Showing results by narrator "Mike Cooper" in All Categories

The original edition of this revered and authorized Queen biography explored every aspect of the legendary group’s career from inception to 1992. Newly revised and updated with cooperation and insight from Brian May and Roger Taylor—and drawing on exclusive interviews with the bandmembers—this book completes the story of the Mercury era and the immediate years after his death.

The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination - mummies and pyramids, curses, and rituals have captured the imagination of generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this great civilization? This second edition of Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction explores the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt, including ideas about Egyptian kingship, ancient Egyptian writing systems, and the history of Egyptology.

While doing fieldwork on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, anthropologist Gregory Forth came across people talking about half-apelike, half-humanlike creatures that once lived in a cave on the slopes of a nearby volcano. Over the years he continued to record what locals had to say about these mystery hominoids while searching for ways to explain them as imaginary symbols of the wild or other cultural representations. We follow Forth on the trail of this mystery hominoid, and the space they occupy in islanders' culture as both natural creatures and as supernatural beings.

In this short book, Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects.

Victoria risks everything to leave a dangerous marriage and gain a second chance at life. But when her escape goes awry, she finds herself caught in the embrace of a mysterious siren, forced to choose: temporary salvation or immediate death. Five years later, Victoria is alive—and the world’s finest ship captain. But her debt to the siren looms while her conniving ex has demanded a king’s ransom as the final price of her freedom. Victoria refuses to cause her family to suffer any more on her behalf, and is determined to make things right before her time is up. But that time is cut short.

Author Andrew Harmel-Law shows you how architects and development teams can collaborate to create and evolve more efficient architectures for their systems. Techniques in this book will help you learn how to create a mindset that allows everyone to practice architecture and build the best systems they've ever experienced.

Super Volcanoes revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, Earth-bound and otherwise, and explores how these eruptions reveal secrets about the worlds to which they belong. Science journalist and volcanologist Robin George Andrews describes the stunning ways in which volcanoes can sculpt the sea, land, and sky, and even influence the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life.

First published more than seventy-five years ago in the inaugural issue of Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, Albert Einstein's "Why Socialism?" is an unheralded classic. Written during the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the United States, it constituted an act of defiance, making a case for socialism unrivaled in its time or ours. Yet, its very existence has been an embarrassment to an establishment which has continually sought to downplay the significance of his iconoclastic essay, together with Einstein's socialism itself.

With enchanting descriptions of natural landscapes, and a deep well of humanity, boundless humor, and unbridled joy, Deakin beckons us to wilder waters and inspires us to connect to the larger world in a most unexpected way. Thrilling, vivid, and lyrical, Waterlog is a fully immersive adventure-a remarkable personal quest, a bold assertion of the swimmer's right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.

On January 22, 1879, the British Army in South Africa was swept aside by the seemingly unstoppable Zulu warriors at the Battle of Isandlwana. Nearby, at a remote outpost on the Buffalo River, a single company of the 24th Regiment and a few dozen recuperating hospital patients were passing a hot, monotonous day. It seemed certain that the Rorke's Drift detachment would share the same fate. And yet, against incredible odds, the British managed to defend their station.

Here is Peter Caddick-Adams's third volume in his trilogy about the final year of the Western front in World War Two. Fire & Steel covers the war's final 100 days—beginning in late January 1945 and continuing until May 8, 1945, when the German high command surrendered unconditionally to all Allied forces. Caddick-Adams's previous two volumes in the acclaimed series—Sand & Steel, which covers the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and Snow & Steel, the definitive study of the Battle of the Bulge—have set the stage for this concluding volume.

Author William Whitecloud brings a dazzling range of knowledge and experience - from a childhood in Swaziland immersed in supernatural worldviews to hermetic philosophy and esoteric speculation on the financial markets - to bear on the practical and magical look at what we really want , and how to get it.

The Last Shaman is a captivating ride through the jungles of war-torn Africa. Mark Vale, who represents any of us struggling to take consistent ownership of our personal power, takes an unwanted journey to find the last shaman who is responsible for ending the war and saving thousands of lives. All throughout, Mark learns from a colourful array of characters - including a doctor of philosophy exiled in the swamps, a shape-shifting sorceress, and the widow of a tribal scout - who teach him to commit completely to the desires of his soul.

Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler have tested the forty-four most important communication theories and distilled them in book form....

Becky and Jamie are an ordinary hard-working couple trapped in the daily grind, dreaming of an easier life. On one of their rare vacations, they meet Phil and Mel, a wealthy couple who seem to have it all—they're fun, well-traveled, and very generous with their money. But they are also very, very dangerous. Phil and Mel are not who they say they are, and this is no random vacation friendship.

Best-selling author and creative development trainer William Whitecloud dispenses with the usual approaches of fixing, self-manipulation or relying on mystical forces to get ahead in life. Instead, he offers a highly original insight into how your level of creativity determines your level of natural success in life, and a step-by-step guide to unlocking and applying the dormant genius within each of us.

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson, Frank Close has produced this major revision to his classic and compelling introduction to the fundamental particles that make up the universe. Frank Close takes us on a journey into the atom to examine known particles such as quarks, electrons, and the ghostly neutrino, and explains the key role and significance of the Higgs boson. Along the way he provides fascinating insights into how discoveries in particle physics have actually been made, and discusses how our picture of the world has been radically revised in the light of these developments.

Simon Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, Schama recreates in precise detail a nation's mental state. He tells of bloody uprisings and beached whales, of the cult of hygiene and the plague of tobacco, of thrifty housewives and profligate tulip-speculators.

London has harbored many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956). A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man." But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river.

Brian Clegg was always fascinated by Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series of books, in which the future is predicted using sophisticated mathematical modeling of human psychology and behavior. Only much later did he realize that Asimov’s "psychohistory" had a real-world equivalent: game theory. Originating in the study of probabilistic gambling games that depend on a random source—the throw of a dice or the toss of a coin—game theory soon came to be applied to human interactions: essentially, what was the best strategy to win whatever you were doing?