Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the most widely read masterpiece in world literature, as appealing to readers today as four hundred years ago. In Fighting Windmills Manuel Durán and Fay R. Rogg offer a beautifully written excursion into Cervantes’ great novel and trace its impact on writers and thinkers across centuries and continents. How did Cervantes write such a rich tale? Durán and Rogg explore the details of Cervantes’ life, the techniques with which he constructed the novel, and the central themes of the adventures of Don Quixote and his earthy squire Sancho Panza. The authors then provide an insightful, panoramic view of Cervantes’ powerful influence on generations of writers as diverse as Descartes, Voltaire, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Twain, and Borges.

In seventeenth-century Valladolid, Spain’s new capital, Miguel Cervantes is busy writing his comic masterpiece, Don Quixote, which is being issued in installments. It is quickly making him the most popular author in the country, when three potential disasters strike: Cervantes discovers that there is a real Don Quixote, just like the character he thought he’d invented; a jealous poet concocts a scheme involving one of the novel’s other characters to make Cervantes a laughingstock; and Cervantes falls in love with a beautiful, widowed, but un-available duchess. Many duels, misunderstandings, politicking, and betrayals later, Don Quixote himself comes to Cervantes’ rescue. This sparkling tale of crazed knights, thwarted love, and literary rivalry is set against the back-ground of a mighty empire suffering from a century of reckless wars and a ruling hierarchy stultified by patronage and ritual. Peopled with an engagingly idiosyncratic cast that ranges from a Machiavellian duke to a misanthropic poacher, this charming story is imbued with the spirit, verve, and humor of the great novel to which it pays playful tribute. Tilting at Windmills is a dazzling evocation of Cervantes’ life and times, and a brilliant weave of fact, fiction, and farce.

"Fighting Windmills" is the story of a modern-day Don Quixote, whose adventures are revealed as you march side by side with the author on his life's journey, one that has truly been to the beat of a different drum. His adventures as a CIA Operations Officer during pivotal times in our country's recent history, an Army 'Green Beret', an International Business Executive, and Entrepreneur, are chock full of life, laughter, love and the lessons learned along the way. This is a story about life as seen through the eyes of a romantic idealist, and the quixotic odyssey which evolves; as Webster defines, "quixotic" implies "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic, impractical, impulsive and often rashly unpredictable," which aptly describes the saga herein. This is a unique story of intrigue and normality, of success and failure, of love and the loss of it, of the perpetual seeking of wisdom and the occasional departure from sound judgment. In essence, it is a fundamental story of the human experience.

Andy Miller is a sports atheist. The beautiful game, the roar of the crowd, winning, losing, taking part - these mean nothing to him. But at thirty he is worried. He thinks he's turning into a bit of a crank. So Andy decides that he must try to love sport - and just maybe it will love him back. He shivers for a season in the stands at QPR, braves the queues at Wimbledon, stays (reasonably) sober at the Boat Race, gets his money's worth at a WWF event. But to really show his commitment, he takes up the one sport now dear to his heart - crazy golf. Dreaming of putting glory, he heads for Europe and the International circuit. No one can accuse him of being a crank now . . .

Columns the author wrote for Comics Retailer magazine.

Now a Netflix film starring and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, this is a gripping memoir of survival and perseverance about the heroic young inventor who brought electricity to his Malawian village. When a terrible drought struck William Kamkwamba's tiny village in Malawi, his family lost all of the season's crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution. There, he came up with the idea that would change his family's life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William's windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land. Retold for a younger audience, this exciting memoir shows how, even in a desperate situation, one boy's brilliant idea can light up the world. Complete with photographs, illustrations, and an epilogue that will bring readers up to date on William's story, this is the perfect edition to read and share with the whole family.