United Kingdom Books

My copy of this product ran wonderfully on Windows XP, but will not install on Windows Vista.

No, Samuel Johnson did not write the first English Dictionary. Let's dispense with that up front. However, he did write an incredibly high quality one, the first high quality English Dictionary actually, and he did it practically singlehandedly. (For the details of the effort, please see "The Making of Johnson's Dictionary," by Reddick, also available here at Amazon.)

Johnson wrote his Dictionary at a time when people read Dictionaries, not just referred to them. Knowing that, Johnson pursued his goal of putting a stake in the ground as to the meaning of words while developing and promoting a point of view; he was very careful about the quotations he used to illustrate his words, and the choices he made have been the subject of numerous books.

Johnson knew, in writing a Dictionary, that any attempt to cement the language was due to failure, and he said as much in his famous Preface. However, he felt obliged to make an effort (heck, he'd already received some advance money, and had to make good!), and over the course of years produced a volume that reigned supreme until the advent of the Oxford English Dictionary.

(You may already be aware of amusing definitions found within, such as oats, pensioner, etc., but it would be a shame to let the amusement distract you from the achievement that this represents.)

McDermott has included both the 1st and 4th editions on this CD-ROM, thus providing the two major editions Johnson produced (other editions are either skeletons, sans quotations, or very similar to these here), and its presence on CD-ROM makes it mcuh handier than pulling two heavy volumes off the shelf (which would cost you thousands of dollars anyway). I only have two regrets, neither of which should stop you from buying this. One, the CD-ROM does not include Johnson's Preface (it is easily available in paperback Johnson anthologies, but the absence seems pointless). Two, unless I haven't figured the interface out, it's a bit clunky: words are not searchable, one must click sections open.

That being said, I am still very glad I have my copy, and I bought a second for my alma mater.

This book is a great help by aging and checking out future sales if you are a collector. If you are not this is also a great book just to read .

The book gives a very indepth view of the history of dinky toys as well as thorough description of the various models. The part "lacking" is descriptions about French-made dinky toys (eight-hundred numbers)

Greyhounds have been revered since ancient times where they appear on the walls of the tombs of the Pharos. For Henry VIII they were his favourite hunting dogs. But in Laura Thompson's book we find a personal testament to a more modern chapter in the history of this noble creature.

Greyhound racing in the United Kingdom came to prominence in the dark economic recession of the 30's, being in some ways a cameo of its elder sister - horse racing. Sharing a deep and longstanding affiliation with Ireland champion racing greyhounds, like cup-winning racehorses, often drew their first breath on the other side of the Irish Sea.

Laura Thompson's book takes us right into the heart of people, places and of course the dogs she knew as a child. With the hindsight of an age in which some of the great Stadia like White City in West London have already been lost, she takes us on a journey which immortalises a generation of owners and trainers.

For anybody who has ever spent an evening at a Greyhound Stadium and wondered what lay behind it all.. this book is the inside track.

This is not just a history of greyhound racing, it is a deeply moving personal insight into Laura Thompson, her love for dogs and her love for the father who owned and raced them. The book is Fever Pitch with heart; I wept buckets reading the damn thing. It is full of compassion for the greyhounds who run in the name of business and sport, and full of guilt for the fact that they give so much pleasure while being used, all too often, as playthings. It is also a journey into a completely separate world of which I hitherto knew nothing, and which came wonderfully alive for me. I found this book by accident in a second hand shop and couldn't help myself from wanting to say something about it - it is really beautiful.

Doing The Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy : Its Origin, Practice, and Demise (Kingdom in the West : the Mormons and the American Frontier, Volume 9) Hardy's previous book on Mormon polygamy, Solumn Covenant, was heretofore the best book on the subject I've ever read. However, in this book he equals if not surpasses that by bringing together in one volume, not only his own narrative on the subject from 1831 to 1933. but includes primary documents on the subject, both pro- and anti-. It was a fascinating and illuminating read.

