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An Extraordinary Year Of Ordinary Days
by Susan Wittig AlbertFrom Eudora Welty's memoir of childhood to May Sarton's reflections on her seventieth year, writers' journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events-whether in daily life or on a global scale-that shape our lives. In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, best-selling mystery novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days in which her reading, writing, and thinking about issues in the wider world-from wars and economic recession to climate change-caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life. Albert's journal provides an engaging account of how the business of being a successful working writer blends with her rural life in the Texas Hill Country and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. As her eclectic daily reading ranges across topics from economics, food production, and oil and energy policy to poetry, place, and the writing life, Albert becomes increasingly concerned about the natural world and the threats facing it, especially climate change and resource depletion. Asking herself, "What does it mean? And what ought I do about it?", she determines practical steps to take, such as growing more food in her garden, and also helps us as readers make sense of these issues and consider what our own responses might be.
An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M. F. K. Fisher
by Anne ZimmermanIn An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher's life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, the stories of Fisher's love for food and her love for family and men are meticulously researched and exquisitely captured in this book. Exploring Fisher's lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; and the child she carried from an unnamed father, the story of M.F.K. Fisher's life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine.Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented depth of intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the careful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.
An Extravagant Life: An Autobiography Incorporating Blue Water, Green Skipper
by Stuart WoodsThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stone Barrington series tells the story of his own life from childhood to the present, and chronicles the journey that made him the writer he is today.Over the last forty years, Stuart Woods has written more than ninety novels of suspense and intrigue, beginning with the award-winning Chiefs. Featuring iconic crime-fighting and jet-setting leads, the plots are masterfully conceived and wonderfully escapist. What many readers don&’t know is that Woods's very own life was filled with similar stories of adventure. Born in Georgia, Woods worked in advertising in New York, served in the US Air Force, and had a short stint as an advance man. At the age of 37, he found himself in a transatlantic sailing race, and pursued writing as a full-time career shortly thereafter. Along the way, Woods has lived all over the world, from New York to London, Santa Fe to Ireland. Incorporating his iconic sailing memoir Blue Water, Green Skipper, this is the story of a life well-lived, and a special inside look into the beloved author&’s many exploits.
An Extravagant Life: An Autobiography Incorporating Blue Water, Green Skipper
by Stuart WoodsThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stone Barrington series tells the story of his own life from childhood to the present, and chronicles the journey that made him the writer he is today.Over the last forty years, Stuart Woods has written more than ninety novels of suspense and intrigue, beginning with the award-winning Chiefs. Featuring iconic crime-fighting and jet-setting leads, the plots are masterfully conceived and wonderfully escapist. What many readers don&’t know is that Woods's very own life was filled with similar stories of adventure. Born in Georgia, Woods worked in advertising in New York, served in the US Air Force, and had a short stint as an advance man. At the age of 37, he found himself in a transatlantic sailing race, and pursued writing as a full-time career shortly thereafter. Along the way, Woods has lived all over the world, from New York to London, Santa Fe to Ireland. Incorporating his iconic sailing memoir Blue Water, Green Skipper, this is the story of a life well-lived, and a special inside look into the beloved author&’s many exploits.
An Eye at the Top of the World: The Terrifying Legacy of the Cold War's Most Daring CIA Operation
by Pete TakedaAt some point during the inhumanly cold Himalayan winter straddling 1965 and 1966, a peculiar collection of box-shaped objects -- one sprouting a six-foot, insect-like antenna -- plummets nine thousand feet down the sheer flanks of a remote peak. Ripped from its moorings by an avalanche, the jumbled apparatus slides down a funnel-shaped hourglass of hard snow and shoots over a black cliff band, careening a vertical distance six times the height of the Empire State building. The boxes come to rest on the glacier at the mountain's base. One, an olive-drab casing the size of a personal computer, begins to sink. Then, trailing a robotic dogtail of torn wires, it slowly burns through the snow, melting into solid blue glacial ice, eventually disappearing beneath the surface, and never seen again. No one actually witnessed this event. But as you read these words, nearly four pounds of plutonium -- locked in the glacier's dark unknowable heart -- are almost certainly moving ever closer to the source of the Ganges River. Eye at the Top of the World, provides a harrowing present-day account of Takeda's expedition to solve the mystery of Nanda Devi.
