This work comprises the author's impressions of London, as it is today and how it has changed over the last 35 years. Among other things, he considers the impact of progress on London's architecture.

"As a kid growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father they called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line and ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood there. Decades later, Helmreich teaches university courses about New York, and his love for exploring the city is as strong as ever. Putting his feet to the test, he decided that the only way to truly understand New York was to walk virtually every block of all five boroughs--an astonishing 6,000 miles. His epic journey lasted four years and took him to every corner of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Helmreich spoke with hundreds of New Yorkers from every part of the globe and from every walk of life, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former mayors Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Edward Koch. Their stories and his are the subject of this captivating and highly original book. We meet the Guyanese immigrant who grows beautiful flowers outside his modest Queens residence in order to always remember the homeland he left behind, the Brooklyn-raised grandchild of Italian immigrants who illuminates a window of his brownstone with the family's old neon grocery-store sign, and many, many others. Helmreich draws on firsthand insights to examine essential aspects of urban social life such as ethnicity, gentrification, and the use of space. He finds that to be a New Yorker is to struggle to understand the place and to make a life that is as highly local as it is dynamically cosmopolitan."--Publisher's description.

Geoffrey Fletcher's London was not the big landmarks, but rather ‘the tawdry, extravagant and eccentric’. He wrote about parts of the city no-one ever had before. This could be an art nouveau pub, a Victorian music hall, a Hawksmoor church or even a public toilet in Holborn in which the attendant kept goldfish in the cisterns. He was drawn to the corners of the city where ‘the kids swarm like ants and there are dogs everywhere’. This classic book was originally published in 1962 and has been in and out of print ever since. In 1967 it was turned into an acclaimed documentary film starring James Mason. Following a series of sold out screenings at the Barbican and the ICA, the film was re-released on DVD in 2008. This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in London, and will surprise even those who think they know it well.

A playful and diverting, yet always scientifically rigorous look at those simple mysteries that are yet to be solved Why are so many giraffes gay? Has human evolution stopped? Where did our alphabet come from? Can robots become self-aware? Can lobsters recognize other lobsters by sight? What goes on inside a black hole? Are cell phones bad for us? Why can't we remember anything from our earliest years? Full of the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, this is a fascinating and unputdownable exploration of the limits of human knowledge of our planet, its history and culture, and the universe beyond.

A memoir of MIT life, from being Noam Chomsky's boss to negotiating with student protesters. When Jay Keyser arrived at MIT in 1977 to head the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, he writes, he "felt like a fish that had been introduced to water for the first time." At MIT, a colleague grabbed him by the lapels to discuss dark matter; Noam Chomsky called him "boss" (double SOB spelled backward?); and engaging in conflict resolution made him feel like "a marriage counselor trying to reconcile a union between a Jehovah's witness and a vampire." In Mens et Mania, Keyser recounts his academic and administrative adventures during a career of more than thirty years. Keyser describes the administrative side of his MIT life, not only as department head but also as Associate Provost and Special Assistant to the Chancellor. Keyser had to run a department ("budgets were like horoscopes") and negotiate student grievances—from the legality of showing Deep Throat in a dormitory to the uproar caused by the arrests of students for anti-apartheid demonstrations. Keyser also describes a visiting Japanese delegation horrified by the disrepair of the linguistics department offices (Chomsky tells them "Our motto is: Physically shabby. Intellectually first class."); convincing a student not to jump off the roof of the Green Building; and recent attempts to look at MIT through a corporate lens. And he explains the special faculty-student bond at MIT: the faculty sees the students as themselves thirty years earlier. Keyser observes that MIT is hard to get into and even harder to leave, for faculty as well as for students. Writing about retirement, Keyser quotes the song Groucho Marx sang in Animal Crackers as he was leaving a party—"Hello, I must be going." Students famously say "Tech is hell." Keyser says,"It's been a helluva party." This entertaining and thought-provoking memoir will make readers glad that Keyser hasn't quite left.

An English aristocrat from inside the royal family's exclusive circle reveals startling information about Princess Diana's life, discussing rumors of her eating disorder, her marriage to Prince Charles, and more. Reprint.

Having all her life unquestioningly abided by her mother's decisions to move frequently and remain aloof from outsiders, fourteen-year-old Nina Lewis begins to wonder about the reasons for their way of life. Reprint.