Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Tuesday, 26 February 2019
The Diary Of A Bookseller (Memoir) by Shaun Bythell
Paperback: Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea.
A book-lover's paradise?
Well, almost...
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky.
He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.
The Diary Of A Bookseller (2017) is unique and makes a wry yet hilarious case for the influence of books.
About the author: Shaun Bythell bought The Bookshop in Wigtown on 1 November 2001 and has been running it ever since with an increasing passion for the business, matched only by a sense of despair for its future, and an ill-humour inspired by a decade-and-a-half of dealing with confused customers and surly staff.
His first book, The Diary of a Bookseller, was sold into seventeen languages and has been optioned for a television series.
Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp
Paperback: The book is an outline history of the Auschwitz concentration camp for a general readership. Its contents include the origins, construction, and expansion of the camp, the organizational structure and characteristics of the SS administration, the conditions under which the prisoners lived and laboured, the medical experiments, the fate of children in the camp, the mass extermination of the Jews, the number of victims, the plundering of Jewish property, the camp resistance movement, the escapes, the evacuation, the liquidation, and liberation of the camp, and the trial and punishment of the SS camp garrison.
The publication is based on the latest scholarly research, as carried out in large part by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum research staff in Oświęcim in 2012.
The book is subsidized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims Memorial Foundation and the Auschwitz Preservation Society.
Auschwitz (2012) is translated from the Polish by Douglas Selvage, edited by Franciszek Piper and Teresa Świebocka.
Its authors are Danuta Czech, Tadeusz Iwaszko, Barbara Jarosz, Helena Kubica, Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Kazimierz Smoleń, Irena Strzelecka, Andrzej Strzelecki and Henryk Świebocki.
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Panzram: A Journal Of Murder (True Crime/Penology/Americana) by Thomas E Gaddis and James O Long
Paperback: "In my lifetime, I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1000 male human beings. For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don't believe in man. God nor Devil. I hate the whole damn human race including myself."
Carl Panzram, who called himself the "world's worst murderer," wrote these words in a full autobiography and confession he prepared for the one friend in his life - a young prison guard named Henry Lesser.
Panzram: A Journal of Murder (1970) combines these brutally forthright memoirs with the perspective of authors Thomas E Gaddis and James O Long in a compelling chronicle of the forces that engender hate.
The authors provided a historical and sociological framework for Panzram's own words, using this uniquely detailed self-analysis by a mass murderer to depict what happens when an intelligent and unbreakable personality that has been interminably and unmercifully abused strikes back in vengeance.
Panzram arrives as a gripping warning from America's recent past to our current repressive era of prison-industrial complex, death penalty abuse and unprecedentedly high rates of incarceration from a man who walked the halls of Death Row with a blindingly clear vision.
About the authors: The late Thomas E Gaddis wrote Birdman of Alcatraz and was technical director of the classic movie starring Burt Lancaster and Karl Malden. A former California probation officer, Gaddis later became a professor at Red College in Portland, Oregon, and a practicing psychologist. While working on the Panzram book, he founded Project Newgate to establish accredited college programs inside some of the country's toughest prisons. It was a revolutionary idea for its time, helping fuel the great expansion of American civil rights under the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty in the 1960s.
James O Long is a reporter for The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, where, in the past, he covered the Oregon prison system and wrote extensively about prisoners and the death penalty. His journalism honours include the coved Investigative Reporters and Editors award. He received a degree in philosophy from the University of Portland, and lives in Portland with his wife, Ruby.
Wednesday, 20 February 2019
The Life Of St Francis Of Assisi And The Treatise Of Miracles by Brother Thomas Of Celano
Paperback and about the author: Much has been written about St Francis since his death over 700 years ago and there is a wealth of information available about the man himself and about the Franciscan Order. Nevertheless, to understand exactly who he was and why his movement had such a profound and lasting effect on the Church, it is essential to see him through the eyes of those who knew him and thus to place the man within the context of his life and times.
Consequently, the works of Brother Thomas of Celano represent an invaluable source not only for scholars of Franciscanism but also for the lay person.
The task that was given to Thomas of Celano was to make Francis' life and works known to a vast audience, not only during his own lifetime but, as himself points out in his introductory remarks, for generations to come.
Indeed, in his Preface to Part Two of the Second Life, Thomas states, "Handing down the excellent works of the fathers to the memory of their children is a sign of honour to the former and of love to the latter. Truly, those who have not had the fortune of knowing their forefathers in person will be led towards goodness at least through the account of their lives and will be induced to do their best..."
In this, Thomas has more than succeeded in the task he set out to accomplish, for the Franciscan message, as he wrote it, is as fresh today as it was seven centuries ago when he first set pen to paper.
But who exactly was Brother Thomas?
