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Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre tranger, The History of Love explores the lasting power of the written word and the lasting power of love. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

'When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called The History of Love. . . '

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived- crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . .
'Wonderfully affecting...brilliant, touching and remarkably poised' Sunday Telegraph
'A tender tribute to human valiance. Who could be unmoved by a cast of characters whose daily battles are etched on out mind in such diamond-cut prose?' Independent on Sunday
'Devastating...one of the most passionate vindications of the written word in recent fiction. It takes one's breath away' Spectator

A collection of parables and teaching stories from the martial arts traditions of Japan and China that emphasizes their spiritual foundation.

• The teaching stories in this book are based on the lives of martial arts masters and are meant to inspire questions and insights for the student.

• Written for martial artists and anyone interested in Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Zen, and Taoism.

True martial arts should never be confused with simple combat techniques. Rather, martial arts are a way that an individual, after a long and difficult apprenticeship, can gain a profound understanding of the true nature of reality and one's place in it. Over time the apprentice discovers the laws governing the subtle forces of life and realizes that their mastery is only possible after one has mastered oneself. "He who has mastered the Art doesn't use his sword: he compels his adversary to kill himself." This quote from renowned sword master Tajima no Kami perfectly expresses the paradoxical nature of martial arts teachings in China and Japan. These teaching stories are not moral fables; in fact they have nothing to prove. Their purpose is actually to inspire questions and insights that will aid the student to achieve self-realization.

Most of the stories in this book are based on actual events in the lives of martial arts teachers who have achieved legendary status. The almost superhuman abilities of some of the masters described here are evidence of the secret powers that can be wielded by those whose martial arts training is not simply the learning of physical techniques but involves the mastering of the subtle energies of the mind and body. Master of the Art of Archery Kenzo Awa could hit the center of a target even when shooting in total darkness. Assailants of Tai Chi master Yang Lu Chan found their blows did more damage to themselves than to their would-be victim. By reading--and comprehending--the tales in this book, we can acquire the same essential knowledge that these masters had--that extraordinary forces are within the grasp of those who have achieved inner peace and self-mastery.

'If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?'

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf's skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank- 'The Trading Game'. The prize- a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you'd ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. Where soon you're the bank's most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep - and then stop sleeping at all. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can't. Because nobody ever leaves. Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?

This is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world - from someone who survived the game.

At the sexually promiscuous court of Kyoto in early 11th century Japan, the poet Onogoro has an embarrassing problem with her love life. Oyu, the blind storyteller, holds the key to solving it. Hiding behind a screen in Onogoro's bedroom, Oyu is a potent but invisible guest at the feast of lovemaking. Only Oyu's cruel and sensual tales can unlock the secrets to Onogoro's orgasm. Writing in an era of astrologers and Tiger-gods, the unknown narrator sounds a startlingly modern note, as she seeks to escape a world of concubinage and female suppression. With The Pillow Boy of the Lady Onogoro, Alison Fell confirms that her's is one of the distinctive voices in contemporary British fiction.

Persoonlijk verslag van een moeder over de opvoeding van haar zoon met een aan autisme verwante contactstoornis en over de ontwikkeling die zijzelf tegelijkertijd doormaakte.

De moord in 1944 op een vrouw in een afgelegen dal in de Italiaanse Alpen is aanleiding voor een onderzoek door een inspecteur uit de stad die zelf uit de streek afkomstig is.

In 'De blanke gave' word je ondergedompeld in een wereld waar het water oprukt, moeders hun kinderen op het droge slepen en geliefden verdwijnen. De IKEA loopt onder en de A2 verandert in een heel kalm, groot kanaal: 'op de tekentafel rust een atlas/ alvast atlantisblauw gekrast.' Want wat kun je met een land waarin de krant niet meer is 'dan een sudoku met wat foto's eromheen', en er achter iedere voordeur geheimen schuilgaan? Dat vraagt om antwoorden. Want 'de doden groeien met je mee. We noemen het pas afgesloten/ als we er niet meer bij kunnen'. Een bundel vol heldere taal, ontroerende beelden en krachtige gedichten.

