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Brief Answers to the Big Questions
Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded our understanding of the universe and unravelled some of its greatest mysteries. But even as his theoretical work on black holes, imaginary time and multiple histories took his mind to the furthest reaches of space, Hawking always believed that science could also be used to fix the problems on our planet. And now, as we face potentially catastrophic changes here on Earth - from climate change to dwindling natural resources to the threat of artificial super-intelligence - Stephen Hawking turns his attention to the most urgent issues for humankind. Wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating, passionately argued, and infused with his characteristic humour, BRIEF ANSWERS TO THE BIG QUESTIONS, the final book from one of the greatest minds in history, is a personal view on the challenges we face as a human race, and where we, as a planet, are heading next.
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The Final Testament Of The Holy Bible
In true controversial James Frey style, this brilliant new novel is the final Testament of the Holy Bible
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Inside Apple
In Inside Apple, Adam Lashinsky provides readers with an insight on leadership and innovation. He introduces Apple business concepts like the ‘DRI' (Apple's practice of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task) and the Top 100 (an annual event where that year's top. 100 up-and-coming executives are surreptitiously transported to a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs). Based on numerous interviews, the book reveals exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers, and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era.While Inside Apple provides a detailed investigation into the unique company, its lessons about leadership, product design and marketing are universal. Inside Apple will appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of the Apple magic to their own company, career, or creative endeavour.
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Diplomatic Baggage
Brigid Keenan was a glamorous, successful young London fashion journalist. But falling in love with a diplomat saw her leave behind the gilt chairs of the Paris salons for a large chicken shed in the forests of Nepal.Thirty years later ( at the farewell party for the Papal Nuncio in Kazakhstan ) Brigid found herself wondering whether her decision has been the right one. This is her hilarious account of her life as a trailing spouse - and utterly engaging tale of diplomatic protocol, difficult teenagers, homesickness, frustrated career aspirations, witch doctors and giant jumping spiders.
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Prisoner Of Tehran
An international bestseller, PRISONER OF TEHRAN is the astonishing, true account of one woman's remarkable courage in the face of unbelievable terror. Brought up a Christian, Marina's childhood in Tehran was shattered when the Iranian Revolution ushered in Islamic rule. After complaining about her Maths lessons being replaced by Koran study, Marina was arrested and imprisoned, suffering daily torture. Aged sixteen, she was sentenced to death. Her prison guard snatched her from death but exacted a shocking price in return - marriage to him and conversion to Islam. Marina lived out her prison days as his secret bride but struggled to reconcile her hatred towards Ali with the fact that he had saved her life. At last she was able to return home, but the regime kept her under surveillance. Marina's world had been changed forever and she questions whether she will ever escape Iran or her memories.
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The Spice Route
The Spice Route is one of history's greatest anomalies: shrouded in mystery, it existed long before anyone knew of its extent or configuration. Spices came from lands unseen, possibly uninhabitable, and almost by definition unattainable; that was what made them so desirable. Yet more livelihoods depended on this pungent traffic, more nations participated in it, more wars were fought for it, and more discoveries resulted from it than from any other global exchange. Epic in scope, marvelously detailed, laced with drama, "The Spice Route spans three millennia and circles the world to chronicle the history of the spice trade. With the aid of ancient geographies, travelers' accounts, mariners' handbooks, and ships' logs, John Keay tells of ancient Egyptians who pioneered maritime trade to fetch the incense of Arabia, Graeco-Roman navigators who found their way to India for pepper and ginger, Columbus who sailed west for spices, de Gama, who sailed east for them, and Magellan, who sailed across the Pacific on the exact same quest. A veritable spice race evolved as the west vied for control of the spice-producing islands, stripping them of their innocence and the spice trade of its mystique. This enthralling saga, progressing from the voyages of the ancients to the blue-water trade that came to prevail by the seventeenth century, transports us from the dawn of history to the ends of the earth.
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Princess The Six Daughters Of George III
King George III believed that his six daughters were perfectly content with a life of charitable works and lady-like accomplishments at Windsor. But secretly, as Flora Fraser's absorbing narrative of royal repression and sexual licence shows, the sisters enjoyed startling freedom. Scandal and intrigue often erupted within the castle walls as the sisters forged lives torn between love for an ailing father and longing for independence. With unparalleled access to Royal and private family papers, Flora Fraser turns the historical searchlight on George III and his daughters. Writing with wit, zest and sympathy, she creates an extraordinary historical saga and confirms her place among our finest biographers.
