Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

The Paultain experience by Paultain

Follow Paultain across 30 years worth of Southeast Asian hedonism, as told from the local pub.

You'll be taken from Manila to Pattaya and points in between, on a roller coaster ride of chasing tail, getting pissed, and the odd cameo of famous faces and (in)famous places.

There is no better way to learn the ways of the mongering world than from this firsthand account.

The Paultain Experience is a must read for the uninitiated and the veteran whore monger alike.

[Daveo]

Gallant Lady - A Biography of the USS Archerfish

by Ken Henry - Don Keith...

She looked like just about like the other diesel powered, Balao-class submarines crafted in the '40s. But there the similarity ends.

Because the Archerfish - named for a fish that kills its victims with a lethal blast of water from below - won a unique, heroic place in military history and the memories of her crew members.

Here is her story: from her assembly in New England, her dedication at the hand of Eleanor Roosevelt, her service in World War II, where she broke the back of the Japanese Navy and sank the largest ship ever sunk by a submarine, to the details of her critical role in the Cold War, crisscrossing the oceans for six years to foil Soviet naval intelligence.

Here too, is the story of her officers and enlisted men, who waited years to serve on the Archerfish.

In their own words, these men tell how, against all odds, they sent a Japanese aircraft carrier to the ocean floor - served in peacetime in the Navy's only all Bachelor crew - steered their ship into exotic ports all over the world - welcomed B-girls, Japanese war veterans, royalty, Playboy bunnies and a goat aboard ship, with equal hospitality.

As they helped their sub outlast fires and even an earthquake, they worked hard, played hard and lived even harder.

An extraordinary real-life odyssey, Archerfish is a vivid, unforgettable portrait of submariners' life.

[Daveo]

The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy by Robert D. Kaplan..

[Daveo]

Asian Fighting Arts by Donn F Draeger & Robert W Smith.

[Daveo]

I Choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne..

I lived through the Dutroux affair from the inside, and all these years I have kept silent about it - about my 'personal' Dutroux Affair - my time in the company of the most hated psychopath in Belgium.

I need to write this book for three reasons: so that people stop giving me strange looks and treating me like a curiosity; so that no one ever asks me any more questions ever again; and so that the judicial system never again frees a paedophile for 'good behaviour'.'

'The Dutroux Affair' shook the whole of Europe.

In the middle of the immense machinery of investigation and justice there was Sabine Dardenne herself, Dutroux's last victim. She was held captive for eighty days - and survived.

Far from sensationalising the horror, her story, dignified and restrained, is ultimately uplifting.

Says Sabine Dardenne, 'I choose to live'.

[Daveo]

1491- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

by Charles C. Mann..

In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness - rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them.

The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city.

Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand.

Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

[Daveo]

China Shakes the World : The Rise of a Hungry Nati by James Kynge...

Authoritative and fully up-to-date account by leading China expert on China's economic rise and how it will affect the world.

The new China, the nation that in 25 years has changed beyond all recognition is becoming an industrial powerhouse for the world.

James Kynge shows not only the extraordinary rise of the Chinese economy, but what the future holds as China begins to influence the world.

On the eve of the British industrial revolution some 230 years ago, China accounted for one third of the global economy.

In 1979, after 30 years of Communism, its economy contributed only two per cent to global GDP.

Now it is back up to five per cent, and rising. Although China is already a palpable force in the world, its re-emergence is only just starting to be felt.

Kynge shows China's weaknesses - its environmental pollution, its crisis in social trust, its weak financial system and the faltering institutions of its governments - which are poised to have disruptive effects on the world.

The fall-out from any failure in China's rush to modernity or simply from a temporary economic crash in the Chinese economy would be felt around the world.

[Daveo]

Death In The City Of Light: The True Story of the Serial Killer Who Terrorised Wartime Paris by David King..

Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris.

As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.

The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.

He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor.

Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.

Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance?

Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness.

When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers.

But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease.

His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges.

Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.

Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.

[Daveo]

100 baht - Pattaya - the Good the Bad and the Other - lots of hints and tips on the Thai girls - ways - and culture...

40 baht shipping anywhere in Thailand..

[Daveo]

Giant Steps: The Remarkable Story of the Goliath Expedition - from Punta Arenas to Russia by Karl Bushby..

[Daveo]

I Am Dynamite! : A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux..

Friedrich Nietzsche's work rocked the foundation of Western thinking and continues to permeate our culture, high and low - yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers.

Sue Prideaux's myth-shattering book brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work.

I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand Nietzsche, the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solutions to - our own troubled times.

[Daveo]

City of Fortune HOW VENICE RULED THE SEAS By ROGER CROWLEY..

“The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and Roger Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”

The author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty.

City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean.

In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion.

From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time - the reverberations of which are still being felt today.

[Daveo]

Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America

by Steven J. Ross ..

The chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it.

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world.

The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: plans existed for hanging twenty prominent Hollywood figures such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.

U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention - preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis - and only Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way.

From 1933 until the end of World War II, attorney Leon Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call "the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles," ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles.

Often rising to leadership positions, this daring ring of spies uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction.

Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.

[Daveo]

 

Secret Agent's Handbook by Mark Seaman...

Here is the catalog from which real spies once ordered their explosives, gadgets, and equipment!

Have you ever fantasized about what it would be like to be a secret agent? A super-spy? To have at your disposal the wild gadgets seen in movies like Mission Impossible and the James Bond series?