The ninth volume of The Arthur H. Clark Company 'Kingdom in the West: the Mormons and the American Frontier' series, "Doing The Works Of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy, Its Origin, Practice, And Demise" by academician and Mormon historian B. Carmon Hardy (Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Fullerton) is a history of the peculiar theological doctrine of 'Celestial Marriage' that commanded male members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints under the successive leadership of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor to practice polygamy as a form of sanctified marriage. From its shadowy inception in Nauvoo, Illinois in the 1830s to its public proclamation in 1852, and through almost forty years of conflict with the federal government, polygamy was an honored practice within the Church until the Mormon leadership renounced the practice in 1890 in order to become a state, quell dissent within Church ranks, and deprive their opponents of an effective weapon in argument of what was considered by the broader American society as a scandalous practice. Especially recommended for students of Mormon History in general and the practice of polygamy in particular, "Doing The Works Of Abraham" is an impressive work of meticulous scholarship and a seminal contribution to academic library 19th Century American History reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

With Domination and Conquest Davies, one of the most prominent historians of the "British" middle ages, has put together a gem of a book. Davies' fundamental purpose here is to put an end to many of the misconceptions about the Anglicization of Britain and Ireland. Beginning with a discussion of the difference between domination and conquest, Davies helps us see that the military aspect of this episode in history is not as important as it often appears. From here Davies moves on to shatter the idea of a concerted and organized Anglo-Norman endeavor to conquer and dominate the Isles, and the myth of organized resistances in Wales and Ireland. In the end, Davies leaves us with a profoundly different understanding of Anglo-Norman expansion in the British Isles. In addition to being illuminating, Domination and Conquest is wonderfully written and a joy to read.

I should start with a disclaimer - Rees Davies was my doctoral supervisor at Oxford. That said, this is a short, well-written exposition of the trend in recent British medieval historiography, advanced by Davies and Robin Frame, in which the boundaries of "national" history are broken down. Davies examines the ideological underpinnings, going back to the Anglo-Saxons, for the overlordship of the British Isles and Ireland by the kings of England. He then proceeds to examine Anglo-Norman expansion and infiltration in Wales, Ireland and Scotland in all its myriad aspects. Military conquest was only one tool available, and was accompanied by economic exploitation (and blandishments), the imposition or denial of English law, and English domination of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Wales and Ireland. With an eye for the telling anecdote, Davies shows how the Anglo-Normans were flexible, adapting from local societies what suited their purposes and exploiting political divisions and rivalries for their own ends. Davies is a good writer as well as one of the most prominent medieval historians in the U.K., and this book should prove accessible for the lay reader interested in what the author has called the "first English empire".

This book is THE book for Don's work. I found it, and another collection of his work in a book store and this is the clear winner!

I read an interview with Don McCullin in a photography magazine recently in which he described why he is different to other war photojournalists. His response was that he learned to be compassionate about his subjects. Not to just take photos of horror but also try and capture that emotion that the victims of war feel.... all I can say is that he succeeds completely.

While looking through this book you are confronted with the reality of war. It's not CNN, it's not your standard major newspaper shots either - it's the real deal. Looking at dead bodies, or children starving to death, or women crying over the bodies of their assassinated husbands you can't help but want to cry with them.

This book will change everything that you believe about war...if you let it.

Don McCullin is one of the greatest photographers of our time and this 295-page book beautifully reproduces Mr. McCullin's work. The book includes stunning black and white images of England, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, Cyprus, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Beirut and Bangladesh. For example, the book contains (at page 90) an exceptionally moving photograph of a Turkish woman discovering the body of her new husband, killed with his brother and father in Cyprus in 1964. On the lighter side of life, the book includes gorgeous landscapes of Scotland. And the size of the images is large enough to really do them justice. I highly recommend this book.

When I found out that Brassey's Military Profiles series was doing an assessment of Francis Drake, I was pleased that this complex and almost legendary figure was going to be summed up in a handy snapshot reference work. At 89 pages of text, this endeavor was quite a challenge. Dudley Wade has managed to include all the controversies and episodes while providing a surprisingly full and fair an appraisal in such a concise book.