An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers
by Natasha Wing Julia Breckenreid<p>As a child, Josef Albers loved to watch his handyman father paint houses.When Josef grew up and became an artist, he reduced each image to its simplest shapes, breaking it down into blocks of color. <p>He made an incredible discovery: he could alter the entire mood of a painting just by changing the way he combined the colors! Josef spent his entire life studying color, and what he found revolutionized the way people look at art.</p>
An Eye in the Sky: The Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force Career of Air Commodore Henry George Crowe MC, CBE, CBD (SC)
by Bob CosseyThis is the biography of Henry Crowe whose career encompassed time as an infantryman with the Royal Irish Regiment during the First World War, an observer with the RFC and fledgling RAF, a pilot in Ireland at the time of the Irish War of Independence, a photographic officer and flight commander in Iraq, and Commanding Officer of Nos. 23 and 74 Squadrons. His memories of time spent in Iraq and on the North West Frontier between the wars have a real resonance today, illustrating just how little has changed in some respects.Henry served at the Air Ministry in various positions and concluded his service with the RAF in India, retiring as an Air Commodore in 1945. He had a keen interest in photography and took hundreds of images of the places he served, the aircraft he flew and saw, and the people he met. With an early Bell and Howell cine camera he also captured film of Malta, Iraq and India between the wars. As a photographic record alone this book is fascinating. But Henry wrote about his experiences as well and it is his memoirs that form the backbone of this biography, written with the full backing of his family.Henry Crowe was highly decorated and especially well thought of during the course of his career; reading Bob Crosseys account of his fascinating life, it is clear to see why.
An Eye on Ireland: A Journey Through Social Change - New and Selected Journalism
by Justine McCarthy'Jolts like jump-leads to the complacent heart ... an eye-opener. MIRIAM LORDFOR FOUR DECADES, JUSTINE MCCARTHY'S FEARLESS JOURNALISM AND COMMENTARY HAS HELD POWER TO ACCOUNT AS SHE, IN HER OWN WORDS, 'GREW UP ALONGSIDE MY COUNTRY'.The book opens with a long personal essay in which Justine recounts her early years as a fearful child who dreamed of being a writer, to cutting her teeth in the male-dominated newsrooms of the 1980s, where she faced down sexism and broke gender barriers in a determined career marked by excellence.From Mary Robinson making history as Ireland's first female president to a present-day RTÉ in crisis, over thirty years of stories are collected here. In her long career, Justine broke child sexual abuse scandals and reported from the frontline of the Northern Ireland Troubles; she documented political turmoil and charted the role of Ireland on the world stage. She followed the times the country let down its people, through its ailing health system, its legal system, the domination of the church, and its treatment of women.An Eye on Ireland maps a transformative era in Irish life towards a more progressive and just society, and onewoman's extraordinary career at the forefront of change.
An Eye on Ireland: A Journey Through Social Change - New and Selected Journalism
by Justine McCarthy'Jolts like jump-leads to the complacent heart ... an eye-opener. MIRIAM LORDFOR FOUR DECADES, JUSTINE MCCARTHY'S FEARLESS JOURNALISM AND COMMENTARY HAS HELD POWER TO ACCOUNT AS SHE, IN HER OWN WORDS, 'GREW UP ALONGSIDE MY COUNTRY'.The book opens with a long personal essay in which Justine recounts her early years as a fearful child who dreamed of being a writer, to cutting her teeth in the male-dominated newsrooms of the 1980s, where she faced down sexism and broke gender barriers in a determined career marked by excellence.From Mary Robinson making history as Ireland's first female president to a present-day RTÉ in crisis, over thirty years of stories are collected here. In her long career, Justine broke child sexual abuse scandals and reported from the frontline of the Northern Ireland Troubles; she documented political turmoil and charted the role of Ireland on the world stage. She followed the times the country let down its people, through its ailing health system, its legal system, the domination of the church, and its treatment of women.An Eye on Ireland maps a transformative era in Irish life towards a more progressive and just society, and onewoman's extraordinary career at the forefront of change.
