Stalin's Wine Cellar

Stalin's Wine Cellar PDF Author: John Baker
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 1761043668
Category : Georgia (Republic)
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
The adventure of a lifetime to buy Stalin's secret multimillion dollar wine cellar located in Georgia; it is the Raiders of the Lost Ark of wine. In the late 1990s, John Baker was known as a purveyor of quality rare and old wines. He was the perfect person for an occasional business partner to approach with a mysterious wine list that was different to anything John, or his second-in-command, Kevin Hopko, had ever come across. The list was discovered to be a comprehensive catalogue of the wine collection of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. The wine had become the property of the state after the Russian Revolution of 1918, during which Nicholas and his entire family were executed. Now owned by Stalin, the wine was discreetly removed to a remote Georgian winery when Stalin was concerned the advancing Nazi army might overrun Russia. Half a century later, the wine was rumoured to be hidden underground and off any known map. John and Kevin embarked on an audacious, colourful and potentially dangerous journey to Georgia to discover if the wines actually existed; if the bottles were authentic and whether the entire collection could be bought and transported to a major London auction house for sale. Stalin's Wine Cellar is a wild, sometimes rough ride through the glamorous world of high-end wine.

Stalin's Wine Cellar

Stalin's Wine Cellar PDF Author: John Baker
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
ISBN: 1760893145
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
In the late 1990s, John Baker was known as a purveyor of quality rare and old wines. Always entrepreneurial and up for adventure, he was the perfect person for an occasional business partner to approach with a mysterious wine list that was foreign to anything John, or his second-in-command, Kevin Hopko, had ever come across. The list was discovered to be a comprehensive catalogue of the wine collection of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. The wine had become the property of the state after the Russian Revolution of 1918, during which Nicholas and his entire family were executed. Now owned by Stalin, the wine was discreetly removed to a remote Georgian winery when Stalin was concerned the advancing Nazi army might overrun Russia, and inevitably loot artefacts and treasures. Half a century later, the wine was rumoured to be hidden underground and off any known map. John and Kevin embarked on an audacious, colourful and potentially dangerous journey to Georgia to discover if the wines actually existed; if the bottles were authentic and whether the entire collection could be bought and transported to a major London auction house for sale. Stalin's Wine Cellar is a wild, sometimes rough ride in the glamorous world of high-end wine. From Double Bay Sydney to Tbilisi Georgia, via the streets of Paris, the vineyards of Bordeaux and iconic Château d'Yquem. A multimillion dollar cellar and a breathtaking collection of wine (and one very expensive broken bottle) is the elusive treasure. The cast of characters include Stalin, Hitler, Tsar Nicholas II and a motley bunch of Georgian businessmen/cowboys toting handguns, in the early days of Russian business development that led to the world of Putin and oligarchs.

The Climate Cure

The Climate Cure PDF Author: Tim Flannery
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925923738
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
An urgent and essential call to arms from one of Australia’s most respected climate scientists, Tim Flannery. A compelling and solution-focused declaration of the action required to win the climate battle, and how change must start in our board rooms and parliaments.

Young Stalin

Young Stalin PDF Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307498921
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 636

Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs—and one of our pre-eminent historians—comes “a meticulously researched, authoritative biography” (The New York Times), the companion volume to the prize-winning Stalin, and essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history. This revelatory account unveils how Stalin became Stalin, examining his shadowy journey from obscurity to power—from master historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. Based on ten years of research, Young Stalin is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR, a chronicle of the Revolution, and an intimate biography. Montefiore tells the story of a charismatic, darkly turbulent boy born into poverty, scarred by his upbringing but possessed of unusual talents. Admired as a romantic poet and trained as a priest, he found his true mission as a murderous revolutionary. Here is the dramatic story of his friendships and hatreds, his many love affairs, his complicated relationship with the Tsarist secret police, and how he became the merciless politician who shaped the Soviet Empire in his own brutal image.

