Penguin Books strana 88 z 485

An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life—the humble parking spot Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don’t resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed—and in some cases demolished—our homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Why have we done this to the places we love? Is parking really more important than anything else? These are the questions Slate staff writer Henry Grabar sets out to answer, telling a mesmerizing story about the strange and wonderful superorganism that is the modern American city. In a beguiling and often absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar brilliantly surveys the pain points of the nation’s parking crisis, from Los Angeles to Disney World to New York, stopping at every major American city in between. He reveals how the pathological compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems—from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster—ultimately, lighting the way for us to free our cities from parking’s cruel yoke.

'I want what the straight kids have. Even just for a couple of days...' Seventeen-year-old Max might be out and proud but he's usually too busy checking his nail polish to check his privilege. So when he says he wishes he could have the 'easy' life straight kids enjoy, Max gets more than he bargained for. He wakes up to find his wish has come true - not only have his feelings for boys vanished, so has his lifelong best friend Dean. With his world turned upside down and relationships in tatters, can Max find his way back to the life he took for granted, and maybe even win the heart of the guy he thought could never be his...? What If It's Us meets One Last Stop in this deliciously swoony queer romance.

From the acclaimed Wolfson Prize-winning author, a dazzling history of the world's emperors For millennia much of the world was ruled by emperors: a handful of individuals claimed no limit to the lands they could rule over and no limit to their authority. They operated beyond normal human constraint and indeed often claimed a superhuman or divine authority. In practice they ran the gamut from being some of the most remarkable men who ever lived, to being some of the worst and least remarkable. Dominic Lieven's marvellous new book, In the Shadow of the Gods, is the first to grapple seriously with this extraordinary phenomenon. Across the world peoples, willingly or unwillingly, fell into orbit around figures who reshaped or destroyed entire societies, imposed religions and invaded rivals. Lieven describes the anatomy of imperial monarchy and the principles by which it functioned. He compares the great emperors of antiquity, the caliphs and the warrior-emperors of the steppe before he turns to the Habsburg, Russian, Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese emperors, packing the book with extraordinary stories, astute observations and a sense of both delight and horror at these individuals' antics. The entire breadth of extreme human behaviour is here - from warlords to patrons of the arts, from political genius to feeble incapacity and pathological violence. As one of the great experts both on empires and on Russian history, Lieven is brilliantly qualified to write a book that brings to life a system of rule that dominated most of human history, as well as some of history's grandest and most dismaying figures.

The jaw-dropping story behind North Korea's dangerous cyber-criminals, the Lazarus Group, who hacked Hollywood and the world Meet the Lazarus Group, a shadowy cabal of hackers accused of working on behalf of the North Korean state. They are one of the most effective criminal enterprises on the planet, having stolen more than $1bn in an international crime spree. Their targets include central banks, cryptocurrency companies, film studios and even the British National Health Service. In this jaw-dropping, global investigation, journalist Geoff White examines how the North Korean regime has harnessed cutting-edge technology to launch a decade-long campaign of brazen and merciless raids on its richer, more powerful adversaries. From the bustling streets of Dhaka, to the glamorous studios of Hollywood, to the glittering casinos of Macau and the secretive dynastic court of Pyongyang, this is the shocking story of the world's most devastating hackers, their victims and the people who have tried - and ultimately, failed - to stop them.

What is language? Why do we have it? Why does that matter? Language is perhaps humanity's most astonishing accomplishment and one that remains poorly understood. Upending centuries of scholarship (including, most recently, Chomsky and Pinker) The Language Game shows how people learn to talk not by acquiring fixed meanings and rules, but by picking up, reusing, and recombining countless linguistic fragments in novel ways. Drawing on entertaining and persuasive examples from across the world the book explains: · How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech. · Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers. · Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied—-and why no two people speak quite the same language. · Why humans have language, but chimps don't. · How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution. · How language doesn't limit, but does shape, how we think. ·And ultimately, why all we know about language should give us hope. Christiansen and Chater's The Language Game draws on a fascinating range of examples to show the way language works, has shaped our evolution and is critical to our future.

WE WERE LIARS meets GOSSIP GIRL - this YA thriller with a splash of dark academia is full of secrets, lies, privileged teens and beach parties. The perfect summer read. A body in the pool. A friend who might be an enemy. A vacation they'll never forget... Linden has always felt like an outsider and spending the summer at his best friend's vacation house, surrounded by money and privilege is doing nothing to lessen his imposter syndrome. But he soon has bigger concerns than fitting in - there's a body in the pool and everyone's a suspect - including him.

A powerful and commanding account of the life of trailblazing political activist Angela Davis Edited by Toni Morrison and first published in 1974, An Autobiography is a classic of the Black Liberation era which resonates just as powerfully today. It is reissued now with a new introduction by Davis, for a new audience inspired and galvanised by her ongoing activism and her extraordinary example. In the book, she describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humour, and conviction, it is an unforgettable account of a life committed to radical change.