First biographer of St Francis in Assisi, was born in Celano, in Abruzzo, probably of a noble family. He entered the Order in 1215. In 1221, he went with the Friars on the first mission to Germany, where, in 1223, he was made the Superior of the Rhine Custody. We do not have precise data for the duration of his stay in Germany. It is certain that he was in Assisi in the years 1228, 1230 and probably also between 1244 and 1250. He died in the proximities of Tagliacozzo probably (Abruzzo), where, in the local church of St Francis his body still rests.
He wrote, in the years 1228-29, the first biography of St Francis, the so-called First Life at the bequest of Pope Gregory IX.
Subsequently he wrote a second biography of the saint, called Second Life, commissioned by the Minister General, Crescenzio from Iesi, between 1244 and 1247. In this biography, he used some testimony of the closest companions of Francis.
About 1250, he began a third writing about Francis, The Treatise on the Miracles, at the bequest of the Minister General Giovanni from Parma, which contain the miracles after the death of the Saint.
Also attributed to him is a work about Saint Clare of Assisi, as well as two Sequences in honour of St Francis: Sanctitatis nova signa and Fregit victor virtualis.
The Life of St Francis of Assisi And The Treatise of Miracles (timeless/dateless) is translated from the Italian by Catherine Bolton.
Monday, 18 February 2019
Sunday, 17 February 2019
I Survived Auschwitz by Krystyna Żywulska
Paperback: I Survived Auschwitz (2011) was written by Krystyna Żywulska. Żywulska was born in 1914 as Sonia Landau. During the German occupation of Poland, she was displaced with her Jewish family to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. She escaped from the Ghetto and became active in the Polish resistance movement. Under her new name, Żywulska, she was captured by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz.
There is always the danger that we will forget things that are best not forgotten. Certainly, some things should be permanently recorded so that posterity will remember what we would prefer to erase from our memories.
This is the story of a woman who was imprisoned for a number of years in Auschwitz, the notorious death camp. What she saw there makes medieval genocides look like child’s play.
This is her memoir, and she shows not only her own courage but also her fellow prisoners’ fierce will to live. Half-starved, suffering from lice, scabies and dysentery and mowed down by typhus and pneumonia, they worked in fields of icy slush and mud and registered new arrivals - hundreds of thousands of women from Holland, Greece, Italy and Hungary, who did not know where they were or why they had been seized.
That she survived and finally managed to escape to tell the tale is one of many reasons why this book should be published and widely read. Most of her companions were murdered so that they could not bear witness.
Written just after the author’s escape and published in 1946, I Survived Auschwitz was the first ever book to emerge about the camp and therefore occupies an important place in Holocaust literature.
In certain parts of this book you will notice changes made by Poland’s communist censors after 1945. Due to these interventions, the book has become an unintentional double witness to the 20th century’s two most dreadful totalitarian regimes.
I Survived Auschwitz was published in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. With additional footnotes, 26 percent increase in text, and 45 photos taken during war, the new edition is greatly expanded compared to the original 1946 English version.
The book was translated from the Polish, Przeżyłam Oświęcim, by Lech Czerski and Sheila Callahan based on an initial translation by Krystyna Cenkalska.
About the author: Krystyna Żywulska, born Sonia Landau to Jewish parents in Lódz, Poland, walked out of the Warsaw ghetto in August 1942. She joined the resistance as Zofia Wisniewska and provided aid to Jews in hiding, assuming yet another fictitious identity when arrested by the Nazis in June 1943. Two months later, she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a Polish political prisoner. There, she began to write poems and songs, becoming one of a group of amateur poets and musicians who created “unofficial” art.
In 1970, Zywulska moved to Düsseldorf to be with her sons, who had earlier emigrated to the West as a result of the 1968 anti-Semitic campaigns in Poland. Asked by the Polish psychologist and scholar Barbara Engelking near the end of her life whether Krystyna was her real name, she replied, “In my life, when it comes to such topics, there is nothing ‘true,’ my dear.” But in truth, she was “Zosia” to family and friends from before the war and “Krysia” to her friends who survived Birkenau. They loved her all the same.
She died on 1 August 1992, and is buried in Germany as Zofia Zywulska Andrzejewski. Those who had been closest to her, both family and friends, remember Zywulska as a woman who loved to laugh, sing, and jest. Perhaps befitting a woman endowed with such optimism and spirit - as well as a gift for pictorial description - in the last decade of her life, without training and with impressive success, Zywulska took up painting, fulfilling a life-long desire.
Saturday, 16 February 2019
Deacon Of Death: Sam Smithers, The Serial Killer Next Door (True Crime) by Fred Rosen
Paperback: When a devilish deacon’s secrets are discovered, it is revealed that a man who was holier than thou was also guilty as sin.