Een depressie doordringt het gehele functioneren van een kind of adolescent. De prognose ervan is ongunstig en de effecten op de psychosociale ontwikkeling zijn enorm. Depressies hebben bovendien een nadelige invloed op het functioneren van ouders en overige gezinsleden, leerkrachten en klasgenoten. Een depressie die snel onderkend en adequaat gediagnosticeerd wordt is vaak goed te behandelen. Inzicht in de verschillende aspecten die een depressie kenmerken is daarvoor onmisbaar.Dit boek geeft een uitvoerig overzicht van recente theoretische en onderzoeksgegevens betreffende definitie en begripsafbakening van depressie, classificatie, algemene en differentiële symptomatologie, co-morbiditeit, etiologische determinanten en trajecten, verloop en ontwikkelingseffecten. Het hoofdstuk over procedures en instrumenten gaat uitvoerig in op de verschillende methodieken van behandeling en voorwaarden die daarvoor gelden. Het boek is geïllustreerd met casuïstisch materiaal. Depressie bij kinderen en adolescenten is bestemd voor psychiaters, psychologen, pedagogen, onderwijskundigen, kinderartsen, jeugdartsen en andere professionals werkzaam met kinderen en adolescenten met depressieve stoornissen.

Veel jongeren zijn op de middelbare school (soms zelfs al aan het einde van de basisschool) zijn bezig met lijnen en uiterlijk. Dit past bij de normale ontwikkeling. Slechts een klein aantal van hen ontwikkelt een eetstoornis, zoals anorexia nervosa. Een dergelijke stoornis is een ernstige en vaak chronische ziekte, die een bedreiging vormt voor zowel de lichamelijke als de sociaal-emotionele en psychoseksuele ontwikkeling. In de behandeling zal er voor al deze aspecten aandacht moeten zijn. Anders gezegd: de jongere is naast patient ook adolescent. Voor het betreffende behandelteam geldt dat zonder samenwerking met elkaar en met de ouders, en zonder een eenduidige visie, een behandeling gedoemd is te mislukken.

Praktische informatie voor hulpverleners in de GGZ.

Interviews met bewoners van Curaçao over de slavernij, het koloniale verleden en de toekomst van het eiland. Curaçao heeft een geschiedenis achter de rug van 200 jaar slavernij gevolgd door bijna 100 jaar kolonisatie. Hoe wordt er momenteel in de Curaçaose gemeenschap gedacht over de doorwerking van dat verleden? Welke slagschaduwen worden zichtbaar in de samenleving van vandaag? Colet van der Ven vroeg het een veertigtal Curaçaoënaars, van scholier tot oud-ministerpresident en van psychiater tot kunstenaar. Hun antwoorden leverden een bont palet aan meningen op. Slagschaduwen wil de lezer uitnodigen om in samenspraak met al die verschillende stemmen een eigen standpunt te formuleren en hoopt zo een inhoudelijke bijdrage te leveren aan een hoogst actueel debat.

As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed to recognize.

In his incisive history of the expanded city, Bruegmann overturns every assumption we have about sprawl. Taking a long view of urban development, he demonstrates that sprawl is neither recent nor particularly American but as old as cities themselves, just as characteristic of ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Paris as it is of Atlanta or Los Angeles. Nor is sprawl the disaster claimed by many contemporary observers. Although sprawl, like any settlement pattern, has undoubtedly produced problems that must be addressed, it has also provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy, and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful.

The first major book to strip urban sprawl of its pejorative connotations, Sprawl offers a completely new vision of the city and its growth. Bruegmann leads readers to the powerful conclusion that "in its immense complexity and constant change, the city-whether dense and concentrated at its core, looser and more sprawling in suburbia, or in the vast tracts of exurban penumbra that extend dozens, even hundreds, of miles-is the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind."

“Largely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, we now have one. What a pleasure it is: well-written, accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl.”—Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal

“There are scores of books offering ‘solutions’ to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book.”—Witold Rybczynski, Slate

'The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with outsize intensity.'

Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks meet a need for Julius: they are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. Though he is navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation. But it is not only a physical landscape he covers; Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey-which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.

A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss, dislocation, and surrender, Teju Cole's Open City seethes with intelligence. Written in a clear, rhythmic voice that lingers, this book is a mature, profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our world.