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The Interrogator's War
The methods of the US military's War on Terror have come under intense international scrutiny. But much remains unclear about realities on the ground, in those cramped cells in the midst of combat zones where terrorist suspects and interrogators come head-to-head. Now, for the first time, the inside story is uncovered by Chris Mackey, a senior US Army interrogator in Afghanistan, who interviewed thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, many of whom went to Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan the interrogators faced an enemy who, with tactics like sleeper cells and suicide bombers, were unlike any other. Working round the clock, Mackey and his team had to evolve breakthrough psychological strategies and complex mind games. But the interrogators too were under immense pressure; relentlessly pitching their wits against suspected fanatics, ever fearful that their prisoners might know of another 9/11, but constrained from unleashing their tempers by the Geneva Convention, it was not always just the prisoners who cracked. The pressure-cooker atmosphere which built up under the relentless Afghan sun gives a troubling insight into the temptations in the path of sound military judgement.But it is also a testament to the strength of character of the many interrogators who remained rational and played by the rules.
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Shockwave The Countdown To Hiroshima
Six miles above Hiroshima, the bombardier of the Enola Gay releases an atomic bomb into the freezing skies. Seconds later, the city is obliterated in a single, monumental blast of fire. The destruction is immediate and catastrophic, as if a small sun had suddenly exploded. Tens of thousands of people are instantly annihilated. In that moment, the world will never be the same again. Combining a rich array of interviews with gripping storytelling, Stephen Walker's Shockwave presents an extraordinary and unforgettably moving portrait of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.
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The Buddha And The Sahibs
Today there are many Buddhists in the West, but for 2000 years the Buddha's teachings were unknown outside Asia. It was not until the late 18th century, when Sir William Oriental Jones, a British judge in India, broke through the Brahmin's prohibition on learning their sacred language. Sanskrit, that clues about the origins of a religion quite distinct from Hinduism began to be deciphered from inscriptions on pillars and rocks. This study tells the story of the search that followed, as evidence mounted that countries as diverse as Ceylon, Japan and Tibet shared a religion which had its origins in India yet was unknown there. British rule brought to India, Burma and Ceylon a whole band of enthusiastic Orientalist amateurs - soldiers, administrators and adventurers - intent on investigating the subcontinent's lost past. Unwittingly, these men helped lay the foundations for the revival of Buddhism in Asia during the 19th century and its spread to the West in the 20th. Charles Allen's book is a mixture of detective work and story-telling, as this acknowledged master of British Indian history pieces together early Buddhist history to bring a handful of extraoridinary characters to life.
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Where We Have Hope
Where We Have Hope is the gripping memoir of a young American journalist. In 1980, Andrew Meldrum arrived in a Zimbabwe flush with new independence, and he fell in love with the country and its optimism. But over the twenty years he lived there, Meldrum watched as President Robert Mugabe consolidated power and the government evolved into despotism. In May 2003, Meldrum, the last foreign journalist still working in the dangerous and chaotic nation, was illegally forced to leave his adopted home. His unflinching work describes the terror and intimidation Mugabe’s government exercised on both the press and citizens, and the resiliency of Zimbabweans determined to overturn Mugabe and demand the free society they were promised.
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You Remind Me Of Me
Jonah Doyle is six years old. He lives with his mother, his grandfather and their dog Elizabeth in a yellow house in South Dakota. It is a house full of tensions. And then one sunny day in early spring, a terrible accident occurs that will change the course of Jonah's life.That accident sets in motion a course of events that unfolds over the course of this spellbinding novel. Jonah sets off to find his adopted brother, whom he has never met. His journey across America in search of his family, and his own identity, is unforgettable.
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The Encyclopaedia Of Guilty Pleasures
Whether it be bacon sandwiches or Eurovision, Ice Magic or not waking up people who have fallen asleep on trains, we all have our secret indulgences that fill us with joy and shame in equal measure. Relished in private while we wouldn't be caught dead enjoying them in public, guilty pleasures are celebrated here in all their glory
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Secret Servant
Jane Moneypenny may project a cool, calm and collected image but her secret diaries reveal a rather different story. In the grip of an uncertain love affair and haunted by a dark family secret, the last thing she needs is a crisis at work. But the Secret Intelligence Service is in chaos. One senior officer is on trial for treason, another has defected to Moscow and her beloved James Bond has been brainwashed by the KGB. Only a woman's touch can save them. Moneypenny soon finds herself embroiled in a highly-charged adventure infused with the glamour of the Cold War espionage game. Alone on a dangerous Russian mission she turns, with breathless intimacy, to writing a truly explosive private diary.