Biographies

"Love is a boundless ocean, in which the heavens are but a flake of foam." For more than eight hundred years, the poetry of Jalalu'l-Din Rumi has touched and inspired people of all faiths and cultures. Considered the greatest mystical poet of Iran, Rumi is also known as "the Sufi poet of love." His stirring and mesmerizing words have gained a new appreciation in the western world, influencing celebrities and musicians from Deepak Chopra to Coldplay and Madonna. Rumi produced an enormous body of work--as many as 2,500 mystical odes; 25,000 rhyming couplets; and 1,600 quatrains--each reflecting his fervent belief in the transformative powers of longing, love, and spirituality. This beautifully designed hardcover volume presents more than one hundred of Rumi's finest verses, including "The Marriage of True Minds," "The Children of Light," "The Man Who Looked Back on His Way to Hell," "The Ascending Soul," "The Pear-Tree of Illusion," "The Riddles of God," and many more.

In this exhilarating memoir, three-time World Champion and Olympic gold-medalist Nathan Chen tells the story of his remarkable journey to success, reflecting on his life as a Chinese American figure skater and the joys and challenges he has experienced?including the tremendous sacrifices he and his family made, and the physical and emotional pain he endured. When three-year-old Nathan Chen tried on his first pair of figure skates, magic happened. But the odds of this young boy?one of five children born to Chinese immigrants?competing and making it into the top echelons of figure skating were daunting. Chen's family didn't have the resources or access to pay for expensive coaches, rink time, and equipment. But Nathan's mother, Hetty Wang, refused to fail her child. Recognizing his tremendous talent and passion, she stepped up as his coach, making enormous sacrifices to give Nathan the opportunity to compete in this exclusive world.That dedication eventually paid off at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, where Chen?reverently known as the ?Quad King??won gold, becoming the first Asian-American man to stand at the highest podium in figure skating. In this moving and inspiring memoir Chen opens up for the first time, chronicling everything it took to pursue his dreams. Bolstered by his unwavering passion and his family's unconditional support, Chen reveals the most difficult times he endured, and how he overcame each obstacle?from his disappointment at the 2018 Olympic Games, to competing during a global pandemic, to the extreme physical and mental toll the sport demands.Pulling back the curtain on the figure skating world and the Olympics, Chen reveals what it was really like at the Beijing Games and competing on the US team in the same city his parents had left?and his grandmother still lived. Poignant and unfiltered, told in his own words, One Jump at a Time is the story of one extraordinary young man?and a testament to the love of a family and the power of persistence, grit, and passion.This memoir includes 16 pages of color photographs.

By Philippe Margotin with a foreword by David Sinclair. Pop Rock Icons takes us into the extraordinary world of London, England at the time of the greatest countercultural upheaval that the country has known.

A renowned scholar investigates the human crisis' that Albert Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant study of Camus's life and influence for those readers who, in Camuss words, ';cannot live without dialogue and friendship.'As Franceand all of the worldwas emerging from the depths of World War II, Camus summed up what he saw as the human crisis': We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world. In the years after he wrote these words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity, and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946for his first and only visit to the United Stateshe found an ebullient nation celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was dead, but ';we know perfectly well,' he argued, ';that the venom is not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts.' All around him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that we see all around, and within ourselves, today. Camus's voice speaks like few others to the heart of an affliction that infects our country and our world, a world divided against itself. His generation called him ';the conscience of Europe.' That same voice speaks to us and our world today with a moral integrity and eloquence so sorely lacking in the public arena. Few authors, sixty years after their deaths, have more avid readers, across more continents, than Albert Camus. Camus has never been a trend, a fad, or just a good read. He was always and still is a companion, a guide, a challenge, and a light in darkened times. This keenly insightful story of an intellectual is an ideal volume for those readers who are first discovering Camus, as well as a penetrating exploration of the author for all those who imagine they have already plumbed Camus' depthsa supremely timely book on an author whose time has come once again.

