Bøger udgivet af Harper Perennial

An extraordinary memoir from a man in his nineties who remembers everyday life in a North London now long gone: the hardships and deprivations of a life of poverty but also the resourcefulness and fortitude of a community determined to survive between the wars. 'When I look back, I can picture the old gels chinwagging on their steps in the Bay like it was yesterday. Little did they think that young Sid, passing by with his arse out of his trousers, would one way publish his memoirs!' 'Ordinary' people do not write their stories, believing their lives to be unremarkable. Some, like Sid, cannot write at all. But, with the aid of his granddaughter Helen Day, Sid has produced an extraordinary memoir of a city and a way of life now lost forever. 'London Born' is a book that has appeared against all the odds ? as Sid says, 'When me granddaughter Helen Day said she wanted to record the story of the first half of me life and turn it into a book I was astonished. I thought to meself, Well, I've done a lot of things, but I never dreamt I'd get into the book game. You see, I can't write more than me own name.' In 'London Born', Sid remembers the city that emerged from the First World War and recreates the daily life of the people living in the notorious street known as 'Tiger Bay'. He describes the drinking and merrymaking, the poverty and unemployment ? and the 'villainry'. With relish he relates how youthful high spirits and a refusal to accept the hardship of the times sometimes put him and his friends on the wrong side of the law. He goes on to tell of the wartime mayhem endured by Londoners and his determination to survive. His story closes with demobilisation when he returns to his wife and young family ? 'the only thing that ever counted'. This is a memoir from a warm and cheeky voice; from someone who remembers, as if it were yesterday, parading down Archway in his fifty-bob suit, or running rings around Ernie Costen, the local policeman.

To everyone who truly loves the game, Mickey Mantle epitomizes the golden age of baseball, when the mighty New York Yankees indisputably ruled, appearing in an unprecedented twelve World Series in fourteen years. In this intimate memoir, Mantle recounts the joys and trials of his rise from rural Oklahoma youngster to the pinnacle of baseball greatness.In All My Octobers, the one and only Mick relives every one of his World Series appearances--from the 1951 battle when he played alongside an aging Joe DiMaggio to his three-home-run performance in the 1964 showdown. In addition to the on-field heroics, Mantle talks candidly about the injuries, the alcohol, the parties and celebrations, and the terrible toll they can take on a young athlete's life. But most of all, it is a remembrance of October greatness, of postseason pyrotechnics . . . and a loving appreciation of a team of titans that achieved something marvelous and unequaled to this day.

The abridged edition of the enduring masterwork--a classic portrait of America's culture and people.Originally penned in the mid-nineteenth century by Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America remains the most comprehensive, penetrating, and astute picture of American life, politics, and morals ever written, as relevant today as when it first appeared in print nearly two hundred years ago.This abridged edition by scholar and historian Scott A. Sandage includes a new introduction and editorial notes, and offers students and the general reader alike easy access to the preeminent translation by George Lawrence, widely recognized as the best translation based on the second revised and corrected text of the 1961 French edition, edited by J. P. Mayer.

On March 11, 2001, seventeen-year-old Will ingested a near-fatal dose of his antidepressant medication, an event that would forever change his life and the lives of his family. In Will's Choice, his mother, Gail Griffith, tells the story of her family's struggle to renew Will's interest in life and to regain their equilibrium in the aftermath.Griffith intersperses her own finely wrought prose with dozens of letters and journal entries from family and friends, including many from Will himself. A memoir with a social conscience, Will's Choice lays bare the social and political challenges that American families face in combating this most mysterious and stigmatized of illnesses. In Gail Griffith, depressed teens have found themselves a formidable advocate, and in the evocative and fiercely compelling narrative of Will's Choice, we all discover the promise of a second chance.

"Wonderful, and deeply sobering. . . . Lyndall Gordon relates Wollstonecraft's story with the same potent mixture of passion and reason her subject personified."--New York Times Book ReviewThe founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman in Europe and America in her time. Yet her reputation over the years has suffered--until now. Acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this brilliant, unconventional woman who held strikingly modern notions of education, single motherhood, family responsibilities, working life, domestic affections, friendships, and sexual relationships.Offering a new interpretation for the 21st century, Gordon paints a vibrant, full portrait of Wollstonecraft, revealing how this remarkable woman's genius reverberated through the generations, influencing not only her daughter, Mary Shelley, and other heirs, but early political philosophy in England and America as well--including the ideas of John and Abigail Adams.

Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is the first history of the world's great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe, these epic achievements and more are brilliantly explored, as are the fascinating failures of once "universal" languages. A splendid, authoritative, and remarkable work, it demonstrates how the language history of the world eloquently reveals the real character of our planet's diverse peoples and prepares us for a linguistic future full of surprises.

