Author's Note: This book is written in the style of an oral history, a form which requires interviewing a wide variety of witnesses and compiling their testimony. Anytime multiple sources are questioned about a shared experience, it's inevitable for them occasionally to contradict each other. For additional biographies written in this style, please see Capote by George Plimpton, Edie by Jean Stein, and Lexicon Devil by Brendan Mullen.

Наиболее полная русскоязычная биография группы, ставшей самым ярким музыкальным проектом воссоединенной Германии.

Немецкая группа Rammstein — безусловно, самый яркий музыкальный проект воссоединенной Германии. После первых же выступлений эта команда вызвала абсолютный шок у большинства музыкальных критиков и прочих деятелей немецкого шоу-бизнеса, а также у политиков всех мастей. На нее ополчились, засыпав обвинениями во всех смертных грехах сразу — от недостойного использования людской трагедии в коммерческих целях до пропаганды садомазохизма, гомосексуализма и фашизма.

За последние десять лет этот «танцевально-металлический» коллектив стал культовым, завоевав сердца любителей тяжелого жанра во всем мире. Мнения о Rammstein по-прежнему кардинально расходятся: одни считают их слишком грубыми, скандальными, женоненавистническими; другие восхищаются потрясающим сценическим шоу, провокационными видеоклипами, брутальным имиджем и откровенным содержанием текстов; третьи обвиняют в праворадикальных и даже нацистских взглядах.

А шестеро немецких парней поигрывают на сцене накачанными мускулами, заливают концертные залы морем огня и на своем непонятном для большинства слушателей грубоватом языке поют песни о крайних формах любви:

Ramón Gómez de la Serna, como hijo de una familia de clase media con abono en la ópera, decide desde muy joven tener estudio propio para recluirse a escribir sus cosas y ganarse la vida. Se pensaría en lo que entonces llamaban una “garçoniere”, pero la única señorita a lo garzón que tiene capilla en la alta basílica ramoniana, calle de Velázquez, es una muñeca de cera con la que se hacía las fotos para los periódicos.

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir—a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother’s love and a father’s fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space… and who made those dreams come true.

With the grace of a natural storyteller, NASA engineer Homer Hickam paints a warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive. A story of romance and loss, of growing up and getting out, Homer Hickam’s lush, lyrical memoir is a chronicle of triumph—at once exquisitely written and marvelously entertaining.

One of the most beloved bestsellers in recent years, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir. A powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the end of the 1950s, it is the story of a mother’s love and a father’s fears, of growing up and getting out. With the grace of a natural storyteller, Homer Hickam looks back after a distinguished NASA career to tell his own true story of growing up in a dying coal town and of how, against the odds, he made his dreams of launching rockets into outer space come true.

A story of romance and loss and a keen portrait of life at an extraordinary point in American history, Rocket Boys is a chronicle of triumph.

This is the extraordinary true story of America’s first female rocket scientist, told by her son. It describes Mary Sherman Morgan’s crucial contribution to launching America’s first satellite and the author’s labyrinthine journey to uncover his mother’s lost legacy—a legacy buried deep under a lifetime of secrets political, technological, and personal. Blending a fascinating personal history with dramatic historical events taking place on the world stage, this compelling narrative brings long-overdue attention to a modest but brilliant woman whose work proved essential for America’s early space program.

In 1938, a young German rocket enthusiast named Wernher von Braun had dreams of building a rocket that could fly him to the moon. On the opposite side of the world, a young farm girl named Mary Sherman was attending high school in Ray, North Dakota. In an age when girls rarely dreamed of a career in science, Mary wanted to be a chemist. A decade later the dreams of these two disparate individuals would coalesce in ways neither could have imagined.

In a vivid narrative, Morgan relates how World War II and the Cold War space race with the Russians changed the fates of both von Braun and his mother. When von Braun and other top engineers could not find a solution to the repeated failures that plagued the nascent US rocket program, North American Aviation, where Mary Sherman Morgan then worked, was given the challenge. Recognizing her talent for chemistry, company management turned the assignment over to young Mary.

In the end, America succeeded in launching rockets into space, but only because of the joint efforts of the brilliant farm girl from North Dakota and the famous German scientist. While von Braun went on to become a high-profile figure in NASA’s manned space flight, Mary Sherman Morgan and her contributions fell into obscurity.

In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; young people were rebelling. With his long hair, jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man. He could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in search of himself.

His journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities. The result is a compelling and utterly unique insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.