Watching Darkness Fall

Watching Darkness Fall PDF Author: David McKean
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250206987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
A gripping and groundbreaking account of how all but one of FDR's ambassadors in Europe misjudged Hitler and his intentions As German tanks rolled toward Paris in late May 1940, the U.S. Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, was determined to stay put, holed up in the Chateau St. Firmin in Chantilly, his country residence. Bullitt told the president that he would neither evacuate the embassy nor his chateau, an eighteenth Renaissance manse with a wine cellar of over 18,000 bottles, even though “we have only two revolvers in this entire mission with only forty bullets.” As German forces closed in on the French capital, Bullitt wrote the president, “In case I should get blown up before I see you again, I want you to know that it has been marvelous to work for you.” As the fighting raged in France, across the English Channel, Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy wrote to his wife Rose, “The situation is more than critical. It means a terrible finish for the allies.” David McKean's Watching Darkness Fall will recount the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the road to war from the perspective of four American diplomats in Europe who witnessed it firsthand: Joseph Kennedy, William Dodd, Breckinridge Long, and William Bullitt, who all served in key Western European capitals—London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Moscow—in the years prior to World War II. In many ways they were America’s first line of defense and they often communicated with the president directly, as Roosevelt's eyes and ears on the ground. Unfortunately, most of them underestimated the power and resolve of Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Third Reich. Watching Darkness Fall is a gripping new history of the years leading up to and the beginning of WWII in Europe told through the lives of five well-educated and mostly wealthy men all vying for the attention of the man in the Oval Office.

The Billionaire's Vinegar

The Billionaire's Vinegar PDF Author: Benjamin Wallace
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307338789
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it. The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. “Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek

White King and Red Queen

White King and Red Queen PDF Author: Daniel Johnson
Publisher: Atlantic
ISBN: 9781843546108
Category : Chess
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Book Description
The Cold War transformed the cloistered world of chess. As Daniel Johnson explains in this gripping account, for the Soviet Union, chess was more than just a game: it was war by another means. Under the Bolsheviks, the game had become the national sport, taught in schools as a form of intellectual and military training. Those with talent were moulded into champions from a young age and Soviet players, such as Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian, dominated international competitions throughout the Cold War years. White King and Red Queen illuminates the lives and times of the players and matches at the forefront of this confrontation, from the famous 1972 encounter between American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer and Soviet champion Boris Spassky; to the struggle between anti-Communist Viktor Korchnoi and loyal Kremlin supporter Anatoly Karpov; to the emergence of Garry Kasparov, the last Soviet world champion. Daniel Johnson's book offers a dramatic new perspective on the post-war struggle for supremacy between the superpowers.

Behind the Urals

Behind the Urals PDF Author: John Scott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780253351258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
John Scott's classic account of his five years as a worker in the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the 1930s, first published in 1942, is enhanced in this edition by Stephen Kotkin's introduction, which places the book in context for today's readers; by the texts of three debriefings of Scott conducted at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1938 and published here for the first time; and by a selection of photographs showing life in Magnitogorsk in the 1930s. No other book provides such a graphic description of the life of workers under the First Five-Year Plan.

The Course of History

The Course of History PDF Author: Struan Stevenson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1948924250
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
An entertaining seat at the table of ten power meals that shaped history—including the menus and recreated recipes! Some of the most consequential decisions in history were decided at the dinner table, accompanied—and perhaps influenced—by copious amounts of food and drink. This fascinating book explores ten of those pivotal meals, presenting the contexts, key participants, table talk, and outcomes of each. It offers unique insight into the minds and appetites of some of history’s most famous and notorious characters, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon. Feasting on leg of lamb, Bonnie Prince Charlie doomed the Jacobite Army at Culloden. A uniquely American menu served with French wine lubricated the conversation between rivals Jefferson and Hamilton that led to the founding of the US financial system and the location of the nation’s capital in Washington. After schweinwürst and sauerkraut with Adolf Hitler at his Berghof residence, Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg agreed to the complete integration of Austria into the Third Reich. Celebrity chef Tony Singh has researched the menus and recipes for all ten dinners down to the last detail and recreates them here. The book contains fifty-five recipes from soup to desert and lists the spirits as well.
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