It's the end of the world as we know it...
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world.

Winner of the Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction and Los Angeles Times bestseller

"It makes good music sound better."-Janet Maslin in The New York Times

"A fascinating look into the West Coast recording studio scene of the '60s and the inside story of the music you heard on the radio. If you always assumed the musicians you listened to were the same people you saw onstage, you are in for a big surprise!"-Dusty Street, host of Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM Satellite Radio

If you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew-whether you knew it or not.

On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves in Los Angeles, California as the driving sound of pop music-sometimes over the objection of actual band members forced to make way for Wrecking Crew members. Industry insider Kent Hartman tells the dramatic, definitive story of the musicians who forged a reputation throughout the business as the secret weapons behind the top recording stars.

Mining invaluable interviews, the author follows the careers of such session masters as drummer Hal Blaine and keyboardist Larry Knechtel, as well as trailblazing bassist Carol Kaye-the only female in the bunch-who went on to play in thousands of recording sessions in this rock history. Readers will discover the Wrecking Crew members who would forge careers in their own right, including Glen Campbell and Leon Russell, and learn of the relationship between the Crew and such legends as Phil Spector and Jimmy Webb. Hartman also takes us inside the studio for the legendary sessions that gave us Pet Sounds, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the rock classic "Layla," which Wrecking Crew drummer Jim Gordon cowrote with Eric Clapton for Derek and the Dominos. And the author recounts priceless scenes such as Mike Nesmith of the Monkees facing off with studio head Don Kirshner, Grass Roots lead guitarist (and future star of The Office) Creed Bratton getting fired from the group, and Michel Rubini unseating Frank Sinatra's pianist for the session in which the iconic singer improvised the hit-making ending to "Strangers in the Night."

The Wrecking Crew tells the collective, behind-the-scenes stories of the artists who dominated Top 40 radio during the most exciting time in American popular culture.

Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, Paine's text is a passionate defense of man's inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens, "at his characteristically incisive best," marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness (The Times, London). Hitchens is a political descendant of the great pamphleteer, "a Tom Paine for our troubled times." (The Independent, London) In this "engaging account of Paine's life and times [that is] well worth reading" he demonstrates how Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the United States, and how, "in a time when both rights and reason are under attack," Thomas Paine's life and writing "will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend." (New Statesman)

Een studie van het Asperger syndroom.

"...!?" Is niet meteen de meest veelzeggende titel voor een boek. Hij is zelfs onuitspreekbaar. Probeer dat maar eens te bestellen in de boekhandel! Maar toch herken je de tekens. Leestekens zijn het. We kunnen ze zelfs benoemen: "punt, punt, punt, uitroepteken, vraagteken". En toch zegt het je als titel waarschijnlijk niks. Dat komt omdat je er niet in slaagt de boodschap achter de tekens te vatten. U begrijpt al dat dit boek over communicatie gaat. Bij mensen met een stoornis in het autismespectrum verloopt de communicatie niet altijd effectief. Zij missen het talent dat anderen wél hebben om te goochelen met symbolen. Soms kunnen zij symbolen wel benoemen, net als u de leestekens uit de titel benoemt. Maar net zoals bij de titel van dit boek blijft de boodschap, de betekenis achter de symbolen, een raadsel voor hen. Dit komt omdat kennis van symbolen of het "woordenboek" onvoldoende is om tot echte communicatie te komen. Spraak is nog geen taal. Dat weten de specialisten van de computerspraaktechnologie maar al te goed. Willen wij mensen met autisme helpen in één van de meest wezenlijke menselijke activiteiten, de communicatie, dan zal het niet volstaan hen uit te rusten met een bagage vol symbolen. We zullen hen moeten helpen in het complexe menselijke proces van het uitwisselen van betekenissen.

Every time we are introduced to someone new, try to be creative, or start a difficult conversation, we take a risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - we strive to appear perfect.

In a powerful new vision Brene Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability - from revealing our true selves - we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.

