Bitten by an Elephant

Author: Gordon Lewis
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
ISBN: 1925281485
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
At the age of 65 Gordon Lewis was described by an enraged senior judge as a 'bloody maverick!' He took comfort from this assessment as he felt it confirmed that he was on the right track... Gordon Lewis loves the humanity of the Law. That affection has led him to a legal career of great diversity. Whether as Director of the Victorian Law Institute, sitting as a County Court Judge, regular presentations on radio, guest speaker at both overseas and Australian conferences, or his role as Cricket Australia's Senior Code of Conduct Commissioner, his name has become almost as well known to the general public as it is to the legal profession. Known for his warmth, compassion and quick wit, he has devoted many years to assisting and advising young lawyers. The textbook he originally co-authored with Justice Kyrou, Handy Hints on Legal Practice, was once described as the only legal textbook to ever make the readers laugh. Several years ago he decided to write 'a funny book about the law and his life so far.' This book is the result. Whether it is the law stripped of its pomposity, cricket, film reviewing, greyhounds or just coping with life's exigencies, the self-deprecatory humour in these pages gives a rare insight into the author's kindness and sense of fun. You might also think that apart from writing 'a funny book', almost coincidentally the author has recorded a testament to overcoming personal adversity.

The Chronicle of a Young Lawyer

Author: Kerry Dillon
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
ISBN: 1925736423
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
“The volcanic political atmosphere in the bubbling cauldron of the caldera that was the Gazelle Peninsula came to a head in December 1969.” This unique book tells the story of the day-to-day life of a young criminal circuit lawyer from Tasmania, Kerry Dillon, some 50 years ago in a country where many people lived as generations before had lived, back into the mists of time. Employed as a 22-year-old lawyer in the Office of the Public Solicitor, WA Lalor, in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, Kerry travelled the country on Supreme Court criminal circuits from 1969 to 1971, appearing as counsel for Indigenous people accused of serious criminal offences, including stealing, rape and wilful murder. Written as a chronicle, this account features descriptions of criminal cases in major centres and in remote places only accessible by small planes. It depicts the clash of cultures as Australian criminal law was introduced, and there is valuable material on the application of the rule of law in the emerging nation. “The differing ways of life between Papua New Guinean communities, and the wide variation in the character of their interactions with Europeans and the Administration, was a significant part of the complex environment in which Kerry’s experiences in the country took place and which his account illustrates.” – Michael Adams QC

Mostly Guilty

Author: Michael Challinger
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
ISBN: 1925736555
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
A book for the general reader rather than lawyers, this often tongue-in-cheek account of Michael Challinger's interactions with the criminals he defends gives a first-hand account of the quirky nature of human beings. Mostly Guilty deals with the workings of the lowest level of the Australian legal system. It's about the down-to-earth cases that happen daily in Magistrates' Courts. It does so through the experiences and anecdotes of a low-flying criminal barrister. While the cases are from Victoria, the book makes reference to other states and has relevance and interest Australia-wide. The style is light, punchy and informal, with lots of direct speech and many funny yarns. Some of the book is tongue-in-cheek (and even politically incorrect) but it also makes serious points throughout. It's entertaining as well as informative. The chapters are short, and generally deal with specific offences (shop theft, for example) or areas of law (bail). Others recount particular cases in an ironic or colourful way. Most cases are of low to medium criminality so the light-hearted tone is not inappropriate. Most legal memoirs are by big-shot advocates or retired judges. Mostly Guilty is different, and doesn't take itself too seriously.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

Author: Richard P. Feynman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393355683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 429

Book Description
One of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that "buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist" (Science Digest). Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that “can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist” (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets—and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman’s life shines through in all its eccentric glory—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah. Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.

The Everything Store

Author: Brad Stone
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316219258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Book Description
The authoritative account of the rise of Amazon and its intensely driven founder, Jeff Bezos, praised by the Seattle Times as "the definitive account of how a tech icon came to life." Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators -- Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg -- Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store is the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.

The Man from Lisbon

Author: Thomas Gifford
Publisher: Overamstel Uitgevers
ISBN: 904998388X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 565

Book Description
A daring fraud makes one man a titan, and brings a nation to its knees The son of a failing undertaker, Alves Reis learned early on that death comes quickly and a man must make his fortune while he can. In 1916, Reis left Portugal for Angola, where the hardships of colonial life dashed his dream of easy riches. In desperate straits, Alves discovers his true talent: forgery. With an unerring hand, Alves begins to counterfeit. He falsifies diplomas, government documents, currency, and countless checks on his way to perpetrating one of the greatest frauds of the twentieth century. Inspired by the true story of a master swindler, Gifford brings to life a breathtaking international scam. Before Bernie Madoff, before Frank Abagnale, there was Alves Reis—a forger with talent, vision, and an uncompromising drive to succeed, no matter what man, bank, or nation stood in his way.

The Cultural Cold War

Author: Frances Stonor Saunders
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595589147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
During the Cold War, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy’s most cherished possession—but such freedom was put in service of a hidden agenda. In The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders reveals the extraordinary efforts of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were working for or subsidized by the CIA—whether they knew it or not. Called "the most comprehensive account yet of the [CIA’s] activities between 1947 and 1967" by the New York Times, the book presents shocking evidence of the CIA’s undercover program of cultural interventions in Western Europe and at home, drawing together declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA’s astonishing campaign to deploy the likes of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock as weapons in the Cold War. Translated into ten languages, this classic work—now with a new preface by the author—is "a real contribution to popular understanding of the postwar period" (The Wall Street Journal), and its story of covert cultural efforts to win hearts and minds continues to be relevant today.

Idea Man

Author: Paul Allen
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241953715
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
What's it like to start a revolution? How do you build the biggest tech company in the world? And why do you walk away from it all? Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. Together he and Bill Gates turned an idea - writing software - into a company and then an entire industry. This is the story of how it came about: two young mavericks who turned technology on its head, the bitter battles as each tried to stamp his vision on the future and the ruthless brilliance and fierce commitment.

Dictionary of the British English Spelling System

Author: Greg Brooks
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783741074
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 524

Book Description
This book will tell all you need to know about British English spelling. It's a reference work intended for anyone interested in the English language, especially those who teach it, whatever the age or mother tongue of their students. It will be particularly useful to those wishing to produce well-designed materials for teaching initial literacy via phonics, for teaching English as a foreign or second language, and for teacher training. English spelling is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn; it is correctly described as much less regular and predictable than any other alphabetic orthography. However, there is more regularity in the English spelling system than is generally appreciated. This book provides, for the first time, a thorough account of the whole complex system. It does so by describing how phonemes relate to graphemes and vice versa. It enables searches for particular words, so that one can easily find, not the meanings or pronunciations of words, but the other words with which those with unusual phoneme-grapheme/grapheme-phoneme correspondences keep company. Other unique features of this book include teacher-friendly lists of correspondences and various regularities not described by previous authorities, for example the strong tendency for the letter-name vowel phonemes (the names of the letters ) to be spelt with those single letters in non-final syllables.

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Author: Rob Nixon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424799X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Book Description
The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.