A wise, bighearted, and hilarious look at one teenager's life by a remarkable new voice in contemporary fiction It's 1992, and as Vim Sweeney deals with the recent end of his high school career and the uncertainty of his future, America shares his angst. In Seattle, Kurt Cobain reeks of teen spirit. In Washington, George Bush (the first one) has just finished rattling his saber at Saddam Hussein. And in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Vim is trying to put off adulthood and all that comes with it, whatever that is, for as long as he can. He's already juggling guitars, girls, and a long-absent biological father who's suddenly making noise about Wanting to Be Involved. And he still can't convince his friends why local schoolboy hero Derek Jeter is bound for obscurity. Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way traces Vim's stumble toward adulthood as he comes to terms with his parents, balances friendships and infatuation with varying levels of success, and accepts that the things he thought would last forever probably won't. Generous in spirit and laugh-out-loud funny, here is a novel that introduces a tremendous new talent and deftly captures the alternately amusing and harrowing process of holding on until you find your way.

Now a feature film starring Alexandra Daddario An achingly honest debut novel of memory, self-destruction, and relationships set in contemporary Tokyo Sometimes, when I'm staring down a room of Japanese stewardesses-in-training, looking across a sea of shiny black coifs, a chorus line of stockinged legs, knees together, toes to the side, when I'm chanting, "Sir, you are endangering yourself and other passengers!" I think I should have let my brother stab me . . .Margaret is doing everything in her power to forget home. And Tokyo's red light district--teeming with intoxicants, pornography, and seedy love hotels--is almost enough to keep at bay memories of her brother Frank's descent into schizophrenia. But sobriety brings the past flooding back, along with a pervasive fear that she, too, is destined to battle mental illness. Working as an English specialist at a training academy for Japanese stewardesses by day, and losing herself at night in drugs, alcohol, and S&M fueled sex in the arms of anonymous men, Margaret numbs her loneliness with self destruction, wondering when she'll take things too far. And when she falls for a married man who is part of Tokyo's illicit underworld, their relationship might finally force her hand. . . .

Since it first went to press in 1996, BlackBook has established itself as an arbiter of style, and a forum for new and dynamic writing. The Revolution Will Be Accessorized gathers many of the magazine's strongest pieces, and the result is a star-studded collection that addresses the intersection of pop culture, the arts, politics, and fashion, with provocative contributions from many of today's best writers, including:Augusten Burroughs on Christmas with his motherJonathan Ames on his boyhood sneaker fetishMeghan Daum on L.A. bourgeoisAlso included are pieces by Neal Pollack, Sam Lipsyte, Joan Didion, Naomi Klein, William T. Vollmann, DBC Pierre, Emma Forrest, and Douglas Coupland, among others. Raw, edgy, and always insightful, The Revolution Will Be Accessorized is a window on to what's happening outside the mainstream.

Readers have found Robert Bly's ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality.My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy is Robert Bly's second book of ghazals. The poems have become more intricate and personal than they were in The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, and the leaps even bolder. This book includes the already famous poem against the Iraq War, "Call and Answer": "Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days / And cry over what is happening."The poems are intimate and yet reach out toward the world: the paintings of Robert Motherwell, the intensity of flamenco singers, the sadness of the gnostics, the delight of high spirits and wit. Robert Bly is writing the best poems of his life, and this book reestablishes his position as one of the greatest poets of our era.

The story of the bombing of Hiroshima presented in a new and dramatic way: a minute-by-minute account told from multiple perspectives, both in the air and on the groundBritish feature and documentary director Stephen Walker tells the story of the bombing of Hiroshima in a way only a filmmaker can--not as a dry history of the sad, regrettable, mission, but as an immediate and perilous drama. Walker has extensively interviewed American soldiers, Los Alamos scientists, and Japanese survivors that were involved in the bombing, and thus is able to tell the story through truly alive-on-the-page characters. The result is a narrative that--without either trivializing the tragedy of the bombing or ignoring its importance in WWII's end--tells the real story of why and how one of the most important events of the 20th century took place. Shockwave might not change anyone's opinion about the justification of the Hiroshima bombing, but it will provide readers with an unprecedented viewpoint that is sure to educate and enthrall its audience.

A beautiful and affecting novel -- bittersweet and comic -- on the elusive nature of happinessMaggie is in her early thirties, gainfully employed, between relationships, and ready for a change. But when she takes a quiz in a magazine that promises to predict the date of a person's death, she's shocked to learn she's going to die before her next birthday unless she can somehow discover contentment in life. What ensues is a quirky and satisfying journey in pursuit of true happiness, a quest that leads to unexpected joys and perceptions.

