A fascinating journey through Europe’s old towns, exploring why we treasure them—but also what they hide about a continent’s fraught history Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. These old towns and their turbulent histories have been key sites in Europe’s ongoing theater of politics and war. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, the acclaimed writer Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history. Uncovering hidden stories behind these old and old-seeming façades, Kohn offers us a new understanding of the politics of European history-making—showing how our visits to old towns could promote belonging over exclusion, and empathy over indifference.

A fascinating journey through Europe's old towns, exploring why we treasure them--but also what they hide about a continent's fraught history Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War--some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. These old towns and their turbulent histories have been key sites in Europe's ongoing theater of politics and war. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, the acclaimed writer Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history. Uncovering hidden stories behind these old and old-seeming façades, Kohn offers us a new understanding of the politics of European history-making--showing how our visits to old towns could promote belonging over exclusion, and empathy over indifference.

Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.

Ghost Towns of Route 66 guides you through more than 25 fascinating ghost towns along America's Main Street-Route 66 expert Jim Hinckley fills you in on their rich history and the photography of Kerrick James brings their haunting beauty to life.

This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them, in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug problem was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

Marek Kohn - 'one of the best science writers we have' (AC Grayling) - paints an important and eye-opening portrait of Britain and Ireland after a century of global warming. Author of A Reason for Everything and Four Words for Friend Marek Kohn projects one hundred years into the future when, based on the climate change evidence we have now, some parts of Britain will be like regions of today's Mediterranean. But, more disturbingly, our parks will be arid brown fields; private automobile use will probably be unheard of; water will be severely rationed; significant stretches of our beloved coastline will have been sacrificed to the sea. Floods on these coasts and in certain river valleys will make them uninhabitable. Some of our flora and fauna will have vanished; exotic animals and pests will flourish. Human climate migration will have become a significant fact of life as other continents become harsher places to survive in. Surveillance and restriction of our movements will be taken for granted. Walking in what is left of 'nature' will be nearly impossible. As climate activism - including Greta Thunberg's school strikes and Extinction Rebellion's mass protests - gathers pace worldwide in the light of a growing climate emergency, Turned Out Nice is more relevant than ever: an urgent report from the near-future that we cannot afford to ignore. It will change the way you think about the climate and global warming. 'An imaginative journey through different parts of the British Isles, crammed with detail . . . A good primer for anyone who wants to think about the British future without being suicidal or consciously blinkered.' Andrew Marr, Financial Times ' Graphic, gripping . . . [Kohn] warns against the current complacency of short-term thinking and temporising inactivity.' The Times

A collection of stories of the bank and train robbers of the Old West and how the local citizens fought to defend their homes and lives.

Take a journey down winding lanes and Roman roads in this witty and informative guide to the meanings behind the names of England's towns and villages. From Celtic farmers to Norman conquerors, right up to the Industrial Revolution, deciphering our place names reveals how generations of our ancestors lived, worked, travelled and worshipped, and how their influence has shaped our landscape. From the most ancient sacred sites to towns that take their names from stories of giants and knights, learn how Roman garrisons became our great cities, and discover how a meeting of the roads could become a thriving market town. Region by region, Caroline Taggart uncovers hidden meanings to reveal a patchwork of tall tales and ancient legends that collectively tells the story of how we made England.

Marek Kohn examines the resurgent racialism in science in a timely expose. The ideas, which exploit anxieties about race and social breakdown and their defenders, are analysed in this book."