A work of immense cultural significance and beauty, this long poem became an anthem for the African diaspora and the birth of the Negritude movement. With unusual juxtapositions of object and metaphor, a bouquet of language-play, and deeply resonant rhythms, Césaire considered this work a "break into the forbidden," at once a cry of rebellion and a celebration of black identity.

More praise:

"The greatest living poet in the French language."-American Book Review

"Martinique poet Aime Cesaire is one of the few pure surrealists alive today. By this I mean that his work has never compromised its wild universe of double meanings, stretched syntax, and unexpected imagery. This long poem was written at the end of World War II and became an anthem for many blacks around the world. Eshleman and Smith have revised their original 1983 translations and given it additional power by presenting Cesaire's unique voice as testament to a world reduced in size by catastrophic events." — Bloomsbury Review

"Through his universal call for the respect of human dignity, consciousness and responsibility, he will remain a symbol of hope for all oppressed peoples." — Nicolas Sarkozy

"Evocative and thoughtful, touching on human aspiration far beyond the scale of its specific concerns with Cesaire's native land — Martinique." — The Times

Biografinis abato Ransė romanas tarsi praskleidžia užmaršties šydą ir pažeria daug senų laikų istorijų, susijusių su tikromis asmenybėmis. Čia veikia karaliai ir karalienės, kunigaikščiai ir hercogienės, žymūs filosofai ir rašytojai, politikai ir bažnyčios tėvai, jų vaikai ir pavainikiai, draugai ir priešai, žmonos ir meilužės. Autorius pamažu atskleidžia paslaptis ir parodo tikrąjį Prancūzijos visuomenės veidą.

Ринату, 31-летнему татуировщику, после долгого и дорогого обследования врачи поставили диагноз «лимфома» (рак лимфатической системы).

Книга «Rinat VS Lymphoma» – это история, длиною в 36 недель, полных борьбы, новых встреч, потерь, страха, радости и веселья – 36 недель реальной жизни невероятно сильного человека, который готов посмеяться над собой и обстоятельствами. В книге описывается протекание болезни, здесь нет советов и нетрадиционных методов лечения. Это честная и искренняя история о том, как человек живет после постановки такого диагноза, что он думает, какие проходит процедуры, какие последствия препаратов бывают и истории жизни пациентов-соседей по этажу, палате, заболеванию.

Вера в себя, друзей и близких, врачей и самое главное – вера в выздоровление – вот, что помогло, смеясь, «прописать этой лимфоме в челюсть».

В формате pdf А4 сохранен издательский дизайн.

Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies looks at how film shapes identity. Through ten cleverly constructed essays, Ison explores how a lifetime of movie-watching has, for better or worse, taught her how to navigate the world and how to grapple with issues of career, family, faith, illness, sex, and love.

Cinema is a universal cultural experience, one that floods our senses with images and sounds, a powerful force that influences our perspective on the world around us. Ison discusses the universal aspects of film as she makes them personal, looking at how certain films across time shaped and molded who she has become. Drawing on a wide ranging catalog of films, both cult and classic, popular and art-house, Reeling Through Life examines how cinema shapes our views on how to make love, how to deal with mental illness, how to be Jewish, how to be a woman, how to be a drunk, and how to die with style.

Rather than being a means of escape or object of mere entertainment, Ison posits that cinema is a more engaging form of art, a way to slip into other identities and inhabit other realities. A way to orient oneself into the world. Reeling Though Life is a compelling look at one popular art form and how it has influenced our identities in provocative and important ways.

This fusion of novel and memoir from a bestselling British author chronicles the destructive effects of WWI on two working-class families in Nottingham.

An advocate for ordinary people, Alan Sillitoe combines family memoir with exhaustive research on military records, and fuses them with artistic speculation in this inventive and political historical novel. Central to the story are the author’s grandfather, the blacksmith Ernest Burton, and his uncle Edgar, a World War I deserter.

The launching point for this narrative family album is a legless match-seller from Sillitoe’s childhood who “walked” on the streets of Nottingham with his hands. When the young Sillitoe asked his family about the reasons behind this man’s deformity, he heard a series of different accounts: His mother said it was a train accident, his father claimed it was an explosion during the Battle of the Somme, his grandmother was convinced it was a birth defect, and his grandfather declared it was a way of dodging work. Thus Sillitoe sets the tone for a tale in which “anything which is not scientific or mathematical thought is colored by the human imagination and feeble opinion.”

