Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion

'A highly entertaining read, deftly melding social history with sporting memoir and travelogue' Mail on Sunday A history of Latin America through cricket Cricket was the first sport played in almost every country of the Americas - earlier than football, rugby or baseball. In 1877, when England and Australia played the inaugural Test match at the MCG, Uruguay and Argentina were already ten years into their derby played across the River Plate. The visionary cricket historian Rowland Bowen said that, during the highpoint of cricket in South America between the two World Wars, the continent could have provided the next Test nation. In Buenos Aires, where British engineers, merchants and meatpackers flocked to make their fortune, the standard of cricket was high: towering figures like Lord Hawke and Plum Warner took star-studded teams of Test cricketers to South America, only to be beaten by Argentina. A combined Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean team took on the first-class counties in England in 1932. The notion of Brazilians and Mexicans playing T20 at the Maracana or the Azteca today is not as far-fetched as it sounds. But Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion is also a social history of grit, industry and nation-building in the New World. West Indian fruit workers battled yellow fever and brutal management to carve out cricket fields next to the railway lines in Costa Rica. Cricket was the favoured sport of Chile's Nitrate King. Emperors in Brazil and Mexico used the game to curry favour with Europe. The notorious Pablo Escobar even had a shadowy connection to the game. The fate of cricket in South America was symbolised by Eva Peron ordering the burning down of the Buenos Aires Cricket Club pavilion when the club refused to hand over their premises to her welfare scheme. Cricket journalists Timothy Abraham and James Coyne take us on a journey to discover this largely untold story of cricket's fate in the world's most colourful continent. Fascinating and surprising, Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion is a valuable addition to cricketing and social history.

The dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, was one of the longest and bloodiest in Latin American history. The Dictator’s Seduction is a cultural history of the Trujillo regime as it was experienced in the capital city of Santo Domingo. Focusing on everyday forms of state domination, Lauren Derby describes how the regime infiltrated civil society by fashioning a “vernacular politics” based on popular idioms of masculinity and fantasies of race and class mobility. Derby argues that the most pernicious aspect of the dictatorship was how it appropriated quotidian practices such as gossip and gift exchange, leaving almost no place for Dominicans to hide or resist. Drawing on previously untapped documents in the Trujillo National Archives and interviews with Dominicans who recall life under the dictator, Derby emphasizes the role that public ritual played in Trujillo’s exercise of power. His regime included the people in affairs of state on a massive scale as never before. Derby pays particular attention to how events and projects were received by the public as she analyzes parades and rallies, the rebuilding of Santo Domingo following a major hurricane, and the staging of a year-long celebration marking the twenty-fifth year of Trujillo’s regime. She looks at representations of Trujillo, exploring how claims that he embodied the popular barrio antihero the tíguere (tiger) stoked a fantasy of upward mobility and how a rumor that he had a personal guardian angel suggested he was uniquely protected from his enemies. The Dictator’s Seduction sheds new light on the cultural contrivances of autocratic power.

Grow your heart three sizes and get in on all of the Grinch-mas cheer with this Christmas classic--the ultimate Dr. Seuss holiday book that no collection is complete without! Every Who down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot . . . but the Grinch, who lived just north of Who-ville, did NOT! Not since "'Twas the night before Christmas" has the beginning of a Christmas tale been so instantly recognizable. This heartwarming story about the effects of the Christmas spirit will grow even the coldest and smallest of hearts. Like mistletoe, candy canes, and caroling, the Grinch is a mainstay of the holidays, and his story is the perfect gift for readers young and old. "Irrepressible and irresistible." --Kirkus Reviews

