A lively memoir of James Duncan Cambell, who joined the Chinese Maritime Customs Service in 1862, served in China from 1863-1870, and was sent to Paris in 1884 to negotiate an end to the Chinese-French War on behalf of the Qing government.

Preliminary Material /Robert Ronald Campbell --Campbell's Early Years, 1833-1853 /Robert Ronald Campbell --Campbell in the British Civil Service, 1856-1862 /Robert Ronald Campbell --Campbell in China, 1863-1870 /Robert Ronald Campbell --The London Office of the Chinese Customs Service /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Service's Entrance Examination /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Lighting of the Chinese Coast /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Chinese Fleet and Admiral Lang /Robert Ronald Campbell --The International Exhibitions /Robert Ronald Campbell --Campbell As a Diplomat The French and Portuguese Treaties, 1885 and 1887 /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895 /Robert Ronald Campbell --Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee /Robert Ronald Campbell --Railways, Postal Service, and Mining /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Boxer Rising, 1900 /Robert Ronald Campbell --The Chinese Special Envoy at King Edward's Coronation /Robert Ronald Campbell --Campbell's Closing Years, 1903-1907 /Robert Ronald Campbell --A Note on Campbell's China Correspondence /Robert Ronald Campbell --Index /Robert Ronald Campbell --Harvard East Asian Monographs /Robert Ronald Campbell.

Examine the obscured line between those who create crimes and those who report on them in this sordid history of journalism "If it bleeds, it leads"--this maxim is as true now as it was 300 years ago. Crime is the staple of the news, and the British public's appetite for crime stories shows no sign of abating. Today, following Leveson, the line between journalists and the criminals they expose has been blurred; but, in fact, it was ever thus. The reporters who have delved into the most terrible crime stories of each era have often, by necessity, had questionable morals and dubious practices. The "hacks in the macs" and the "murder pack" would go to any lengths to get a story--and serve it up to an ever-eager reading public. In this colorful history of the wild world of crime reporting since 1700, crime reporter Duncan Campbell goes behind the scenes to show how the phone hacking scandal is nothing new--in fact, it is part of the great British news heritage. Revealing what it's really like to deal with murderers, gangsters, robbers, cat burglars, victims, informers, and detectives, Campbell draws on 40 years of experience to explore the dark arts of journalism, as the relationships between the press, public, police, and criminals, and their impact on society, are being questioned as never before.

US original edition, debut of British author who writes for the Guardian newspaper. Hero is a journalist (hence the title) who is blackmailed into traveling to Thailand to track down the killer of a notorious English mobster. Very funny, not at all violent, and possibly the first in a series.

The story of Frank Whittle – RAF pilot, mathematician of genius, inventor of the jet engine and British hero. 'Wonderful' David Edgerton, TLS 'A fascinating account' Aeroplane Monthly 'Casts new light on the intense, heroic character of Frank Whittle' Leo McKinstry '[A] thorough dissection of the evolution of the jet engine... I recommend this mighty tome unreservedly' Journal of Aeronautical History 'A long overdue corrective of an extraordinary man' James Hamilton-Paterson 'A fine, deeply researched book' Military History Monthly In 1938, a thirty-one-year-old RAF pilot and engineer named Frank Whittle – given special leave to pursue his own startlingly original concept of flight – presented the Air Ministry with a written proposal for a revolutionary jet-powered fighter aircraft. A ready response might have changed the course of history, but Whittle got no reply. In this gripping and insightful biography, Duncan Campbell-Smith charts Whittle's success at building a pre-war jet engine against all the odds – and tracks his desperate struggle to have it launched into active service against Hitler's Luftwaffe. It arrived too late – but nonetheless transformed the future of aviation.

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Salinger, to name just a few. Now Duncan distills his remarkable powers of observation into this unique collection of short stories and essays. At the heart of Duncan's tales are characters undergoing the complex and violent process of transformation, with results both painful and wondrous. Equally affecting are his nonfiction reminiscences, the "river teeth" of the title. He likens his memories to the remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water. These experiences—shaped by his own river of time—are related with the art and grace of a master storyteller. In River Teeth, a uniquely gifted American writer blends two forms, taking us into the rivers of truth and make-believe, and all that lies in between.

If not perhaps the most popular Highland clan, the Campbells are undoubtedly one of the most successful. The Campbell earls of Argyll have traditionally enjoyed a rather unsavoury historical reputation, viewed by their rivals with a mixture of fear, envy and respect. The spectacular advance of Campbell power in the medieval Scottish kingdom has normally been explained in terms of the family’s ruthless and duplicitous suppression of their fellow-Gaels in Argyll and the Hebrides at the behest of the Scottish crown. In particular, Clan Campbell’s success is seen to be built on the destruction of older and more prestigious regional lordships in the west, such as those of the MacDougall lords of Argyll and the MacDonald lords of the Isles. This book reassesses these negative images and interpretations of the growth of Campbell authority from the thirteenth century and the opening of the Wars of Independence through to the death of Archibald, 2nd earl of Argyll, at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The lords who dominated the medieval Clan Campbell emerge more as individuals enjoying complex and ambiguous relationships with the Scottish crown and the culture and politics of Gaelic-speaking Scotland, rather than as unquestioning agents of the Stewart monarchy and committed converts to the aristocratic culture of lowland Scotland.