As one of club culture's most notorious - and best loved - figures, Tony is a complete force of nature. Here he tells the most extraordinary stories of depravity and hedonism, of week-long benders and extreme self-destruction - and of recovery, redemption, friendship and the joy of a good tune.'If you want to change your life but can't.. I strongly advise you read this book' TRACEY EMIN'This is a story that should never have been told' KATE MOSS 'I love this man so much. He was, and always will be, my knight in shining Westwood.' DAVINA MCCALL'Anyone can get a party started, but no one keeps it going like Fat Tony, the energy never dips andwhat a life he's lived.. He's a tosser but we still love him.' ELTON JOHN & DAVID FURNISHDJ Fat Tony has been described as 'the closest thing that club culture has to a national treasure' and the 'unlikely cult hero of quarantine'. Few people have crammed so many lives into one: when your first line of cocaine is aged 16 with Freddie Mercury, where do you go from there?I Don't Take Requests is Fat Tony's breathtakingly candid and outrageous memoir of a life of extremes. From his childhood on an estate in Battersea where he honed his petty criminality, was abused by an older man and made friends with Boy George, to his teenage years spent parading the Kings Road in his latest (stolen) clobber, working as a receptionist for a prostitute, hanging out with Leigh Bowery and Sue Tilley and creating his drag persona, to his life as DJ to the stars and his spiral into serious drug addiction. Now, he is 16 years sober and, alongside working to help others overcome addiction, DJing for everyone from Elton John to Louis Vuitton and the Beckhams - and running one of lockdown's most popular Instagram accounts with its wickedly funny memes. It is all here in horrifying, glorious, heart-breaking detail.'Whenever we host a party, Tony is our first port of call. He'll have everyone dancing, guarantee great memories, and the stories he tells... Just don't f*****g ask for any requests!' DAVID & VICTORIA BECKHAM'There is nobody in London, let alone the world who has lived a more extraordinary life... his journey from villain to real life hero is one of the most beautiful examples of humanity I have ever witnessed. I wouldn't be without this c*nt.' KELLY OSBOURNE'Hearing Tony's story is brutal and shocking. He is nothing short of a miracle and his willingness to be of service to others seeking sobriety is testament to how far he has come from the days of pulling his own teeth out.' MARC JACOBS

Dispensing with the patriarchal bullshit, Kirsty Loehr exposes centuries of outrageous straightwashing

Bon Scott was once asked if he was AC or DC. ''Neither,'' he grinned, ''I''m the lightning flash in the middle.'' And that''s how he lived his life.No one had the same skill with lyrics as Bon, who called his words ''toilet poetry'', his ''dirty ditties''. He could also vividly depict life on the road, best heard in the AC/DC classics ''Long Way to the Top'' and ''Highway to Hell''.When Bon appeared on Countdown in March 1975, the impression he left was indelible. The ugliest schoolgirl to ever grace the small screen, Bon was a mess of tattoos and pigtails, wearing an awkwardly short skirt, all the while puffing on a ciggie. His bandmates, not just the audience, were in hysterics. The video quickly became part of Oz rock folklore.Bon was always the joker in the AC/DC pack. He''d happily pose for a photograph with a joint dangling from his lips or be interviewed in cut-off shorts with a banana provocatively stuffed into his waistband. Anything to elicit a laugh. The off-stage stories surrounding Bon are legendary. After spending a lively couple of days with Bon, Ol'' 55 singer Jim Manzie said, ''My rock-and-roll education was pretty much complete.''Bad Boy Boogie is the first biography to focus on Bon''s remarkable gifts as a lyricist, frontman and rascal. In short, the real Bon Scott.

Evocative, funny and poignant, this is the third volume of memoirs from James Herriot who inspired the television series All Creatures Great and Small

'The Power' is back. King of the oche and a legend in the game, Phil Taylor is largely responsible for taking darts into the 21st century. Recently crowned world champion for an unprecedented eleventh time, Taylor is a complete one-off ? the Tiger Woods of his sport ? and the most phenomenal player ever to throw a dart. Brought up in the back streets of the Potteries, where his Dad tried to turn him into a boxer, Taylor's first job saw him earning £75 a week in a factory making ceramic toilet handles ? and by the age of 25 he had hardly thrown a dart in anger. Then he attended an Eric Bristow darts exhibition, and the 'Crafty Cockney' became his mentor and friend and loaned him £10,000 to play the pro circuit. Within five years Taylor had won the first of his eleven world titles ... In his book, Taylor describes how Bristow coaxed, bullied, humiliated and often literally punched him into making it as a pro. He is candid about the booze culture of the game, while revisiting the memorable matches and recalling vivid stories featuring the likes of Bristow, Cliff Lazarenko (who once had 20 cans of lager before a match), John Lowe and the legendary Jocky Wilson. A dispute between the professional players and the British Darts Organisation in 1992 almost led to a dispirited Taylor giving up the game for good. And he retraces the worst six months of his life, during which time he was convicted of sexually assaulting two female fans and had his MBE rescinded. The pain for his family was hard to bear. This is a story of a man having to come to terms with unparalleled success in his professional life after a career setback that would have destroyed many others; a unique sportsman whose steely-eyed determination won him an unprecedented eleventh world title in 2004 in what many observers described as the best professional darts match in living memory.

