A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Beirut

It's hard to coach a team when your players don't show up. Mafi muscula. Hard to make air flights without reservations. Mafi muscula. Can't tape ankles without tape. Hey! Why isn't Darrin here from the States yet? Mafi Muscula. Can't understand these Hungarian menu forms...we could starve. Mafi muscula. We're almost out of tea. Muscula! In Arabic, mafi muscula means "no problem." But a better definition is probably: "no problem for ME, big problem for YOU." Saudi Arabia is where mafi musculas start, but they don't end there. From Saudi it's on to a training camp near Budapest then onward to Beruit for the basketball championships of the Eighth Pan Arab Games. Some funny things happen along the way. And there, too. These are recounted through the eyes of an American coach. They sometimes happen on the court., but more often off. Some are pretty peculiar and that's the kind of questions they raise. For example: —Was Bruce Springsteen born in Saudi Arabia? —Do you know how to properly kiss your players? —Why are Homer's underpants radioactive? —Is Martin as dead as he thinks? —Is Adel as dead as Coach tells his mom he is? —How to get a lunatic asylum airborne? —When must camels kill you? And more.

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author and feminist icon - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos 'A happy, hilarious book' Daily Express Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the 50s and 60s. Witty, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel... twice. Nancy Spain had a deep love of the Mediterranean. So it was no surprise when, in the 1960s, she decided to build a place of her own on the Greek island of Skiathos. With an impractical nature surpassed only by her passion for the project, and despite many obstacles, she gloriously succeeded. This classic memoir is infused with all Spain's chaotic brilliance, zest for life and single-minded pursuit of a life worth living. Perfect for fans of A PLACE IN THE SUN and ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY 'Full of fun, and that zest of intelligence that never left her' Sunday Times

This book profiles eighteen of our funniest elections, from 1828, the first election in which all states had electors, to the election from hell in 2000. The book also includes chapters on Watergate and impeachment, and a gallery of official photographs.

In this powerful and achingly beautiful novel, Janette Turner Hospital tackles head-on questions of national security, art, terrorism and love. From the moment Leela’s ear catches the first few bars of music in between the roar of subway trains, she’s entranced by its haunting beauty. Letting the music reel her in, in perfect fifths, it’s at the end of the inbound platform that she finds Mishka Bartok, singing Che farò senza Euridice and accompanying himself on the violin. He’s surrounded by a cluster of commuters, but hardly seems to notice they are there until he stops playing. Despite Mishka’s reluctance to talk, Leela discovers that he’s a graduate student at Harvard, studying composition. She’s a mathematician at MIT, researching the math of music. Their connection is immediate, and that night they embark on a steamy love affair. Living together in Boston, Leela and Mishka pursue their mutual passions — both academic and carnal — in a fog, as if the outside world does not exist. They have both distanced themselves from their families — Mishka from his mother and grandparents in Australia, Leela from her father and sister back in Promised Land, South Carolina. Both recoil from the reality of the city streets, where terrorists attack American civilians and a subway bombing under Harvard Square comes dangerously close to tearing their world apart. But that is ultimately the effect of the bombing, when Leela is grabbed off the street, thrust into a dark car, and taken to an interrogation room. There, she is questioned about the recent attacks by a masked man who tells her he’s a member of a private security force. He also asks directly about Mishka — who often visits an Arab café and a mosque that are under surveillance, and socializes with known instigators… all signs that he’s a terrorist, or at least aiding those responsible for the subway bombing. When Leela’s captor removes his mask at last, Cobb stands before her: the person she was perhaps closest to as a teenager back in Promised Land. Since leaving the army, after a long stint in the Middle East, he’s been involved in paramilitary work. Cobb knows from experience that photographs can be disastrously misinterpreted, but in his eyes, Mishka is guilty. Against her instincts, Leela thinks back to Mishka’s many unexplained disappearances, often around the time of such attacks. It’s then that she realizes the mystery and intensity at the heart of their relationship could be hiding much more than she’d thought. Mishka disappears again the next day, and doubt erodes Leela’s love as she embarks on her own investigation to find him and unravel the mystery of his life. Little does she know that her search will lead her across the globe and into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair. With this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Janette Turner Hospital again shows her genius, interweaving a literary thriller with a story of passion and the triumph of decency in confusing and dangerous times. It is at once a love story on a grand scale that spans America, Australia and the Middle East, and an exploration of how ghastly side effects of terrorism can wreak havoc on individual lives.

Proceeds chronologically through the audition process, beginning with finding auditions and reading and interpreting casting calls. Flom discusses many facets of preparation, including selecting songs and monologues to suit your voice and the audition, organizing and arranging your music, working with the accompanist, etc.

The promotion of democracy by the United States became highly controversial during the presidency of George W. Bush. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were widely perceived as failed attempts at enforced democratization, sufficient that Barack Obama has felt compelled to downplay the rhetoric of democracy and freedom in his foreign-policy. This collection seeks to establish whether a democracy promotion tradition exists, or ever existed, in US foreign policy, and how far Obama and his predecessors conformed to or repudiated it. For more than a century at least, American presidents have been driven by deep historical and ideological forces to conceive US foreign policy in part through the lens of democracy promotion. Debating how far democratic aspirations have been realized in actual foreign policies, this book draws together concise studies from many of the leading academic experts in the field to evaluate whether or not these efforts were successful in promoting democratization abroad. They clash over whether democracy promotion is an appropriate goal of US foreign policy and whether America has gained anything from it. Offering an important contribution to the field, this work is essential reading for all students and scholars of US foreign policy, American politics and international relations.

Fully revised and updated, The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories sorts the myths from the realities, the allegations from the explanations and the paranoid from the probable. Who might be trying to convince us that climate change is or isn't real? What is the truth behind the death of Osama bin Laden and is he still alive? When did the CIA start experimenting with mind control? Where is the HAARP installation and did it have anything to do with the Japanese tsunami disaster? Why is surveillance in our cities and online so widespread and what are the real benefits? This definitive guide to the world's most controversial conspiracies wanders through a maze of sinister secrets, suspicious cover-ups hidden agendas and clandestine operations to explore all these questions - and many many more. Now available in PDF format.

Prizewinning journalist Robert Fisk offers a brilliant account of the tragedy of war as seen in the conflict in Lebanon. "Eminently readable . . . a chronicle of a continuing war without heroes".--The New York Times.