Backroom Boys

Author : Francis Spufford
Publisher : Faber & Faber
ISBN 13 : 0571266444
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Backroom Boys written by Francis Spufford and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers.The book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others.Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, 'Backroom Boys' tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. 'Backroom Boys' is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.

Author : Graeme Sligo
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1922132543
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Backroom Boys written by Graeme Sligo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Backroom Boys is the remarkable, but little known, story of how a varied group of talented intellectuals, drafted into the Australian Army in the dark days of 1942, provided high-level policy advice to Australia’s most senior soldier, General Blamey, and through him to the Government for the remainder of the war and beyond. This band of academics, lawyers and New Guinea patrol officers formed a unique military unit, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, under the command of an eccentric and masterful string-puller, Alf Conlon. The Directorate has been depicted as a haven for underemployed poets or meddlesome soldier-politicians. Based on wide-ranging research, this book reveals a fuller and more fascinating picture. The fierce conflicts in the wartime bureaucracy between public servants and soldiers, in which the Directorate provided critical support to Blamey, went to the heart of military command, accountability and the profession of arms. The Directorate was a pioneer in developing approaches to military government in areas liberated by the combat troops, as demonstrated by the Australian Army in New Guinea, and Borneo in 1945-46. It is an issue of enduring importance. The Directorate established the Australian School of Pacific Administration, and had an important role in founding the Australian National University. Its influence extended into post war Australia. The Backroom Boys emphasises the personality of Colonel Alf Conlon, as well as the talented men and women he recruited. Above all, this book shows how, unexpectedly, the Australian Army fostered a group of men and women who made a lasting contribution to the development of Australia in the decades after the war.

Author : Mandla Mathebula
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1776140893
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Backroom Boy written by Mandla Mathebula and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Backroom Boy opens dramatically in China, 1962. Andrew Mlangeni is one of a small select group undergoing military training there. The unannounced visitor is Mao Tse-Tung or Chairman Mao as he was known, Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Mlangeni was selected as one of the first-ever six members who received military training in China before the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He seems to have been chosen because he was a dedicated, intelligent and dependable operative, rather than a leader. Even after his release after 25 years on Robben Island, Mlangeni was not given a senior position in the post-apartheid democratic government. ‘I was always the backroom boy,’ says Andrew Mlangeni about himself. Andrew Mlangeni, is a struggle stalwart, Rivonia Trialist, and Robben Island prisoner 467/64 who was next door inmate to Nelson Mandela’s acclaimed 466/64 prison number. Released after 26 years of incarceration, he served as Member of Parliament, and is Chairman of the ANC’s Integrity Commission and Founder of the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation. With the passing of Ahmed Kathrada (March 2017), Mlangeni (91) is one of only two Rivonia Trialist still alive with Denis Goldberg. While still at school, Andrew Mlangeni joined the Communist Party of South Africa and also the ANC Youth League. These were the organisations that shaped his values. Decades of resourceful activism were to lead to his arrest and life sentence in the Rivonia trial. Mlangeni’s lifelong commitment to the struggle for liberation reverberates with other biographies and memoirs of leading figures, such as Rusty Bernstein’s Memory Against Forgetting and Albie Sachs’ We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge. This story of an ANC elder is a well-researched historical record overlaid with intensely personal refl ections which intersect with the political narrative. Above all, it is one man’s story, set in the maelstrom of the liberation struggle. This biographical project has been developed for, and published in conjunction with, the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation.

Author : Noam Chomsky
Publisher : Fontana Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Backroom Boys written by Noam Chomsky and published by Fontana Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Craig Stockings
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009085999
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Army of Influence written by Craig Stockings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of regional cooperation is becoming more apparent as the world moves into the third decade of the 21st century. An Army of Influence is a thought-provoking analysis of the Australian Army's capacity to change, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Written by highly regarded historians, strategists and practitioners, this book examines the Australian Army's influence abroad and the lessons it has learnt from its engagement across the Asia-Pacific region. It also explores the challenges facing the Australian Army in the future and provides principles to guide operational, administrative and modernisation planning. Containing full-colour maps and images, An Army of Influence will be of interest to both the wider defence community and general readers. It underscores the importance of maintaining an ongoing presence in the region and engages with history to address the issues facing the Army both now and into the future.