In order to rediscover the fictional truth behind his own spirit, Sillitoe then delves into his heritage. He paints a telling portrait of his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith who hated dogs, despised the people who loved him, and was blinded in one eye by a shred of steel. Separated from society by his illiteracy, and both feared and respected for his instinctual cunning, Ernest was a tyrant to his wife and eight children, a hardworking provider, and a talented craftsman.

On his father’s side of the family, Sillitoe explores the life of his uncle Edgar, “the darling of the family” who enlisted in the British army when the Great War began in 1914. However, when the young man discovered that his service consisted of dysentery, haircuts, and taking orders, he “sensibly” deserts. To avoid the military police, he leaves Nottingham and bicycles furiously on the back roads to his sister’s house in Hinkley, but is caught a few days later in a pub and sent back to his battalion. A persistent man, Edgar deserts a second time and hides out in the forest, but again he is captured and sent just in time to join the Sherwood Foresters on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Raw Material spans a century of family history and legends, interweaving personal memories with collected facts and hearsay. The “kitchen-sink realism” Sillitoe is known for takes on a more philosophical and transparent approach in this innovative self-portrait that explores the base matter and inspirations of the esteemed British novelist’s life work.

Эта неофициальная биография рассказывает всю историю Rammstein – с создания до их последнего альбома Liebe ist für alle da. Подробно, непредвзято, взвешенно. Эпатажные тексты их песен нарушают все мыслимые табу, а специфический ритм, фирменный стиль и сценические выступления узнаваемы во всем мире. Где бы они ни выступали, их везде встречают на ура. Культовая и одна из самых успешных немецкоязычных групп, покоряющая чарты по всему миру на протяжении более 20 лет.

SHROUDED IN SECRECY due to the covert nature of their work, the legendary Recces have fascinated South Africans for years. Now one of these elite soldiers has written a tell-all book about the extraordinary missions he embarked on and the nail-biting action he experienced in the Border War.

Shortly after passing the infamously gruelling Special Forces selection course in the early 1980s, Koos Stadler joined the so-called Small Teams group at 5 Reconnaissance Regiment. This subunit was made up of two-man teams and was responsible for numerous secret and highly dangerous missions deep behind enemy lines. With only one team member, Stadler was sent to blow up railway lines and enemy fighter jets in the south of Angola. As he crawled in and out of enemy-infested territory, he stared death in the face many times.

A gripping, firsthand account that reveals the near superhuman physical and psychological powers these Special Forces operators have to display.

Крис Хит работал в тесном сотрудничестве с Робби Уильямсом в течение многих лет и в этой книге Робби выставляет свою жизнь в самом неприглядном виде, беспощадно перечисляя все свои промахи, недостатки и разочарования.

«RUтопия» исследует воплощенную утопию, которая, по мнению автора, стоит за всеми фундаментальными социально-культурными трансформациями. При этом, однако, если воплощение утопии оказывается неполным, она с неизбежностью перерастает в свою антиутопическую противоположность. В книге анализируются исторические примеры такого воплощения (США, СССР, Третий рейх) и новые возможности воплощения в условиях эпохи постмодерна. Автор рассматривает религиозные и метафизические основы утопизма и особое внимание уделяет традиции и вероятному будущему русской утопии, способной прийти на смену нынешнему безвременью.

An essay printed in March 1958 issue of Saturn magazine, a few months after the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik causing public outcry in the USA over the effectiveness of the American space program.

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook, June 2006

Эссеистская — лирическая, но с элементами, впрочем, достаточно органичными для стилистики автора, физиологического очерка, и с постоянным присутствием в тексте повествователя — проза, в которой сегодняшняя Польша увидена, услышана глазами, слухом (чутким, но и вполне бестрепетным) современного украинского поэта, а также — его ночными одинокими прогулками по Кракову, беседами с легендарными для поколения автора персонажами той еще (Вайдовской, в частности) — «Город начинается вокзалом, такси, комнатой, в которую сносишь свои чемоданы, заносишь с улицы зимний воздух, снег на козырьке фуражке, усталость от путешествия, запах железной дороги, вагонов, сигаретного дыма и обрывки польской фразы „poproszę bilecik“. Потом он становится привычным и даже банальным с похожими утрами и темными вечерами, с улицами, переполненными пешеходами и бездомными алкоголиками, с тонко нарезанной ветчиной в супермаркете и телевизионными новостями про политику и преступления, с посещениями ближайшего рынка, на котором крестьяне продают зимние яблоки и дешевый китайский товар, который привозят почему-то не китайцы, а вьетнамцы»; «Мрожек стоял и жмурился, присматриваясь к Кракову и к улице Каноничной, его фигура и весь вид будто спрашивали: что я тут ищу? Я так и не решился подойти тогда к нему. Просто стоял рядом на Крупничей с таким точно идиотским видом: что я тут делаю?»

