Julian Elfer
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English
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Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the outstanding Allied aces of the Second World War. A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe.
The Big Show, his extraordinary account of the war, has been described as the greatest pilot's memoir of WWII.
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What is capitalism? Is capitalism the same everywhere? Is there an alternative?
The word "capitalism" is one that is heard and used frequently, but what is capitalism really all about, and what does it mean? This Very Short Introduction addresses questions such as, "what is capital?" before discussing the history and development of capitalism through several detailed case studies, ranging from the tulipomania of 17th century Holland, the Great Depression...
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English
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During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. But the terrible truth is that much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership, leading to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942...
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A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls...
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Fierce warriors and skilled craftsmen, the Celts were famous throughout the Ancient Mediterranean World. They were the archetypal barbarians from the north and were feared by both Greeks and Romans. For two and a half thousand years they have continued to fascinate those who have come into contact with them, yet their origins have remained a mystery and even today are the subject of heated debate among historians and archaeologists.
Barry Cunliffe's...
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English
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5,000 years of history-from the Bhagavad Gita to Bollywood-fill this masterful portrait of the world's most populous nation and a rising global power.
India-a cradle of civilization with five millennia of history, a country of immense consequence and contradiction-often defies ready understanding. What holds its people together-across its many cultures, races, languages, and creeds-and how has India evolved into the liberal democracy it is today?
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Described as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', and a woman 'capable of arousing profane passion', this is the story of a woman whose life combined privilege and tragedy, love and riches, conviction and courage, humanity and inhumanity. A granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Ella was born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. At twenty, her marriage to the Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, who became the victim of terrorist assassination, like...
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English
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The uses of shame (and shamelessness) in spheres that range from social media and consumerism to polarized politics and mass violence
Today, we are caught in a shame spiral-a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And...
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Enzymes are the astonishing, tiny molecular machines that make life possible. Each one of these small proteins speeds up a single chemical reaction inside a living organism many millionfold. Working together, teams of enzymes carry out all the processes that collectively we recognize as life, from making DNA to digesting food.
This Very Short Introduction explains the why and the how of speeding up these reactions-catalysis-before going on to reveal...
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English
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A touching, clever novel about stories, about using them to create your own identity, and about the way they can forge bonds of love.
It is 1919. Elizabeth Whitman is working as a nurse in the local hospital, waiting for her husband to return from war, though he is missing in action, 'presumed dead'. She keeps him alive for their four-year-old son, Jack, by telling the story of a man she calls The Balloonist, who went away in a hot-air balloon and...
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Author of The Great War, as well as celebrated accounts of the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Jutland, and Gallipoli, historian Peter Hart now turns to World War One's final months. Much has been made of-and written about-August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves, and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four...
52) Ink and Bone
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Great library volume 1
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English
Description
In an exhilarating new series, New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine rewrites history, creating a dangerous world where the Great Library of Alexandria has survived the test of time ... Ruthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. Alchemy allows the Library to deliver the content of the greatest works of history instantly-but the personal ownership...
53) The Demon
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English
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Award-winning poet and novelist Douglas Nicholas has captivated listeners with his stunning Something Red trilogy. In "The Demon," Sir Balthasar leads the men of Blanchefontaine against a mythical beast stalking the woods of England's wild North Country.
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English
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The story of an era shrouded in mystery, and the gradual changing of a nation's cultural identity.
We speak English today, because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur's Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject-the answers are out there, in the British countryside,...
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Göring. Hess. Mengele. Dönitz. Names that conjure up dark memories of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. They were the architects of the Third Reich. And they were fathers. Gerald Posner convinced eleven sons and daughters of Hitler's inner circle to break their silence. This second generation of perpetrators in Hitler's Children struggle with their Third Reich inheritance. In grappling with memories of good and loving fathers who were later charged...
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In 1119, the people of the Near East came together in an epic clash of horses, swords, sand, and blood that would decide the fate of the city of the Aleppo-and the eastern Crusader states. Fought between tribal Turkish warriors on steppe ponies, Arab foot soldiers, Armenian bowmen, and European knights, the battlefield was the amphitheater into which the people of the Near East poured their full gladiatorial might. Carrying a piece of the true cross...
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From near suicidal RAF attacks in 1940 through to the dawn of the jet age in 1945, Flames in the Sky captures the astonishing drama, intensity, heroism, and incomparable exhilaration of the World War Two air war like no other book.
This epic global struggle between Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mustangs, Mosquitos, Messerschmitts, Zeros, Kamikazes and more is brought vividly to life by a writer who was himself in the thick of the action.
Pierre Clostermann...
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English
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The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, subsequent war in Eastern Ukraine, and economic sanctions imposed by the West transformed European politics. The conflict did not escalate to the levels originally feared but nor was either side able to bring it to a definitive conclusion. Ukraine suffered a loss of territory but was not forced into changing its policies away from the Westward course adopted as a result of the EuroMaidan uprising of February...
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Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. He helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.
In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to...
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"We are provincials no longer," said Woodrow Wilson on March 5, 1917, at his second inaugural. He spoke on the eve of America's entrance into World War I, as Russia teetered between autocracy and democracy. Just ten days after Wilson's declaration, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, ending a three-centuries-long dynasty and ushering in the false dawn of a democratic Russia. Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany a few short weeks...