Je m'appelle Renée, j'ai cinquante-quatre ans et je suis la concierge du 7 rue de Grenelle, un immeuble bourgeois. Je suis veuve, petite, laide,... grassouillette, j'ai des oignons aux pieds et, à en croire certains matins auto-incommodants, une haleine de mammouth. Mais surtout, je suis si conforme à l'image que l'on se fait des concierges qu'il ne viendrait à l'idée de personne que je suis plus lettrée que tous ces riches suffisants. Je m'appelle Paloma, j'ai douze ans, j'habite au 7 rue de Grenelle dans un appartement de riches. Mais depuis très longtemps, je sais que la destination finale, c'est le bocal à poissons, la vacuité et l'ineptie de l'existence adulte. Comment est-ce que je le sais? Il se trouve que je suis très intelligente. Exceptionnellement intelligente, même. C'est pour ça que j'ai pris ma décision : à la fin de cette année scolaire, le jour de mes treize ans, je me suiciderai.

Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her... carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society's expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this facade lies the real Renee: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renee lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever. By turn moving and hilarious, this unusual novel became the top-selling book in France in 2007 with sales of over 900,000 copies to-date.

Devising and performing a scientific experiment is an art, and it is common to hear scientists talk about the 'beauty' of an experiment. What does this... mean in chemistry, the experimental science par excellence? And what are the most beautiful chemical experiments of all time? This book offers ten suggestions for where beauty might reside in experimental chemistry. In some cases the beauty lies in the clarity of conception; sometimes it is a feature of the instrumental design. But for chemistry, there can also be a unique beauty in the way atoms are put together to make new molecules, substances not known in nature. The ten experiments described here offer a window into the way that chemists think and work, and how what they do affects the rest of science and the wider world. This book aims to stimulate the reader to think anew about some of the relationships and differences between science and art, and to challenge some of the common notions about particular 'famous experiments'. Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry is accessible to all readers, including those without a scientific background and can provide an unusual point of entry into some of the basic concepts of chemistry. Phillip Ball is a renowned, prolific, award winning science writer.

Tibullus is one of the three great Roman elegists. In this volume, the award-winning poet A. M. Juster provides a faithful and stylish new translation... of his major work, with parallel Latin text. The Introduction considers Tibullus' poems in the context of classical elegy and in particular the elegies of his contemporaries, Ovid and Propertius, and discusses the influence of his patron Messalla in the reign of Augustus. Finally, Maltby's comprehensive notes explain topical, literary, and mythological allusions and identify major themes.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

During the first half of the twentieth century, epidemics of polio caused fear and panic, killing some who contracted the disease, leaving others with... varying degrees of paralysis. The defeat of polio became a symbol of modern technology's ability to reduce human suffering. But while the story of polio may have seemed to end on April 12, 1956, when the Salk vaccine was declared a success, millions of people worldwide are polio survivors.In this dazzling memoir, Anne Finger interweaves her personal experience with polio with a social and cultural history of the disease. Anne contracted polio as a very young child, just a few months before the Salk vaccine became widely available. After six months of hospitalization, she returned to her family's home in upstate New York, using braces and crutches. In her memoir, she writes about the physical expansiveness of her childhood, about medical attempts to "fix" her body, about family violence, job discrimination, and a life rich with political activism, writing, and motherhood.She also writes an autobiography of the disease, describing how it came to widespread public attention during a 1916 epidemic in New York in which immigrants, especially Italian immigrants, were scapegoated as being the vectors of the disease. She relates the key roles that Franklin Roosevelt played in constructing polio as a disease that could be overcome with hard work, as well as his ties to the nascent March of Dimes, the prototype of the modern charity. Along the way, we meet the formidable Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who claimed to have found a revolutionary treatment for polio and who was one of the most admired women in America at mid-century; a group of polio survivors who formed the League of the Physically Handicapped to agitate for an end to disability discrimination in Depression-era relief projects; and the founders of the early disability-rights movement, many of them polio survivors who, having been raised to overcome obstacles and triumph over their disabilities, confronted a world filled with barriers and impediments that no amount of hard work could overcome. Anne Finger writes with the candor and the skill of a novelist, and shows not only how polio shaped her life, but how it shaped American cultural experience as well.