An Eye on the Hebrides: An Illustrated Journey
by Mairi HedderwickMairi Hedderwick embarks on a six-month-long journey to 40 islands from Arran to Lewis, recounting her pilgrimage around the archipelago of the Western Isles with which she has had a lifelong love affair. Filled with wit and wisdom that is matched by her spell-binding illustrations, Mairi Hedderwick portrays the islands in all their diversity, with swift and perceptive cameos of everyday life drawn with humour and affection alongside gorgeous landscapes which capture the truly magical beauty of the Hebrides.
An Historian in Peace and War: The Diaries of Harold Temperley (Routledge Studies in First World War History)
by T. G. OtteThe First World War and subsequent peace settlement shaped the course of the twentieth century, and the profound significance of these events were not lost on Harold Temperley, whose diaries are presented here. An established scholar, and later one of Britain’s foremost modern and diplomatic historians, Temperley enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the war in August 1914. Invalided home from the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, he spent the remainder of the war and its aftermath as a general staff officer in military intelligence. Here he played a significant role in preparing British strategy for the eventual peace conference and in finalising several post-war boundaries in Eastern Europe. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, Temperley was to co-edit the British diplomatic documents on the origins of the war; and the vicissitudes of modern Great Power politics were to be his principal preoccupation. Beginning in June 1916, the diary presents a more or less daily record of Temperley’s activities and observations throughout the war and subsequent peace negotiations. As a professional historian he appreciated the significance of eyewitness accounts, and if Temperley was not at the very heart of Allied decision-making during those years, he certainly had a ringside seat. Trained to observe accurately, he recorded the concerns and confusions of wartime, conscious always of the historical significance of what he observed. As a result there are few sources that match Temperley’s diary, which presents a fascinating and unique perspective upon the politics and diplomacy of the First World War and its aftermath.
An Honest Ghost: A Novel
by Rick WhitakerA 2013 "Books of the Year" -Times Literary Supplement & John Ashbery "6 Great Books to Read"-Readers Digest "19 Books You Shouldn't Have Overlooked in 2013"-Slate "An impressionistic portrait of literary subjectivity. . . revealing the opportunities for pleasure and refuge available to the inveterate reader. " - Lambda Literary "A masterful act of literary ventriloquism. " - Huffington Post Books Inspired by the task of unpacking his library, the narrator returns to writing an autobiographical novel about the sudden appearance of his son, Joe, who at age nine shows up on the narrator's doorstep for the first time. The narrator, unnerved by the prospect of sharing his life with his extremely precocious child, is nonetheless moved by Joe's arrival. He has to change his own life by accepting the responsibility of fatherhood, a role he shares slightly with his young English boyfriend, David. Joe's unpredictable mother, Eleanor Sullivan, seeks her own satisfactions. The domestic scene is affected when David introduces a new friend, Roy Hardeman, a strange gay cop who dies as mysteriously as he arrived. The heart of the novel is the ghostly, persistent, unreliable qualities of literary and personal memory, and the ways in which a narrative can hold onto, recapture, and transform memory. Rick Whitaker's semi-autobiographical novel, An Honest Ghost, consists entirely of sentences appropriated from over 500 books. Whitaker limited himself to using 300 words per book (in accordance with Fair Use); never taking two sentences together; and never making any changes, even to punctuation. In the iBook version, touching a sentence brings up its original source: a book's title, author, and page number. The experience of acknowledging each sentence as literary artifact, combined with the imagined accretion of books that built An Honest Ghost, deftly mirrors the burgeoning nostalgia in the narrator's voice and, fittingly, in the careful reader's heart.
