The Magic of AMAZON BOOKS
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The Man-Eaters of
Tsavo (Peter Capstick Library Series)
John Henry Patterson
The Man-eaters of Tsavo - Africa just
a hundred years ago, an ordinary man like you or me trying to supervise the building
of a railway, with his operations in turn overseen by two uncannily wily lions
with a cultivated taste for human meat - No, not fiction: stone cold sober fact,
and how the average British were - steadfast, unpretentious, doing in difficult
circumstances what had to be done. The recent 'film of the book' travesty, an
insultingly patronising vehicle for Hollywood personnel, merits no mention
- Read the book. And do not criticise too loudly Patterson's shooting of animals -
That is what people were led to do in those days; today in so many places around
the globe people are persuaded to shoot other folks instead. - Is that progress?
- Well, in a world of rapidly dwindling wildlife, for the arms manufacturers it is.
- Which surely must give you pause for thought. Hardcover - 346 pages (January 1986) Sagittarius Rising Sagittarius Rising - An account of life - and war
- in the air during the still innocent times of the First World War, and after
it. I knew people from that war, and knew them well. They were a different -
better - breed, quietly superb people, and if someone like me honestly tells you
this from personal acquaintance, then never let anyone for other and very
different reasons tell you otherwise. Read this book and see; I have run across
it in many other houses, and am not surprised. Availability: The Best Short Stories In his work as a young reporter-cum-sub-editor in India
Kipling discovered the effect of compression in writing and thereafter added to an
already extraordinary precocity, producing tales of naked facts with never a word too
many, rarely a word too few. His superbly inventive stories are short, brilliant and
alive. The majority of his many books are almost always 'out of stock' - not from
unpopularity with their readers, quite the contrary: on the all-too-infrequent
occasions of their production they are snapped up immediately. For reasons which
need not concern you here he is not popular with the publishers. However, on balance
this is possibly England's most able author of the last two centuries - certainly
one of them. You should not be denied access to his writings. These books are
your heritage, so demand them. Whether you like them is for you to decide; it is
not for any international publishers to keep such excellent literature from you on the
pretence that it is 'unfashionable'. If they will not adequately publish
it, we shall find others who will. It is all 'good', but I will let you have a list
of his best titles another time.
Availability: This title is usually dispatched within
2-3 days. The Man Who Would Be King and Other
Stories The Man Who Would Be King - and most
of his other books - For all his period and the most strenuous efforts of his
strategic detractors being lined up to slam him - even in his own books! - a most progressive,
modern man who can still tell you and make you feel how things really were even within living
memory, but now are intended to be no longer - unless, that is, we do something about it.
Immerse yourself in the world of his books. He can absorb you, living, sweating and panting,
into the action of his fabulous stories more vividly than can any author before or since.
You do not have to accept all his ideas or attitudes, but he had - and can express - far
more experience - both his own and others' - than you or I will ever have, so read his
adult stories; the excellent other tales will better educate your children. And remember,
he wrote the masterly 'Man Who Would Be King' in which writers, if not all critics,
recognise excellence, when he was - twenty! - Eat your heart out, writers. Yes,
maybe you did see the film, but the story is much more visual and complete. It lives! -
And you live with it! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24
hours Go Down Moses (Modern Library)
Go Down, Moses - How things were in Mississippi.
The story 'The Bear', which should be ten books, has more compressed brilliance
per page than virtually any other piece of modern literature - But then
Faulkner, with Hemingway, learned from the master - Kipling. Faulkner can be
difficult for some, but not always, and not in this. The best story in the world?
