Secondhand History & Biography Bargain Book Box SP2803

Secondhand History & Biography Bargain Book Box SP2803

A varied non-fiction box spanning biography, history, travel, journalism, and memoir. Michael Palin's New Europe and Tony Hawks's Piano in the Pyrenees anchor the travel thread; Ben Hills's inside account of Fairfax Media's collapse and Gavin Weightman's Frozen Water Trade provide absorbing histories of industry and media; and Brian Lapping's Apartheid: A History, Mark Honigsbaum's Fever Trail, and the McLeod family memoir All the Broken Soldiers give the box substantial historical range.

1. An Accidental Brush With History — Elizabeth Marshall — A memoir by a woman who found herself witness to significant historical moments; Marshall recounts an unusual life lived close to the edges of 20th-century events.
2. A Portrait of Sheridan — Stanley Ayling — A biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the 18th-century playwright and politician; Ayling traces the author of The School for Scandal from his theatrical triumphs to his chaotic final years.
3. Kindred Spirits: A Botanical Correspondence — compiled by Anne Latreille — The correspondence between two passionate Australian botanists, Jean Galbraith and Joan Law-Smith; a record of a deep friendship conducted through the shared love of plants.
4. The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria — Mark Honigsbaum — A medical history adventure; Honigsbaum follows the 19th-century quest to find and cultivate cinchona, the tree whose bark produces quinine, across South America.
5. Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon — Ed Caesar — The story of the attempt to break the two-hour marathon barrier; Caesar profiles the elite runners and the science behind the most ambitious target in distance running.
6. New Europe — Michael Palin — The Python-turned-traveller explores the new Europe that emerged after the fall of the Iron Curtain; a warm, curious, and characteristically generous portrait of a continent reinventing itself.
7. A Piano in the Pyrenees — Tony Hawks — The author of Round Ireland with a Fridge buys a house in the French Pyrenees and attempts to integrate into village life; warmly comic travel memoir.
8. Stop the Presses! How Greed, Incompetence (and the Internet) Wrecked Fairfax — Ben Hills — An insider account of the collapse of one of Australia's great media institutions; Hills traces the editorial, commercial, and technological failures that brought Fairfax to its knees.
9. Dora B: A Memoir of My Mother — Josiane Behmoiras — A daughter's memoir tracing a life shaped by displacement and memory; intimate and quietly moving.
10. The Frozen Water Trade — Gavin Weightman — The extraordinary story of how New England entrepreneurs built a global industry in natural ice; Weightman uncovers a forgotten trade that shaped the modern world's relationship with cold.
11. title see product photo — Tomas Eloy Martinez — A novel by the Argentine author of Santa Evita; Martinez was one of Latin America's most celebrated literary voices.
12. Rembrandt — Christopher White — A study of Rembrandt's life and art by one of the leading authorities on Dutch Golden Age painting; White examines the painter's technique, his self-portraits, and his place in Western art history.
13. Devil's Gallop: True Tales of Scotland's Dark and Bloody Past — Douglas Skelton — A collection of true crime and historical horror from Scotland's past; Skelton uncovers murders, witch trials, and dark deeds from across the centuries.
14. Apartheid: A History — Brian Lapping — A comprehensive history of apartheid in South Africa, produced in association with Granada Television; Lapping traces the origins, implementation, and eventual dismantling of the system.
15. All the Broken Soldiers: Private Kennedy's War — Jan McLeod and Andrew McLeod — A family reconstruction of one soldier's experience of war, drawn from letters, diaries, and personal memory.