It takes a strong man to resist the strange allure of a Holden Piazza, and at the age of eight, lying on his parents' lounge room floor watching Sale of the Century, Chris Warr didn't stand a chance. An unhealthy obsession was born. The Holden Piazza, a glossy black wedge-bonneted sports car, was the ultimate prize of prizes on Australia's richest quiz show. Unfortunately it was also frequently the butt of jokes from motoring critics and the general public alike. Its launch in 1986 attracted comments such as, 'Holden Piazza; the answer to the question nobody asked' and 'exhilarating in the hands of an experienced driver . . . dangerous in the hands of others'. So it's not surprising that less than 200 new Holden Piazzas were sold in Australia, and less than 80 are still on Australian roads today. Chris lived with his hidden shame for over a decade, until fate led to a meeting with Joe Kremzer, a fellow Piazza aficionado and a dream was born. Together, they would go in search of the Holden Piazza - indeed they would go in search of the Holden Piazza IN a Holden Piazza - travelling the length and breadth of Australia seeking out owners past and present of this iconic if much maligned vehicle. Their quest results in a quirky, laugh-out-loud adventure, in the tradition of Tony Hawkes (Round Ireland With A Fridge) and Dave Gorman. A rollicking great read for all motoring tragics and anyone who likes a beer and a laugh, In Search of the Holden Piazza is as Australian as pie and sauce or a beat-up FJ Holden.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi forces inside occupied countries confiscated an untold amount of treasure, including a flawless, 47.05 caret blue diamond known as the Blue Regina. Later, it was mistakenly sent to the United States, and arrived just prior to the start of World War II. Throughout the duration of the war and after, its whereabouts remained unknown.In 1951, a well-funded U.S. bound expedition is formed by a noted Berlin gemologist. Unfortunately, news of his expedition motivates others to search for the diamond, while applying their own set of rules. That doesn't bode well for any of the participants, especially when the prize is valued at more than three million dollars.The Blue Regina evokes romance, obsession, deceit, desperation and hollow hope, in a deadly competition to possess a world class diamond.

From Italian textiles featuring Islamic and Asian motifs to ceramics and glassware that reflected Syrian techniques and ornamental concepts, this book gives an extraordinary view of the influence of imported Oriental goods in Italy over three crucial centuries of artistic development, from 1300 to 1600.".

Data in all domains is getting bigger. How can you work with it efficiently? Recently updated for Spark 1.3, this book introduces Apache Spark, the open source cluster computing system that makes data analytics fast to write and fast to run. With Spark, you can tackle big datasets quickly through simple APIs in Python, Java, and Scala. This edition includes new information on Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, setup, and Maven coordinates. Written by the developers of Spark, this book will have data scientists and engineers up and running in no time. You’ll learn how to express parallel jobs with just a few lines of code, and cover applications from simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine learning. Quickly dive into Spark capabilities such as distributed datasets, in-memory caching, and the interactive shell Leverage Spark’s powerful built-in libraries, including Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, and MLlib Use one programming paradigm instead of mixing and matching tools like Hive, Hadoop, Mahout, and Storm Learn how to deploy interactive, batch, and streaming applications Connect to data sources including HDFS, Hive, JSON, and S3 Master advanced topics like data partitioning and shared variables