- One of them, and a book to keep by you for life. His story lines and family
histories criss-cross his books, and much of their depth and the action occur
outside his books: that's right: inside your head - I grew up in the airs and
ways of Yoknapatawpha County, so I know. I recommend that you let this greatest
of American story-tellers and writers talk to you awhile. He is immensely
persuasive - in American. Look for 'Pylon' and his short story 'Turnabout'. I
will give you others of his another time. Several have been turned into wretchedly
unworthy films 'for public consumption', but don't let that deter you from discovering
and exploring the world of his monumental talent. Availability: On Order; is usually
dispatched within 1-2 weeks. The Poacher's Handbook
Ian Niall, Barbara Greg (Illustrator)
The Poacher's Handbook - An elegiac book, without
intending to be, about the real England which was still there only a short time ago
in my youth, and which perhaps will flower again - in time, with help. Life in the
woods and country in times when traditional certainties still existed and there
was nothing to question. Feel its slope under your foot, smell its richness
of soil and leaf-mould, feel the rain and listen to the wind and the birdsong - if
we are to be left any by the mercenary business that farming has become - and know
what England was - and is? - Well, not for a long time perhaps, but - in time. West with the Night
West with The Night - for me certainly the finest
book by any woman and perhaps by anyone else - Flying in Africa in the Twenties,
as flown by a fabulous and fascinating free spirit of a woman, and all that unique
experience of one who dared portrayed by the same magical author, who had the enormous
benefit of no cramping formal education. The vindictive suppression of her book for
forty years wilfully deprived two generations of us of its wisdom and beauty - She
wrote only this. Its title could have been better: 'She Who Dared', perhaps would have
been apt; but if nothing else had been written this book alone would still be enough
to establish her and her time. Be warned: don't blame me if you fall in love with
her. She is like that. - She was like that? - No, she - and her world -
still are, just waiting for you. Read the book. See for yourself. Prepare to be
stirred and made restless. Let yourself aspire a little! Flight to Arras A superb flower of French civilisation: a
composed, detached writer and, they say, awful pilot, if such a being can exist
for long - But an example of just how wonderfully perceptive - and expressive of that
marvel - a human can be. We ought to be taught people like this, but what have we? -
TV quizzes and socially-manipulative, always urban,
so-unfunny-they-have-to-come-with-their-own-canned-haw-haw 'sit-coms', junk-food and
intentionally junk-education, all simply in the interest of, and promoted by, those
who exercise finance and so inflict their commerce on us. Remember this, will you:
we are all frisking in the wheat for just a little while. What say we frisk to better
effect? Wake up. Read this book. Be inspired; frisk better.
Consort
with real quality: Order St. Ex's unique Flight to Arras. Don't
miss it!
If you have to wait for this book, then wait. But
then make sure you buy it. While waiting, try these by the same incomparable
author - He, lamentably, is long since dead - yes, in a war, of course - and sadly
missed, but at least we still have these few marvellous fragments to read and
rejoice in. Airman's Odyssey
Antoine de Saint-Exupery Paperback - 437 pages (November 1984) Harcourt Wind, Sand and Stars
Fabulous flight all the world over. Unless you
have done it, you haven't lived! - Well, you have not lived this. But you
can read about it, be there again and again to share the perils and the sights,
once-in-another-lifetime experiences and just-as-unique company, and the skies! -
and always the cool reflections of this pensive author, which are an education in
themselves, both in content and in character. His life was a tribute to - and
promise of - what we, too, can be. Meet him and see. The Gallic accent of the
'Arras' translation was entrancing - St. Ex was essentially French, after
all; but give the Celt his chance.
Here it is, take it - Wind, Sand and Stars - And marvel!
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Paperback - 144 pages (5 January, 1995), Penguin Books The White Nile The White Nile and The Blue Nile - which is how
'the dark continent' of Africa was and mostly still is. The European exploration
of The Nile a mere hundred-odd years ago, and the sequence of extraordinary
people who enacted it. The interior of Africa was - to us, even so recently -
still as remote and unknown as was the other side of the moon. Read between the
lines of these books and you will understand much you did not know before and
otherwise never will. See and understand, for instance, the benefit of 'European
banking' to the Sudan then - and perhaps therefore of 'international' banking and
finance to us all now, the manipulation of domestic public opinion for political
ends, arms to both sides in exchange for the diamonds and oil, then use of armed might -
'our brave lads' against theirs - all of us the merest utensils of finance.