An Honest Living: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries
by Steven SalaitaAn exiled professor’s journey from inside and beyond academeIn the summer of 2014, Steven Salaita was fired from a tenured position in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois for his unwavering stance on Palestinian human rights and other political controversies. A year later, he landed a job in Lebanon, but that, too, ended badly. With no other recourse, Salaita found himself trading his successful academic career for an hourly salaried job. Told primarily from behind the wheel of a school bus—a vantage point from which Salaita explores social anxiety, suburban architecture, political alienation, racial oppression, working-class solidarity, professional malfeasance, and the joy of chauffeuring children to and from school—An Honest Living describes the author’s decade of turbulent post-professorial life and his recent return to the lectern.Steven Salaita was practically born to a life in academia. His father taught physics at an HBCU in southern West Virginia and his earliest memories are of life on campus and the cinder walls of the classroom. It was no surprise that he ended up in the classroom straight after graduate school. Yet three of his university jobs—Virginia Tech, the University of Illinois, and the American University of Beirut [AUB] —ended in public controversy. Shaken by his sudden notoriety and false claims of antisemitism, Salaita found himself driving a school bus to make ends meet. While some considered this just punishment for his anti-Zionist beliefs, Steven found that driving a bus provided him with not just a means to pay the bills but a path toward freedom of thought.Now ten years later, with a job at American University at Cairo, Salaita reconciles his past with his future. His restlessness has found a home, yet his return to academe is met with the same condition of fugitivity from whence he was expelled: an occasion for defiance, not conciliation. An Honest Living presents an intimate personal narrative of the author’s decade of professional joys and travails.
An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland
by H. Paul JeffersScholarly but favorable toward the only President elected for non-concurrent terms.
An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland
by H. Paul JeffersToday, Grover Cleveland is chiefly known as the only president to have been elected to two non-consecutive terms. But in his day, Cleveland was a renowned reformer and an enemy of political machines who joined forces with Theodore Roosevelt to fight powerful party bosses, a moralist who vetoed bills he considered blatant raids on the Treasury, and a vigorous defender of the Monroe Doctrine who resisted American imperialism. Cleveland's career in office was plagued by scandal and a gossip-mongering press. During his first presidential bid, he was persecuted for fathering a child out of wedlock, a charge Cleveland readily admitted. At the age of forty-nine, he married his twenty-one-year-old ward, though after the nation's initial surprise, she became the most popular first lady of her day. On his deathbed, Cleveland would sum up his career simply: ''I have tried so hard to do right.''
An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work
by Charlotte ShaneThrough the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a provocative and tender reckoning of what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society.In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women&’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results. Shane uses her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual &“other woman.&” Braiding the personal and the universal, Shane&’s memoir is a merciless and moving love letter to straight men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.
An Honourable Calling
by Allan BlakeneyAs Premier of Saskatchewan from 1971 to 1982, Allan Blakeney played a pivotal role in the shaping of modern Canada. In this engaging and candid political memoir, Blakeney reflects on his four decades of public service, offering first-hand insights on the introduction of government-sponsored medicare, the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, and new approaches to natural resource development. Blakeney provides not only a vibrant picture of the Canadian political landscape, but also vivid portraits of some of Canada's most fascinating political personalities including Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, René Lévesque, Tommy Douglas, Bill Davis, and Peter Lougheed. He supplies an insider's account of the controversial struggle between the federal and provincial governments as they attempted to reach a compromise in the creation of the Canadian Constitution. Relying on his career-long experience as a medicare advocate, including his work with Tommy Douglas, Blakeney comments on current public medicare issues such as how to finance health care, and the role, if any, of a parallel private system. An Honourable Calling is a thoughtful commentary on many of the central issues in Canadian politics from the last half of the twentieth century and offers perceptive insights into some of the challenges facing Canadians in the decades ahead.
