dinner honoring the British prime minister. As he watches the prime minister's motorcade leave the White House that evening, a bomb is detonated in Lafayette Park, an apparent terrorist attack against both leaders. It's in the chaotic aftermath that Stone takes on a new, more urgent assignment: find those responsible for the bombing.
British MI-6 agent Mary Chapman becomes Stone's partner in the search for the unknown attackers. But their opponents are elusive, capable, and increasingly lethal; worst of all, it seems that the park bombing may just have been the opening salvo in their plan. With nowhere else to turn, Stone enlists the help of the only people he knows he can trust: the Camel Club. Yet that may be a big mistake.
In the shadowy worlds of politics and intelligence, there is no one you can really trust. Nothing is really what it seems to be. And Hell's Corner truly lives up to its name. This may be Oliver Stone's and the Camel Club's last stand.
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ISBN:9780330456555
Author:David Baldacci
To Cut a Long Story Short
Brief summary
From the master storyteller comes a masterful collection of fourteen riveting tales of elaborate confidence tricks, political chicanery, immoral behavior, and dangerously illicit affairs, rendered with the breathtaking narrative twists that have become the Jeffrey Archer hallmark.
Here are all new stories that will engross and astonish, peopled with a rich assortment of truly memorable characters: the intoxicating woman who appears to her lover only once every six years; the British diplomat who employs his rather creative -- if not entirely ethical -- financial talents for a greater good; the millionaire who declares himself bankrupt to test the love and loyalties of those closest to him.
This is Jeffrey Archer at the top of his form, as he offers us unique fables of our time and civilization, each one shining a harsh yet hypnotic light on that fascinating, complex being called "human."
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ISBN:9780330419093
Author:Jeffrey Archer
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of women of color in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture.
The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence.
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okpa...
Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities.
They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.
As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti’s political coming of age, Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees uses one woman’s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood.
Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.
A Long Walk Home
Brief summary
A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival
This is the story of how, over a period of one hundred and ninety-two days, I was torn away from the life I knew and loved, and dragged down to the depths of despair; of how I endured enforced isolation and near-starvation at the hands of Somali pirates; and of how I made a choice to survive by any and all means that I could muster.
In September 2011 Judith Tebbutt and her husband David set out on an adventurous holiday to Kenya. A couple for thirty-three years, they had first met in Zambia: Africa had played a major part in their life together.
After a joyous week on safari in the Masai Mara, they flew on to a beach resort forty kilometres south of Somalia. And there, in the early hours of 11 September, tragedy struck them.
Judith was torn away from David by a band of armed pirates, dragged over sea and land to a village in the arid heart of lawless Somalia, and there held hostage in a squalid room, a ransom on her head. There, too, she learned the terrible truth that the responsibility of securing her release now rested with her son Ollie.
Powerful, moving and at times quite devastating, this is Judith Tebbutt's story in her own words.
ISBN:9780571303069
Author:Judith Tebbutt
The High Mountains of Portugal
Brief summary
In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that—if he can find it—would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure.
Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás’s quest.
Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he arrives with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee. And there the century-old quest will come to an unexpected conclusion.
The High Mountains of Portugal—part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable—offers a haunting exploration of great love and great loss. Filled with tenderness, humor, and endless surprise, it takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century—and through the human soul.
ISBN:9781782114758
Author:Yann Martel
The Game
Brief summary
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
Hidden somewhere, in nearly every major city in the world, is an underground seduction lair. And in these lairs, men trade the most devastatingly effective techniques ever invented to charm women. This is not fiction. These men really exist.
They live together in houses known as Projects. And Neil Strauss, the bestselling author, spent two years living among them, using the pseudonym Style to protect his real-life identity. The result is one of the most explosive and controversial books of the year -- guaranteed to change the lives of men and transform the way women understand the opposite sex forever.
On his journey from AFC (average frustrated chump) to PUA (pick-up artist) to PUG (pick-up guru), Strauss not only shares scores of original seduction techniques but also has unforgettable encounters with the likes of Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Heidi Fleiss, and Courtney Love.
And then things really start to get strange -- and passions lead to betrayals lead to violence. The Game is the story of one man's transformation from frog to prince -- to prisoner in the most unforgettable book of the year.
ISBN:9780060554736
Author:Neil Strauss
The Secret River
Brief summary
In 1806 William Thornhill, an illiterate English bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep compassion, steals a load of wood and, as a part of his lenient sentence, is deported, along with his beloved wife, Sal, to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia.
The Secret River is the tale of William and Sal’s deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William’s gradual realization that if he wants to make a home for his family, he must forcibly take the land from the people who came before him.
Acclaimed around the world, The Secret River is a magnificent, transporting work of historical fiction.
ISBN:9780857860842
Author:Kate Grenville
Dont Tell Me You are Afraid
Brief summary
Based on a remarkable true story, Don't Tell Me You're Afraid is a moving, inspiring novel of a life lived in hope.
Samia Omar grows up in war-torn Somalia, dreaming of being a world-class sprinter. She sleeps with a photo of Mo Farah by her bed and trains hard. A
fter achieving a place on the national team to compete in the Beijing Olympics, she sets her sights on the 2012 games in London.
But with the war encroaching on the lives of her family, Samia decides to join her sister and make the treacherous journey to Europe, putting her life and her dreams in the hands of traffickers.
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ISBN:9780571322695
Author:Giuseppe Catozzella
Swimming with Sharks
Brief summary
Swimming with Sharks: My Journey into the World of the Bankers
Joris Luyendijk, an investigative journalist, knew as much about banking as the average person: almost nothing. Bankers, he thought, were ruthless, competitive, bonus-obsessed sharks, irrelevant to his life. And then he was assigned to investigate the financial sector.