Author : David Foster
Publisher : Elsevier
ISBN 13 : 1483165485
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Innovation and Employment written by David Foster and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation and Employment is a comprehensive study of the various aspects and principles of the problem of unemployment in Great Britain. It aims to provide new approaches and newfangled proposals that delineate from traditional methods of solving the problem of unemployment. The formulation of a practical solution to the problem of unemployment is the main objective of the book. Prior to the presentation of the solution, correct facts and figures are gathered and the basic principles of employment are identified and explained. Finally, the author suggests the creation of a National Work Service to find a special job-fit between the self-starters and the unemployed, which hopefully can create a parallel economic arrangement of continuous economic growth. Economists, labor planners, demographers, politicians, and students of economics and sociology will find this book invaluable.

Author : John Pilger
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1407086375
Total Pages : 642 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Distant Voices written by John Pilger and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist and film-maker, John Pilger has looked behind the 'official' versions of events to report the real stories of our time. The centrepiece of this new, expanded edition of his bestselling Distant Voices is Pilger's reporting from East Timor, which he entered secretly in 1993 and where a third of the population has died as a result of Indonesia's genocidal policies. This edition also contains more new material as well as all the original essays - from the myth-making of the Gulf War to the surreal pleasures of Disneyland. Breaking through the consensual silence, Pilger pays tribute to those dissenting voices we are seldom permitted to hear.

Author : Albert Jack
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141912227
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep written by Albert Jack and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2006-10-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The English language is crammed with colourful phrases and sayings that we use without thinking every day. It's only when we're asked who smart Alec or Holy Moly were, where feeling in the pink or once in a blue moon come from, or even what letting the cat out of the bag really means that we realize that there's far more to English than we might have thought. Luckily enough, we now have Albert Jack. And rather than resting on his laurels after the enormous success of Red Herrings and White Elephants, he has continued his search around the world, exploring the origins of hundreds more phrases. The fascinating stories he has uncovered come from the rich traditions of the navy, army and law to confidence tricksters and highwaymen, from the practices of ancient civilizations to Music Hall and pubs. Determined to chase each shaggy dog story to the bitter end, his discoveries are even stranger and more memorable this time round. Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep is a compulsively readable, highly enlightening look at the phrases we use all the time but rarely consider. From the skin of your teeth to the graveyard shift - you'll never speak (or even think) English in the same way again.

Author : Niobe Way
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814793843
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Adolescent Boys written by Niobe Way and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A flurry of best-selling works has recently urged us to rescue and protect boys. They have described how boys are failing at school, acting out, or shutting down emotionally. Lost in much of the ensuing public conversation are the boys themselves—the texture of their lives and the ways in which they resist stereotypical representations of them. Most of this work on boys is based primarily on middle class, white boys. Yet boys from poor and working class families as well as those from African American, Latino, and Asian American backgrounds need to be understood in their own terms and not just as a contrast to white or middle class boys. Adolescent Boys brings together the most up-to-date empirical research focused on understanding the development of boys from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The authors show how the contexts of boys' lives, such as the schools they attend shape their identities and relationships. The research in this book will help professionals and parents understand the diversity and richness of boys' experiences.

Author : Nigel Rees
Publisher : Batsford Books
ISBN 13 : 1849942897
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Don't You Know There's A War On? written by Nigel Rees and published by Batsford Books. This book was released on 2014-12-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nigel Rees presents a nostalgic and witty guide to wartime catchphrases, from the now ubiquitous 'Keep Calm and Carry On' to lesser-known gems such as 'lions led by donkeys'. Following his hugely popular survey of domestic sayings, More Tea Vicar?, Rees returns with a witty and fascinating examination of the catchphrases that saw us through wartime Britain and are still relevant in times of crisis today. Including domestic phrases of the time, propaganda, and slang developed by soldiers abroad, the book describes the provenance and development of these intriguing, quirky and sometimes crude phrases that were born out of times of conflict and have in many cases become part of our language.