My introduction to Drake was a reading of Julian Corbett's one volume 1912 biography (rather than his more scholarly but ponderous 1899 two volume treatment incorporating the dawn of the British Navy). While a handy summary of Drake's career, in just over 200 pages, it was written for a British audience and assumed some background knowledge of the personalities, parties and political-religious quarrels both within England and among its European (principally Spanish) antagonists. Plus Corbett's Edwardian British chauvinism and dated idiom is a bit off-putting. I've since read works on the English "sea dogs" and renaissance era piracy and seafaring, and was looking for a good, brief overview of Drake employing modern (i.e. late 20th century) research.

Chapter 1, Prelude (pp. 3-13). This is a valuable chapter setting the exploits of Drake in total context. This includes the development of seafaring/navigation, maritime trade and conquest, the vagaries and rivalries of the search for routes to the sources of spices (and later, more fortuitously precious metals and gems) in the East, and the rise of Protestant-Catholic (not always so neatly demarcated) antagonism, later focused on the struggle between Protestant England and Caotholic Spain and their allies, pawns, dupes and double-agents. All this is set into English court and religious history - often identical-and the various political intrigues surrounding Elizabeth I.

Chapter 2, Young Man Drake (pp. 15-28). Born of the lesser gentry (economically akin to the present day lower middle class) Drake's father, a tailor by trade, became a preacher in the new Church of England and thus a target for a Catholic backlash against Edward VI's promulgation of a common prayer book. Fleeing local persecution the family wound up living in a ship's hulk converted to a home near Plymouth where young Drake was exposed to seafarers of the port as his father received a very modest stipend to preach the new gospel to them. Here Dudley speculates on the exposure of the boy to the nuts and bolts, or knots and splices, of practical seamanship, while his father imbued him with guiding principles of his Protestant faith and a concomitant hatred of Catholicism - though not of Catholics as individuals. The brief return of the pro-Catholic "Bloody Mary" to the throne marked another stage in the young Drake's career, wherein for his son's safety, his father agreed that his eldest son should leave home at the age of 13. Dudley notes two theories about his schooling in seamanship at this point. One, that generally prevalent in early histories and most popular accounts is that Drake became apprenticed to a coastal merchant, who upon his death, bequeathed Drake his vessel. The alternate account, one seemingly favored by Dudley, is that Drake was "fostered" into the home of a prosperous relative, William Hawkins of Plymouth. Here, Drake would have similarly gained considerable practical knowledge of seamanship while aboard the family's several 50-ton vessels, while also continuing a formal education in the mathematical and navigational skills. Also, here is where the young Drake likely acquired his familiarity with the international diplomatic scene as well as the political savvy to hold his own among haughty gentry. The Hawkins family privateering tradition also imbued Drake with this entrepreneurial and self-directed attitude towards armed adventures. Plus he gained valuable experience in the tricky three-way slaves for gold and produce trade, England-African West Coast - Spanish Caribbean, that danced the fine line between sticking it to the Spaniards and overkill which would get Elizabeth in hot water over her "plausible deniability" sponsorship. Here, in a few close-run escapades, Drake learned the value of Protestant allies and how being charitable to Catholic prisoners and victims could also reap benefits. Plus he acquired his outstanding proficiency in seamanship, both in uncharted shoals and in the vast deep blue, and how to stomach dire adversity with a clear head and cool nerves. The treacherous Spanish attack at San Juan de Ulua, off the coast of Mexico led to some vague charge that Drake deserted the expedition, but his reputation for excellent seamanship was affirmed despite the financial losses. Most importantly, it spurred him to seek revenge on the haughty overbearing Catholic rulers of Spain.

Chapter 3, To the Spanish Main and Beyond (pp. 29-47)continues the saga of the imperfectly "sponsored" freebooting raids on Spanish maritime treasure and communications. It provides a handy summary of Drake's circumnavigation -- a covert operation that forever cemented his place (and that of his diminutive galleon the Golden Hind) in history. Drake's summary trial and execution of a dissident captain, the courtier Thomas Doughty, is handled deftly. Interestingly, Dudley suggests that this incident underlies Drake's shipboard piety, as a guilty conscience plagued him.