Joris immersed himself in the City for a few years, speaking to over 200 people - from the competitive investment bankers and elite hedge-fund managers to downtrodden back-office staff, reviled HR managers and those made redundant in the regular 'culls'.
Breaking the strictly imposed code of secrecy and silence, these insiders talked to Joris about what they actually do all day, how they see themselves and what makes them tick. They opened up about the toxic hiring and firing culture. They confessed to being overwhelmed by technological and mathematical opacity.
They admitted that when Lehman Brothers went down in 2008 they hoarded food, put their money in gold and prepared to evacuate their children to the countryside. They agreed that nothing has changed since the crash.
Joris had a chilling realization. What if the bankers themselves aren't the real enemy? What if the truth about global finance is more sinister than that?
ISBN:9781783350650
Author:Joris Luyendijk
Straight to Hell
Brief summary
Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals.
Over the past three years, the notorious @GSElevator Twitter feed has offered a hilarious, shamelessly voyeuristic look into the real world of international finance.
Hundreds of thousands followed the account, Goldman Sachs launched an internal investigation, and when the true identity of the man behind it all was revealed, it created a national media sensation—but that’s only part of the story.
Where @GSElevator captured the essence of the banking elite with curated jokes and submissions overheard by readers, Straight to hell adds John LeFevre’s own story—an unapologetic and darkly funny account of a career as a globe-conquering investment banker spanning New York, London, and Hong Kong.
Straight to Hell pulls back the curtain on a world that is both hated and envied, taking readers from the trading floors and roadshows to private planes and after-hours overindulgence. Full of shocking lawlessness, boyish antics, and win-at-all-costs schemes, this is the definitive take on the deviant, dysfunctional, and absolutely excessive world of finance.
ISBN:9781611855500
Author:John LeFevre
Killing Pablo
Brief summary
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
A tour de force of investigative journalism-this is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel.
Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt.
With unprecedented access to important players-including Colombian president César Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez-as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world.
"The story of how the U.S. Army Intelligence and Delta Force commandos helped Colombian police track down and kill Pablo Escobar is a compelling, almost Shakespearean tale." ("Los Angeles Times") "Absolutely riveting. . . . Mark Bowden has a way of making modern nonfiction read like the best of novels." ("The Denver Post")
ISBN:9780857891495
Author:Mark Bowden
Rent a Bridesmaid
Brief summary
Tilly can’t believe it when her best friend Matty is asked to be a bridesmaid. In Tilly’s favourite daydream, she’s wearing the most beautiful bridesmaid dress and walking down the aisle behind a bride.
The one wedding she’d really love to attend is her own mum and dad’s - but it seems like that's never going to happen. So Tilly decides to make her own dream come true, and puts a notice in the local shop, advertising her services as a bridesmaid. And to her amazement, she gets a reply.
A fabulous, funny and moving story about finding family and friendship in all sorts of places, from the mega-bestselling author of Tracy Beaker, Hetty Feather and Katy.
ISBN:9780440870241
Author:Jacqueline Wilson
Atlas Of Management Thinking
Brief summary
First published in 1981, this was the first book ever to be written explicitly for the right side of the reader’s brain. Much has been made of the research conducted into the left side of the brain—home to language and logic.
The right side works in images, whole patterns and undefined feelings—none of which can be verbalized. This more elusive thinking often functions as what is loosely called "intuition." Here, Edward de Bono shows us how to use the right side.
It is an atlas because it is a visual reference of images and illustrations that point the reader in the right direction (literally).
For anyone who has ever been told to trust their instinct, or who is concerned with decision-making, this book is a classic.
ISBN:9781785041105
Author:Edward de Bono
You Are the Universe
Brief summary
You Are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters
What happens when modern science reaches a crucial turning point that challenges everything we know about reality? In this brilliant, timely, and practical work, Chopra and Kafatos tell us that we've reached just such a point.
In the coming era, the universe will be completely redefined as a "human universe" radically unlike the cold, empty void where human life is barely a speck in the cosmos.
You Are the Universe literally means what it says--each of us is a co-creator of reality extending to the vastest reaches of time and space. This seemingly impossible proposition follows from the current state of science, where outside the public eye, some key mysteries cannot be solved, even though they are the very issues that define reality itself:
1. What Came Before the Big Bang?
2. Why Does the Universe Fit Together So Perfectly?
3. Where Did Time Come From?
4. What Is the Universe Made Of?
5. Is the Quantum World Linked to Everyday Life?
6. Do We Live in a Conscious Universe?
7. How Did Life First Begin?
"The shift into a new paradigm is happening," the authors write. "The answers offered in this book are not our invention or eccentric flights of fancy. All of us live in a participatory universe.
Once you decide that you want to participate fully with mind, body, and soul, the paradigm shift becomes personal. The reality you inhabit will be yours either to embrace or to change." What these two great minds offer is a bold, new understanding of who we are and how we can transform the world for the better while reaching our greatest potential.
ISBN:9781846045301
Author:Deepak Chopra & Menas Kafatos
The Bat
Brief summary
Includes the opening of the brand new Harry Hole thriller, The Thirst, and an exclusive new introduction by Jo Nesbo
Harry Is Out Of His Depth
Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl taking a gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can.
He's not supposed to get too involved...
When the team unearths a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for a serial killer is on, but the murderer will talk only to Harry.
...But he might just be the next victim
ISBN:9781784705848
Author:Jo Nesbo
