Presents basic information about the vehicles of powered flight from the Montgolfier brothers' balloon to today's Concorde and the X-15.

Product Description: This provocative new study contends that Jules Verne was indeed more than just a writer of science fiction or harmless fantasies for children. Placing him squarely within the center of a strong literary tradition, Martin convincingly shows that a recurrent narrative, describing the strange destiny of a masked prophet who revolts against an empire, runs throughout Verne's Voyages extraordinaires...read more

Product Description: What did Captain James Cook, Elvis Presley and the author of this book have in common? They all went to Hawaii to live a dream or die there. The North Shore on the island of Oahu is only twelve miles long but it has the magic and myth of Troy or Never Never Land...read more

Product Description: This anthology ranges from medieval poetry to 20th-century prose and covers the Borders in springtime, skating in Victorian Edinburgh, fishermen lashed by Hebridean gales, farmers harvesting in summer heat, the Brocken Spectre and a host of other experiences of Scotland's weather...read more

Product Description: This second book by the author is a guide for working technical writers and editors. It covers the major issues in technical writing: clarity and readability. It also gives guidance on how CEOs can improve their employee's writing.

Product Description: European union movements played a central role in promoting a "Europeanmodel of society", a humane industrial relations system, high labor standards, generous welfare states, and collective political representation which reached its pinnacle in the post-World War II era...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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This brilliantly original study uncovers a side to Napoleon Bonaparte which has hitherto been ignored by biographers - that of the aspiring novelist and man of letters. In this illuminating, witty and elegantly written book, Andy Martin reveals how this neglected aspect of Napoleon's remarkable life actually provides the key to understanding it. The French Revolution, Austerlitz and Waterloo all came second in Napoleon's life to a Discourse on Happiness, a Dialogue on Love and repeated attempts at a novel. Napoleon began as a would-be Rousseau and ended up on Saint Helena dictating his own confessions. The colossal rise and catastrophic fall of his empire are, Martin argues, anticipated in the obsessive and tragicomic pages of his voluminous writings. Napoleon emerges as an idealist, romantic, visionary, critic, a thinker with an epic imagination and an underdeveloped sense of reality, pushing his 'portable library' across Europe, Asia and the Orient, and always wrestling with the intricacies of language and literature. And, although Napoleon was denounced as a failure in an essay competition, Martin shows that he did indeed succeed in imposing himself as the archetype and inspiration of modern European culture. This provocative book will appeal to a wide general readership. It will also be of interest to students of literature, modern languages and European history. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Brussels 1986 was a ground breaking event in many respects. It was Kasparov's first tournament after his gruelling series of marathons against Anatoly Karpov for the world title, and it was the first major tournament televised by the BBC and containing commentary by the players themselves...read more

Product Description: The creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) marks a leap forward in European integration. Authority over monetary policy has moved from member states to the European Central Bank, an independent, supranational institution...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Andrew Martin studies this famous opening in a simplistic way, introducing the crucial initial moves and ideas and taking care to explain the reasoning behind them, something that has sometimes been neglected or taken for granted.

Product Description: The hippopotamus, as every big game hunter knows, is a deceptively dangerous beast. And so, in the chess world, is the Hippopotamus Defense. To opponents unfamiliar with it, it looks awkward and unaggressive—until it crushes the life out of their favorite openings...read more

Analysts today routinely look toward the media and popular culture as a way of understanding global security. Although only a decade ago, such a focus would have seemed out of place, the proliferation of digital technologies in the twenty-first century has transformed our knowledge of near and distant events so that it has become impossible to separate the politics of war, suffering, terrorism, and security from the practices and processes of the media.This book brings together ten path-breaking essays that explore the ways our notions of fear, insecurity, and danger are fostered by intermediary sources such as television, radio, film, satellite imaging, and the Internet.  The contributors, from a wide range of disciplines, show how both fictional and fact-based threats to global security have helped to create and sustain a culture that is deeply distrustful.  Topics range from the Patriot Act, to the censorship of media personalities, to the role that television programming plays as an interpretative frame for current events.Designed to promote strategic thinking about the relationships between media, popular culture, and global security, this book is essential reading for scholars of international relations, technology, and media studies. 

Product Description: "A fool and his words are soon parted," wrote William Shenstone in 1764; one might add that "A wit and his words are rarely collected." Here is the antidote: a dazzling survey of the one-liners, quips, and observations from Ancient Rome, the Bible, and Chaucer right up to "The Simpsons...read more

Moving to London in 1903 in his endeavor to become a railway man, ambitious young Jim Stringer takes a graveyard shift moving coffins to cemeteries outside of the city and struggles with his predecessor's untimely disappearance and his co-worker's unsettling animosity. Original.