This is the stranger-than-fiction story of Wirecard, once a $30 billion tech darling, now a smouldering wreck, by the journalist who brought it crashing down - perfect for those who loved Bad Blood and Empire of Pain. When journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate the hot new tech company challenging Silicon Valley, everything about Wirecard looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up around the world, it was reporting runaway growth and the CEO even wore a black turtleneck in tribute to Steve Jobs. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum dug deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more dangerous than he ever imagined: a world of short sellers and whistleblowers, pornographers and private militias, hackers and spies. Before long he realised that he wasn't the only one in pursuit. Shadowy figures were following him through the streets of London, high-flying lawyers were sending ominous letters to his boss, and he was named as the prime suspect in a criminal inquiry. The race was on to prove his suspicions and clear his name. Money Men is the astonishing true story of Wirecard's multi-billion-dollar fraud, Europe's biggest new tech darling revealed as a house of cards. Uncovering fake bank accounts, fake offices and possibly even a fake death, McCrum offers a searing exposé that will finally lay bare the truth. Now adapted as the Netflix documentary Skandal!

LONDON. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones. DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and quickly sends the bag for forensic examination. The bones are those of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head many years ago. Also inside the bag is a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up. The clues point forward too to a brother and sister in Chicago searching for the only person who can make sense of their pasts. Four deaths. An unsolved mystery. A family whose secrets can't stay buried for ever ...

The first-ever picture book from Adam Kay and Henry Paker. This is the hilarious (and admittedly a tiny bit gross) tale of Amy, a small piece of sweetcorn who is eaten by Noah, a medium-sized boy. The story follows Amy on her funny, gooey and anatomically-accurate adventure through the human body as she discovers lots of facts about digestion. (It's fair to say that parents might learn a little bit too.)

Civil wars are the biggest danger to world peace today - this book shows us why they happen, and how to avoid them. We are now living in the world's greatest era of civil wars. While violence has declined worldwide, major civil wars are now being fought in countries including Iraq, Syria and Libya, and smaller civil wars are being fought in India and Malaysia. Even countries we thought could never experience another civil war - such as the USA, Sweden and Ireland - are showing signs of unrest. So how can we stop them? In How Civil Wars Start, acclaimed expert Professor Barbara F. Walter, who has advised on political violence everywhere from the CIA to the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, explains the rise of civil wars and the conditions that create them - not least when countries are not quite democratic. As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarised, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past - but this urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.

'I'm a fairly calm fellow; I don't usually get het up about things. But I was, let's say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn't quite say 'dead or alive'. But it came close...' Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021 Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider's battle to save his country's soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country's rise and fall against Khodorkovsky's own journey, from Soviet youth to international oil executive, powerful insider to political dissident, and now a high-profile voice seeking to reconcile East and West. With unparalleled insight, written with Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith, The Russia Conundrum exposes the desires and damning truths of Putin's Russia, and provides an answer to the West on how it must challenge the Kremlin - in order to pave the way for a better future.

Neither of them expected to fall in love. But sometimes life has other plans. When Wren realises her fiancé is in love with someone else, she thinks her heart will never recover. On the other side of the world, Anders lost his wife four years ago and is still struggling to move on. Wren hopes that spending the summer with her dad and step-family on their farm in Indiana will help her to heal. There, amid the cornfields and fireflies, she and Anders cross paths and their worlds are turned upside-down again. But Wren doesn't know that Anders is harbouring a secret, and if he acts on any feelings he has for Wren it will have serious fall-out for everyone. Walking away would hurt Wren more than she can imagine. But, knowing the truth, how can she possibly stay?

1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. At the heart of this glittering world is notorious Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie's empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho's gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost. With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson brings together a glittering cast of characters in a truly mesmeric novel that captures the uncertainty and mutability of life; of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems.

The cult classic from one of France's most stylish writers 'Don't give a damn,' says Zazie, 'what I wanted was to go in the metro' Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.

The remarkable untold story of the mercurial cycling prodigy Frank Vandenbroucke, written by William Hill award-winning author Andy McGrath. They called him God. For his grace on a bicycle, for his divine talent, for his heavenly looks. Frank Vandenbroucke had it all, and in the late Nineties he raced with dazzling speed and lived even faster. The Belgian won several of cycling's most illustrious races, including Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Nice and Ghent-Wevelgem. He was a mix of poise and panache who enthralled a generation of cycling fans. Off the bike, he only had one enemy - himself. Vandenbroucke dabbled in nocturnal party sessions mixing sleeping pills and alcohol and regularly fell out with team managers. By 1999 his team had suspended him and this proved to be the start of a long, eventful fall from grace. Depression, a drug ban, addiction, car crashes, divorce and countless court appearances subsumed his life. He threatened his wife with a gun. He tried to commit suicide twice. And when police found performance-enhancing drugs at his house, Vandenbroucke said they were for his dog. It seemed he had finally learned from his mistakes. Then, on 12 October 2009, aged just 34, Vandenbroucke was found dead in a hotel room in Senegal. Guided by exclusive contributions from his family, friends and team-mates, William Hill award-winning author Andy McGrath lays bare Vandenbroucke's chaotic, complicated life and times. God is Dead is the remarkable biography of this mercurial cycling prodigy.