Michael Page
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Once upon a time, a student of molecular biology became curious about why his ideas should be the way they are. The ideas lived happily ever after. This text started as a collection of thoughts and ideas aimed at achieving personal clarity. It developed into something more ambitious: What if someone could encapsulate their world view so completely that the ideas took on a life of their own? What is it which is special about those collections of ideas...
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I was sitting in my hotel room after a nine-hour overnight flight clearing my emails before a busy week in Tokyo. An email from a friend popped up "Would you like to run a marathon in October?" he wrote. I replied "Of course". Questions then raced through my head like, "What is a marathon? and "How do I train for one?". This simple invitation led my wife and I into the wonderful world of running, of bloody shins, broken bones, blistered feet, puddles...
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Michael Le Page studied the early history of Western Australia in addition to his family history for over twenty years and found certain areas were shrouded in mystery. He finally discovered after much research that he is a fifth generation Australian on his father's mother's side of the family. Little was said of this side of the family over many generations. His great, great grandfather, John Arnold, was a convict who was transported in the 1850s...
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Keep off the Grass comprises nine original and vivid short stories developed from the author's nightmares: Keep off the Grass, Thick Skin, Cross Roads, Attack of the Karma Pigeons, Converse, Windows to the Soul, The Gauntlet, Decent and Wake Up to The Rain. Reactions to Keep off the Grass include: "Refreshing, polished and effortless, this shits on Mr. King", "Awesome mental imagery", "Holy crap. These stories are bloody brilliant!" and "Ha ha ha...
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Alexander Kurbsky, a famous Russian writer and ex-paratrooper, fakes his escape from Russia and infiltrates British and American intelligence at the highest levels. He has his own motivations for doing the most effective job possible, which entails murdering anyone in his way--including Charles Ferguson, Sean Dillon and the rest of the group known informally as the "Prime Minister's private army."
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What life was like for ordinary French and English people, embroiled in a devastating century-long conflict that changed their world. The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history. Historian David Green focuses on the ways the war affected...
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"Plain Tales From the Hills" is a classic collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Contained here in this volume are the following tales: Lispeth, Three and-an Extra, Thrown Away, Miss Youghal's Sais, 'Yoked with an Unbeliever', False Dawn, The Rescue of Pluffles, Cupid's Arrows, The Three Musketeers, His Chance in Life, Watches of the Night, The Other Man, Consequences, The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin, The Taking of Lungtungpen, A Germ-Destroyer,...
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Originally published in the 1851 Christmas edition of Dickens' journal Household Words, What Christmas is as We Grow Older is an essay suggesting that Christmas should be a time of gratitude and forgiveness. This version of What Christmas is as We Grow Older is part of Dreamscape's The Christmas Stories of Charles Dickens.
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A Charles Dickens Christmas story about remembering the poor, forgotten, and overlooked once a year by the Christmas fire. This grand story sets up the esteemed bickering Big Wig family as a guide to the laboring Nobody family, led by the named Legion, and nothing good comes of it. Legion's master discusses his losses in term of the poor and their habits and diseases. Legion points out it is one world; what happens to us happens to you. (Description...
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Sometimes explosive, often delicious, occasionally poisonous, and always fascinating: the New York Times bestselling author of Stuff Matters offers an "entertaining discussion of the various ways our lives are enriched by fluids" (The Wall Street Journal). We know that we need water to survive, and that, for some of us, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine can feel just as vital. But do we really understand how much we rely on liquids, or their destructive...
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Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history:...
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In the time of the great Anglo-Saxon kings like Alfred and Athelstan, thelred and Edmund Ironside, what was warfare really like how were the armies organized, how and why did they fight, how were the warriors armed and trained, and what was the Anglo-Saxon experience of war? As Paul Hill demonstrates in this compelling new study, documentary records and the growing body of archaeological evidence allows these questions to be answered with more authority...
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In 1897, Britain responded to the killing of a group of officials by razing an empire to the ground. The men had been travelling to the ancient Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Nigeria, when they were ambushed and killed by local soldiers. Just six weeks later, the British had exacted their revenge, set Benin aflame, exiled the king and annexed the territory. They also made off with some of Africa's greatest works of art.
This is the story of the...
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The imperial aspect of Churchill's career tends to be airbrushed out, while the battles against Nazism are heavily foregrounded.
A charmer and a bully, Winston Churchill was driven by a belief that the English were a superior race, whose goals went beyond individual interests to offer an enduring good to the entire world. No better example exists than Churchill's resolve to stand alone against a more powerful Hitler in 1940 while the world's democracies...
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Originally published in the 1852 Christmas edition of Dickens' journal Household Words, The Child's Story is the account of a man's life from childhood to the present as told to his grandson in the form of a fairytale about a traveler and the people he meets. This version of The Child's Story is part of Dreamscape's The Christmas Stories of Charles Dickens.
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Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: we fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and their healthy outdoor lifestyle; we glut ourselves on their crime fiction; even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavia, and how accurate our picture of life in Scandinavia today? Scandinavians follows...
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Winner of the Tomlinson Book Prize
A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2016
An epic, groundbreaking account of the ethnic and state violence that followed the end of World War I-conflicts that would shape the course of the twentieth century.
For the Western Allies, November 11, 1918, has always been a solemn date-the end of fighting that had destroyed a generation, but also a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of...
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A rich and luminous biography of nineteenth century music from the acclaimed author of Debussy: A Painter in Sound.
When one thinks of "great" classical music, music with the most emotional resonance and timelessness, we harken back to the nineteenth century and the Romantic tradition.
The emotional resonance of nineteenth century has moved generations musicians and resonated with countless listeners. It has inspired artists and writers. But no...
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"Winner of the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing, Long-Form Nonfiction Category" Les Johnson is a physicist whose many books include Graphene: The Superstrong, Superthin, and Superversatile Material That Will Revolutionize the World; Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel; and The Spacetime War. He researches advanced spacecraft propulsion for NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
A brief guide to the real...