Rachel Johnson's hilarious take on life as a yummy mummy in West London and on Exmoor has been making her newspaper readers chortle for the last couple of years: now they are seamlessly turned into a diary of her year, from the dog's birthday party in January (games of Paws-the-Parcel) to the June sports days (where the mummies turn up at the school sports day in sports bras and running shorts with little back packs containing high energy drinks - and that's just for them) to summer on Exmoor hosting demanding visiting ponies.

The City at Stake tells the dramatic story of how the nation's second-largest city completed a major reform of its government in the face of a deeply threatening movement for secession by the San Fernando Valley. How did Los Angeles, a diverse city with an image of unstructured politics and fragmented government, find a way to unify itself around a controversial set of reforms? Los Angeles government nearly collapsed in political bickering over charter reform, which generated the remarkable phenomenon of two competing charter reform commissions. Out of this nearly impossible tangle, reformers managed to knit a new city charter that greatly expanded institutions for citizen participation and addressed long-standing weaknesses in the role of the mayor. The new charter, pursued by a Republican mayor, won its greatest support from liberal whites who had long favored reform measures. Written by an urban scholar who played a key role in the charter reform process, the book offers both a theoretical perspective on the process of institutional reform in an age of diversity, and a firsthand, inside-the-box look at how major reform works. The new afterword by the author analyzes the 2005 election of Los Angeles's first modern Latino mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, a milestone in the development of urban reform coalitions in an age of immigration and ethnic diversity.

English Books

Text: English, French (translation)

Eighty paradoxes, logical lobyrinths, and intriguing enigmas progress from light fables and fancies to challenging Zen exercises and a novella and probe the timeless questions of philosophy and life

THE STORY: Herbert Stempel is the first winner of the big money quiz show 21 and the man who took a dive for the scandal's more famous victor, Charles Van Doren. Orchestrated by 21 's producer Dan Enright--a television incarnate, an abs

One of America's preeminent writers of gay fiction validates his reputation with his third, and sadly, last collection. Here are love stories, both passionate and compassionate; tales of suspense; narratives on the theme of AIDS; even a ghost story. "A standout read".--The Advocate. Hall died of AIDS-related complications in October, 1992.

"The first trade edition of new poems by punk progenitor and acclaimed writer Richard Hell since he largely abandoned poetry at the age of 22 includes also a valedictory essay, "Falling Asleep," and a "list" of recent notebook writings, and art by Christopher Wool. Richard Hell dropped out of high school shortly after turning 17 to move to New York and become a poet, 1967. He succeeded at that but by 1973 had forsaken poetry writing for the composition of aggressive, lyrical songs that would soon be scorned and hailed as punk. After 10 years as a professional musician, in 1984 he switched again, leaving music and resuming writing but now prose-fiction and essays mostly. Come 2020, pandemic time, Hell, at the age of 70, found himself gratified, in lockdown isolation, to finally become a poet, a working poet without distractions or competing intentions, content(ish) to struggle the days into mediums for poems. The result comprises one half of this volume. The second half of the book consists of an essay called "Falling Asleep" and a list of note(book) entries called "Chronicle." "Falling Asleep," from 2019, is Hell's equivalent to Poe's late-life summing up of his conception of the universe, "Eureka" (but better). "Chronicle," compiled in 2021 at the behest of Adam Marnie for his F Publications pamphlet series, captures in 88 numbered entries Richard's view and experience of recent years"--

Based on two extant Jewish sources describing the pogroms in the Rhineland in 1096, the Mainz Anonymous and the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, narrates the history of the massacre of Jews by the Crusaders and by burghers who joined them, in Mainz, Worms, Köln, and Speyer. The Pope, who conceived the Crusade, did not call for the massacre of Jews, nor did the secular authorities approve of it; it was Count Emicho's army that unleashed the murders. Clergymen and imperial officials, as well as some burghers, tried to protect the Jews, not always successfully. The revulsion toward Christianity, the readiness for martyrdom evinced by the Rhineland Jews, the mass suicides, and even the murder of their families by Jews themselves only incited the Crusaders to greater excesses. Despite the brutality of the massacres of 1096, the bulk of Ashkenazic Jewry survived them unharmed. Although later Jewish literature sometimes praised the Jews' behavior during the First Crusade, this pattern was not repeated in other disasters which befell European Jewry.

Thundering through four turbulent decades of Russian history, this ambitious novel propels the reader from Moscow to the Winter Palace. From the birth of rebellion to the death of Stalin, one man has chosen to act as the war for freedom becomes a betrayal.

Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street—these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky's work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: "I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry." That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America ; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart ; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante ; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music . That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume.

Book by Brustein, Robert

Thirteen of the greatest science fiction stories--including "Four one," "The Monsters," "Colony," and "Day million"--are accompanied by in-depth critical analyses and by an autobiographical essay entitled "The Making of a Science Fiction Writer"