Review - Canterbury Tales Cafe

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On Their Own: a story of street children in Thailand by Colin C. Bell..

Based on TRUE events! Life was tough enough for Nok and his sister Ning after their father walked out, leaving their mother to raise them alone in a Bangkok slum, yet they made ends meet.

But when she suddenly falls sick and dies, the children have no option but to find their own way in this world. When they fail to find their mother's estranged sister far away from Bangkok, the two siblings end up on the streets of Bangkok. While fending for themselves and resisting the momentary temptations of vice and drugs and the trap of child prostitution, their unlikely dream is to find a new home.

Life is an ongoing daily struggle and the children try their best to survive, while desperately hoping for a way out. Is there a place for them where they can escape the street and the seemingly inevitable slide into crime, vice, and a wasted life?

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Colonial Cambodia's 'Bad Frenchmen'

 

BY GREGOR MUELLER

Colonial Cambodia's Bad Frenchmen provides a captivating analysis of the gradual establishment of French colonialism in the late nineteenth century.

Drawing on new materials from French, Vietnamese and Cambodian archives, it reconstructs a time during which France struggled to give meaning and substance to its Protectorate over Cambodia.

It traces the lives of failed colonists most notably Thomas Caramen, who all constituted a challenge to the colonial enterprise by muddling its social, cultural and racial boundaries.

In its consideration of the critical role played by these colonists, this compelling book shifts away from governor-generals, grand discourses and the simple view of colonialism as colonizers versus colonized, to explore how things actually worked themselves out on the ground.

It examines in particular the 'civilizing mission' and educational initiatives; the slow destruction of the indigenous justice system; the policing of sexual relations between colonisers and colonized; the theft of Cambodian land and taxes by the colonizing power; and the brutal repression of resistance wherever and whenever it appeared.

Overall, Muller reveals the crucial role played by indigenous middlemen and marginal Europeans in the rise of the colonial state, and tells the fascinating tale of a Frenchman who came to represent everything that the colonial state dreaded.

AND other books in today

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Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer In April, 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley.

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The Charisma of Adolf Hitler

by Laurence Rees

 Adolf Hitler was an unlikely leader - fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to debate political issues - and yet he commanded enormous support. So how was it possible that Hitler became such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the important question at the core of Laurence Rees' new book.

The Holocaust, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the outbreak of the Second World War - all these cataclysmic events and more can be laid at Hitler's door. Hitler was a war criminal arguably without precedent in the history of the world. Yet, as many who knew him confirm, Hitler was still able to exert a powerful influence over the people who encountered him.

In this fascinating book to accompany his new TV series, the acclaimed historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal, and reveals the role Hitler's supposed 'charisma' played in his success. Rees' previous work has explored the inner workings of the Nazi state in The Nazis: A Warning from History and the crimes they committed in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. The Charisma of Adolf Hitler is a natural culmination of twenty years of writing and research on the Third Reich, and a remarkable examination of the man and the mind at the heart of it all. 

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We ship books within Thailand

For example these 6 Books to your doorstep 1200 baht

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Lightning Strike: The Secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor

 

by 

Donald A. Davis

This is the story of the fighter mission that changed World War II.
It is the true story of the man behind Pearl Harbor - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and the courageous young American fliers who flew the million-to-one suicide mission that shot him down.

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Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid

On September 8, 1941, eleven weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation

Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides.

They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism - and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice.

Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.

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Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II

by Brendan I. Koerner 

Part history, part thriller, Now the Hell Will Start tells the astonishing tale of Herman Perry, the soldier who sparked the greatest manhunt of World War II, and who became that war's unlikeliest folk hero

A true story of murder, love, and headhunters, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a budding playboy from the streets of Washington, D.C., who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle--not because he yearned for adventure, but rather to escape the greatest manhunt conducted by the United States Army during World War II.

An African American G.I. assigned to a segregated labor battalion, Perry was shipped to South Asia in 1943, enduring unspeakable hardships while sailing around the globe. He was one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched to build the Ledo Road, a highway meant to appease China's conniving dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. Stretching from the thickly forested mountains of northeast India across the tiger-infested vales of Burma, the road was a lethal nightmare, beset by monsoons, malaria, and insects that chewed men's flesh to pulp.

Perry could not endure the jungle's brutality, nor the racist treatment meted out by his white officers. He found solace in opium and marijuana, which further warped his fraying psyche. Finally, on March 5, 1944, he broke down--an emotional collapse that ended with him shooting an unarmed white lieutenant.

So began Perry's flight through the Indo-Burmese wilderness, one of the planet's most hostile realms. While the military police combed the brothels of Calcutta, Perry trekked through the Jungle, eventually stumbling upon a village festooned with polished human skulls. It was here, amid a tribe of elaborately tattooed headhunters, that Herman Perry would find bliss--and would marry the chief's fourteen-year-old daughter.

Starting off with nothing more than a ten-word snippet culled from an obscure bibliography, Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost--a pursuit that eventually led him to the remotest corners of India and Burma, where drug runners and ethnic militias now hold sway. Along the way, Koerner uncovered the forgotten story of the Ledo Road's black G.I.s, for whom Jim Crow was as virulent an enemy as the Japanese. Many of these troops revered the elusive Perry as a folk hero--whom they named the Jungle King.

Sweeping from North Carolina's Depression-era cotton fields all the way to the Himalayas, Now the Hell Will Start is an epic saga of hubris, cruelty, and redemption. Yet it is also an exhilarating thriller, a cat-and-mouse yarn that dazzles and haunts.

