The Dizzying Heights


Book Description

In this 7th book of the highly acclaimed Grafton Everest Series, our indolent hero, Professor Dr Everest (former lecturer in Lifestyles and Wellbeing at the University of Mangoland) is surprised to find himself President of the newly minted Republic of Australia. Luckily he manages to avoid any actual work or duties, save heading the newly created Department of Wellbeing, and leaves on a goodwill tour of the US. Here, he is courted by both Democrats and Republicans as a possible US Presidential candidate. After further discoveries, including a secret society of retired spies and bionic clones, he returns to Australia to find that the Department of Wellbeing has become a ruthless dictatorship that has brought the nation to a stop. It is now up to Professor Dr Everest to save the country … This is slapstick that tickles the funny bone while the satirical barbs penetrate the shifty shibboleths of today’s progressive orthodoxies!




Dizzying Heights


Book Description

Imagine that these airy United States sit on a point of balance that is their center of population. A cosmic ball bearing. At the start of the republic, the fulcrum lodged somewhere north of Philadelphia, tucked snug against the coast, and the continent sloped off gently to the Pacific. Slowly that fulcrum rolls westward, until one day, in late September toward the end of the last century, it finds perfect equilibrium. On that day the continent balances straight even, a day, you may remember, of warm breezes, when every love discovered is eternal and every duffer's putt runs plumb and true. But the giant steel ball continues to edge westward, and the nation tilts now on an easterly slope. When that happens, Horace Greeley's ghost fluffs his pillow and shifts in his sleep, and the quicksilver that is Opportunity begins to run upstream, pooling in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains....




A Baffling Murder at the Midsummer Ball


Book Description

A locked room. A mysterious death. Just another gig for the Dizzy Heights. When London's finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realise this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought. But here's the lick. What if it was in fact cold-blooded murder? And what if the killer is still at large? It's up to the Dizzy Heights to once again put down their instruments and get improvising if they want to solve this confounding mystery.




Venturing Upon Dizzy Heights


Book Description

This book assembles lectures and essays on literature (William Wordsworth, Walter Benjamin, Chinese mountain poetry, Friedrich Nietzsche, the Tao Te Ching), art (Paleolithic cave art, Vincent Van Gogh, American landscape painting), and Japanese poetry forms (haiku, haibun, tanka) that were originally presented and published between 2000 and 2007. The essays identify strategies to counter the so-called postmodern condition. Matters of will, ethics, and consciousness are examined in comparative contexts with the aim of formulizing models of enlightened states of being and their aesthetic expressions. This study focuses on Wordsworth's rainbow epiphany; Walter Benjamin's «aura» and «monad»; Chinese mountain poetry's cosmic emptiness; Nietzsche's Hyperborean; Paleolithic cave art's transpersonal expression; Van Gogh's «dizzy heights» of natural beauty; American landscape painters' depiction of the sublime; haiku's absolute metaphor epiphany; and tanka's connection between natural beauty and erotic feeling. The collection is a re-examination of Ralph Waldo Emerson's «fundamental unity» between humanity and nature, as well as an examination of often-unmediated affective experience and its expression in this context through literature and art.




Tunesmith


Book Description

From the legendary pop artist who has given the American songbook an unparalleled number of unforgettable hits comes the definitive guide for aspiring songwriters.




City of the Uncommon Thief


Book Description

A dark and intricate fantasy, City of the Uncommon Thief is the story of a quarantined city gripped by fear and of the war that can free it. "Guilders work. Foundlings scrub the bogs. Needles bind. Swords tear. And men leave. There is nothing uncommon in this city. I hope Errol Thebes is dead. We both know he is safer that way." In a walled city of a mile-high iron guild towers, many things are common knowledge: No book in any of the city's libraries reveals its place on a calendar or a map. No living beasts can be found within the city's walls. And no good comes to the guilder or foundling who trespasses too far from their labors. Even on the tower rooftops, where Errol Thebes and the rest of the city's teenagers pass a few short years under an open sky, no one truly believes anything uncommon is possible within the city walls. But one guildmaster has broken tradition to protect her child, and now the whole city faces an uncommon threat: a pair of black iron spikes that has the power of both sword and needle on the rib cages of men has gone missing, but the mayhem they cause rises everywhere. If the spikes are not found, no wall will be high enough to protect the city—or the world beyond it. And Errol Thebes? He's not dead and he's certainly not safe.




