Résultats lu par "Roger Davis" dans Toutes les catégories

John Masters was a soldier before he became a best-selling novelist. He went to Sandhurst in 1933 at the age of 18 and was commissioned into the Fourth Gurkha Rifles in time to take part in some of the last campaigns on the turbulent North-West Frontier of India. John Masters joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission, and his depiction of garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier has never been surpassed. Bugles and a Tiger is a matchless evocation of the British Army in India on the eve of the Second World War.

During the Khmer Rouge's four-year rule of terror, two million people, or one in every four, Cambodians, died. In describing one family's decades-long quest to learn their husband's and father's fate and the war crimes trial of Comrade Duch (pronounced 'Doyk'), who ran the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, When the Clouds Fell from the Sky illuminates the tragedy of a nation. 

In this strikingly impressive book, he combines academic verve and insight with colourful, dramatic writing to produce a classic, ground-breaking work that has changed forever how we think about the Sixties.

Robert of Locksley, the handsome son of a respected earl, has long battled the tyranny of Prince John - a man as weak as he is cruel. Now that power has shifted even more firmly into John's hands, and Robert has no choice but to fight as an outlaw - as Robin Hood. Lady Marian of Ravenskeep has fled into the depths of Sherwood Forest. There, amid wild woods, she will be transformed from lady to warrior - as Robin Hood's partner in stealing John's gold.

As the gates of Ravenskeep swing open and a young woman flees into the primeval depths of Sherwood Forest and into the arms of the man she loves, a saga of exceptional power and remarkable passion begins... He is Sir Robery Locksley - the heroic nobleman who has turned his back on all he knows to embark on a dangerous quest for justice in an England torn apart by treachery, betrayal, and war.

At the turn of the 20th century, two children play on an English beach. Eustace, a gentle, dreamy boy with a weak heart, relies on his older sister, Hilda. As young adults, Eustace and Hilda are unexpectedly invited to stay at the grand country house of the wealthy Staveley family. The weekend's events will haunt the siblings' lives as their story travels from Oxford colleges to Venetian palazzi.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.

Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonise the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice in by Western revolutionary regimes a century later. 

Einstein’s Fridge tells the story of how scientists uncovered the least known and yet most consequential of all the sciences and learned to harness the power of heat and ice. The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behaviour of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Not only that, but thermodynamics explains why we must eat and breathe, how the lights come on and ultimately how the universe will end. 

The Circuit des Champs de Bataille (the Tour of the Battlefields) was held in 1919, less than six months after the end of the First World War. It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again. With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its story is largely forgotten. 

Radical uncertainty changes the way we should think about decision-making. For over half a century economics has assumed that people behave rationally by optimizing among well-defined choices. Behavioral economics questioned how far people are rational, pointing to the cognitive biases that seem to describe actual behavior. 

The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously changing system of immense complexity, it offers over 10 billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every 15 years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people. How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend? From the tally stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop.

Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the preserve of the rich. But with the rise of the European sugar colonies in the Americas in the 17th century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous and hugely popular - an everyday necessity. As recently as the 1970s, very few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem; yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco, and the cause of a global obesity epidemic. While sugar consumption remains higher than ever.

The last Plantagenet king remains one of England's most famous and controversial monarchs. There are few parallels in English history that can match the drama of Richard III's reign, witnessed in its full bloody intensity. A dedicated brother and loyal stalwart to the Yorkist dynasty for most of his early life, Richard's personality was forged in the tribulation of exile and the brutality of combat.

As the United Kingdom left the European Union, during a period of international and domestic turmoil, London found itself at a turning point. This critical moment presents an opportunity to look back, with a distinctive perspective, a focus on London in its national and, perhaps even more importantly, its international contexts, rather than on the city in isolation. It is the interactions of London that Black considers, and he does so in order to address the question as to why London became the foremost international city, how it sustained that position and what its future holds. 

In Nuclear Folly, award-winning Historian Serhii Plokhy tells the riveting story of those weeks, tracing the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and of their advisors and commanders on the ground. More often than not, Plokhy argues, the Americans and Soviets simply misread each other, operating under mutual distrust, second-guesses and false information. Despite all of this, nuclear disaster was avoided thanks to one very human reason: fear.

Regarded as one of the most versatile fighters ever built, the Phantom F-4 was the US Navy's fastest and highest-flying aircraft. It was flown by both US military demonstration teams (Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thundercats) from 1969 to 1973. It ended its service in 1991 with the RAF. But it continued to serve a variety of air forces across the world, with some still in service 50 years after its first flight.

Exploring the beliefs, history and politics of the ordinary people of Muslim countries, Grieve cuts through the complexities as he examines all aspects of Islam. He also addresses the big issues: Can Islam support true democracy? Is true democracy what the West really wants for Muslim countries or are we merely seeking a cover of legitimacy for a policy of 'might is right'? Paul Grieve is an unbeliever - he is not a born-again Muslim, a proselytizer or a frustrated desert romantic. His aim is to inform.

A revolution is under way across the globe, yet very few people understand it. Basic Blockchain explains everything you need to know to understand the technology that will soon disrupt and revolutionise everything from financial and health services to the property market and how we vote.

Our brains evolved to solve the survival problems of our Stone Age ancestors, so when faced with modern-day situations that are less extreme, they often encounter a mismatch. Our primitive brains put us on the wrong foot by responding to stimuli that - in prehistoric times - would have prompted behaviour that was beneficial. If you've ever felt an anxious fight-or-flight response to a presenting at a board meeting, equivalent to facing imminent death by sabre-toothed tiger, then you have experienced a mismatch.