Related to: 'The Lifeboat'

Conventional wisdom holds that trauma scars us for life, wreaking psychological havoc that affects everything from our sleep cycles to our relationships to our very will to live but this popular conception of trauma ignores a startling fact: many people emerge from traumatic experiences stronger, wiser and more fulfilled, despite having endured great emotional pain. For the past 20 years, Joseph has worked with survivors of trauma and sufferers of posttraumatic stress. In this groundbreaking book, he boldly challenges current notions about trauma and its aftermath. His studies have shown that a wide range of traumatic events - from illness, divorce, separation, assault and bereavement to accidents, natural disasters and terrorism - can act as catalysts for positive change strengthening relationships, changing one's perspective and revealing inner strengths. What Doesn't Kill Us reveals how all of us can navigate change and adversity - traumatic or otherwise - to find new meaning, purpose, and direction in life.

The Royal Navy to which Admiral Lord Nelson sacrificed his life depended on thousands of sailors and marines to man the great wind-powered wooden warships. Drawn from all over Britain and beyond, often unwillingly, these ordinary men made the navy invincible through skill, courage and sheer determination. They cast a long shadow, with millions of their descendants alive today, and many of their everyday expressions, such as 'skyscraper' and 'loose cannon', continuing to enrich our language. Yet their contribution is frequently overlooked, while the officers became celebrities. JACK TAR gives these forgotten men a voice in an exciting, enthralling, often unexpected and always entertaining picture of what their life was really like during this age of sail. Through personal letters, diaries and other manuscripts, the emotions and experiences of these people are explored, from the dread of press-gangs, shipwreck and disease, to the exhilaration of battle, grog, prize money and prostitutes. JACK TAR is an authoritative and gripping account that will be compulsive reading for anyone wanting to discover the vibrant and sometimes stark realities of this wooden world at war.

When English soldier Hal strikes up a conversation with German Lieutenant Wilhelm during the ceasefire in no-man's-land on Christmas Day 1914, he has no idea the impact this chance meeting will have. Wilhelm is in love with an English woman, Sam, and presses a photograph into Hal's hand - if he makes it home, Hal must promise to find Sam and give her this token of affection.Hal does make it home, though the war rages on - but the moment he sees Sam he is in trouble. With Wilhelm's shadow looming over their relationship, and his photograph never revealed, Hal begins to live a life that was meant for someone else ...

Charles Williams' major biography of Philippe Petain (1856-1951) tells of a peasant who became a Marshal of France and the Head of the Vichy State. A slow climb up the army ranks was leading inexorably to retirement when war broke out. He defended Verdun in 1916 and settled the mutinies in 1917.In May 1940, he realised that France had been defeated and requested an armistice. As head of unoccupied France, he jockeyed between Nazis, Allies and Vichy politicians until, in 1945, he returned to France to be tried for treason. His death sentence was commuted by General de Gaulle to life imprisonment. In recounting Petain's long life, Lord Williams, one of our most notable political biographers, has successfully illustrated the character of an extraordinary man.

The towering iceberg drifting in the North Atlantic was a floating tomb. Embedded in the great gleaming mass was a ship - sealed in so solidly that not even its mast protruded.Here was a sea mystery to rank alongside the Bermuda Triangle and the Marie Celeste. But for Major Dirk Pitt, top troubleshooter for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, it was also the first link in a fantastic chain of events that would lead him too close - and too often - to violent death. And to the discovery of the most sinister and bizarre conspiracy of the century . . . ICEBERG.

ISLOMANIA is not really about the famous fictional castaway at all - it is more about the place he was forced to make his temporary home, and other places like it. Renowned travel writer Thurston Clarke has long been obsessed with islands, an affliction he calls 'islomania', and his new book is a kind of love letter to these little (and not so little) worlds surrounded by sea.Beginning with the accepted model for Robinson Crusoe's remote abode, Mas ? Tierra in the Pacific, Clarke then takes us on a hugely enjoyable tour of his favourite islands, exploring their geography, history and culture. From George Orwell's Jura, where he wrote '1984', to the beautiful (but slowly sinking) Maldives in the Indian Ocean, this is a book about some of the most curious and evocative places on earth. And over every island falls the shadow of Crusoe, persuading us that islands are more liberating than confining, more contemplative than lonely, more holy than barbaric . . .