By day, Sam Smithers was the deacon of his Baptist church in Plant City, Florida. A respected neighbour to many and considered a true pillar of his community, Smithers was a devoted family man. But after the sun set, he became something else: a violent attacker of prostitutes - and a killer.
Smithers’s twisted double life came to light when a local woman who had hired him to take care of her property found him surrounded by a puddle of blood in her garage, cleaning an axe. Through exclusive interviews with Smithers’s wife, who described her spouse as nothing but a doting husband and father, author Fred Rosen learned why this man of God would be the last person anyone would suspect of committing these savage crimes.
Deacon Of Death was first published in 2000. The above edition was published in 2015.
About the author: Fred Rosen is an American true crime author and former columnist for the Arts and Leisure Section of The New York Times.
Rosen's published works in the genre include There But For the Grace: Survivors of the 20th Century’s Infamous Serial Killers (2007) and When Satan Wore a Cross (2007). Both were best-sellers at the Doubleday Book Club, Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Book-of-the-Month Club.
He is also the winner of Library Journal’s Best Reference Source 2005 award for The Historical Atlas of American Crime, and has written many other works of historical non-fiction including Cremation in America, Contract Warriors, Lobster Boy and Gold! He can frequently be seen on the Investigation Discovery network's Evil Kin and Evil Twins TV series, where he is a regular on-air commentator.
Friday, 15 February 2019
The Diamond Caper (Sam Levitt Series) by Peter Mayle
Hardback: Bon vivant and expert sleuth, Sam Levitt, and his partner in love and intrigue, Elena Morales, return in the latest instalment of the delightful, sun-splashed, Provençal Caper series.
When a Riviera socialite's diamonds are stolen - the latest in a string of seemingly unconnected, but ever-more-audacious, jewelry heists across France - Elena flies in to investigate the insurance claim.
It is a trip she is more than happy to make, as it gives her a chance to meet up with old friends in Marseilles - and, particularly, with Sam.
Once reunited, she and Sam buy the local cottage they have had their eyes on, but Sam is not entirely distracted by domestic matters.
In the pattern of these "perfect crime" heists he is beginning to see a master at work, and he is quickly determined to connect and solve the cases.
But as he and Elena dig deeper, they begin to realize just how much is connected and how dangerous it may be to pursue the whole truth.
Meanwhile, there is a house to renovate, rosé wine to share, and feasts of Provençal summer bounty to enjoy.
Full of Peter Mayle's inimitable wit and style, The Diamond Caper (2015) is - the fourth and last book in the lighthearted but excellent Sam Levitt series - sure to charm faithful fans and new readers alike.
About the author: Peter Mayle (born 14 June 1939, in Brighton) was a British author famous for his series of books detailing life in Provence, France. He spent fifteen years in advertising before leaving the business in 1975 to write educational books, including a series on sex education for children and young people. In 1989, A Year in Provence, was published and became an international bestseller. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he was a contributing writer to magazines and newspapers.
Indeed, his seventh book, A Year in Provence, chronicles a year in the life of a British expatriate who settled in the village of Ménerbes. His book, A Good Year, was the basis for the eponymous 2006 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring actor Russell Crowe. Peter Mayle died in Provence, France on 18 January 2018.
Rating: 5/5
Forty Dreams of St John Bosco From Saint John Bosco's Biographical Memoirs compiled and edited by Fr J Bacchiarello SDB
Paperback: For sixty years, St John Bosco experienced remarkable vision-like dreams, which were so lively and vivid that he would often awaken exhausted the next morning. The dreams frequently featured the actual boys at the Oratory; however, their value goes far beyond this, since they bring to life the realities of the Catholic Faith in a way that is absolutely unique!
In these dreams, St John Bosco saw his boys facing fearsome and disgusting animals or involved in battles, banquets and journeys, etc - which would reveal to him the state of their souls.
The boys (and priests) of the Oratory eagerly anticipated the narration of new dreams and for many boys the dreams resulted in the rectifying of bad Confessions, recovery of Sanctifying Grace, preservation from sin and even holy deaths.
Catholics who may not be inspired by abstract spiritual writings will be able to see in these dreams the evil of impurity, disobedience, gluttony, pride, bad Confessions, sacrilegious Communions, etc - as well as the reality of Hell and the danger of flirting with temptations.
They also will see the great power of good Confessions and devout Holy Communions, as well as the rewards in story for those who practice purity, obedience, temperance and humility, but especially for those who preserve their baptismal innocence - a precious gem far too little regarded by most Catholics.
We are truly indebted to those priests who recorded St John Bosco's narrations of his amazing dreams. Readers of all ages will be admonished, entertained and inspired by these Forty Dreams (1969) of one of the greatest and most beloved Saints of the Church!
Thursday, 14 February 2019
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