Daring Greatly is the culmination of 12 years of ground-breaking social research, across every area of our lives including home, relationships, work, and parenting. It is an invitation to be courageous; to show up and let ourselves be seen, even when there are no guarantees

Wat als het noodlot toeslaat? Christel, een optimistische stralende vrouw met een enorme levenskracht, vertelt in dit aangrijpende en ontroerende boek over haar uitzonderlijke gezin. De jongste drie van haar vier kinderen zijn verstandelijk beperkt en autistisch. Hierdoor ontstaat een chaotische en onzekere situatie. Uiteindelijk komen ze erachter dat de kinderen het zeldzame syndroom van Cohen hebben. Eerlijk schrijft deze moeder over de invloed die haar bijzondere kinderen hebben op haar relatie, haar gezin en hun omgeving. Christel verliest zichzelf niet in wrok, verdriet of in een slachtofferrol. Met haar verhaal toont ze hoe hoop en onvoorwaardelijke liefde de teleurstellingen#13;#13;en tegenslagen overwinnen en uiteindelijk het leven verrijken.#13;#13;'Onze kinderen zijn anders' is een persoonlijk verhaal van een vrouw, moeder en echtgenote. Het boek biedt (h)erkenning aan ouders die een 'handicap' overkomt. Voor specialisten, zorgverleners (in opleiding), instellingen en instanties biedt dit boek inzicht in het proces dat verwanten van hun cliënten doorstaan. Leerkrachten in het speciaal onderwijs krijgen een waardevol kijkje achter de schermen van de thuissituatie van hun leerlingen.#13;#13;Christel Kooyman maakt sinds zij moeder is notities over haar kinderen en besloot haar ervaringen in boekvorm te gieten. Waar het boek eindigt, gaan haar blogs verder. Deze zijn te vinden op onzekinderenzijnanders.nl.

Opstellen over het belang van emotionele steun aan begeleiders van mensen met een verstandelijke beperking.

Wat overkomt een gezin wanneer een ouder op jonge leeftijd plotseling een beroerte krijgt? Jasper heeft het meegemaakt. Zijn vader kreeg een ernstig herseninfarct toen Jasper vijf jaar was en zijn zusjes vier en twee. Een ingrijpende periode van ziekenhuisopnames en klinische opname in een revalidatiecentrum volgde. Eén ding was duidelijk: de oude pap was er niet meer en zou ook niet terugkomen. De nieuwe pap was anders. Twee jaar na het herseninfarct lijkt het stof dat het infarct heeft doen opwaaien enigszins neer te dalen en wordt een beetje duidelijk hoe het nieuwe gezinsleven met de nieuwe pap er uit gaat zien.

From Tristram Hunt, award-winning author of The Frock-Coated Communist and leading UK politician, Ten Cities that Made an Empire presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through the cities that epitomised itSince the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and the end days of Empire, Britain's colonial past has been the subject of passionate debate. Tristram Hunt goes beyond the now familiar arguments about Empire being good or bad and adopts a fresh approach to Britain's empire and its legacy. Through an exceptional array of first-hand accounts and personal reflections, he portrays the great colonial and imperial cities of Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and twentieth-century Liverpool: their architecture, culture, and society balls; the famines, uprisings and repressions which coursed through them; the primitive accumulation and ghostly bureaucracy which ran them; the British supremacists and multicultural trailblazers who inhabited them.From the pioneers of early America to the builders of modern India, from west to east and back again, Hunt follows the processes of exchange and adaptation that collectively moulded the colonial experience and which in their turn transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles. This vivid and richly detailed imperial story, located in ten of the most important cities which the Empire constructed, demolished, reconstructed and transformed, allows us a new understanding of the British Empire's influence upon the world and the world's influence upon it.TRISTRAM HUNT is one of Britain's best known historians. Since 2010 he has been the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, and in October 2013 was made Shadow Secretary of State for Education. He is a senior lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written numerous series for radio and television. He is also a regular contributor to the Times, Guardian and Observer. His previous books include The English Civil War at First Hand, Building Jerusalem, and The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, which was published in more than a dozen languages.Praise for The Frock-Coated Communist:'Beautifully written and consistently engaging' - Independent'An excellent book ... Hunt has a mastery of 19th-century British culture and European political thought' - Robert Service, Sunday Times'Thoughtful and engaging' - Telegraph Review

