The Road to Verdun : France, Nationalism and the First World War

This work gives a vivid account of the generals' planning and the troops' suffering in the largest, longest and bloodiest battle of World War I. It challenges the narrow horizons of military history and should challenge the reader's view of France, and the very nature of warfare.

Ousby, Ian

Chatto Bodley Head & Cape

<p>Weaving history, literature, science, and his own vivid experiences observing pigs, cows, sheep, goats, and chickens, Masson bears witness to the emotions and intelligence of these remarkable animals, each unique with distinct qualities.</p>

The Pig Who Sang to the Moon

Science & Math

Jeffrey Mason

Agricultural Sciences

When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of genius-illuminating and exciting and compelling', and Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live and learned intelligence'; Adam Begley, in the Financial Times, said that 'Wood is not just a keen critic, our best, but a superb writer'; Geoff Dyer admired the 'passionately sustained vigour of his writing' which 'towered above most of what passes for criticism'; Natasha Walter, in the Independent, described The Broken Estate as 'a book that makes you feel, having closed it, as if your mind has been oxygenated'. The common thread in Wood's latest collection of essays is what makes us laugh - and the book is an attempt to distinguish between the perhaps rather limited English comedy (as seen in Waugh, for example) and a 'continental' tragic-comedy, which he sees as real, universal and Quixotic. A particularly acerbic, and very funny, essay - which has been widely celebrated - deals with Zadie Smith, Rushdie, Pynchon and DeLillo,

The Irresponsible Self : Essays on Comedy and Fiction

James Wood

Some Great Thing

Colin McAdam

The "New York Times" has opened its archives on September 11 and its consequences, including the anthrax scare, the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, the fall of the Taliban and the efforts to rebuild the nation. It also features background essays, charts and graphics that provide a new level of clarity.

A Nation Challenged : A Visual History of 9/11 and Its Aftermath

Arts & Photography

New York Times

Photography & Video

The Battle for New York : The City at the Heart of the American Revolution

<p>On 15 September 1776 the British army under General William Howe invaded Manhattan Island, with the largest expeditionary force in their history. George Washington's Continental Army, still in disarray after the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn some two weeks earlier, retreated north to Harlem Heights, leaving New York in British hands. Control of the city was Howe's primary objective. Located at the mouth of the strategically vital Hudson river, it had become the centrepiece of England's strategy for putting down the American rebellion. However, as Barnet Schecter reveals in his stirring narrative, far from furnishing a key to the colonies, New York proved to be the fatal chalice that poisoned the British war effort. The Battle for New York tells the story of how the city became the pivot on which the American Revolution turned - from the political and religious struggles of the 1760s and early 1770s that polarised its citizens and increasingly made New York a hotbed of radical thought and action; to the campaign of 1776 that turned New York into a series of battlefields; to the seven years of British occupation, during which time Washington and Congress were as determined to regain the city as the British were to hold it. The extraordinary campaign in the autumn of 1776, which forms the dramatic heart of the book, was by far the largest military venture of the Revolutionary War; it involved almost every significant participant in the war on both sides; and there can be little doubt that during it the fate of America hung in the balance. Moreover, the outcome had a direct impact on the major turning points of the rest of the war.</p>

History

Barnet Schecter

Americas

Darien Dogs

Jim Rogers once had everything: a successful career, the love of a beautiful woman, a Manhattan penthouse and more money than he knew what to do with. Now it had all gone wrong and he was in a seedy hotel in Panama realising that the prostitute he'd just been with had stolen his wallet. Though it wasn't the money he was worried about but a sheet of folded paper, which he'd just been given by the mysterious Albert Jones: a piece of paper that might have saved his life. The search for the girl and the stolen document lead the two men deep into the Darien archipelago - a primitive, treacherous idyll that seems like Paradise but may in fact be Hell. The short novel, Darien Dogs, and the four stories that accompany it, mark the fictional debut of an assured and thrillingly gifted writer. With his disaffected, morally riven characters caught up in exotic, ambiguous Edens, there are echoes of Graham Greene - but Henry Shukman's writing has an imaginative depth, an erotic, muscular charge, and a dark, compulsive energy all its own.

Henry Shukman

The Prison House

Jimmy has reached a crossroads in his life. After many months of drifting and drinking his way around Europe he finds himself at the sharp edge of the empire, incarcerated in Seven Towers, a notorious hilltop prison, peering into the abyss. Jimmy has always been an outsider, but is now a fully-fledged alien, who doesn't understand the language or customs of the other inmates, just that their crimes range from shoplifting and drug addiction to murder and rape. But what exactly is the nature of Jimmy's offence? And what is the dark secret that haunts his every move? Seven Towers is another name for Hell: a place where squalor and fear are endemic and imagination is the only means of escape. The characters Jimmy meets inside push his sanity to the brink: the silent, pyjama-clad Papa with his knitting needle, the cheerful killer and mutilator known as the Butcher, the gentle Franco and the cruel Homer, and Dumb Dumb, a deaf mute building a better world out of matchsticks. A visceral, violent, compelling novel, it is also a moving testament to the human spirit and its ability - against the odds - to hold on to hope and the idea of love..

John, King

When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 - his first New York real estate killing - he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, nearby Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. From the Minuit purchase until centuries of pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, New York was a city known for its oysters- the 'Blue Points,' still produced by the Long Island town of the same name; the 'Rockaways' and 'East Rivers'; 'Sounds' from Staten Island; several Manhattan varieties, and even those from a celebrated area by what is now LaGuardia Airport. For centuries New York was world famous as an oyster centre, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. In Europe New York oysters were famous for both their size and durability. In a dubious endorsement, William Makepeace Thackeray said that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby. When travellers visited New York, they not only wanted to eat the Coral oysters, they wanted to experience the famous New York oyster houses. While some houses were known for their elegance, the infamous slums such as Five-Points were notoriously disreputable. Due to

The Big Oyster

Mark Kurlansky

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

The Gathering

Enright. Anne

Literature & Fiction

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