My Mother was a Woman

Gender equality should be top of the agenda of discourse on human affairs. There is no rhyme nor reason for the status of women to be languishing below the male ranking. The ‘weaker sex’ label must cease forthwith. Women are strong, resilient and always unbowed. Moreover, women conceive and populate our world with all the talents the human race celebrates from time to time. Women deserve to be ululated and rewarded. The current status demeans women and denies the human race the chance to scale the heights it has the potential to scale!

My Parents' Daughter

The mob bullying of an accomplished and expert senior secondary English teacher and Co-ordinator in a Victorian state school in Australia is re-told in My Parents’ Daughter giving a vivid insight into the hellish world of its victim. This first part of Victoria Hartmann’s Memoir is about workplace bullying by her four male principals, plus others, in the new millennium. This otherwise dark theme is re-told with good humour. Victoria’s intention is for her reader to laugh a lot outwardly but be moved inwardly to further discussions about this sinister blight on our democracies; perhaps even be moved to action and further the cause.

It shows how Victoria’s employer – the Department of Education, plus associated bodies, dealt with Victoria’s injuries and complaints. It questions accountability and equity or rather the lack there of. This memoir tackles head on psychological bullying and spot lights the notion that authority does not equate to honesty thus our need for external checks on governmental power brokers. The memoir’s intention is to enlighten and demands justice and change leading to prevention. It is a courageous effort by a courageous woman who owes everything to her genetics and upbringing. Please note that all names are fictitious but the content word for word true.

My Wife’s Canary

Miles Maskell has lived a varied and adventurous life, and has travelled widely as amply demonstrated in his anecdotes. He has been a City of London wine merchant, owned two restaurants and a champagne bar, and eventually created a company letting top-of-the-range properties in southern France on behalf of their owners.

He has climbed mountains, shot wild boar in Poland, piloted a 4-seater aircraft of which he was a part-owner, parachuted in New Zealand, and ridden the Cresta Run in St Moritz. He is also a sculptor.

Written as a lighthearted and easy-to-read series of anecdotes, this is his autobiography and recounts some of the more entertaining experiences of his life to date, as well as a number of amusing incidents encountered by his relations and closest friends.

He was born in London where he continues to live, having been at school in Cape Town and then at Cambridge University.

Myths, History, and Art

Sir Basil Markesinis has held tenured senior posts at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, University of London, Leiden (in the Netherlands) and the Law School of the University of Texas at Austin where he is now Emeritus Professor of Comparative Methodology. He has also held for a number of years part-time Chairs at the Universities of Paris I (Sorbonne), Paris II (Assas), Munich (Germany), Ghent (Belgium), Siena, Genova, and Rome (Italy), the Michigan Law School (at Ann-Arbour) for two years and the Cornell Law School for four years. He has authored or co-authored 56 books, over 150 legal articles, and close to 100 articles on geopolitical issues in journals and newspapers in three continents. His most-recent work is his three-volume illustrated treatise entitled Ancient Greek Poetry from Homer to Roman Times, Jan Sramek, Verlag (2017). His academic work has earned him Fellowships at the Academies of Athens, Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Rome (Lincei), as well as the Athens Archaeological Society and the American Law Institute. For his work in promoting international relations and the study of various European Cultures, especially through his creation of the Leiden Institute of Anglo-American Law (in 1987); The Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law (in 1996) of which he was Founder, fund raiser, and first Director; and the Texas Institute of Global Law (in 2000), he was awarded the Insignia of the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy; the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of France; the Insignia of the Grand Cross of Service with Star of the Republic of Germany, as well as the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Légion d' honneur of France. In 1997 on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor, he was appointed Hon. Queen's Counsel; and in 2005, on the advice of the Prime Minister, he was knighted by H. M. Queen Elizabeth II for "exceptional services to international relations."

N Z Small Business Owners Handbook

The N Z Small Business Owners Handbook is an essential guide for the over 500,000 small business owners in New Zealand. This practical and comprehensive book offers clear and actionable insights that every owner and stakeholder needs to understand in order to succeed.

While many small business owners are skilled at working in their business, they often neglect the crucial task of working on their business due to their busy schedules. This can lead to exponentially increased risks and missed opportunities. Simply working harder is not the answer - knowing how to work on your business is critical.

This book offers an easy-to-understand solution, using the analogy of the popular game ‘snakes and ladders.’ Just like in the game, business life can be full of ups and downs. This handbook provides a clear roadmap to help navigate the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities that arise.

Whether you are an established business owner or just starting out, this handbook is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to thrive in the dynamic and ever-changing world of small business. With practical advice, real-world examples, and clear action steps, the N Z Small Business Owners Handbook is the ultimate guide to achieving success and realizing your business dreams.

Neil's Story: Trial by Media

The Neil Entwistle murder case caused a media frenzy on both sides of the Atlantic. With his wife and baby daughter found dead in their bedroom, Neil was the immediate suspect, and his subsequent conviction seemed inevitable to all who heard and read the sordid coverage. However, things are not always what they seem.

With remarkable objectivity, Cliff Entwistle reveals the inconsistencies in the investigation, the lies told and the key forensic evidence withheld from the medical examiner, and with touchingly personal candour, he shares the pain he felt at the great loss and betrayal his family suffered.

You will be disturbed by the harrowing details he exposes of the justice systems of both the UK and the US, yet you cannot fail to be encouraged as he testifies to the strength and resilience of family bonds in the face of unimaginable heartache and adversity.

Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids

Teaching students whose behaviour is so ‘out of control’ is a challenge faced by all teachers in modern schools. Contemporary approaches have focused on dealing with the presenting behaviours and attempting to control those. This approach may deal with the problem in the short term but creates no long-term solution.

This work accepts that the majority of extremely dysfunctional behaviour is carried out by children who have suffered early, persistent trauma and/or neglect. Disruptive conduct can be explained by the effect their early childhood environment has had on the neural construction of their brain. These children are not ‘born bad’ but behave this way because of the ‘parenting’ they received in their early life. These are the children who have graduated out of these dysfunctional environments.

Recognising this provides the key to understanding how to deal with these kids. Because the social conditions created these problems, if we change those conditions, over time these children will develop different behaviours to get their fundamental needs met. The solution lies in the fact that everyone acts to get their needs met in the environment in which they live, so it makes sense to present an environment that demands different behaviours to satisfy these needs.

The book provides a description about how the early childhood environment creates the neural scaffold that drives dysfunctional behaviour and how developing a well-defined classroom environment will make a positive contribution to changing that behaviour.

New Realism in Contemporary Israeli Painting

Art today can be whatever one wants it to be: a rotting cadaver, a photograph of someone else’s photograph, a banana… In this post-modern age of post-truth, of social media and the selfie, when everyone has a high-resolution digital camera at their fingertips, one wonders what would possess a talented artist to sit for days, weeks, often months, to paint a portrait of a friend or a landscape of home. Today, a group of 20 or so remarkable painters have revived a fascinating style of realistic painting, and in Israel of all places, where realistic art has never played any significant role. Their brand of realism is not mundane photographic realism, but rather it is an intensified sort of realism, a kind of hyper-realism. This book offers an initial explanation as to what these artists are doing, and how they are doing it.

Nicholas and Alexandra Majesties and Massacre

This is a book about love, life and death set in Russia, during Czar Nicholas the II’s reign. It commences at the end of the 19th century with his father’s burial and his subsequent inheritance of the Crown – with absolute power. His reign is underpinned by the strong love between him and his wife Alexandra and overshadowed by the presence of Rasputin.

But his unwise decisions lead to chaos, including the Khadynka Tragedy, Bloody Sunday, 1905 revolution and the Czar’s abdication. His family is imprisoned, first in Tobolsk and then in Ekaterinburg, and the story concludes with the communists obtaining power and executing the entire royal family.

Become entangled in the tales of love, hate, conflict, sex, treachery, and murder between the characters. Dive into a horrifying historical moment from one hundred years ago and experience for yourself life at a crucial turning point in Russia’s bloody history.

No More Blood

Blood is the life-force of every human being (and other animals). When it leaks out of our blood vessels, we die. When the aorta, the biggest blood vessel in the body, bursts, death usually comes quickly but for a lucky few it’s not instantaneous. For them, survival is possible with emergency surgery. When a blockage in a blood vessel stops the blood from flowing, the deprived part of the body malfunctions and may decay if an operation to relieve the blockage is not performed. When Peter Harris first became a consultant vascular surgeon in the 1980s, the operations were big and bloody. When he finished in 2012, scalpels and saws had been largely superseded by bloodless needle-puncture procedures guided by X-ray images on a television screen. The evolution of the technology that made this possible is told primarily through the experiences of patients and includes vivid and, at times, harrowing descriptions of their operations and aftermath. Accounts of his own trials and tribulations and the good times are set against the troubled backdrop of the NHS starting in Broadgreen Hospital on the outskirts of Liverpool in 1979 and ending at University College Hospital in London in 2012.

Not All Quiet Before the Storm: A Political Study of the West

Not All Quiet Before the Storm: A Political Study of the West offers a comprehensive political and philosophical critique concerning the increasing popularity of socialism among liberal intellectuals, leftist generations of the young, and even Christian democrats. The author presents a series of extensive analyses on ideological, cultural, and generational wars, moral and identity issues, and the challenges facing the Western world in the twenty-first century.
The reader is to receive a severe but frank stricture upon liberal democracy, a condemnation of the globalizing elite and the Western world’s current political climate and culture.
The tone of the work is “politically incorrect,” describing the decline and socialist transformation of the West. The Left has changed the entire political and cultural landscape of the Western world. The breakdown of civil society was caused by individual rights not being paired with personal responsibility, and the growing culture of entitlements has convinced the people that failure is not their fault but results from the political-economic system’s transgressions. Westerners have abandoned the ethical basis for society, believing that all problems are solvable by “good government.”
The book offers recommendations on solving the readily apparent impasse. It outlines an alternative system termed the “New West”.

Not What The Good Fairy Promised

Twenty-four-year-old Joanna’s life flipped upside down at the taking of a phone call. News of her sister’s near-death in a fire triggered the onset of bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that Joanna would have to manage for the rest of her life.

A scholarship to Cambridge, with three years to get her degree, had ended in this. Joanna’s high hopes, and her father’s fierce ambitions for her, now lay in tatters. A glowing future of any description lay beyond her grasp as she struggled to get to grips with her new and utterly foreign reality. Where was she going in life now?

Not What the Good Fairy Promised is the heart-warming story of a young woman’s experience of terrifying breakdown, psychiatric hospital, and the stigma of mental illness. There is the battle with everyday life, with its frightening demand that she re-discover her identity – her selfhood – while struggling to survive and earn a living, yearning for something worthwhile to fill the hours of nine to five. This is a tale of experiencing, and overcoming, serious mental illness, of driving ahead to forge a new and unlooked for future – and what the Good Fairy did deliver.