The collection of stories

Is it truth or fiction? Memoir or essay? Narrative or associative? To a writer like Michael Martone, questions like these are high praise. Martone’s studied disregard of form and his unruffled embrace of the prospect that nothing-no story, no life-is ever quite finished have yielded some of today’s most splendidly unconventional writing. Add to that an utter weakness for pop Americana and what Louise Erdrich has called a “deep affection for the ordinary,” and you have one of the few writers who could pull off something like Racing in Place. Up the steps of the Washington Monument, down the home stretch at the Indy Speedway, and across the parking lot of the Moon Winx Lodge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Martone chases, and is chased by, memories-and memories of memories. He writes about his grandfather’s job as a meter reader, those seventies-era hotels with atrium lobbies and open glass elevators, and the legendary temper of basketball coach Bob Knight.Martone, as Peter Turchi has said, looks “under stones the rest of us leave unturned.” So, what is he really up to when he dwells on the make of Malcolm X’s eyeglasses or the runner-up names for Snow White’s seven dwarfs? In “My Mother Invents a Tradition,” Martone tells how his mom, as the dean of girls at a brand-new high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, “constructed a nostalgic past out of nothing.” Sitting at their dining room table, she came up with everything from the school colors (orange and brown) to the yearbook title (Bear Tracks). Look, and then look again, Martone is saying. “You never know. I never know.”

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated “Enlightenment for Children” youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.

Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.

Эта книга — не просто сборник историй о необыкновенных, необъяснимых, мистических явлениях — о загадочных существах, привидениях, полтергейсте, НЛО, телепатии, телепортации и т. п. (знатоки и ценители этой тематики найдут здесь для себя немало интересного!), причем историй достаточно достоверных, поведанных заслуживающими доверия источниками, большинство из которых названы поименно.

Эта книга — опыт писательского расследования. Автор дает объяснения приведенным историям — убедительно, доходчиво, увлекательно и доступно даже для не слишком подготовленного читателя, хотя использует в своих объяснениях сложнейший аппарат: современную психологию, квантовую физику и даже космическую геологию.

Правда, чаще всего самые загадочные случаи имеют самые простые объяснения

On August 19, 1991, eight high-ranking Soviet officials took over the government of the USSR and proclaimed themselves its new rulers. Less than seventy-two hours later, their coup had collapsed, but it would change the course of history in a way that no one—certainly not the plotters themselves—could have foreseen.

The editor of this volume, who witnessed these momentous events, have assembled firsthand accounts of the attempted coup. They include testimonies from “junta” members and military officers, resistance leaders and ordinary citizens, Muscovites and residents of other locales, Russian and foreign journalists, foreign visitors and returning émigrés, as well as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Key documents and photographs complement the individual accounts.

The provocative introduction to the volume places the August events in the larger context—from the early days of perestroika and glasnost to the second confrontation at the White House, in October 1993.

Russia, again, is on the move. The news headlines proclaim it. Georgia was first. Then, Ukraine and the invasion of Crimea. Meddling in the elections of the United States followed. For the fourth straight year, Forbes has ranked Vladimir Putin as the world’s most powerful person—even above the president of the United States. Like it or not, the world has descended into a new Putin-led Cold War 2.0. As the storm clouds gather, America sleeps.

Russian’s hand in Syria and its closer ties to Iran are especially alarming to those who know Bible prophecy and the book of Ezekiel. Putin is poised right now on Israel’s northern border—an ominous sign of our times.

What does the Bible say about our troubling times?

In Russia Rising, Mark Hitchcock, popular speaker and Bible prophecy expert, explores the history of Russia and its current military moves. He will explain the biblical prophecies related to Russia, the Middle East, and the end times. The tracks of the Russian bear lead to the Middle East and Israel. Are we on a collision course with Russia?

_{[Contain tables]}

Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent air campaign over Syria took the world by surprise. The capabilities and efficiency of Moscow’s armed forces during both operations signalled to the world that Russia was back in business as a significant military actor on the international stage.

In this cutting-edge study, Bettina Renz provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Russia’s military revival under Putin’s leadership. Whilst the West must adjust to the reality of a modernised and increasingly powerful Russian military, she argues that the renaissance of Russian military might and its implications for the balance of global power can only be fully understood within a wider historical context.