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Feng Shui: The Chinese System Of Elements

by Harry Rolnick

As elusive in its explanation as the power of prophecy, feng shui is the spiritual magnetic field that binds our universe, distinguishing good from ill, peace from turmoil, governing the balance in the very elemants of harmony itself. Understanding it is beyond the capacity of most laymen. Not crediting it is like not believing in the inevitability of spring replacing winter.

[Daveo]

The Last Leonardo by Ben Lewis..

In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries.

 

In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived’. Its dazzling price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting.

 

For two centuries art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the first half of the sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself?

 

In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings and sheikhs. Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Holland, Moscow and Louisiana; to the galleries, salerooms and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly, emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across five centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, where we’re never quite certain what to believe.

 

Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.

[Daveo]

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.

This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the slap.

In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.

What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of commitment and happiness, compromise and truth.

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The Big Smoke: The Chinese Art and Craft of Opium by Peter Lee

and others

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The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw ..

Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess have shaped our perceptions of Malaysia.

In Tash Aw, we now have an authentic Malaysian voice that remaps this literary landscape. The Harmony Silk Factory traces the story of textile merchant Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in British Malaya in the first half of the twentieth century. Johnny's factory is the most impressive structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny is a hero - a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people.

But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father's illegal businesses.

This debut novel from Tash Aw gives us an exquisitely written look into another culture at a moment of crisis. The Harmony Silk Factory won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award and also made it to the 2005 Man Booker longlist.

[Daveo]

No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan

by Mitch Weiss & Kevin Maurer

 It seemed like an impossible mission right from the start.

A Special Forces team planned to land in an enemy-held valley, scale a steep mountain in Afghanistan to surprise and capture a terrorist leader.

But before they found the target, the target found them...

The team was caught in a deadly ambush that not only threatened their lives, but the entire mission. The elite soldiers fought for hours, huddled on a small rock ledge as rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine gun fire rained down on them. With total disregard for their own safety, they tended to their wounded and kept fighting to stay alive.

When the battle finally ended, ten soldiers had earned Silver Stars- the Army's third highest award for combat valor. It was the most Silver Stars awarded to any unit in one battle since Vietnam.

Based on dozens of interviews with those who were there, No Way Out is a compelling narrative of an epic battle that not only tested the soldiers' mettle but serves as a cautionary tale: Be careful what you ask a soldier to do because they will die trying to accomplish their mission.

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Brunel: The Man Who Built the World by Steven Brindle One of the great minds of the 19th century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was responsible for some of the most impressive engineering feats of his day. By the age of 26, he had been appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, linking Bristol to London. His love of steamships led him to build a series of revolutionary vessels, including the Great Britain—the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. Illustrated with a wealth of blueprints, drawings, and rare photographs, this new biography tracks the life and achievements of this Victorian-era genius. A fascinating portrait of ambition and innovation, Brunel provides ample evidence to support the claim that Brunel was indeed “the man who built the world.”

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Newton's Notebook: The Life, Times, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton

by Joel Levy

 This unique format brings Sir Isaac Newton, the man who “discovered” gravity, to life in vivid form. An intimate look at his writings, correspondence, and life events, the Notebook examines his early life and education, his achievements in mathematics and optics, the publication of the Principia, and the long-term impact of his revolutionary theories. Illustrated with letters, journals, photographs, and more, Levy’s close look into the life of Newton includes his personal relationships, his schooling and work among colleagues, and his lasting legacy to science. Each spread is a self-contained story or anecdote, revealing some specific event in the scientist’s life. Newton’s Notebook is bound like a personal journal, giving it the custom feel of a personal possession, and better than any biography, reveals the whole scope of Newton’s life and times.

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A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth about Alien Contact....

This work of speculative nonfiction combines meticulous fact-finding from historian/researcher Richard M. Dolan and forward-leaning scenarios from journalist/screenwriter Bryce Zabel on the world's most mind-bending subject. The authors predict radical changes after official acknowledgment that at least some UFOs are intelligently controlled craft from somewhere other than Earth. A.D. After Disclosure isn't afraid to make mind-blowing, specific predictions, such as: Congress will hold Watergate-style hearings and ask secret-keepers, "What did you know and when did you know it? "The first decade A.D. (After Disclosure) will be like a high-tech 1960s, spawning massive cultural and societal change. Abductees will file a class-action suit against the government for withholding critical information. All the textbooks on planet Earth - from history to science - will need an immediate review. Whether disclosure leads to social panic or ushers in a new era of unity and peace, it will undoubtedly be a game-changing event.

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Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye..

by Steve Turner..

Marvin Gaye was a twentieth-century icon, one of our greatest pop singers.He made his name with the Motown sound of the sixties, but went on to become a musical revolutionary with the release of "What's Going On" -- an album that tuoched on war, ecology, racism, violence, and poverty. It perfactly capured the spirit of the times and changed people's perceptions of what soul music could achieve.Behind the songs, however, Gaye's was a troubled life: drug dependency, tortured personal relationships, and ongoing financal and legal difficulties led inexorably to the final fatel meeting with his father. Since his tragic death, his stature has increased rather than diminished. His musical legacy has endured that his popularity and influnce will endure and continue to win new generations of fans.

"Trouble Man," based on exhausive and exclusive new research, is the definitive story of the turbulent life and violent death of an American icon. Steve Turner probes beyond the undying magic of songs like"I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "What's Going On," and "Sexual Healing" to trace the jagged contours of Gaye's life and examine the man behind the legend. Turner's detailed exploration of Gaye's childhood and his relationship with his family, his religious upbringing, and his meteoric professional success and ultimate descent into drug abuse and financial instability offers a new look at a beloved American musician.