A magical coming-of-age tale in rural Zimbabwe Ah, you’ve arrived. Sit down, please, and make yourself comfortable. There may not be much dinner tonight – Father is still out of work; Mother can’t do anything with those stunted maize plants in the stony ground – but at least you are here, in Gushure Village, home to unsurpassed raconteurs and the Guramatunhu family, who know that telling stories staves off hunger. Surprise awaits at every turn: thoughts and conversations bloom into poems, political speeches and songs. You will find instructions for cooking a hare, for how to defend yourself when a dead snake is your enemy’s chosen weapon, how to speak in war tongues, how to compose a fist and aim it at a tree trunk, how to eliminate animal terrorism in a time of rabies, how to rehearse the body-viewing of a good-looking corpse, how to rock under flying okapis with The Double Shuffle, and how to practise your lovemaking technique on a woman drawn in the sand. At a time when cooked ants constitute a feast, the future nevertheless holds abundant prospects for the boy who devours words. But there is an unexpected fork in the road for this book louse, and plenty of wondrous twists and shocking turns. Hilarious, poetic and poignant, Robert Muponde’s vibrant coming-of-age story of Ronald Guramatunhu brings to life rural Zimbabwe from the Second Chimurenga to independence. There are malevolent mermaids, eccentric shamans, outrageous relatives, fearsome teachers, and men who transform into hippos in a tale that captures all the magic of childhood.

Richard Marson's book, JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner tells the story of the most controversial figure in the history of Doctor Who. For more than a decade, John Nathan-Turner, or JN-T as he was often known, was in charge of every major artistic and practical decision affecting the world's longest-running science fiction programme. Richard Marson brings his dramatic, farcical, sometimes scandalous, often moving story to life with the benefit of his own inside knowledge and the fruits of over 100 revealing interviews with key friends and colleagues, those John loved to those from whom he became estranged. The author has also had access to all of Nathan-Turner's surviving archive of paperwork and photos, many of which appear here for the very first time.

In 1963 Marvin Kalb observed the Secret Service escorting an attractive woman into a hotel for what was most likely a rendezvous with President Kennedy. Kalb, then a news correspondent for CBS, didn't consider the incident newsworthy. Thirty-five years later, Kalb watched in dismay as the press dove headfirst into the scandal of President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, disclosing every prurient detail. How and why had the journalistic landscape shifted so dramatically? One Scandalous Story seeks to answer this critical question through the inside story of thirteen days -- January 13-25, 1998 -- that make up a vital chapter in the history of American journalism. In riveting detail, Kalb examines just how the media covered the Lewinsky scandal, offering what he calls an "X-ray of the Washington press corps." Drawing on hundreds of original interviews, Kalb allows us to eavesdrop on the incestuous deals between reporters and sources, the bitter disagreements among editors, the machination of moguls for whom news is Big Business, and above all, the frantic maneuvering to break the story. With fresh insight, he retraces decisions made by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Internet renegade Matt Drudge, Jackie Judd of ABC, Clinton-basher Lucianne Goldberg, Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post, Jackie Bennett of the Office of the Independent Counsel, and other key players in this scandal that veered from low comedy to high drama. Through the lens of those thirteen turbulent days, Kalb offers us a portrait of the "new news" in all its contradictions. He reveals how intense economic pressures in the news business, the ascendancy of the Internet, the blurring of roles between reporters and commentators, and a surge of dubious sourcing and "copy-cat journalism" have combined to make tabloid-style journalism increasingly mainstream. But are we condemned to a resurgence of "yellow journalism"? Painstakingly documented and sobering in its conclusions, One Scandalous Story issues a clarion call to newsmakers and the American public alike: "Journalism can change for the better -- and must."

First rocketing to fame when he 'purchased' a 13-yearold girl as part of a campaign against child prostitution, W. T. Stead was the pioneer of investigative reporting. As criminal convict, Puritan, sex-fanatic, occultist, social reformer and stuntman, Stead's notoriety escalated throughout his life until his tragic death in the Titanic disaster. This book traces the rise and fall of W. T. Stead, from his childhood as the son of a strict Nonconformist minister in Newcastle, to his rapid and Machiavellian career as an influential investigative journalist, and his last years when he was ridiculed as a madman for his devotion to the occult. Stead's campaigns - all conducted with his trademark invincible zeal - are vividly described, ranging from the reform of London slums to denouncing an ex-slave trader who claimed to be the Messiah. A hundred years after his death, author Will Robinson presents new material about Stead's life taken from his personal papers, previously suppressed by his wife, giving us a fuller portrait than ever before of the sensational father of journalistic campaigning.

