Download or read book Long Way Round written by Ewan McGregor and published by Sphere. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A highly readable and spiritually uplifting book about a dream come true' Wanderlust 'Touching and memorable ... one for armchair travellers and bike freaks' Daily Mail From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride more than twenty thousand miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures - a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.

Download or read book The Soviet Century written by Karl Schlögel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encyclopedic and richly detailed history of everyday life in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. A museum of—and travel guide to—the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR, from the Gulag, the planned economy, the railway system, and the steel city of Magnitogorsk to cookbooks, military medals, prison camp tattoos, and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow. The book examines iconic aspects of Soviet life, including long queues outside shops, cramped communal apartments, parades, and the Lenin mausoleum, as well as less famous but important parts of the USSR, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the voice of Radio Moscow, graffiti, and even the typical toilet, which became a pervasive social and cultural topic. Throughout, the book shows how Soviet life simultaneously combined utopian fantasies, humdrum routine, and a pervasive terror symbolized by the Lubyanka, then as now the headquarters of the secret police. Drawing on Schlögel’s decades of travel in the Soviet and post-Soviet world, and featuring more than eighty illustrations, The Soviet Century is vivid, immediate, and grounded in firsthand encounters with the places and objects it describes. The result is an unforgettable account of the Soviet Century.

Download or read book The Kremlin s Confidant written by David S Tonge and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Packard is an extraordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. An idealist and a man of liberal instincts, his enthusiasms resulted in him having an inside track in several major events of recent decades, including the coup and bloody dictatorship in Greece and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Easy going, warm and generous with his friendship, his life story is a ripping read. – Peter Murtagh, journalist and author of The Rape of Greece (Simon & Schuster, London, 1994) His story needed telling. – Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian 1975-1995 This gripping biography is a classic tale of fact being stranger than fiction. Martin Packard was an incurable romantic who thought he could do ethical business in the chaos of Gorbachev's perestroika Russia, but was constantly thwarted by more ruthless rivals or incompetent partners. He was a Don Quixote of the Cold War. His story is a fascinating, alternative and very personal view on the confrontations of his times, from the cynical US and UK policies towards Greece and Cyprus, to the chaotic collapse of the USSR. His tale suggests that cock-up, not conspiracy, is usually the most plausible explanation of history. - Quentin Peel, former Moscow Correspondent and Foreign Editor of the Financial Times. Wonderful. They don’t make men like that anymore. - Helena Smith, Correspondent of The Guardian for Greece and Cyprus. This biography describes how a British naval officer became a Kremlin favorite and CIA target as Gorbachev’s Kremlin decided to open the Soviet economy to the west. In 1985, Moscow reached out to Martin Packard, a retired British naval commander. He was promised unrivalled access to the hidden riches of the Soviet Empire with a cornucopia spread before him as he traveled this long closed land from the Baltic to the Bering Sea. A harbinger of the technology and foreign exchange needed to halt the Soviet decline, to some Russians he was the most important foreign businessman in the Soviet Union. But, as the Communist Party imploded, this previously-undescribed offer turned into a Faustian bargain, and his life became a captivating saga of rags-to-riches-to-rags. This book describes his rise, the details of his freelancing for Gorbachev – and his fall. A former intelligence analyst at the British Mediterranean command in Malta, Packard’s role as Scarlet Pimpernel of the Greek Colonels saw him forced out of the Royal Navy. He then became one of the largest jeans manufacturers in Europe. In this capacity, the insiders of Gorbachev’s perestroika identified him to help them lift the life of the Soviet peoples, an unlikely partnership of the Kremlin and a quintessential Briton, a scion of Empire, Church and Navy, but a non-conformist in every sense. It is a political tale, where Packard clashes with the British Foreign Office and the CIA in Cyprus and the Colonels’ Greece. Forced out of the Navy, he heads the English Cell of the Greek resistance, shipping printing presses, passports and petards across Europe to Athens. He then becomes an intimate of the wayward but brilliant Dom Mintoff and survives a mysterious poison attempt by ‘Erica’ at a Moscow airport. It is also a deeply human tale, of a charismatic figure who rose so high, mingled with the mighty of East and West, and then lost it all.

Download or read book Criminal Subculture in the Gulag written by Mark Vincent and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite growing academic interest in the Gulag, our knowledge of the camps as a lived experience remains relatively incomplete. Criminal Subculture in the Gulag, in its sophisticated analysis of crime, punishment and everyday life in Soviet labour camps, rectifies this. From Gulag journals and song collections to tattoo drawings and dictionaries of slang, Mark Vincent draws on often-overlooked archival material from the Moscow Criminological Bureau to reconstruct a fuller picture of Gulag daily life and society. In thematic chapters, Vincent maps the Gulag 'penal arc' of prisoners across initiation tests, means of communication, the importance of card playing, punishment rituals and the notorious 1948-52 cyka ('bitches') internal prison war between military veterans and vory-v-zakone. Most importantly, this timely examination of crime and punishment in modern Russia also highlights the lines of continuity between the Gulag systems, late Imperial Katorga,and today's Russian mafia. As such, this impressively interdisciplinary volume is important reading for all scholars of 20th-century Russia as well as those interested in international criminality and penology.

Download or read book Contractions written by United States. Federal Aviation Administration and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains the approved word and phrase contractions used by personnel of the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies in the use of air traffic control, communications, weather, charting, and associated services.

