The Olivetti Chronicles

John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows shaped the taste of successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, Home Truths, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also tapping away on his beloved Olivetti typewriter, creating copy for an array of patient editors. He wrote articles, columns and reviews for newspapers and magazines as diverse as The Listener, Oz, Gandalf's Garden, Sounds, the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times. Now for the first time, the best of these writings have been brought together - selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children. Music, of course, is a central and recurring theme, and he writes on music in all its forms, from Tubular Bells to Berlin punk to Madonna. Here you can read John Peel on everything from the perils of shaving to the embarrassments of virginity, and from the strange joy of Eurovision to the horror of being sick in trains. At every stage, the writing is laced with John's brilliantly acute observations on the minutiae of everyday life. This endlessly entertaining book is essential reading for Peel fans and a reminder of just why he remains a truly great Briton.

John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows pretty much defined popular culture as it emerged and shaped the taste of successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, Home Truths, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also committing his laconic brilliance to paper, in articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines, his diaries and his letters. Now for the first time, these writings have been brought together. Selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children, these writings amount to a second autobiography, telling the John Peel story as it happened. From his earliest journalism - and, as Peel admitted in the original synopsis of his autobiography: 'starting with crap pieces (opportunities for hilarious quotes from same "clouds are poems written in the sky")', he also wrote contributions for International Times, Oz, Gandalf's Garden and Disc and Music Echo, then Sounds, the Observer, the Independent, Radio Times and he was even briefly a correspondent for Bike magazine. Woven through these pieces are Peel's diary entries, letters and personal reflections from his family who are the subject of so many of them. This extraordinary, hilarious and moving book is a reminder of just why John Peel remains a truly great Briton and how much we still miss him...

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.

The Principal Chronicles is a collection of funny and poignant short stories that follow the arc of one man’s life and career in education. These works of creative non-fiction—or, to be precise, of semi-autobiographical, pseudo-non-fictional memoir—have been refined by many years of telling and re-telling to David Garlick’s friends, family and, especially, to fellow educators. Some stories, such as “You’ve Got to Eat a Pound of Dirt Before You Die” depict childhood and teenage hijinks. Others, such as “Elvis Presley and My Second Teaching Report,” deal with Garlick’s years in the classroom. Many stories, bearing such salient titles as “I Hate High School Swimming Pools” and “Sometimes—in Fact, Almost Always—They Grow Up,” detail his years as a high school vice-principal and principal. Garlick spins lively, engaging tales about the funny situations in which he has so often found himself, from his earliest years all the way to retirement and beyond. By turns candid, poignant, insightful, and surprising, and always gently humorous, these stories invite readers to laugh about humanity’s quirks and appreciate the many large and small ways that people show each other kindness every day.

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the #1 New York Times bestselling Spiderwick Chronicles and get ready for the series soon to be streaming on Disney+ with this sixth installment in the fantastical adventures featuring updated text. The Nixie’s Song was previously published under the series title Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles. The Spiderwick Chronicles leaves the old-fashioned charm of New England far behind and heads south for some fiendish faerie fun in the hot Florida sun. Eleven-year-old Nicholas Vargas only thinks his life has been turned upside down after his developer father remarries and moves his new wife and daughter into the soon-to-be completed Mangrove Hollow. But an expedition to a nearby lake turns up a little nixie with a giant problem—the huge, lumbering, fire-breathing variety—and it’s up to Nick; his stepsister, Laurie; and his big brother, Julian to figure out the best way to stop a host of rampaging giants before all of Florida goes up in smoke.

When the newborn Princess Catkin disappears right before the Naming Ceremony, and all clues point to her caretaker, the islanders must band together and overcome their greatest fears to save her and restore order to their beloved home. Reprint.

This daring speculative novel tackles terrorism and anti-immigrant hysteria, combining lyric intensity with the tools of science fiction.