Just A Shot Away:69 Revisited is veteran author-journalist Kris Needs' highly-personal account of 1969 as he experienced it happening in real time, remembering the gigs, bands and records that bombarded his young radar and shaped his future path. Following Part One's account of January-June's pivotal events, including the births of Aylesbury's legendary Friars club and Pete Frame's Zigzag (which he wrote for before becoming editor), witnessing Hendrix in concert and his lifelong love of the Stones, Part Two shows Kris growing up fast; including discovering and meeting David Bowie, Mott The Hoople and Iggy and the Stooges, seeing many more bands and exploring his love of Sun Ra, Can, the Doors, Pearls Before Swine, Spirit, Moondog, Love, Tim Buckley and Syd Barrett, not forgetting the Stones and Hendrix. With Foreword by mentor Pete Frame, Kris's 45 year career as a music writer impacts time machine fashion, including conversations with Keith Richards, Mott The Hoople, the Doors, Iggy Pop, Suicide, Can's Irmin Schmidt, Silver Apples, Pete Brown, Spirit's Mark Andes and more, along with perspective and knowledge gained from living a life the teenage Needs could never have imagined, some leading characters becoming lifelong friends. In a year that ends with Mott The Hoople about to change his life, there's never time to care about the death of a decade in which he's coming alive, let alone any loss of innocence when he can't lose his fast enough. The book carries a sad back story as, while Kris was writing it, his beloved partner Helen succumbed to cancer, his grief inevitably casting a tragic shadow over the story, instilling greater appreciation of life when it's just getting under way. Moving back into the family home with his mum, Kris wrote the book in the same bedroom where he actually experienced 1969 - and still got told to turn down his Stones records!

Just A Shot Away:69 Revisited is veteran author-journalist Kris Needs' highly-personal account of 1969 as he experienced it happening; from starting the year as a wide-eyed 14-year-old Rolling Stones/Hendrix nut and turning 15 the day Brian Jones died to becoming part of the UK's longest-running club and befriending its hottest new band. There have been endless books that take a well-researched look at that tumultuous year but few that actually live it in real time. Rather than recycle hoary cliches about Manson and Altamont snuffing the 60s after Woodstock's brief optimism, or any ludicrous rivalry between the Beatles and Stones, Kris remembers the gigs, bands and records that bombarded his own young radar and helped shape his future life as a music writer, DJ and, briefly fan club secretary. With John Peel a lifeline, 1969 was pivotal for Kris, including the births of the legendary Friars Aylesbury rock club, for which he designed the membership card and flyers, Pete Frame's Zigzag magazine, which he later wrote for before becoming editor, and Mott The Hoople, who he befriended after they played his school dance and ended up running their fan club. As a member of the Jimi Hendrix fan club, he witnessed the guitarist in concert, plunging himself in black music and becoming fascinated with the Black Power movement. As a lifelong Stones fan, he saw them early and ended up hanging out with Keith Richards in later years. There was never time to care about the death of a decade in which he was coming alive, let alone any loss of innocence when he couldn't lose his fast enough. With Foreword by his mentor Pete Frame, Kris's 45 year career as a music writer impacts on the narrative time machine fashion, including sessions with Keith Richards, Captain Beefheart, George Clinton and Marianne Faithfull, epic conversations with Ian Hunter, the Doors, the Magic Band, the Fugs, Traffic, Silver Apples, Last Poets, "voice of Woodstock" Chip Monck and many more. Obviously, the book gains perspectives and knowledge from 50 years reading, writing, listening, investigating and living a life the teenage Needs (or anyone else, for that matter!) could never have imagined, some of those leading characters becoming lifelong friends. The book also carries a sad back story as, while Kris was writing it, his beloved partner Helen, who he fell in love with at a Mott The Hoople reunion gig in 2013, succumbed to cancer, his grief inevitably tangible and casting a tragic shadow over the story. Helen's death instilled a greater appreciation of life when it was just getting under way, along with the romantic notion that none of his many experiences can ever compare to finding his true soul mate. Helen's death resulted in Kris moving back to the family home with his 93-year-old mum; now writing in the same bedroom where he experienced 1969 as it unfolded, and still getting told to turn down his Rolling Stones records! Once Kris finished writing the book, it was twice as long as the average music tome so will now come in two volumes, each covering half that year

nig·gard·ly (adj.) [nig´erd-le] 1. stingy, miserly; not generous 2. begrudging about spending or granting 3. provided in a meanly limited supply If you don’t know the definition of the word, you might assume it to be a derogatory insult, a racial slur. You might be personally offended and deeply outraged. You might write an angry editorial or organize a march. You might even find yourself making national headlines In other words, you’d better know what the word means before you pour your energy into overreacting to it. That’s the jumping-off point for this powerful directive from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Karen Hunter. It’s time for the black community to stop marching, quit complaining, roll up their collective sleeves, channel their anger constructively, and start fixing their own problems, she boldly asserts. And while her straight-talking, often politically incorrect narrative is electrifyingly fresh and utterly relevant to today’s hot-button issues surrounding race, Hunter harks back to the wisdom of a respected elder—Nannie Helen Burroughs, who was ahead of her time penning Twelve Things the Negro Must Do for Himself more than a century ago. Burroughs’s guidelines for successful living—from making education, employment, and home ownership one’s priorities to dressing appropriately to practicing faith in everyday life—teach empowerment through self-responsibility, disallowing excuses for one’s standing in life but rather galvanizing blacks to look to themselves for strength, motivation, support, and encouragement. From our urban communities to small-town America, the issues Hunter is bold enough to tackle in Stop Being Niggardly affect us all. Refreshingly candid and challenging, certain to get people everywhere talking, this is the book that takes on race in a new—yet also historically revered and simply stated—way that can change lives, both personally and collectively.

From the reviews: "This book offers a coherent treatment, at the graduate textbook level, of the field that has come to be known in the last decade or so as computational geometry. ... ... The book is well organized and lucidly written; a timely contribution by two founders of the field. It clearly demonstrates that computational geometry in the plane is now a fairly well-understood branch of computer science and mathematics. It also points the way to the solution of the more challenging problems in dimensions higher than two." #Mathematical Reviews#1 "... This remarkable book is a comprehensive and systematic study on research results obtained especially in the last ten years. The very clear presentation concentrates on basic ideas, fundamental combinatorial structures, and crucial algorithmic techniques. The plenty of results is clever organized following these guidelines and within the framework of some detailed case studies. A large number of figures and examples also aid the understanding of the material. Therefore, it can be highly recommended as an early graduate text but it should prove also to be essential to researchers and professionals in applied fields of computer-aided design, computer graphics, and robotics." #Biometrical Journal#2

Written by leading scholars in the field, Causes of War provides the first comprehensive analysis of the leading theories relating to the origins of both interstate and civil wars. Utilizes historical examples to illustrate individual theories throughout Includes an analysis of theories of civil wars as well as interstate wars -- one of the only texts to do both Written by two former International Studies Association Presidents