Staff Pickles - librarians online
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Our team of staff pickles are here to bring you recommendations with flavour. We will be sharing lists, reviews, and blog posts - all about the books, movies, TV, and music we love. Follow us on the libraries' blog or in the catalogue or ask us for a personalised recommendation.
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Nagasaki: Life after nuclear war
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Susan Southard
On August 9, 1945 a U.S. Army Air Force plane dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The immediate effects, as in the bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier, were devastating. The long term effects have also caused much suffering, though fewer reports on them have been available in the U.S. Drawing on extensive interviews with five people who were teenagers in Nagasaki when it was bombed, as well as official and public records, author Susan Southard vividly recounts the instantaneous death and destruction and the survivors' subsequent challenges. Library Journal counts "Nagasaki" among the "definitive histories of the end of World War II."
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Royalty Inc. : Britain's best-known brand
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Stephen Bates
How secure is the British Royal Family? How much depends on the person of the Queen herself, and how much on the institution? To answer these questions, Royalty Inc. combines a history of the British Crown's evolution through the modern age with a journalistic peek behind the curtain at the machinery that sustains the Windsors today. This book takes a clear-eyed look at a host of issues, including the future of the Commonwealth, the Monarchy's role in the British constitution and class system, Prince Charles' notorious 'black spider memos', the true scale of the Royal finances, the legacy of Diana, and the problems and pressures faced by any heir to the throne in the future.
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The new spymasters: Inside the modern world of espionage from the Cold War to global terror
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Stephen Grey
From the CIA's Cold War legends to ISIS, a modern history of espionage shows how spying has changed in the 21st century, where the new enemy is constantly evolving and prepared to kill the innocent, revealing how techniques and technologies have evolved, but the old motivations for betrayal endure. By an Amnesty International Award-winning journalist.
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Move up: Why some cultures advance while others don't
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Clotaire Rapaille
Offers an irreverent and controversial examination of why some nations succeed that will overturn all received wisdom. With an abundance of data and evidence, this book explores the societal and biological factors that determine whether cultures are able to ascend socially, economically and intellectually.
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The road to Little Dribbling: More notes from a small island
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Bill Bryson
Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a small island, was taken to the nation's heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed
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Pacific: The ocean of the future
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Simon Winchester
Travelling the circumference of the truly gigantic Pacific, Simon Winchester tells the story of the world's largest body of water, and - in matters economic, political and military - the ocean of the future. The Pacific is a world of tsunamis and Magellan, of the Bounty mutiny and the Boeing Company. It is the stuff of the towering Captain Cook and his wide-ranging network of exploring voyages, Robert Louis Stevenson and Admiral Halsey. It is the place of Paul Gauguin and the explosion of the largest-ever American atomic bomb, on Bikini atoll, in 1951. It has an astonishing recent past, an uncertain present and a hugely important future.
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A pauper's history of England: 1,000 Years of peasants, beggars and guttersnipes
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Peter Stubley
Experience the past from a different perspective: Tour the England of the Domesday Book, make a solemn Franciscan vow of Poverty, and join the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. Did you know that Elizabethan beggars' had their own secret language? What were the lives of inmates of Bedlam Hospital and Bridewell Prison like? Whether you prefer to read of gin-soaked Georgian debauchery, of life in a workhouse, or slums in Victorian London, "The pauper's history of England" paints a picture of life away from the palaces and pleasure gardens of the aristocracy.
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Focus on: World War II: Dambusters
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"Never in the field of human conflict, has so much, been owed by so many, to so few!"
~ Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
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After the flood: What the Dambusters did next
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John Nichol
On the 17th May 1943, 133 airmen set out in 19 Lancasters to destroy the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams. 56 of them did not return. Despite these catastrophic losses, the raid became an enormous propaganda triumph. The survivors were feted as heroes and became celebrities of their time. They had been brought together for one specific task so what happened next? Of the 77 men who made it home from that raid, 32 would lose their lives later in the war and only 45 survived to see the victory for which they fought. Few are aware of the extent of the Dambuster squadron's operations after the Dams Raid.
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Dam busters: The race to smash the dams, 1943
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James Holland
An account of the daring May 1943 mission to destroy three heavily defended German dams that supplied industries supporting the Third Reich's war machine. "Dam busters" documents the 10-week race to create the necessary weapons and orchestrate a bombing raid that nearly cost the lives of its pilots.
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Dam busters: Failed to return
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Robert Owen
On 16/17 May 1943 a select group of Bomber Command airmen carried out one of the most audacious and daring low level attacks of WWII the dam busters raid. Eight Lancasters failed to return, 53 men were killed and 3 captured. Bomber Command historians recount the lives of some of the Dam Busters who were lost that fateful night 70 years ago.
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The dam busters: Breaking the great dams Of Western Germany 16-17 May 1943
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Jonathan Falconer
The story of the dam busters is probably one of the best known and most widely told stories of World War II. In May 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron raided the great hydroelectric dams of western Germany. Each Lancaster was equipped with the revolutionary bouncing bomb.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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