A Country of Words

A Country of Words PDF Author: Abdel Bari Atwan
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 0863568386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book

Book Description
Few lives reflect their times as much as the life of Abdel Bari Atwan. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1950, he left age seventeen and has since become one of the world's most foremost commentators on the Middle East. In this revealing memoir, Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his extraordinary journey. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain's involvement in the region - such as when a British paratrooper fell from the sky with his sizeable parachute and everyone in his mother's village got new silk trousers. Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break. But his is also a touching, personal story, never more so than when he describes taking his British-born children to meet his family, who still live in a camp surrounded by barbed wire. 'This portrait of the life and times of a distinguished journalist offers a penetrating insight into the world as seen from the point of view of someone born and bred a Palestinian refugee in a Gaza camp. Abdel Bari Atwan's authentic voice and sharp, descriptive writing brings alive a childhood full of life-affirming sparkle amid a lifetime spent deep in the travails of the Middle Eastern tragedy' Polly Toynbee 'Atwan's enthralling memoir charts his meteoric rise form the shoeless urchin in the 1950's to cultured commentator whose opinion is now sought all over the world ... A skilful raconteur.' Tribune Magazine

A Country of Words

A Country of Words PDF Author: Abdel Bari Atwan
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 0863568386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book

Book Description
Few lives reflect their times as much as the life of Abdel Bari Atwan. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1950, he left age seventeen and has since become one of the world's most foremost commentators on the Middle East. In this revealing memoir, Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his extraordinary journey. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain's involvement in the region - such as when a British paratrooper fell from the sky with his sizeable parachute and everyone in his mother's village got new silk trousers. Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break. But his is also a touching, personal story, never more so than when he describes taking his British-born children to meet his family, who still live in a camp surrounded by barbed wire. 'This portrait of the life and times of a distinguished journalist offers a penetrating insight into the world as seen from the point of view of someone born and bred a Palestinian refugee in a Gaza camp. Abdel Bari Atwan's authentic voice and sharp, descriptive writing brings alive a childhood full of life-affirming sparkle amid a lifetime spent deep in the travails of the Middle Eastern tragedy' Polly Toynbee 'Atwan's enthralling memoir charts his meteoric rise form the shoeless urchin in the 1950's to cultured commentator whose opinion is now sought all over the world ... A skilful raconteur.' Tribune Magazine

How the Word Is Passed

How the Word Is Passed PDF Author: Clint Smith
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316492914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
This “important and timely” (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America—and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the Stowe Prize Winner of 2022 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

Words for Country

Words for Country PDF Author: Tim Bonyhady
Publisher: UNSW Press
ISBN: 9780868406282
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book

Book Description
Stories and phrases can powerfully shape the ways we experience and manage our environment. What languages have been used to characterise Australian landscapes and how have they influenced the way we see and treat our environment? How do stories take root in particular places? How do we find the right words for those parts of the country that matter to us? "Words for Country" answers these questions while exploring the inter-relationship between Australia's landscape and language. Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths have brought together a collection of essays whose subjects range from the Ord River in the far north-west to Antarctica in the south, from the centre to the coast, the prehistoric to the present. Their terrain is environmental and cultural, political and poetic. Words for Country reveals not just how language grows out of the landscape but how words and stories shape the places in which we live.

There Was a Country

There Was a Country PDF Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101595981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil war For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.

Words That Work

Words That Work PDF Author: Dr. Frank Luntz
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401385745
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Get Book

Book Description
The nation's premier communications expert shares his wisdom on how the words we choose can change the course of business, of politics, and of life in this country In Words That Work, Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. With chapters like "The Ten Rules of Successful Communication" and "The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century," he examines how choosing the right words is essential. Nobody is in a better position to explain than Frank Luntz: He has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. Hell tell us why Rupert Murdoch's six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than "digital cable," and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from "treatment" to "prevention" and "wellness." If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book's for you.

Country Words

Country Words PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book

Book Description


The World in So Many Words

The World in So Many Words PDF Author: Allan A. Metcalf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780395959206
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book

Book Description
An international tour of words that have shaped the English language explores the etymology of words such as paradise, siesta, geyser, justice, tattoo, and zombie, revealing their often fascinating origins in foreign cultures.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

The Dictionary of Lost Words PDF Author: Pip Williams
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 1984820737
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Get Book

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.”—Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world. WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD

A Glossary of North Country Words, in Use

A Glossary of North Country Words, in Use PDF Author: John Trotter Brockett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description


A Glossary of North Country Words, in use. From an original manuscript in the library of J. G. Lambton Esq., with considerable additions

A Glossary of North Country Words, in use. From an original manuscript in the library of J. G. Lambton Esq., with considerable additions PDF Author: John Trotter BROCKETT
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book

Book Description