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At 6'6" and 240lbs, Forrest Gump is difficult to ignore. This satire follows him from the football dynasties of Bear Bryant to Vietnam, and from encounters with Presidents Johnson and Nixon to pow-wows with Chairman Mao. It also takes in Harvard University, a Hollywood set, and a NASA mission.

It is 1948. Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson, and his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet Iantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past - to a life and a career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

How babies babble, words change meaning and languages live or die ... In this fascinating survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work, David Crystal answers every question you might ever have had about the nuts and bolts of language in his usual highly illuminating way. Along the way we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk shows not just how old we are but where we’re from and even who we want to be.

Part archaeological adventure, part philological mystery and a totally thumping good read! 70 AD. A group of Roman soldiers crossing the Sahara desert is destroyed by a ferocious and mysterious presence hidden in a solitary tower at the extreme borders of the sea of sand. The sole survivor, the Etruscan seer Avile Vipinas, is inexplicably saved by the sound of his silver sistrum. Nineteen centuries later, young American scholar Philip Garrett is investigating his father’s disappearance in the desert 10 years earlier when he discovers the house of Avile Vipinas in the underground ruins of Pompeii, sealed by the earthquake of 79 AD.The ancient seer, before his death, had tried to describe the horrific presence in the Tower of Solitude and to make the first faltering steps to its destru

This new edition of the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary explains over 7,000 idioms current in British, American and Australian English, helping learners to understand them and use them with confidence. • Fully updated with new idioms, e.g. think outside the box, play out of your skin, the new black • New, attractive page layout with idioms in colour for easy reference • Clear explanations and example sentences for every idiom • Most common idioms highlighted so students know which to learn • Topic section covering useful language areas, e.g. agreeing and disagreeing, telling stories