Meet the Hennarts: Samantha Hennart, a poet with writer's block; her husband, Bernard, obsessed with the life of a nineteenth-century Belgian mystic with stigmata; their son, Ryan, a mediocre rock musician; and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Marguerite, who is quietly losing her mind. A meditation on family, faith, and mental illness, Genealogy is an operatic story of one family's unraveling and ultimate redemption.

When Catalina Ortiz Midori walks into a shabby New York dance studio for her first mambo class, she has no idea her life is about to change. A Japanese-Cuban immigrant who has lost touch with her Cuban roots, Catalina is mesmerized by the one-eyed teacher, El Tuerto, a titan of the New York mambo scene, and drawn to the dazzling technique of Wendy Cardoza, a Bronx mambera who is one of its reigning queens. Catalina's apprenticeship with them, and her growing obsession with the world of mambo -- the music, the dancers, the seductive dance itself -- will bring her back to her origins with a passion she didn't know she possessed, and inadvertently draw her into a sinister Miami exile scheme through her disreputable cousin Guillermo.

The 100-foot promontory known as Pointe du Hoc -- where six big German guns were ensconced -- was the number one target of the heavy U.S. and British warships poised in the English Channel on D-Day morning. Facing arguably the toughest task to befall U.S. forces during the war, the brave men of the Army 2nd Ranger Battalion boldly took control of the fortified cliff and set in motion the liberation of Europe.Based upon recently released documents, here is the first in-depth, anecdotal remembrance of these fearless Army Rangers. Acclaimed author and historian Douglas Brinkley deftly moves between events four decades apart to tell two riveting stories: the making of Ronald Reagan's historic 1984 speeches about the storming of the Normandy coast and the actual heroic event that inspired them and helped to end the Second World War.

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

We cannot help but be fascinated by the emotions that we see in ourselves and others: an absorbing book exploring the extraordinary feelings which make us human, from a rising media star. Claudia Hammond wrote and presented the acclaimed and very popular Radio 4 series 'Emotional Rollercoaster' which explored the science of emotions: what they are, why they happen and how they are created. Emotional Rollercoaster takes the reader through the full spectrum of emotions: fear, sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, hate, jealousy, love, sympathy and guilt. It traces the progress from fear, which is present from birth, to more complex emotions like sympathy and hope and explores the science behind them. Each emotion is vividly evoked by Claudia's experiences and those of others. This unique book explains clearly and memorably everything from why we feel better after a good cry to how bottling up your anger can be good for you. Packed with surprising discoveries and eccentric stories, Emotional Rollercoaster argues that emotions are far more complex than we realise.

Katrina's arrival on the Gulf Coast was a long time in coming. But it was assured. Since 1965, when Hurricane Betsy struck New Orleans, breached a levee, and flooded part of the city, everyone was waiting and talking about when the Big One would strike and do even more damage. Katrina was that hurricane, predictedand imagined before she struck, but so much worse in her reality.Holding Back the Sea is about the consequences of ignoring the warning signs that nature provides and the struggle to convince the rest of the country that South Louisiana lay in the path of destruction. The signs were not subtle; there were Hurricanes Andrew in 1992, George and Mitch in 1998, and Ivan in 2004, among others. At one time or another in their journeys north, they all threatened New Orleans. Some had headed right for the city before veering to the east and west, sparing the Big Easy and reinforcing the nickname. But the Big Easy ended -- at least in reputation -- on August 29, 2005, when the Big One came ashore as Katrina.

In a memoir of staggering power and candour, award-winning journalist Fergal Keane addresses his experience of wars of different kinds, some very public and others acutely personal. During his years of reporting from the world's most savage and turbulent regions, Fergal Keane has witnessed the violence of the South African townships and the terror in Rwanda, the most extreme kinds of human behaviour, the horror of genocide and the bravery of peacekeepers faced with overwhelming odds. As one of the BBC's leading correspondents, he recounts extraordinary encounters on the front lines. Alongside his often brutal experiences in the field, he also describes unflinchingly the challenges and demons he has faced in his personal life growing up in Ireland. Keane's existence as a war reporter is all that we imagine: frantic filing of reports and dodging shells, interspersed with rest in bombed-out hotels and concrete shelters. Life in such vulnerable areas of the globe is emotionally draining, but full of astonishing moments of camaraderie and human bravery. And so this is also a memoir of the human connections, at once simple and complex, that are made in extreme circumstances. These pages are filled with the memories of remarkable people. At the heart of Fergal Keane's story is a descent into and recovery from alcoholism, spanning two generations, father and son; a different kind of war, but as much part of the journey of the last twenty-five years as the bullets and bombs.

