A STORY OF UNSUNG BRAVERY AT A DEFINING MOMENT IN BRITAIN'S HISTORY'Superb' Stephen Fry'Thrillingly told' Dan Jones'Fascinating' Neil MacGregor'Astonishing' Peter FrankopanWe like to think we know the story of how Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, but there is one chapter that has never been told. In the early 1930s, a group of young, queer British MPs visited Berlin on a series of trips that would change the course of the Second World War. Having witnessed the Nazis' brutality first-hand, these men were some of the first to warn Britain about Hitler, repeatedly speaking out against their government's policy of appeasing him. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hated them. Branding them 'the glamour boys' to insinuate something untoward about them, he had their phones tapped and threatened them with deselection and exposure. At a time when even the suggestion of homosexuality could land you in prison, the bravery these men were forced to show in their personal lives gave them extraordinary courage in public. Undaunted, they refused to be silenced and when war came, they enlisted. Four of them died in action. And without them, Britain would never have faced down the Nazis.A Guardian Book of Autumn 2020

Teenage boys have come a long way since the staid 1980s when they were all lumped into the Breakfast Club categories of Brains, Druggies, and Jocks. Crisscrossing the country -- meeting with boys from different cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds -- journalist Malina Saval introduces readers to the next generation of male teens by creating new archetypes and redrawing the ever-expanding social map. The Secret Lives of Boys offers an uncensored look into boyhood that reveals the spine-tingling confessions, heartrending sadness and isolation, unbridled optimism, and seemingly boundless resilience of male teens today. Saval asks the pertinent questions: Who are these boys? What do they think of themselves? A compelling and candid look at male adolescence in the twenty-first century, The Secret Lives of Boys uncovers what our young people want you to know.

The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time. Johnny Mercer’s early songs became staples of the big band era and were regularly featured in the musicals of early Hollywood. With his collaborators, who included Richard A. Whiting, Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen, he wrote the lyrics to some of the most famous standards, among them, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Skylark,” “I’m Old-Fashioned,” and “That Old Black Magic.” During a career of more than four decades, Mercer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song an astonishing eighteen times, and won four: for his lyrics to “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (music by Warren), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (music by Carmichael), and “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (music for both by Henry Mancini). You’ve probably fallen in love with more than a few of Mercer’s songs–his words have never gone out of fashion–and with this superb collection, it’s easy to see that his lyrics elevated popular song into art.

This book weaves together a rich tapestry on football fandom in Zimbabwe. Based on empirical research focusing on the different dimensions of fan practices and experiences, the book is the result of multiple fieldwork processes with fans in Zimbabwe spanning a period of eight years including desk research, interviews, observation, focus group discussions and netnography. It demonstrates the nexus between social identities and supporting a sports team, highlighting that there are deeper underlying meanings and assumptions to ones support of a sporting team. Manase Chiweshe highlights the various nuances of supporting football clubs. This book provides an alternative way to understanding communities and how sport can be viewed as a serious lens into societal organisations. It offers important insights into how Zimbabweans are also engaged in leisure activities and that play is also part of their life worlds. Given the major focus on poverty, disease and conflict, African stories of intimate play and enjoyment tend to be sidelined. Soccer has the power to bring together or divide communities. In many an African context, just as in Zimbabwe, everyday ethnic and religious rivalries are played out through football matches. It is thus important to capture this space and use football as a way to heal historic and deep-seated conflicts.

(Guitar Recorded Versions). A super-saver collection of over 40 hits! Includes: American Girl * Dance the Night Away * 867-5309/Jenny * Gloria * Heartbreaker * Hey Nineteen * I Wanna Rock * Jet Airliner * Ramblin' Man * Smokin' in the Boys Room * Too Hot to Handle * The Zoo * and more.

With a new preface: A “stunning” analysis of the troubled Republican president by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg (The New York Times Book Review). In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixon’s infamous “enemies list,” Garry Wills takes a thoughtful, in-depth, and often “very amusing” look at the thirty-seventh US president, and draws some surprising conclusions about a man whose name has become synonymous with scandal and the abuse of power (Kirkus Reviews). Arguing that Nixon was a reflection of the country that elected him, Wills examines not only the psychology of the man himself and his relationships with others—from his wife, Pat, to his vice-president, Spiro Agnew—but also the state of the nation at the time, mired in the Vietnam War and experiencing a cultural rift that pitted the young against the old. Putting his findings into moral, economic, intellectual, and political contexts, he ultimately “paints a broad and provocative landscape of the nation’s—and Nixon’s—travails” (The New York Times). Simultaneously compassionate and critical, and raising interesting perspectives on the shifting definitions of terms like “conservative” and “liberal” over recent decades, Nixon Agonistes is a brilliant and indispensable book from one of America’s most acclaimed historians.