This is the fascinating autobiography of none other than Ted Dexter -- aka Lord Ted -- the ferociously powerful and debonair former England international cricketer and captain. Dexter was a classical, hard-hitting batsman and right-arm swing bowler of the highest order. Having captained England in 1961-2, stood as England's chairman of selectors from 1989-1993 and then becoming President of the MCC in 2001, he is undeniably one of England's most prolific cricketers, playing alongside and standing in the same legacy as the iconic Fred Trueman, Peter May, Colin Cowdrey, Richie Benaud and Gary Sobers. But, as Ted is eager to stress in the introduction of his book, he also lived a rich, lively and fulfilling life outside of his sporting career. Featuring tales galore -- of his various escapades along the French Rivera, his experience of running a sports PR company, flying planes (just "because he could"), playing championship golf, racing greyhounds, journalism, broadcasting and honestly *so much more* -- you'll wonder if there's anything in life this man couldn't do! Fresh, vivacious and ridiculously entertaining, this book is destined to unravel as a rip-roaring read not only for those who recall his sporting legacy, but for anyone who resonates with Ted's fervent enthusiasm for both cricket and life. All book royalties will be donated to the MCC Foundation -- Enhancing Lives Through Cricket.

Anagram Solver is the essential guide to cracking all types of quiz and crossword featuring anagrams. Containing over 200,000 words and phrases, Anagram Solver includes plural noun forms, palindromes, idioms, first names and all parts of speech. Anagrams are grouped by the number of letters they contain with the letters set out in alphabetical order so that once the letters of an anagram are arranged alphabetically, finding the solution is as easy as locating the word in a dictionary.

Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.

Born in Italy to a well-to-do Jewish family, Emilio Segrè (1905-1989) became Enrico Fermi’s first graduate student in 1928, contributed to the discovery of slow neutrons and was appointed director of the University of Palermo’s physics laboratory in 1936. While visiting the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California in 1938, he learned that he had been dismissed from his Palermo post by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. Ernest O. Lawrence hired him to work on the cyclotron at Berkeley with Luis Alvarez, Edwin McMillan, and Glenn Seaborg. Segrè was one of the first to join Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, where he became a group leader on the Manhattan Project. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of the antiproton. He was a professor of physics at UC Berkeley from 1946 until 1972. “[A] readable, absorbing, interesting autobiography... A valuable contribution by a person who witnessed the development of much of modern nuclear physics. Segrè’s description of the historic neutron experiments performed in Rome during the mid-1930s by Enrico Fermi’s group, of which Segrè was a member, is of inestimable worth.” — Glenn T. Seaborg, Physics Today “A Mind Always in Motion is Emilio Segrè’s account — published four years after his death in 1989 — of his personal life and his life in physics... It is absorbing, moving in places and frequently revealing. Segrè noted in his preface, ‘I have not sought to display manners and tact I never had, and I have tried to treat myself no better than any one else.’ He ably succeeded in these purposes.” — Daniel J. Kevles, Nature “For general readers with an interest in the history of nuclear physics, Segrè... is among the most personable witnesses.” — Publishers Weekly

'Fascinating and insightful . . . lifts the curtain to reveal the inner workings of international cricket. A must-read for any cricketer, coach or fan' Eoin Morgan 'This path-breaking book should be compulsory reading for commentators and captains - and all cricket fans' Mervyn King 'Clever and original but also wise' Ed Smith How valuable is winning the toss? And how should captains use it to their advantage? Why does a cricket ball swing? Why don't Indians bat left-handed? What is a good length and why? Why are leg-spinners so successful in T20 cricket? Why did England win the World Cup? Why do all Test bowlers bowl at either 55 or 85mph? Why don't they pitch it up? All cricketers long to know the answer to these questions and many more. Only fifteen years ago it would have been difficult to answer them - cricket was guided only by decades-old tradition and received wisdom. Data has changed everything. Today we can track every ball to within millimetres; its release point, speed and bounce point are measured as are how much the ball swings, how much it deviates off the pitch, the exact height and line that it passes the stumps, and multiple other variables. Hitting Against the Spin is the story of that data, and what it can tell us about how cricket really works. Leading cricket thinkers Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones lift the lid on international cricket and explain its hidden workings and dynamics - the forces that shape cricket and, in turn, the cricketers who play it. They analyse the unseen hands that determine which players succeed and which fail, which tactics work and which don't, which teams win and which lose. They also explore the new world of franchise cricket as well as the rapid evolution of the T20 format. Revolutionary in its insights, Hitting Against the Spin takes you on a fascinating whistle-stop tour of modern cricket and sports analytics, bringing cricket firmly into the twenty-first century by revealing its long-kept secrets. This is the most important cricket book in decades.