Chapter 4, the War of the Armada (pp 49-71)j is a very good summary of the Armada campaign and Drake's role. Dudley's criticism of Drake's apparent insubordination in failing to keep formation has to be seen in light of the epoch's rather lax concept of "command and control" and discipline among adventurous and independent-minded sea rovers.

Chapter 5, The Final Raids (pp. 73-83)shows Drake's waning powers of judgment and self-confidence.

Chapter 6, Who Was Francis Drake (pp 85-89) neatly reviews the controversies and possible explanations for Drake's checkered career as an adventurer, commander, local politician and mid-level aristocrat who was never accepted by the "landed gentry" who haunted the court of Elizabeth I at a time when her power abroad depended on the likes of Hawkins, Drake, et. al. -- men who were fanatically loyal to Queen Bess's England but who would not brook any interference from petty politicians, or a Queen's conservatism inspired by their court intrigues.

Drake: For God, Queen, And Plunder by military historian Wade G. Dudley (Visiting Assistant Professor, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina) is a fascinating, informed and informative, military and historical biography of Sir Francis Drake, the famous high seas plunderer of fifteenth century England, who was fueled by hatred of Catholic Spain and his devotion to his Protestant queen Elizabeth I. Highly recommended reading, Drake is a very carefully researched and engagingly told account with an especial focus upon Drake's nautical and military tactics.

This is a great book. I have not been able to stop reading. It does indeed read like a good novel. You will find that it explains a great deal about our Victorian heritage and some of the ideas that have shaped the present. Fascinating!

When I began to read "Each Mind a Kingdom", I soon realized that it was that dreaded genre--the doctoral dissertation made flesh.
I expected the worst sort of academic exercise, in both senses of the word, and read on only because the book had a great cover and I am fascinated with New Thought ideas.

But "Each Mind a Kingdom" is anything but a dry academic tome.
It's as alive as a novel, and full of ideas and opinions. It's rather like going to a movie like "My Dinner with Andre", in which the author sets up ideas with scenarios, and then allows the ideas to subtly hover.

I'm not saying that I found everything in "Each Mind a Kingdom" to be a plethora of positions with which I agreed. Indeed, in many cases, I felt that Dr. Satter over-eggs the pudding, and draws conclusions beyond her citations, and, in some cases, dismisses as "ambiguous" or "unclear" those authorities which do not fit her premise. I found the omission of Elizabeth Delvine King's work, whose "purity new thought" ideas would not fit the author's "chronology" of the rise and fall of the "purity" movement, to be puzzling, and the near-dismissal of the Unity School and Religious Science to be curious in light of the far greater mainstream impact each movement had upon the culture than many of the people whom the author covers in detail.

Still, this book merits reading because it is a narrative voice making important points from fascinating subject matter. She introduced me to thinkers with whose work I was less familiar. More importantly, she tackles the gender rhetoric of early New Thought writings, particularly that by women, and examines the impact of the competing ways of looking at things on the broad culture.

Dr. Satter has three to five books of material in this work, and it is in some senses a shame that she tries to do so much.
Her conclusory points about Freud and modern self-help,each interesting, appear to be "toss ins" to try to "add relevance" to a work which needs no such effort.

But this is a fundamentally satisfying work, even though it is not free of flaws, because it has a rich sweep of ideas and characters better suited to a wonderful set of novels than to a single tome about gender imagery in New Thought. One might wish (as I do) that Dr. Satter adopted a style a little less quick to jump to conclusions and a little more willing to consider the rhetorical and metaphoric value of gender terminology (rather than the more mechanical, if fascinating,angle she takes).
But nonetheless, the work simply fascinates--it's a good read, with many troubling and promising lines of analysis.

Dr. Satter's explorations all prove quite interesting, and well worth reading, although some of her conclusions are notions with which I could not disagree more. This is perhaps a mark of a good book, though--you can dissent from the author's point of view, and yet still like the work.

I encourage anyone who wishes to understand the turn of the 20th Century to read this work, which offers ideas which will be both controversial, sometimes perhaps even unacceptable, but always fascinating. Well done. I wish that every dissertation read so well.