The Pleasures of Counting


Book Description

What is the connection between the outbreak of cholera in Victorian Soho, the Battle of the Atlantic, African Eve and the design of anchors? One answer is that they are all examples chosen by Dr Tom Körner to show how a little mathematics can shed light on the world around us, and deepen our understanding of it. Dr Körner, an experienced author, describes a variety of topics which continue to interest professional mathematicians, like him. He does this using relatively simple terms and ideas, yet confronting difficulties (which are often the starting point for new discoveries) and avoiding condescension. If you have ever wondered what it is that mathematicians do, and how they go about it, then read on. If you are a mathematician wanting to explain to others how you spend your working days (and nights), then seek inspiration here.




This Bright Future


Book Description

The instant New York Times bestseller and “inspiring and vulnerable” (Trevor Noah) memoir from Bobby Hall, the multiplatinum recording artist known as Logic and the #1 bestselling author of Supermarket. This Bright Future is a raw and unfiltered journey into the life and mind of Bobby Hall, who emerged from the wreckage of a horrifically abusive childhood to become an era-defining artist of our tumultuous age. A self-described orphan with parents, Bobby Hall began life as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, the only child of an alcoholic, mentally ill mother on welfare and an absent, crack-addicted father. After enduring seventeen years of abuse and neglect, Bobby ran away from home and—with nothing more than a discarded laptop and a ninth-grade education—he found his voice in the world of hip-hop and a new home in a place he never expected: the untamed and uncharted wilderness of the social media age. In the message boards and livestreams of this brave new world, Bobby became Logic, transforming a childhood of violence, anger, and trauma into music that spread a resilient message of peace, love, and positivity. His songs would touch the lives of millions, taking him to dizzying heights of success, where the wounds of his childhood and the perils of Internet fame would nearly be his undoing. A landmark achievement in an already remarkable career, This Bright Future “is just like the author—fearless, funny, and full of heart” (Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One) and looks back on Bobby’s extraordinary life with lacerating humor and fearless honesty. Heart-wrenching yet ultimately uplifting, this book completes the incredible true story and transformation of a human being who, against all odds, refused to be broken.




She Was A Photographer Behind Enemy Lines


Book Description

She Was a WW II Photographer Behind Enemy Lines. Jeane Slone's fourth acclaimed historical novel Meet Lieutenant Adeline Peterson, war correspondent in eleven theaters of war - a brave, determined, and resilient woman who broke gender biases to photograph the world and document the atrocities of war. Caught in a Black Blizzard in Oklahoma; endured swarms of locusts, Photographed Depression-era dance marathons; visited illegal speakeasies, Detained by a Nazi officer under gunpoint in Czechoslovakia, Fled Paris on foot and got caught in the Blitz in London, Photographed the Nazi takeover of Greece, Jailed in Belgrade by the Gestapo, Photographed the first bomb to fall on Moscow, Torpedoed at sea in North Africa in a convoy headed to war. Hit by Junker planes in a B-17 Flying Fortress. Stowed away on a hospital ship during D-Day and arrested for disobeying orders. Witnessed machine-gun fire during the liberation of France. Almost hit by Japanese snipers on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Arrested for disobeying orders during the battle of Okinawa. First war correspondent to document the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Toured Mengele's torture chambers after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Witnessed Disease X after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.




NPA Theory of Personality


Book Description

by A.M. Benis, Sc.D., M.D. This is the updated hardcover edition of NPA personality theory, originally published as "Toward Self & Sanity: On the genetic origins of the human character" by Psychological Dimensions Press in 1985. It has been updated and contains recently published work: a seventeen page synopsis of the NPA theory, and an article on personality traits in the Australian Aborigines. It contains the original version of the NPA theory as derived from the ideas of Karen Horney. The three NPA traits, posited to be of genetic origins, are sanguinity, perfectionism and aggression. Most of the text is written in question-and-answer (Q & A) format. Book properties: Trade quality hardcover with dust jacket (6" x 9"), 547 pages, 21 figures, 9 tables, 48 plates, glossary, addendum, index.