Naipaul's turn in the South takes him from Atlanta to Charleston, from Tallahassee to Tuskegee, from Jackson to Nashville to Chapel Hill. As he travels, he senses the strong pull the past exerts on inhabitants of the region: the weighty legacy of the land and history that seems to inextricably root to their homeland every Southerner he meets. Naipaul's journey is fueled by the ideas, the thoughts, the beliefs revealed in his probing conversations with Southern politicians and journalists, farmers and college professors, preachers and businessmen, waitresses and judges--who are his guides into the complex, often hidden, life of the South. ISBN 0-394-56477-4: $18.95.

"The idea of 'civilisation' has always been debated, even fought over. At the heart of those debates lies the big question of how people - from prehistory to the present day - have depicted themselves and others, both human and divine. Distinguished historian Mary Beard explores how art has shaped, and been shaped by, the people who created it. How have we looked at these images? Why have they sometimes been so contentious?In Part One, she examines how the human figure was portrayed in some of the earliest art in the world - from the gigantic stone heads carved by the Olmec of Central America to the statues and pottery of the ancient Greeks to the terracotta army of the first emperor of China. And she explains how one particular version of representing the human body, which goes back to the ancient world, still influences (and sometimes distorts) how people in the West see their own culture and that of others. Throughout this story, she is concerned not only with the artists who made images, but with those who have used them, viewed them and interpreted them. In other words: 'How Do We Look?' In Part Two, Mary Beard turns to the relationship between art and religion. For centuries, religion has inspired art: from the Hindu temple at Angkor Wat to the Christian mosaics of Ravenna to the exquisite calligraphy of Islamic mosques. But making the divine visible in the human world has never been simple. All religions have wrestled with idolatry and iconoclasm, destroying art as well as creating it - and asking how to look with 'The Eye of Faith.'"--Jacket.

Emperor of Rome explores the fact and fiction of the rulers of the ancient Roman world, asking what they did, why they did it, and why their stories have been told in the extravagant, sometimes lurid, ways that they have. It looks at big questions of power, corruption and conspiracy. But it also looks at the day-to-day practicalities of their lives. What, and where, did they eat? Who did they sleep with? How did they travel? In the course of the book, we shall meet many people who were not, and did not aspire to be, emperors themselves, but who made the imperial system possible: wary aristocrats, enslaved cooks, diligent secretaries, court jesters - even a doctor who treated one young prince for his tonsillitis. The survival of the Roman empire as a system makes no sense if it was ruled by a series of deranged autocrats. I am interested in how those stories of madness arose, in how the business of empire was really conducted, and in Roman fears that the rule of the emperors was not so much blood-stained (they expected that), but was a strange and unsettling dystopia built on deception and fakery

John Parkinson's beautiful Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris inspired Anna Parkinson from an early age. Who was this man who wrote so engagingly about plants? Was he a relation, as her father believed? And why was so little known about a man who was a key influence on the flowering of the English garden in the 17th century? Intrigued, she set out to find the answers. Now, for the first time, John Parkinson can be seen as a man whose story reveals the excitement and agony of those turbulent times. His lifelong passion for plants was bound up with the new dawn of scientific enquiry and the struggles of faith. We follow him from a humble childhood in Lancashire to a career as an apothecary in London which would bring him to high office under Charles I. We see how he tried, with his medical colleagues, to create a new 'common wealth' to replace the old monastic system, vesting his effort in writing the most comprehensive and scientific herbal there had ever been in English. Yet as a Catholic he kept a low profile, quietly growing an extraordinary range of flowers for 'delight and pleasure' in his notable garden in Covent Garden. He carefully recorded them all and had them engraved for his wonderful books.

It is 1806 and Napoleon is master of an empire covering half of Europe. He subdues kings, conquers woman and defies the Pope himself over the Continental Blockade. In this dazzling mix of history and creativity, Max Gallo brilliantly recreates the most pivotal and turbulent years of the Little Corporal's reign, ending with his 500,000 strong army's march into Russia in 1812. Shifting between the battlefield and the bedroom, this book follows every step of Napoleon's relentless pursuit of power.