Mr. Moorehead went there himself, to Africa where it all happened and is still
being perpetrated; it shows in his writing - You are there with him amid it all. Barbarossa Barbarossa - You may not like history, and - as it
is 'taught' - neither do I - After all, we are intended not to - Well, Will Cuppy's
version excepted, of course. But read this graphic account of the German campaign into
Russia - where they lost the war. The few scalding pages on Stalingrad alone - even just
the sniper battle - make the book compulsive reading, and the heroism of the tragically -
criminally - misused Russians can make you cry. This book is a magnificent achievement,
resulting from Alan Clark's insight into and awesome representation on the page of the
sheer stupid bestiality of the wars we innocent sheep are led into and obliged to wage
in the interest of self-seeking gangster politicians, the arms trade and particularly
those who promote and feast off both and off of us all. Sometimes their wars
achieve unintended results, such as prompting so incandescent a book as this, by
the light of which even such intended mutton-head cannon- and market-fodder as
we - can see! - and react? With a Machine Gun to Cambrai Read how war really is, not in quiet history
books or calm of Staff H.Q., but at the sharp end down in the mud and blood where
the maiming and dying and extinction is done - and is to be done again and again, as
we see every day, unless we adults put a stop to all such politico-commercial trash.
Surely we have to do better than this. So let's do just that! Availability: STRONG MEAT!
See the stuff you, too, are made of: Collar Col.Patterson's The Man-Eaters of
Tsavo now!
St. Martin's Press; ISBN: 0312510101
Don't wait: Meet true blue Valour: Order Cecil Lewis's marvellous Sagittarius
Rising today!
Paperback - 332 pages (May 1994)
Synopsis Generally regarded as one of the classic memoirs
of World War I, this book is a personal account of the air fighting that took
place.
Rudyard Kipling
You cannot afford not to buy The Best Short Stories.- Because these
really are!
Paperback - 384 pages (March 1997), Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Rudyard Kipling
Remember
to buy Kipling Quality whenever you can - So now The Man Who Would Be
King
Paperback - 112 pages (July 1994)
Dover Publications
William Faulkner
Buy this book to absorb at leisure: Go Down, Moses. - It is great
literature!
Hardcover (October 1995)
Do not
miss Mr. Niall's sublime book about traditional England: Take The Poacher's
Handbook now!
Beryl Markham
Take this opportunity to have West With the Night; You will never regret it!
Antoine de
Saint-Exupery
Order St. Ex's Airman's Odyssey now, while you can!
Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
Alan Moorehead
Alan Clark
George Coppard
Ephraim
J.Leitner
Take down this recipe for Utopia now - Devour STRONG MEAT! - It is
devastatingly revealing!
- Yes, we can all do so much better than this - See how easily! - What every banker and economist ought to know, but few if any do. With all of us they should read this to see exactly what it is they are really involved in and are aiding. - In episodes of slyly ferocious hilarity, with a few shrewd oblique strokes, Mr. Leitner slashes away the social undergrowth to reveal in all its stark brutality the unsuspected machine which has manipulated us all for so long - or almost all - And its dark and secret effect: murderous, holocaustal genocide. We must have been mad or blind all this time to have tolerated it - or stupid, though he says stupefied. He urges us, the majority, to dismantle the mechanism - it's just a cheap little trick of a bazaar scam anyway - and decree and enforce Utopia here and now - Well, Amen to that. He makes it sound easy - a picnic, in fact. - And you can imagine what this is about? - Bet you can't!
The Sky Beyond - by the Australian, Sir Gordon Taylor
Pioneering the trans-oceanic routes that are routinely just 'down there' now, but then meant flying by compass and sextant through thousands of miles of weather to try to find a rain-blurred dot amid the ocean, without enough fuel unless you could chance on a tail-wind - otherwise........ All told matter-of-factly, as it happened. I have been unable to find this recently either, but keep an eye open for it in www.copernic.com and buy it when you can. Or agitate for it - It and its protagonists are magnificent and do not deserve oblivion. We need the example of such efforts to see of what we, too, are still capable, and may yet need to be again.