This rich and elegant work describes how the unsettled cultural climate provided fertile soil for the flourishing of elegy. John Rosenberg shows how the... phenomenon of elegy pervaded the writing of the period, tracing it through the voices of individuals from Carlyle, Tennyson, Darwin and Ruskin, to Swinburne, Pater, Dickens and Hopkins. Finally, he turns from particular elegists to a common experience that touched them all - the displacement of the older idea of the earthly city as a New Jerusalem by the rise of a new image of the Victorian city as an industrial Inferno, a wasteland of sprawling towns and of rivers so polluted they caught on fire.

The New York Times Bestselling Author of Christine FallsApril Latimer, a junior doctor at a local hospital, is something of a scandal in the... conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. She’s known for being independent, and her taste in men is decidedly unconventional. Now April has vanished, and her friend Phoebe Griffin suspects the worst. Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, and asks him for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke follows April’s trail through some of the darker byways of the city, and finds himself deeply involved in April’s murky story, facing ugly truths about family savagery, Catholic ruthlessness, and race hatred. Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of a father and his daughter, this is Benjamin Black at his sparkling best.

Petina Gappah is the voice of Zimbabwe. In this astonishingly powerful debut collection, she dissects with real poignancy the lives of people caught up... in a situation over which they have no control, as they deal with spiralling inflation, power cuts and financial hardship - a way of life under Mugabe's regime - and cope with issues common to all people everywhere; failed promises, disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. Compelling, unflinching and tender, "An Elegy for Easterly" is a defining book, and a stunning portrait of a country in chaotic meltdown.

Larry Levis was an outstanding poet, and a student and colleague of Philip Levine. Levine, who edited this posthumous manuscript, writes that Levis's... "early death is a staggering loss for our poetry, but what he left is a major achievement that will enrich our lives for as long as poetry matters." That's high praise, and the poems in Elegy are sturdy enough to carry the weight of those expectations. Especially striking is "The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.," an encounter between urbanites trapped within the prisons of their routines, and an ancient-seeming possum crossing a busy city street: "It would lift its black lips & show them / The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors, / Teeth that went all the way back beyond / The flames of Troy & Carthage..." Levis's writing is marked by memorable imagery that resonates both to the world of our daily lives and our mythic longings for transcendence.

The winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and a 2008 New York Times Notable Book Look at her—It’s as ifThe windows of... night have been sewn to her eyes.                                          —from “Ode to History”

"The German Language Today" sets out to show the linguistic variety that exists within the German speech community as well as describing the main... systematic linguistic features of the language. In it, Charles Russ covers most of the factors which produce competing forms in German, and describes the sounds, inflectional processes, syntactic structures and different layers of words in language. He seeks to give recognition to the fact that languages are changing. "The German Language Today" is detailed in its coverage of both sociolinguistic and linguistic topics, use of illustrative texts and examples, and the application of modern linguistic concepts to German coverage.

Gen Y-those individuals born after 1980-are making an indelible mark on our culture. Raised on praise and technology, they are savvier and more... confident than any prior generation. Their characteristic values, like social responsibility and authenticity, drive their actions. A majority of the 78 million Gen Yers in the U.S. have entered the workforce, creating a new dynamic. Millennial Leaders presents 28 success stories from brilliant Gen Y leaders and those professionals who have studied this social phenomenon-from a 14 year-old political appointee to a finalist on "The Apprentice." Through interviews and insights, this book shows experienced leaders (i.e., Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, and Generation X) how to manage, motivate, and communicate with Gen Y, and how to best utilize their talents. The book also provides Generation Y with over 100 strategies for achieving career and personal success. Learn what turns them on and off, how to retain them as employees, and how to cultivate their natural entrepreneurism for your benefit.

This new, third edition of Practising Spanish Grammar offers a varied set of exercises which puts Spanish grammatical theory into practice. It can be... used alone or with A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. The new edition now features a glossary of grammatical terms, a variety of new and updated exercises, and up-to-date topical and technological vocabulary. The book also provides level indicators with all the exercises so you can select the ones that match your ability. The book also contains the answers to the exercises so you can use this book in class or alone at home.