Seemed idea

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 8 - 13 working days 'The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin's trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year'Splendid... a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail' David Aaronovitch, The TimesBy 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that was itself destroying Europe. In the German government a small group of men had a brilliant idea: why not sow further confusion in an increasingly chaotic Russia by arranging for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the most notorious of revolutionary extremists, currently safely bottled up in neutral Switzerland, to go home?Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train recreates Lenin's extraordinary journey from harmless exile in Zurich, across a Germany falling to pieces from the war's deprivations, and northwards to the edge of Lapland to his eventual ecstatic reception by the revolutionary crowds at Petrograd's Finland Station.With great skill and insight Merridale weaves the story of the train and its uniquely strange group of passengers with a gripping account of the now half-forgotten liberal Russian revolution and shows how these events intersected. She brilliantly uses a huge range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years. Many thought he was a mere 'useful idiot', others thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, others that Lenin had in practice few followers and even less influence. They would all prove to be quite wrong. Features Summary 'The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin's trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year'Splendid... Author Catherine Merridale Publisher Penguin Books Release date 20170503 Pages 368 ISBN 0-14-197994-1 ISBN 13 978-0-14-197994-6

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 11 working days New York Times bestselling author of The Everything Store Brad Stone takes us deep inside the new Silicon Valley. Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger's car, or walking into a stranger's home, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology. They are among the Upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Young, hungry and brilliant, they are rewriting the traditional rules of business, changing our day-to-day lives and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process. The Upstarts is the definitive account of a dawning age of tenacity, creativity, conflict and wealth. In Brad Stone's highly anticipated and riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we find out how it all started, and how the world is wildly different than it was ten years ago. Features Summary New York Times bestselling author of The Everything Store Brad Stone takes us deep inside the new Silicon Valley. In Brad Stone's highly anticipated and riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley... Author Brad Stone Publisher Corgi Books Release date 20180403 Pages 448 ISBN 0-552-17258-8 ISBN 13 978-0-552-17258-5

  Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution - Paperbackin good, clean and tight condition.    Signature Reviewed by Jonah LehrerRichard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed the fact of evolution, which meant that he never got around to laying out the evidence that it [evolution] is true. This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do biologists depend on the reality of evolution. It's the theory that makes every other theory possible.Yet Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God. So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous. All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric—Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents—it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology. If Charles Darwin walked into a 21st-century bookstore and wanted to know how his theory had fared, this is the book he should pick up.Dawkins remains a superb translator of complex scientific concepts. It doesn't matter if he's spinning metaphors for the fossil record (like a spy camera in a murder trial) or deftly explaining the method by which scientists measure the genetic difference between distinct species: he has a way of making the drollest details feel like a revelation. Even if one already believes in the survival of the fittest, there is something thrilling about learning that the hoof of a horse is homologous to the fingernail of the human middle finger, or that some dinosaurs had a second brain of ganglion cells in their pelvis, which helped compensate for the tiny brain in their head. As Darwin famously noted, There is grandeur in this view of life. What Dawkins demonstrates is that this view of life isn't just grand: it's also undeniably true. Color illus.    

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 7 - 12 working days The glorious new picture book from the bestselling, award-winning author of Blown Away and GRRRRR!, all about one boy, one Kevin, and one very special friendship… Uh-oh - Sid Gibbons is in trouble again! Time to think fast… When Sid makes yet another mess, and his mum is at the end of her patience, Sid does what every quick-thinking kid would do - he blames it on his big, furry, vanilla-and-pink friend Kevin! And while it seemed like a good idea at the time, Sid gets an unexpected surprise when he finds out that Kevin and his world might not be so imaginary after all - and while his friend might be make-believe, his feelings are very real. A beautifully illustrated rhyming tale of friendship, kindness and stepping up, from a rare picture book talent. The perfect story for any child, from age three and up. Features Summary The glorious new picture book from the bestselling, award-winning author of Blown Away and GRRRRR!, all about one boy, one Kevin, and one very special friendship... Author Rob Biddulph Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Release date 20180202 Pages 32 ISBN 0-00-820742-9 ISBN 13 978-0-00-820742-7