We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and, ultimately, our judgment. Many of these routine transgressions will be understood in 'revelatory' terms, as peeling back the multiple layers of artifice and spin to reveal an underlying, and oftentimes disturbing, 'truth'. Otherswill be recognized as calculated marketing exercises that simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism. Yet these 'ordinary' scandals can themselves be seen to be largely derivative of another, altogether more fundamental-and fundamentally rare-form of disruption. Such is the real scandal that accompanies instances of authentic creation. Building on the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Scandalous Times not only argues the case for such 'real scandal', but also shows how it is today being abrogated and substituted through the increasing production of novel forms of state-sanctioned controversy. From Duchamp to Donald Trump, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas from art and advertising to politics and social media have come to actively contribute to this 'static' fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creativity as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy.

A wicked turnabout on Jane Austen's oft-quoted adage -- "a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" -- isMy Lady Scandalous,a richly raucous history that traverses the notoriously licentious British Regency era in the company of its most celebrated courtesan.Following a simple Edinburgh girlhood, Grace Dalrymple came of age in the sin city of London, where wealthy men ruled society and women had everything to lose, starting with their reputations. As an impressionable bride of seventeen who married a man more than twice her age, Grace's remarkable beauty (likened by journalists to "a May morning") soon attracted the attentions of other men. A disastrous liaison with a consummate rake not only branded Grace as a demi-rep -- a woman with half a reputation -- but the scandal provoked Dr. John Eliot, her philandering husband, to pursue a divorce.Grace became mistress of the most infamous peer in England, George James, Lord Cholmondeley, whose "secret perfections" were reputed to inspire "female enthusiasm." Cholmondeley commemorated the relationship by commissioning two works from eminent portraitist Thomas Gainsborough, first in 1778 and later in 1782, the same year Grace gave birth to a daughter, Georgiana (who may, in fact, have been the child of the Prince of Wales). Had Grace been an aristocrat, she and Cholmondeley might have had a future together, but it was not to be.The tabloids broke the news: "Miss Dalrymple has embarked for France, and it is said parted with her noble gallant." Grace was soon to find a new protector in that nation's richest man, Philippe, Duc d'Orleans. Though Grace was ensconced as "one of the most brilliant and popular among the fashionable 'impures,'" her liaison with the duke turned perilous when Orleans fell to the Revolution's guillotine, just as she narrowly escaped with her life."People die, but love may not," declares author Jo Manning of her subject's romantic and historic misadventures. A connoisseur of the times, Manning ably demonstrates -- through contemporary newspapers, magazines, prints, and portraits as well as Grace's posthumously published journal -- how life in George III's England and Marie Antoinette's France can seem strangely familiar, especially when history turns to affairs of the heart.

This study re-examines the twentieth-century novel as a form shaped by its problematic, often scandalous relation to the public sphere. Discussing ten texts against the challenges of their milieus, it considers twentieth-century fiction as a tradition of transgression, perennially caught between license and licentiousness, erudition and sedition.

SCANDALOUS! HIGHWAY ROBBERY - Wells Fargo Falls Off The Wagon By: Alan B. Jonas SCANDALOUS! HIGHWAY ROBBERY - Wells Fargo Falls Off The Wagon details the high-pressure, shady practices in banking and their resulting massive fines, as Wells Fargo robbed thousands of customers by opening millions of unauthorized accounts they didn’t need or understand. The author hopes that readers will exercise caution rather than paying for bank services such as insurance and investments and also be wary of safe deposit boxes, which have few federal laws protecting them.

“I’m proud of the fact that [...] we’re probably the first administration in modern history that hasn’t had a major scandal in the White House.” So President Barack Obama boldly declared before leaving office, and numerous times since. But is it true? Not according to Matt Margolis, bestselling co-author of The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. Margolis lays out the details of literally dozens of Obama administration scandals that have been ignored, downplayed, or covered-up by the mainstream media. From “Fast and Furious,” to the illegal IRS targeting of conservative groups, to the recent NSA spying outrage, Margolis makes a powerful case that the Obama years represented nearly a decade of lawless and abusive governance. While Obama and his allies attempt to spin the narrative that his presidency represented a time of pristine politics, it’s critically important that Americans understand the truth—Barack Obama brought to Washington corrupt Chicago-machine politics of cronyism and corporate payoffs, combined with audacious Alinskyite tactics aimed at dividing Americans and destroying his opponents. Obama’s legacy will be discussed and debated for decades. But in the early months after he left office, more scandals have been uncovered—most notably an illegal scheme of using the NSA to spy on his political opponents and the frightening decision to block the prosecution of Iranian-backed terrorists. Far from being a virtuous New Camelot, the Obama administration abused its power like few others.

A captivating look at the origins of our own tabloid culture in the salacious and titillating media of the Victorian era.