Air travel in the United States was heavily regulated for many, many years. Then deregulation came and the era of inexpensive air travel came in. In Europe it was a much bigger mess. Most of the airlines were owned by the Government and had enough pull within the Government to make it difficult for new airlines to enter their protected territory.

easyJet has been able to carve a business out of the European market. Sometimes it has used, shall we say, 'creative' techniques. For instance, in trying to restrict entry into the market and protect SwissAir, the Swiss attempted to stop them by citing an obscure rule that said that that they had to offer accommodations with their tickets. easyJet's president had a tent errected on a hillside nearby and said that any passenger who wanted accommodations were welcome to stay there.

The story of easyJet is the story of our modern time as the rules of international business are changing dramatically. Indeed the whole rise of the no-frills airlines has been an interesting addition to the conventional airlines. The success of easyJet also proves that all new businesses don't have to be high-tech to succeed. There are still fortunes to be made in the more mundane businesses. The story of easyJet has lessons in it for all of us in business. As business becomes more world wide, any business needs to look at international expansion. The easyJet story is one involving a large number of countries and they did it in a different way.

"EasyJet: The Story of England's Biggest Low-Cost Airline" is a delightful book that those interested in the growing low cost airline phenomenon worldwide will enjoy reading. EasyJet is the largest and successful low cost airline based at Luton Airport near London. The airline operates frequent scheduled services for leisure and business passengers and serves more than 200 routes between more than 65 European airports. Its founder is the Greek Cypriot entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

The airline business is modelled around the successful no frills formula that has been brilliantly employed for over a generation by Southwest Airlines in the USA and its nearby rival Ryanair, based in Ireland. EasyJet and Ryanair are the largest low cost airlines in Europe, The airline started operations in November 1995. EasyJet can operate low cost flights because of its low operating costs. The airline achieves this by, among other things, flying to and from airports that offer cheaper take-off and landing fees, eliminating free meals and drinks during flights, using online and telephone booking systems to eliminate travel agent commissions, flying more often than traditional carriers, not allocating specific seats to passengers (free seating to speed up the passenger boarding process) and competing with all transport modes (especially road and railway transport).

The airline also typically opens new routes with no competition from legacy carriers and tends to target the price conscious business, leisure and visiting friends and relatives passengers. It has an aggressive marketing and pricing strategy and focus on short and medium haul traffic with high frequency of services. The airline has a strong brand.

EasyJet initially operated exclusively Boeing 737 aircraft to minimise costs. However, in September 2003 it broke with its philosophy of operating just one aircraft type, a typical strategy by low cost airlines worldwide, by ordering 120 Airbus A319 aircraft. When the last of the Airbus A319s has been delivered in 2007 easyJet is expected to have retired most of its Boeing 737 fleet.

So this is the story of easyJet, which Lois Jones related with rigour and eloquence.

Britain. Wow, what a place. End to end it's colorful (hence the gray thing in the title, little reference to the weather, you know) it's weird, and it's not afraid to celebrate its peccadilloes. It's so interesting there it makes me wonder, as I always do, why the locals ever felt the need to leave and, oh, I dunno, bug the Irish so much. That said (hey, it was my sworn duty) this seriously is a neat book and I enjoyed it a lot. It's full of stories almost too odd to be real and places that call out to you to visit. From cursed chairs in innocuous pubs, to aliens and crop circles, to festivals that merrily commemorate the droolingly insane side to life---shin-kicking contests and Guy Fawke's Day---this island has it all and this book tells you about it. When and if I go next summer for the first time in nine years, I'm going to check out as many as I can of the freakish locales Benedict le Vay (any relation to Morgan le Fay, I wonder?) writes about. Read this book and come away with more respect than ever for the eccentric-loving people who gave us Eastenders, "classic" literature, and one darn cool flag (quite honestly worn over there as underwear) the Union Jack.

I'd often heard that Britain had a tolerance for eccentrics, but I never knew to what extent. Some of these people are really, really weird, and they put more effort into bizzare hobbies, old local customs, and freaky sporting events than you would think possible. Wouldn't it be interesting if Americans spent more time going to blood sausage throwing contests than kid's sports tournaments? Together with Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island", you could spend a extremely interesting vacation in Britain without ever going near any of the usual tourist haunts.