Download or read book Red Arctic written by John McCannon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-09 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of refreshing originality and vivid appeal, Red Arctic tells the story of Stalinist Russia's massive campaign to explore and develop its Northern territories during the 1930s. Author John McCannon recounts the dramatic stories of the polar expeditions--conducted by foot, ship, and plane--that were the pride of Stalinist Russia, in order to expose the reality behind them: chaotic blunders, bureaucratic competition, and the eventual rise of the Gulag as the dominant force in the North. Red Arctic also traces the development of the polar-based popular culture of the decade, making use of memoirs, films, radio broadcasts, children's books, and cultural ephemera ranging from placards to postage stamps to show how Russia's "Arctic Myth" became an integral part of the overall socialist-realist aesthetic that animated Stalinist culture throughout the 1930s.

Download or read book Lake Status Records from the Former Soviet Union and Mongolia written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Torture and Democracy written by Darius Rejali and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques, such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise, drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods. Rejali makes this troubling case in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research--conducted in multiple languages and on several continents--begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. The author of a major study of Iranian torture, Rejali also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point. A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modern torture will be measured.

Download or read book London to Magadan written by Ian Rogers and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic motorbike ride from the UK through Europe, Asia and Mongolia to the outer reaches of Siberia. A book about the healing power of travel and motorcycling through an unknown landscape. Fully illustrated with the photographs the author took while on the journey. When his wife died tragically, Ian Rogers decided that to ride from London to Magadan, in Russia, would be his road to healing and recovery. Completing the Road of Bones on a motorcycle would be an escape route from the helplessness he had felt as he had nursed his wife through the cancer that he would in the end lose her to. It took him away from his work, his family, his normal life and gave him the time to grieve and put his world in perspective. No windows, no automatic transmission, no metal box protection and absolutely no safety belt, motorcycling fills your senses. Wind, rain, sunshine, smells and with your eyes always on the prize be it the idiot road users in built up areas or mile upon mile of breath-taking Monglian wilderness. Join the author for a journey of discovery through 15 countries, 11 time zones and 30,000 kilometres of Europe, Central Asia and the Far East. An adventure story as well as a homage to the author’s wife, this is diary of a journey to places people do not normally think of visiting, or know anything about. ‘It’s good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.’ Ursula Le Guin, author.

Download or read book The Lost Pianos of Siberia written by Sophy Roberts and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “melodious” mix of music, history, and travelogue “reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself . . . These pages sing like a symphony.” —The Wall Street Journal Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snowbound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers, and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia follows Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos. “An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.” —Paul Theroux

Download or read book Selected Water Resources Abstracts written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 962 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Diversified Theological Education written by Ross Kinsler and published by WCIU Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Concentration Camps A Very Short Introduction written by Dan Stone and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concentration camps are a relatively new invention, a recurring feature of twentieth century warfare, and one that is important to the modern global consciousness and identity. Although the most famous concentration camps are those under the Nazis, the use of concentration camps originated several decades before the Third Reich, in the Philippines and in the Boer War, and they have been used again in numerous locations, not least during the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. Over the course of the twentieth century they have become defining symbols of humankind's lowest point and basest acts. In this Very Short Introduction, Dan Stone gives a global history of concentration camps, and shows that it is not only "mad dictators" who have set up camps, but instead all varieties of states, including liberal democracies, that have made use of them. Setting concentration camps against the longer history of incarceration, he explains how the ability of the modern state to control populations led to the creation of this extreme institution. Looking at their emergence and spread around the world, Stone argues that concentration camps serve the purpose, from the point of view of the state in crisis, of removing a section of the population that is perceived to be threatening, traitorous, or diseased. Drawing on contemporary accounts of camps, as well as the philosophical literature surrounding them, Stone considers the story camps tell us about the nature of the modern world as well as about specific regimes. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Download or read book The Gulag Doctors written by Dan Healey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering history of medical care in Stalin's Gulag--showing how doctors and nurses cared for inmates in appalling conditions A byword for injustice, suffering, and mass mortality, the Gulag exploited prisoners, compelling them to work harder for better rations in shocking conditions. From 1930 to 1953, eighteen million people passed through this penal-industrial empire. Many inmates, not reaching their quotas, succumbed to exhaustion, emaciation, and illness. It seems paradoxical that any medical care was available in the camps. But it was in fact ubiquitous. By 1939 the Gulag Sanitary Department employed 10,000 doctors, nurses and paramedics--about 40 percent of whom were prisoners. Dan Healey explores the lives of the medical staff who treated inmates in the Gulag. Doctors and nurses faced extremes of repression, supply shortages, and isolation. Yet they still created hospitals, re-fed prisoners, treated diseases, and "saved" a proportion of their patients. They taught apprentices and conducted research too. This groundbreaking account offers an unprecedented view of Stalin's forced-labour camps as experienced by its medical staff.

Download or read book Ibss Anthropology 1978 written by International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1990-12-31 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book Top Cover for America written by John Haile Cloe and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reciprocal Constructions written by Vladimir P. Nedjalkov and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-06 with total page 2249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph constitutes the first comprehensive investigation of reciprocal constructions and related phenomena in the world’s languages. Reciprocal constructions (of the type The two boys hit each other, The poets admire each other’s poems) have often been the subject of language-particular studies, but it is only in this work that a truly global comparative picture emerges. Nine stage-setting chapters dealing with general and theoretical matters are followed by 40 chapters containing in-depth descriptions of reciprocals in individual languages by renowned specialists. The introductory papers provide a conceptual and terminological framework that allows the authors of the individual chapters to characterize their languages in comparable terms, making it easy for the reader to see points of commonality between languages and constructions that have never been compared before. This set of volumes is an indispensable starting point and will be a lasting reference work for any future studies of reciprocals.