Assessing developments in Russian Great Power thinking, military capabilities, Russian strategic thought and views on the use of force throughout the post-Soviet era, the book shows that, rather than signifying a sudden Russian military resurgence, recent developments are consistent with longstanding trends in Russian military strategy and foreign policy.

How the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia

It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage of it to an extraordinary extent. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, this overwhelming focus on the president and his personality means that we understand Russia less than we ever did before. Too much attention is paid to the man, and not enough to the country outside the Kremlin’s walls.

In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood looks beyond Putin to explore the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. In the process, he challenges many of the common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. Though commonly viewed as an ominous return to Soviet authoritarianism, Putin’s rule should instead be seen as a direct continuation of Yeltsin’s in the 1990s. And though many of Russia’s problems today are blamed on legacies of the Soviet past, Wood argues that the core features of Putinism – a predatory, authoritarian elite presiding over a vastly unequal society – are integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism.

What kind of country has emerged from Russia’s post-Soviet transformations, and where might it go in future? Russia Without Putin culminates in an arresting analysis of the country’s foreign policy – identifying the real power dynamics behind its escalating clashes with the West – and with reflections on the paths Russia might take in the 21st century.

In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures a savage world populated by fighting dogs, prizefighters, sex addicts, gamblers, a repo man and a disappearing magician. The title of the lead story, “28 Bones”, refers to the number of bones in a boxer’s hands; once broken, they never heal properly, and the fighter’s career descends to bouts that have less to do with sport than with survival: no referee, no rules, not even gloves. In “A Mean Utility” we enter an even more desperate arena: dogfights where Rottweilers, pit bulls and Dobermans fight each other to the death. Davidson’s stories are small monuments to the telling detail. The hostility of his fictional universe is tempered by the humanity he invests in his characters and by his subtle and very moving observations of their motivation. In the tradition of Hemingway, "Rust and Bone" explores violence, masculinity and life on the margins. Visceral and with a dark urgency, this is a truly original debut.

Craig Davidson was born in Toronto and now lives in Iowa City. His novel The Fighter is also available from Penguin Canada.

Эта книга – не просто сборник историй о необыкновенных, необъяснимых, мистических явлениях – о загадочных существах, привидениях, полтергейсте, НЛО, телепатии, телепортации и т.п. (знатоки и ценители этой тематики найдут здесь для себя немало интересного!), причем историй достаточно достоверных, поведанных заслуживающими доверия источниками, большинство из которых названы поименно.

Эта книга – опыт писательского расследования. Автор дает объяснения приведенным историям – убедительно, доходчиво, увлекательно и доступно даже для не слишком подготовленного читателя, хотя использует в своих объяснениях сложнейший аппарат: современную психологию, квантовую физику и даже космическую геологию.

Правда, чаще всего самые загадочные случаи имеют самые простые объяснения…

In Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947, something strange happened. Something crashed.

Col.William Blanchard of the Roswell Army Air Field told Lt.Walter Haut, the Public Information Officer, to alert the local media. Haut produced a short press release that said that members of the 509th Bomb Group, there in Roswell, had recovered the wreckage of a flying saucer. Haut took the press release into town, delivered it to both newspapers and radio stations, and then went home for lunch.

Hours later Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, photographed in front of some debris in his office at Eighth Air Force Headquarters, said that all the excitement was unwarranted. Nothing had been found but a weather balloon.

Today, we know better.We have solid eyewitness testimony from reliable sources who can prove they were in Roswell at the time of the incident. They were in a position to know what was happening and they have confirmed many of our suspicions. Now we need to finish the job, prove exactly what crashed in the New Mexico desert, and let the world in on the greatest secret of the last thousand years.

Roswell, UFOs and the Unusual is a book about all those things told by the man who has spent decades studying them. It is a book that provides new information about the Roswell UFO crash, as well as other UFO crashes, analysis of alien abductions, mysterious disappearances, UFO photographs, and many of the mysteries of the past.

The research was not conducted sitting at home using the Internet nor was it conducted in libraries reading what others had written. It was done on the scene of many of the mysteries discussed and told by the people who were there at the time.

Roswell, UFOs and the Unusual is a compendium of research, opinion, analysis, and evidence brought together to suggest solutions to some mysteries and to underscore the importance of others. It provides information not to be found elsewhere in such a compact form. It is a great launching pad for the researching, providing the data necessary to carry on in many areas of research into UFOs and the paranormal. It is a book that is an important part of any research library.