One month in 1865 witnessed the frenzied fall of Richmond, a daring last-ditch Southern plan for guerrilla warfare, Lee's harrowing retreat, and then, Appomattox. It saw Lincoln's assassination just five days later and a near-successful plot to decapitate the Union government, followed by chaos and coup fears in the North, collapsed negotiations and continued bloodshed in the South, and finally, the start of national reconciliation.In the end, April 1865 emerged as not just the tale of the war's denouement, but the story of the making of our nation.Jay Winik offers a brilliant new look at the Civil War's final days that will forever change the way we see the war's end and the nation's new beginning. Uniquely set within the larger sweep of history and filled with rich profiles of outsize figures, fresh iconoclastic scholarship, and a gripping narrative, this is a masterful account of the thirty most pivotal days in the life of the United States.

The masterpiece of Britain's leading Renaissance scholar. Winner of the Time-Life Silver Pen Award and The Royal Society of Literature Award. 'A superb evocation of the Europe of the ?long 16th-century?, wonderfully fresh and rich in its copious illustrative detail, full of innumerable delights. The book is the summation of John Hale's career as a historian, and as the crowning achievement of a master-designer whose richly fabricated works have given so much pleasure.' John Elliot, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. 'The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance' is the most ambitious achievement of Britain's leading Renaissance historian. John Hale has painted on a grand canvas an enthralling portrait of Europe and its civilisation at a moment when 'Europe' first became an entity in the minds of its inhabitants. John Hale's Renaissance has no compartments. With astonishing range and subtlety of learning, he paints a gigantic picture of the age, enlivened by a multiplicity of themes, people and ideas. It contains memorable descriptions of painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture and music, but Hale is not simply concerned with the arts. He examines the dramatic changes during the period in religion, politics, economics and global discoveries. And throughout his book approaches the art of war and the art created for princes from the point of view of their impact on the imaginations, sensibilities and lives of ordinary people.

The true story of Gerard Mercator, the greatest map-maker of all time, who was condemned to death as a heretic. 'Geographie and Chronologie I may call the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left, of all history.' In 'The World of Gerard Mercator', Andrew Taylor chronicles both the story of a great astronomer and mathematician, who was condemned to death as a heretic, and the history of that most fascinating conjunction of science and art: the drawing of maps. Gerard Mercator was born in Flanders in 1512. In addition to creating accurate globes of the earth and the stars, he was the first person to use latitude and longitude for navigation and he created the most-used map of all time: Mercator's Projection is still the standard view of the world, the one we all envisage when we think of a map of the globe. Simply finding the best solution to the impossible challenge of reproducing the spherical world on a flat sheet of paper was a considerable achievement in itself ? something geographers and map-makers had been trying to do for centuries, but Mercator also created the map of the world that would form the basis of the modern age, an image of the continents for the common man. Until Mercator's Projection, maps offered a pictorial encyclopaedia to an illiterate world, and that world stretched far beyond the knowledge and travels of most mapmakers. It is this evolution of mapmaking from art to science that forms the backdrop to the story of Mercator, from the days of Herodotus and Strabo when fabulous creatures were supposed to inhabit the fringes of the world to the great mappae mundi of Hereford and Ebsdorf. The Greek geographer Pytheas claimed to have visited the far north of Britain to establish the limits of the habitable world; but further north, he claimed that the earth, air and sea coalesced into a jellyfish-like gelatinous suspension that made life impossible. 'The World of Gerard Mercator' is a brilliantly readable and absolutely fascinating history for the general reader, describing how our worldview came into being.

The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose--now the major motion picture Submission "Screamingly funny ... Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials." --USA TodayIt has been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Deliciously risqué, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.

From New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, the sequel to The Archer's Tale--the spellbinding tale of a young man, a fearless archer, who sets out wanting to avenge his family's honor and winds up on a quest for the Holy Grail.In 1347, a year of conflict and unrest, Thomas of Hookton returns to England to pursue the Holy Grail. Among the flames of the Hundred Years War, a sinister enemy awaits the fabled archer and mercenary soldier: a bloodthirsty Dominican Inquisitor who also seeks Christendom's most holy relic. But neither the horrors of the battlefield nor sadistic torture at the Inquisitor's hands can turn Thomas from his sworn mission. And his thirst for vengeance will never be quenched while the villainous black rider who destroyed everything he loved still lives."Cornwell writes the best battle scenes of any writer I've read past or present."--George R.R. Martin

The luminous first novel by Marya Hornbacher, the acclaimed author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is a moving and passionate story of a death from despair -- and a stricken family's passage through grief toward the hope, solace, and understanding that waits for them somewhere beyond the center of winter.

One of Gabriel García Márquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power.From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel García Márquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictator-ship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and real.

On the occasion of Mozart's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, read Maynard Solomon's Mozart: A Life, universally hailed as the Mozart biography of our time.