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The Backroom Boy

Author : Mandla Mathebula

Publisher : NYU Press

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 10,92 MB

Release : 2017-04-04

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1776140893

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Book Description

The Backroom Boy opens dramatically in China, 1962. Andrew Mlangeni is one of a small select group undergoing military training there. The unannounced visitor is Mao Tse-Tung or Chairman Mao as he was known, Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Mlangeni was selected as one of the first-ever six members who received military training in China before the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He seems to have been chosen because he was a dedicated, intelligent and dependable operative, rather than a leader. Even after his release after 25 years on Robben Island, Mlangeni was not given a senior position in the post-apartheid democratic government. ‘I was always the backroom boy,’ says Andrew Mlangeni about himself. Andrew Mlangeni, is a struggle stalwart, Rivonia Trialist, and Robben Island prisoner 467/64 who was next door inmate to Nelson Mandela’s acclaimed 466/64 prison number. Released after 26 years of incarceration, he served as Member of Parliament, and is Chairman of the ANC’s Integrity Commission and Founder of the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation. With the passing of Ahmed Kathrada (March 2017), Mlangeni (91) is one of only two Rivonia Trialist still alive with Denis Goldberg. While still at school, Andrew Mlangeni joined the Communist Party of South Africa and also the ANC Youth League. These were the organisations that shaped his values. Decades of resourceful activism were to lead to his arrest and life sentence in the Rivonia trial. Mlangeni’s lifelong commitment to the struggle for liberation reverberates with other biographies and memoirs of leading figures, such as Rusty Bernstein’s Memory Against Forgetting and Albie Sachs’ We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge. This story of an ANC elder is a well-researched historical record overlaid with intensely personal refl ections which intersect with the political narrative. Above all, it is one man’s story, set in the maelstrom of the liberation struggle. This biographical project has been developed for, and published in conjunction with, the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation.



The Backroom Boys

Author : Graeme Sligo

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 39,97 MB

Release : 2013-10-05

Category : History

ISBN : 1922132543

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Book Description

The Backroom Boys is the remarkable, but little known, story of how a varied group of talented intellectuals, drafted into the Australian Army in the dark days of 1942, provided high-level policy advice to Australia’s most senior soldier, General Blamey, and through him to the Government for the remainder of the war and beyond. This band of academics, lawyers and New Guinea patrol officers formed a unique military unit, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, under the command of an eccentric and masterful string-puller, Alf Conlon. The Directorate has been depicted as a haven for underemployed poets or meddlesome soldier-politicians. Based on wide-ranging research, this book reveals a fuller and more fascinating picture. The fierce conflicts in the wartime bureaucracy between public servants and soldiers, in which the Directorate provided critical support to Blamey, went to the heart of military command, accountability and the profession of arms. The Directorate was a pioneer in developing approaches to military government in areas liberated by the combat troops, as demonstrated by the Australian Army in New Guinea, and Borneo in 1945-46. It is an issue of enduring importance. The Directorate established the Australian School of Pacific Administration, and had an important role in founding the Australian National University. Its influence extended into post war Australia. The Backroom Boys emphasises the personality of Colonel Alf Conlon, as well as the talented men and women he recruited. Above all, this book shows how, unexpectedly, the Australian Army fostered a group of men and women who made a lasting contribution to the development of Australia in the decades after the war.



Backroom Boys

Author : Francis Spufford

Publisher : Faber & Faber

Page : 386 pages

File Size : 42,65 MB

Release : 2010-11-25

Category : Technology & Engineering

ISBN : 0571266444

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Book Description

A brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers. The book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others. Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, 'Backroom Boys' tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. 'Backroom Boys' is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.



Backroom Boys

Author : Edward Smithies

Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Page : 405 pages

File Size : 34,82 MB

Release : 2015-11-12

Category : History

ISBN : 1474603394

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Book Description

When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?



The Backroom Boys

Author : Noam Chomsky

Publisher : Fontana Press

Page : 232 pages

File Size : 30,97 MB

Release : 1973

Category : History

ISBN :

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Cassell's Dictionary of Slang

Author : Jonathon Green

Publisher : Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

Page : 1600 pages

File Size : 21,36 MB

Release : 2005

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9780304366361

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Book Description

With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results



Don't You Know There's A War On?

Author : Nigel Rees

Publisher : Batsford Books

Page : 257 pages

File Size : 44,59 MB

Release : 2014-12-08

Category : History

ISBN : 1849942897

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Book Description

Nigel Rees presents a nostalgic and witty guide to wartime catchphrases, from the now ubiquitous 'Keep Calm and Carry On' to lesser-known gems such as 'lions led by donkeys'. Following his hugely popular survey of domestic sayings, More Tea Vicar?, Rees returns with a witty and fascinating examination of the catchphrases that saw us through wartime Britain and are still relevant in times of crisis today. Including domestic phrases of the time, propaganda, and slang developed by soldiers abroad, the book describes the provenance and development of these intriguing, quirky and sometimes crude phrases that were born out of times of conflict and have in many cases become part of our language.



Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang

Author : John Ayto

Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA

Page : 424 pages

File Size : 43,22 MB

Release : 2010-02-11

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0199232059

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Book Description

Offering coverage of over 6,000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney 'abaht' to the American term 'zowie', this is the most authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries.



Gender Relations in Public and Private

Author : E. Stina Lyon

Publisher : Springer

Page : 278 pages

File Size : 26,95 MB

Release : 2016-07-27

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1349245437

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Book Description

This collection of papers from the 1993 BSA `Research Imaginations' conference explores the interpenetration of the public and private spheres. The book comprises two sections, one dealing with aspects of employment and finance, the other with domesticity and intimacy. Topics covered include the changing emotional geography of workplace and home, the gendering of aspects of employment and organisation, marital finance and gendered inheritance, the management of food and domestic labour, researching the emotions, and understanding intimate violence.



Prosthetic Agency

Author : Gill Plain

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 289 pages

File Size : 37,34 MB

Release : 2023-06-30

Category : Literary Criticism

ISBN : 1316513203

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Book Description

This book addresses the legacy of World War II on male identity and reinvention. It considers some of the many ways in which popular culture of the time sought to mediate these difficult transitions, exploring films, popular fiction, memoir and biography.