Cloak-and-dagger escapades have been a mainstay on the screen and in literature, but the stuff of these movies and spy novels was based on fact.

And the clandestine duties required of covert operators entailed employing every possible advantage.

Secret Agent's Handbook is the original catalog used by the actual British S.O.E. agents to select weapons, gadgets, and disguises for their secret missions during World War II.

The S.O.E. was the secret wartime organization set up to promote sabotage in enemy-occupied countries, with active and often highly personal encouragement from Winston Churchill.

Following Winston Churchill's directive to "set Europe ablaze," the Special Operations Executive set about organizing resistance in Europe and beyond as best they could.

To aid in these harrowing activities, government scientists and inventors produced a remarkable and vast array of devices designed specifically for covert sabotage missions.

This intriguing collection includes the equipment that secret agents used-such wild devices as exploding rats and Chianti bottles, shoes that leave barefoot prints, incendiary briefcases and cigarettes-as well as the deadliest of weapons.

Each item is featured with a photograph or illustration and is described in detail. Also included are full instructions for use and information as to how they were utilized on real-life spy missions.

[Daveo]

Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (Making History) by Martin Gilbert...

[Daveo]

The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World Knowledge by Daniel J. Boorstin..

From the author of The Discoverers and The Creators, an incomparable history of man's essential questions: "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?"

Daniel J. Boorstin, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Americans, introduces us to some of the great pioneering seekers whose faith and thought have for centuries led man's search for meaning.

Moses sought truth in God above while Sophocles looked to reason. Thomas More and Machiavelli pursued truth through social change.

And in the modern age, Marx and Einstein found meaning in the sciences. In this epic intellectual adventure story, Boorstin follows the great seekers from the heroic age of prophets and philosophers to the present age of skepticism as they grapple with the great questions that have always challenged man.

[Daveo]

New Great Australian Stories by Bill Marsh..

[Daveo]

 

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan ..

 

[Daveo]

The Final Restraint by Paul C. Alexander (gay interest)

[Daveo]

Hooked: Confessions of a London Call Girl by Clare Gee..

In Hooked, reformed addict Clare Gee draws on her own experiences of cocaine addiction, alcoholism and prostitution in telling the sensational story of a woman living on the edge.

Emotionally scarred by having never known her mother, Katie escapes to London and immerses herself in a seedy world of drugs, drink and sex, chasing happiness in the pubs and clubs, and snorting cocaine in private members' bars with her rich punters.

Finding herself in a cycle of prostitution and unable to break free, she turns to drug smuggling and becomes embroiled in a bigamous marriage in an attempt to secure some emotional stability. From this dark emotional pit, Katie starts her painful journey back to 'wellness' and attempts to rid herself of her addictions for good.

Hooked is a graphic tale of how life as a prostitute really is and what can happen when we search for happiness outside of ourselves. It is a poignant reminder that things can always get better, as long as we remember that when it's time to leave the party, it's time.

[Daveo]

Dear Uncle Go: Male Homosexuality in Thailand by Peter A Jackson..

A landmark study of male homoeroticism in Southeast Asia.

"Uncle Go Pak-nam" has been Thailand's advice columnist for gay men in a major national magazine since 1974.

Letters to him come from the confused, lovelorn, naive, worldly and lonely.

Their sexually explicit stores are often moving, sometimes shocking, sometimes delightful, but always fascinating and deeply human. Uncle Go's advice to them is wild, witty, and wise.

These engaging letters, plus Uncle Go's responses, provide the basis for Dr. Jackson's ingenious and insightful analyses and commentaries into male-to-male relationships in what may be one of the world's few non-homophobic societies.

This landmark book is a fully revised and expanded version of Male Homosexuality in Thailand: An Interpretation of Contemporary Thai Sources (New York: 1989)

Although this book is an academic study, lay people will find it readable and compelling.

[Daveo]

The Janson Equation

(Paul Janson #4)

by Douglas Corleone & Robert Ludlum .

To prevent a war in Asia - one that could quickly spread to the rest of the world - Paul Janson and Jessica Kincaid must learn the truth behind a young woman's murder...

Prominent U.S. Senator James Wyckoff hires former government agents-turned-private security consultants Janson and Kincaid to locate his teenage son Gregory. Gregory's girlfriend Lynell has been found strangled in a Seoul hotel, and Gregory has fled the city to avoid being arrested for the crime. But Senator Wyckoff insists that his son is innocent, suggesting that Lynell, who was a translator, may have been murdered because of something she overheard at a recent international conference. And when Janson and Kincaid realize they're being hunted by an assassin, they suspect that this crime and the cover-up - were orchestrated by a shadowy unit of the U.S. State Department as part of a larger plot to provoke violence between North and South Korea.

[Daveo]

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan...

Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next.

From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years.

Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts.

Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward - it was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions.

From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century - this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now - as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.

[Daveo]

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah..

[Daveo]

Chasing Lost Times: A Father and Son Reconciled Through Running

by Geoffrey Beattie & Ben Beattie..

A book as much about fathers and sons as it is about an emotionally driven obsession with running

Geoffrey Beattie is an extremely successful academic and celebrity psychologist. He was perhaps a less successful father.

His obsession with his career and his driving passion for running when he was at home almost destroyed his relationship with his son, but, ironically, it is running that has brought them back together.

This is the emotional story of a father and son trying to repair a relationship through a shared activity that depends on sheer physical effort, the kind of physical effort that may once have been the source of commonality between father and son in all previous generations but which seems to be absent in the modern world.