Motoring historian Michael Burgess explores this forgotten chapter in the history of the iconic Rootes Group.

Coventry, home of the cycle industry, was also to become the birthplace of the motor industry when the Daimler Company became the first in Britain to mass produce cars in the late 1890s. Spearheaded by H.J. Lawson, Coventry soon became a hub of motoring activity, and by the early 1900s was teaming with small and large companies, testing cars, motor-bicycles and tricycles around the local streets and surrounding country lanes. Many of these companies had previously been established as cycle manufacturers, yet introduced engines to their cycle frames in various forms, as well as producing safer three- and four-wheeled experimental machines. Other companies were established solely as motor manufacturers, many were short-lived, but others would survive and prosper. This new-found industry soon attracted a new type of worker to Coventry, specialised in mechanical engineering. These men and their families came from all parts of the UK and beyond, and made new lives for themselves in the city. Coventry has been home to well in excess of 100 independent motor manufacturers, but in recent years the city has suffered greatly with the loss of huge companied like Jaguar and Peugeot. The legacy of many of these historic cars can, however, still be enjoyed through museums and private collections. This outstanding volume is illustrated with 200 archive photographs and ephemera from the collection held at Coventry Transport Museum, and is a valuable record of the motor companies and their machines, as well as the individuals who both founded and worked for these manufacturers.

In this groundbreaking biography, based on more than 10,000 hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of the extraordinary Siegmund Warburg. A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Warburg rose to become the dominant figure in the post-war City of London and one of the architects of European financial integration. Seared by events in the 1930s, when the long-established Warburg bank was first almost destroyed by the Depression and then 'Aryanized' by the Nazis, Warburg was determined that his own bank would learn from the past and contribute to the economic recovery of Britain, the unity of Western Europe and the birth of globalization. Siegmund Warburg was a complex and ambivalent man, as much a psychologist, politician and actor-manager as a banker. In High Financier Niall Ferguson reveals Warburg's idiosyncracies but above all he recaptures the meticulous business methods and strict ethical code that set Warburg apart from the mere speculators and traders who inhabit today's financial world.

Pulling Up Roots: Book One follows a remarkable line of descent of Edmund Rootes, an educated gentleman who died penniless on September 13, 1613 in Ashford, England, leaving his young family in desperate financial circumstances. The Rootes family suffered but persevered. In 1635, Edmund’s three sons, Puritans, after enduring years of religious oppression, left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Upon their arrival in America, the Rootes boys settled in Salem, then more shantytown than village. Over the next fifty years, Salem grew into a commercially important seaport—and a troubled community that would become forever infamous for its witch trials and public executions in 1692. Among those falsely accused and cruelly punished was elderly Susannah Rootes. By the end of the 17th century, the Rootes family had uprooted again, moving away from Massachusetts, first to Connecticut and then on to the wilderness of Vermont. The Rootes family story provides a unique look at the evolution of America from a fragile English outpost to an independent nation—seen from the perspective of one family compelled by circumstances and chance to continue moving on and experiencing more of the young and growing country. A family history—particularly one going back centuries—faces the difficult task of telling the stories of people who are now largely unknowable. This book begins with Edmund Rootes. Who was he really? What was he like? Kind or callous? Good-natured or sullen? Handsome or hideous? We cannot know. But we can draw inferences by learning more about what these long-gone people experienced. By examining shreds of evidence from aged records and linking them with the sweep history, the dead gradually come into focus. Christopher Eiben is a writer and historical researcher who lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Kurt Vonnegut cites Theodore Sturgeon as the inspiration for his character Kilgore Trout. This volume includes 12 stories from 1953, considered Sturgeon's golden era. Among them are such favorites as the title story, "The Silken-Swift," "A Way of Thinking," "The Dark Room," "The Clinic," and "The World Well Lost," a story very ahead of its time in advocating gay rights.

Nothing is new under the sun and classic cars books come and go. But here, instead of a heavy, large, glossy book of classic car images and details destined to stay on a shelf, is something new. This book is designed to be read as a companion, a book that can go in the car or on a 'plane, and which can be read in full, or dipped into anywhere for a classic car fix. Old stories and new details are presented and cover all eras of our cars. Gathered here is a compilation of the author's published and unpublished adventures and opinions about the design and the driving of some of the greatest cars in motoring history. From 'vintagent' to 'modern classic', pristine to oily-rag, up hill, down dale and across continents, award-winning motoring author, designer and serial classic car owner, Lance Cole, charts the great classic car enthusiasm in a series of engaging essays about cars, car design and the men that made the motor industry. From tales of Malcolm Sayer to Bedelia, and of BMW, Jaguar, Bugatti and Porsche, to tales of old Saabs and rusty Citroens, classic car life is here. Erik Carlsson, Jacques Gerin, Giovanni Michelotti and Innes Ireland are just a few of the names that can be found in these pages. From design to driving, here is a book that is a classic car adventure.