An Honourable Englishman
by Adam SismanHe was one of the most gifted scholars of his generation--a brilliant writer, high-society star, and cultural force who moved easily between aristocratic houses and the humble haunts of literary bohemia. He developed a lucid prose style that he used to scathing effect, earning notoriety for his sharp attacks on other historians. Now this superb biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper, universally acclaimed overseas, makes its anticipated American debut.With incisive knowledge of the man and access to never-before-published letters, Adam Sisman paints a fascinating portrait of this charismatic, contentious, contradictory character. Sisman examines Trevor-Roper's middle-class upbringing in a house so empty of affection that it caused, as he put it, his "almost physical difficulty in expressing emotion." He traces Trevor-Roper's career from his early academic triumphs to his later failure to produce the big book expected of him.Sisman also provides riveting new details of the high drama of Trevor-Roper's World War II intelligence work--in which he boldly blew the whistle on bureaucratic infighting that imperiled British code-breaking--and the exclusive investigation of Hitler's death that inspired his bestselling postwar triumph, The Last Days of Hitler. As never before, Trevor-Roper's personal life is explored, including his passionate affair with an older, married woman. Finally, An Honourable Englishman reveals the truth behind his public substantiation of the false Hitler diaries in 1983, a misstep (encouraged by his impatient employer Rupert Murdoch) that forever tainted his reputation.Profoundly bright and brutally acerbic, Hugh Trevor-Roper was a literary lion like no other, and in An Honourable Englishman he receives the absorbing biography he deserves.From the Hardcover edition.
An Hour Before Daylight: Memories Of A Rural Boyhood
by Jimmy CarterIn an American story of enduring importance, Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed it and the country. In what is sure to become a classic, the bestselling author of Living Faith and Sources of Strength writes about the powerful rhythms of countryside and community in a sharecropping economy. Along the way, he offers an unforgettable portrait of his father, a brilliant farmer and strict segregationist who treated black workers with his own brand of "separate" respect and fairness, and his strong-willed and well-read mother, a nurse who cared for all in need -- regardless of their position in the community. Carter describes the five other people who shaped his early life, only two of them white: his eccentric relatives who sometimes caused the boy to examine his heritage with dismay; the boyhood friends with whom he hunted with slingshots and boomerangs and worked the farm, but who could not attend the same school; and the eminent black bishop who refused to come to the Carters' back door but who would stand near his Cadillac in the front yard discussing crops and politics with Jimmy's father. Carter's clean and eloquent prose evokes a time when the cycles of life were predictable and simple and the rules were heartbreaking and complex. In his singular voice and with a novelist's gift for detail, Jimmy Carter creates a sensitive portrait of an era that shaped the nation. An Hour Before Daylight is destined to stand with other timeless works of American literature.
An Iceberg in Paradise: A Passage through Alzheimer's (Excelsior Editions)
by Nancy Avery DafoeIn this evocative memoir, Nancy Avery Dafoe shares the heart-wrenching experience of caring for her ailing mother as she struggled, and ultimately lost her battle, with Alzheimer's disease. Weaving poetry throughout, Dafoe tells her family's story in the hope of helping those who are navigating the murky waters of Alzheimer's. She presents different approaches and practical advice for dealing with the difficult life transition that occurs when parents become ill. At its center, An Iceberg in Paradise is not only a tribute to love in the face of loss but also an exploration of memory, our human connections, and holding on until there is nothing left to hold.