The Pooh Perplex
Frederick C. Crews
Professor Crews' justifiably - though, oh, of course discreetly - famous, lovely lethal little book which elegantly and so delicately deflates pretentious literary appreciation, which had this coming. Well worth enjoying. And don't you worry about Pooh and Chris. Even they come out of it refreshed and improved.
Treat yourself to The Pooh Perplex - It's de-licious! Paperback (20 September, 1979), Robin Clark
The Decipherment of Linear B
How an irreducible perplexity contained its own
solution - Let this fascinating enigma whispering out of the past whisper its message
to you. Witness the irrevocable, unalterable certainty that tomorrow always
becomes. - Which should prompt thought of what ours of tomorrow - supposing they
are to be left any tomorrow in which to consider such things - will think of what
- today, while we still can - we are doing or neglecting to do to ensure
or prevent their future. But then, similarly, the minor problem of the ruin presently
being made of our world in the name of loot and supremacy is not without its solution
either, is it, when you - and the good Mr. Leitner - come to think of it.
Take
comfort in 'sic transit gloria mundi': The Decipherment of Linear B - It
has a fascination all its own
Availability: This title is usually dispatched within 2-3 days.
Paperback - 173 pages (13 September, 1990) Cambridge University Press
Our Place in the Cosmos
Cosmos - according to Hoyle - & co. About as
much as you will ever know about Universe-and-all-that - made plain, sane
and logical, which is the best way to recognise anything from purported
big-bang to unequivocal belly-button - Perfect absolute reality. God is Love -
nothing more? - How true, and money makes the world go round. No, no such
airy-fairy notions in sight - Feet-on-the-ground, clear-minded northern realism,
and thank God for it. So dwell on these sublime extents of Universe, then re-consider
the human fictions of finance and taxes, their farce of politics and preferential
laws - and their sad, mad, bad consequence of this 'modern' world of theirs, and
look who is really running the circus down here, and why. Then do something about
making all our lives down here on terra firmer.
You
need Our Place in the Cosmos - to give your woes their true
perspective
Availability: This title is usually dispatched within
2-3 days.
Paperback 208 pages (June 1996) Phoenix Press
So, most honoured and welcome Visitor, thank you for your company.
Have your other books, and good luck, but for me no book-shelf or education would be complete
without all of these superb books. Most are paper-backs, one or two are on disk, and none is
expensive - most are irresistibly cheap - as all books should be, if not free - and as everything
else should be - free of the effects of grasping avarice on the part of just a few. Yes, and I
would say, Here, borrow my copies; but I have done that before,
you see, so you can buy or steal your own.
This is experience of the world which otherwise you will never have, lived
over other lifetimes by giants - as we, too, can be - and, perfect to the last dot and comma,
with sublime expertise encapsulated thus for you to enjoy, appreciate and absorb in a
day or two, or even month or two and still have thereafter, and which will be of immeasurable
pleasure and benefit to you - just for the price of a trivial beer and sandwich or so each. Life - ours, or others' as exemplified in these books - is the perfect teacher,
education par excellence. For soon-to-be-obvious reasons, modern education - academic and via
accessible media - deliberately omits all mention of what is really being done to our world, by whom,
and why; one or two of these unpremeditated books do not. Particularly in these days of our strategic
intellectual belittlement and moral impoverishment, in lieu of better educational fare we all need
superb books like these simply to open our mental and moral eyes. Here they are then, at your disposal,
at your very fingertips - now! You owe it to yourself and the future of your family to have them. So
reach for excellence and take them, while you still can - What, the lot? - Well, that is up to you,
but I would - the lot, while you have this chance; it will be cheaper. - Or take one or two now to
prove the sheer quality of this selection, and come back for the others another time. And - as the
Chinese, bless'em, say - Enjoy! - One brief word of advice: never lend any of these if you
want to see them again.
John Chadwick
Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe
And just wait and see what else we will have for you, from down here in the tackle-room!
nd Wodehouse there is super, they'll just love him - And even
- wow - hey, yeah! - Mind that - oops!