The Rise is Mike Sielski's inside look at the life of Kobe Bryant, one of the most captivating basketball players of all time, with never-before-seen material.

A lost inheritance, a rags-to-riches journey from vagabondage in the mountains of central Asia to an imperial throne in India, warrior-poet Babur's life was one of adventure and endurance against the odds. Descended from both Genghis Khan and Timur, Babur came to the throne of a small principality at the age of eleven; ten years of warfare later, he would lose it for ever to Uzbek invaders. A lucky break led to the capture of Kabul, from which he carved out a new state for himself in Afghanistan. Just over twenty years later, he was ready for the biggest throw of all - no less than an invasion of India. He recorded his own story pretty much as it happened with startling immediacy and a winning frankness: it was the crowning achievement of a rich tradition of Islamic autobiography.There is history and politics here aplenty, but what is most striking about Babur's memoirs is the man they reveal - ambitious but modest and self-critical, deeply attached to friends and family, homesick amongst the treasures of India, sensitive to the beauties of nature and extremely fond of a party. He paints a fascinating portrait of a sophisticated and cultured Persian-Turkic society. As violent for political ends as many a European Renaissance ruler, Babur could order a massacre and return home to write a ghazal. Everywhere he went he created beautiful gardens. There are insights into the role of women in such a society; of Babur's several wives, but particularly the older women of his family, who commanded respect and exercised considerable influence. Four years after his Indian conquest, Babur swore to give his own life if his eldest son recovered from a dangerous illness. Humayun pulled through, and in a few months Babur was dead. But he had laid the foundations of the greatest, wealthiest and most populous of the world's Muslim-ruled empires.

The legendary fisherman''s record of a magical summer spent on the banks

Die 15 Inventionen, die nach wie vor zum grundlegenden Repertoire eines jeden Klavierunterrichts gehören, werden hier nach aktuellem Forschungsstand in modernem Notenstich vorgelegt. Auf der Grundlage von Bachs Autograph und seinem selbst verfassten Vorwort, bereinigt von Fingersätzen und Zusätzen aus Quellen zweiter Hand.

Die drei Violinsonaten von Edward Grieg nehmen eine wichtige Stellung im Schaffen des Komponisten ein. Zusammen mit seinen anderen Kammermusikwerken zeugen diese bemerkenswert originellen Sonaten von Griegs Fähigkeit, die klassisch-romantische Form wirkungsvoll durch norwegisches Nationalkolorit zu bereichern.

Contents: Nos.16-32 Opp.31-111

The complete Flute Sonatas of J.S. Bach in two volumes. This first volume contains the Sonatas BWV 1030, 1031 and 1032 in an Urtext edition by Konrad Hampe. Cembalo (piano score) and separate flute part included. With a preface in English and German and critical report, the edition contains a convincing completion of the missing section from the A major Sonata BWV 1032.Flötensonaten, Band 1: BWV 1030-1032 für Flöte und Cembalo (Klavier)Bd.1 Sonaten h-Moll BWV 1030, Es-Dur BWV1031, A-Dur BWV 1032, Flöte und Klavier.

We know that there were dogs in Victorian Britain, but who were the 'Doggy People' who kept them, bred them, showed them, worked with them and cared for them? Chapter by chapter, this book reveals the varied and often eccentric lives of the Victorians who helped define dogs as we know them today. The cast runs from the very pinnacle of society, Queen Victoria, to near the bottom with Jemmy Shaw, a publican, boxer, promoter of dog-fights and rat-killing. The others include an artist, aristocrats, authors, a clergyman, doctors, a dog-dealer, a feminist, journalists, landowners, millionaires, philanthropists, politicians, scientists, a stockbroker, veterinarians, and a showman - none other their Charles Cruft. Looking at the invention and meaning of new breeds such as poodles, collies, Jack Russells, and borzois amongst others, we see how the Victorians thought about pets, sports, dog shows and animal rights.