An Idiot Girl's Christmas
by Laurie NotaroIT’S LAURIE NOTARO’S HOLIDAY HANDBOOK. PREPARE TO LAUGH YOUR TINSEL OFF. It’s the most wonderful–and most dreadful–season of the year, when boxes of truffles attack your thighs, drunken holiday revelers stay long past their welcome, and your grandmother has conniptions at the department store over the price of hand lotion. Welcome to Laurie Notaro’s Christmastime. In ten brand-new stories and three previously published favorites, Notaro shares the sidesplitting daily disasters of the holidays, like finding herself on emergency feminine product recon at midnight on Christmas Eve; surrendering to the inevitable Horrible Gift Parade by simply asking for holiday dish towels and giant white underpants from Sears; battling the morons in line at the Seventh Circle of Hell, otherwise known as the do-it-yourself craft store; and trying to live down her reputation as the Most Unfun Christmas Party Guest Ever, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a fake overdose and emergency paramedics. So whether you find yourself at the Dull and Smart Party or the Raucous and Stupid Party this holiday season, you’ll always know where to find Laurie–just follow the chocolate trail over to the cheese platter. She’ll be the one dialing the cops.
An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege
by Heidi ArdizzoneThe secret life of the sensational woman behind the Morgan masterpieces, who lit up New York society. What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships. Born to a family of free people of color, Greene changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter white society. In her new world, she dined both at the tables of the highest society and with bohemian artists and activists. She also engaged in a decades-long affair with art critic Bernard Berenson. Greene is pure fascination—the buyer of illuminated manuscripts who attracted others to her like moths to a flame.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West
by Konstantin KisinFor all of the West's failings - terrible food, cold weather, and questionable politicians with funny hair to name a few - it has its upsides. Konstantin would know. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities. It wasn't until he moved to the UK that Kisin found himself thriving in an open and tolerant society, receiving countless opportunities he would never have had otherwise.Funny, provocative and unswervingly perceptive, An Immigrant's Love letter to the West interrogates the developing sense of self-loathing the Western sphere has adopted and offers an alternative perspective. Exploring race politics, free speech, immigration and more, Kisin argues that wrongdoing and guilt need not pervade how we feel about the West - and Britain - today, and that despite all its ups and downs, it remains one of the best places to live in the world.After all, if an immigrant can't publicly profess their appreciation for this country, who can?
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West
by Konstantin KisinFor all of the West's failings - terrible food, cold weather, and questionable politicians with funny hair to name a few - it has its upsides. Konstantin would know. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities. It wasn't until he moved to the UK that Kisin found himself thriving in an open and tolerant society, receiving countless opportunities he would never have had otherwise.Funny, provocative and unswervingly perceptive, An Immigrant's Love letter to the West interrogates the developing sense of self-loathing the Western sphere has adopted and offers an alternative perspective. Exploring race politics, free speech, immigration and more, Kisin argues that wrongdoing and guilt need not pervade how we feel about the West - and Britain - today, and that despite all its ups and downs, it remains one of the best places to live in the world.After all, if an immigrant can't publicly profess their appreciation for this country, who can?
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (Karen Pirie #4)
by Konstantin KisinTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A lively and spirited book' DOUGLAS MURRAY'A paean to the freedom and dignity that many in the West take for granted' PETER BOGHOSSIAN'A cool, steady but urgent message that we should value and protect what we have' SPIKED'Kisin's book [has] a powerful moral quality that makes it worth reading' SUNDAY TIMESFor all of the West's failings - terrible food, cold weather, and questionable politicians with funny hair to name a few - it has its upsides. Konstantin would know. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities. It wasn't until he moved to the UK that Kisin found himself thriving in an open and tolerant society, receiving countless opportunities he would never have had otherwise.Funny, provocative and unswervingly perceptive, An Immigrant's Love letter to the West interrogates the developing sense of self-loathing the Western sphere has adopted and offers an alternative perspective. Exploring race politics, free speech, immigration and more, Kisin argues that wrongdoing and guilt need not pervade how we feel about the West - and Britain - today, and that despite all its ups and downs, it remains one of the best places to live in the world.After all, if an immigrant can't publicly profess their appreciation for this country, who can?