検索キーワード： ナレーター "Matthew Waterson" すべてのカテゴリー

In November 1838, Frederic Chopin settled in an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in the mountains above Palma, where he finished what would eventually be recognized as one of the great and revolutionary works of musical Romanticism: his 24 Preludes. There was scarcely a decent piano on the island, so Chopin worked on a small pianino made by a local craftsman, Juan Bauza. Chopin's Piano traces the history of Chopin's 24 Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them, and the traditions they came to represent.

In Stuff Matters, Miodownik entertainingly examines the materials he encounters in a typical morning, from the steel in his razor and the graphite in his pencil to the foam in his sneakers and the concrete in a nearby skyscraper. He offers a compendium of the most astounding histories and marvelous scientific breakthroughs in the material world.

The Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.

What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.

Two complete volumes in one. Liber Null contains a selection of extremely powerful rituals and exercises for committed occultists. Psychonaut is a manual comprising the theory and practice of magic aimed at those seeking to perform group magic or who work as shamanic priests to the community.

When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son from school, she happily says yes. Their children are classmates and best friends. And five-year-olds love being together - just like she and Emily. As a widow and stay-at-home blogger mum living in suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a glamorous and successful PR executive. The trouble is that Emily doesn't come back.

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.

Ranging from the Vikings and Wako pirates in the Middle Ages to modern day Somali pirates, Lehr delves deep into what motivates pirates and how they operate. He also illuminates the state's role in the development of piracy throughout history: from privateers sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth to pirates operating off the coast of Africa taking the law into their own hands. After exploring the structural failures which create fertile ground for pirate activities, Lehr evaluates the success of counter-piracy efforts - and the reasons behind its failures.

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Jeroen Duindam connects the earliest history of kings and queens to contemporary examples of family-based leadership. His sweeping overview of five millennia of dynastic rule brings to light recurring predicaments of families on the throne.

Bringing together the latest insights from psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy, Daniel Nettle sheds light on happiness, the most basic of human desires. Nettle examines whether people are basically happy or unhappy, whether success can make us happy, what sort of remedies to unhappiness work, why some people are happier than others, and much more.

Liber Kaos offers a clear understanding of the practice of chaos magick. Peter Carroll’s approach combines methods from shamanism, paganism, and chaos science. This book includes a selection of extremely powerful rituals and exercises for committed occultists and has instructions that lead listeners through new concepts and practices. A complete, advanced magical training course for the individual or for groups is explained, with details of the author’s magical order, an outline for setting up a temple, and instructions for carrying out the essential rituals of chaos magick.

Horses and humans share an ancient, complex relationship. Once our most indispensable companions, horses were for millennia essential in helping build our cities, farms, and industries. But during the 20th century, in an increasingly mechanized society, they began to disappear from human history. In this esoteric and rich tribute, award-winning historian Ulrich Raulff chronicles the dramatic story of this most spectacular creature, thoroughly examining how they've been muses and brothers in arms, neglected and sacrificed in war yet memorialized in paintings, sculpture, and novels.

Plucked from time, Sir Thomas More arrives on the human colony of Astrobe in the year AD 2535, where there is trouble in utopia: Can he and his motley followers save this golden world from the Programmed Persons, and the soulless perfection they have engineered? The survival of faith itself is at stake in this thrilling, uncategorizable, wildly inventive first novel - but the adventure is more than one of ideas. As astonishingly as Philip K. Dick and other visionaries of the 1960s new wave, Lafferty turns the conventions of space-opera science fiction upside down and inside out.

The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life. While much attention has been given to his short reign, Michael Hicks explores the whole of Richard's fascinating life and traces the unfolding of his character and career from his early years as the son of a duke to his violent death at the battle of Bosworth.

In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Written by Daniel Nettle - author of the popular book Happiness - this brief volume takes the listener on an exhilarating tour of what modern science can tell us about human personality. Revealing that our personalities stem from our biological makeup, Nettle looks at the latest findings from genetics and brain science, and considers the evolutionary origins and consequences of different personalities. The heart of the book sheds light on the "big five": Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientious, Agreeableness, and Openness.

Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome - an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms - that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases.

Blackwood Bay. An ordinary place, home to ordinary people. It used to be a buzzing seaside destination. But now, ravaged by the effects of dwindling tourism and economic downturn, it’s a ghost town - and the perfect place for film-maker Alex to shoot her new documentary. But the community is deeply suspicious of her intentions. After all, nothing exciting ever happens in Blackwood Bay - or does it? Blackwood Bay. An ordinary place, home to an extraordinary secret.

When Duncan McCallum is asked by Benjamin Franklin to retrieve an astonishing cache of fossils from the Kentucky wilderness, his excitement as a naturalist blinds him to his treacherous path. But as murderers stalk him Duncan discovers that the fossils of this American incognitum are not nearly as mysterious as the political intrigue driving his mission. The Sons of Liberty insist, without explaining why, that the only way to keep the king from pursuing a bloody war with America is for Duncan to secretly deliver the fossils to Franklin in London.

The American Colonies, 1765. As the Stamp Act dissent marks the first organized resistance to English rule, someone is kidnapping and killing members of the Iroquois Nation. Asked by an elder to investigate, Scottish exile Duncan McCallum soon uncovers a network of secret runners supporting the nascent “committees of correspondence", engaged in the political dissent fomenting across colonial borders. But as Duncan follows the trail further, it leads to his capture.