John O`Farrell Book order

"This history of medieval inventions, focusing on the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, vividly portrays a thriving era of human ingenuity--and the results are still being felt to this day. From the mechanical clock to the first eyeglasses, both of which revolutionized society, many of the commonplace devices we now take for granted had their origin in the Middle Ages. Divided into ten thematic chapters, the accessible text allows the reader to sample areas of interest or read the book from beginning to end for a complete historical overview. A chapter on the paper revolution shows that innovations in mill power enabled the mass production of cheap paper, which was instrumental in the later success of the printing press as a means of disseminating affordable books to more people. Another chapter examines the importance of Islamic civilization in preserving ancient Greek texts and the role of translation teams in Sicily and Spain in making those texts available in Latin for a European readership. A chapter on instruments of discovery describes the impact of the astrolabe, which was imported from Islamic lands, and the compass, originally invented in China; these tools plus innovations in ship building spurred on the expansion of European trade and the later age of discovery at the time of Columbus. Complete with original drawings to illustrate how these early inventions worked, this guided tour through a distant era reveals how medieval farmers, craftsmen, women artisans, and clerical scholars laid the foundations of the modern world"-- Provided by publisher

It is the heartbreaking and hilarious confessions of someone who has been actively involved in helping the Labour party lose elections at every level: school candidate: door-to-door canvasser: working for a Labour MP in the House of Commons;

'...as the Labour candidate I prepared for every possible question on the local radio Election Phone-In. and he campaigned for a new non-selective inner-city state school, then realised this meant he had to send his kids to a non-selective inner-city state school.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a Sunday IndependentBook of the Year A deeply researched, superbly crafted biography of America's most complex president. Award-winning biographer John A. Farrell examines the life and legacy of one of America's most controversial political figures, from Nixon's early days in the Navy to his political career as senator, vice president, and finally president, and his downfall in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixonis a magisterial portrait of the man who embodied post-war American political cynicism -- and was destroyed by it.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography The definitive biography of Clarence Darrow, the brilliant, idiosyncratic lawyer who defended John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial” and gave voice to the populist masses at the turn of the twentieth century, thus changing American law forever. Amidst the tumult of the industrial age and the progressive era, Clarence Darrow became America’s greatest defense attorney, successfully championing poor workers, blacks, and social and political outcasts, against big business, fundamentalist religion, Jim Crow, and the US government. His courtroom style—a mixture of passion, improvisation, charm, and tactical genius—won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang. In Farrell’s hands, Darrow is a Byronic figure, a renegade whose commitment to liberty led him to heroic courtroom battles and legal trickery alike.

Cat & Fiddle centres on two families whose lives become entwined at the country estate of Bourne Abbey. While Dr Choudhury is busy advising Henry Bourne on the restoration of the abbey, his wife's main concern is marrying off their three children, whose chances of good matches are dwindling by the day.

Informs and elucidates the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945.

This text features a collection of John O'Farrell's 'Guardian' columns, the final part of the trilogy in which he discovers that Margaret Thatcher is actually his mother. Contained within these covers are 100 funny essays on subjects as diverse as Man's ascent from the apes and the re-election of George W. Bush.

A satire about competitive, over-protective parents driving their children to tutors, to ballet, to insanity ... Alice and David are worried parents. Are their children falling behind with their schoolwork, their music lessons and the number of sleepover invitations received this month? Or are all these extra lessons causing them to miss out on physical exercise? Maybe they could find a maths tutor who'd be prepared to swim alongside them and explain binary numbers while the children practiced their breast-stroke? This permanent sense of crisis is coming to a climax as their eldest child looks set to fail her entrance exam for the hallowed school on which they have pinned all their hopes. Many mothers can't help wanting to do everything for their children, but Alice takes this controlling maternal obsession one step further. She takes the test in place of her daughter. With a baseball cap pulled low over her face, she shuffles into a hall of a two hundred kids and faces her first examination for twenty years. But it is only once she puts herself in the place of one her children that she starts to realise the sort of exhausting pressures that her kids have been undera