David Littlejohn – författare

In 1919 Adolf Hitler joined the tiny German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich, becoming its leader the following year and adding 'National Socialist' to its title.Thus the NSDAP, popularly known as the Nazi Party, was born. All political parties had strong-arm squads to protect their meetings from disruption by rivals, and the NSDAP was no exception. In August 1921 ex-naval Lieutenant Hans Ulrich Klintzsch took command of the NSDAP's 'Defence and Propaganda Troop' which, the following month, was renamed the SA (Sturmabteilung = Storm Detachment).David Littlejohn's fine text examines the history, uniforms and insignia of Hitler's stormtroopers.

What images come to mind when you think of Las Vegas? Mobsters and showgirls, magicians and tigers, multimillion-dollar poker games and prizefights; towering signboards that light up the night in front of ever more spectacular casino hotels. But real people live here, too--over a million today, two million tomorrow. Greater Las Vegas has long been the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. And almost every aspect of its citizens'' lives is influenced by the almighty power of the gambling industry. A team of fifteen reporters led by David Littlejohn, together with prize winning photo-journalist Eric Gran, studied the "real" Las Vegas--the city beyond the Strip and Downtown--for the better part of a year. They talked to teenagers (whose suicide and dropout rates frighten parents), senior citizens (many of whom spend their days playing bingo and the slots), Mexican immigrants (who build the new houses and clean the hotels), homeless people and angry blacks, as well as local police, active Christians, city officials, and prostitutes. They looked into the local churches, the powerful labor unions, pawn shops, the real estate boom, defiant ranchers to the north, and dire predictions that the city is about to run out of water. Proud Las Vegans claim that theirs is just a friendly southwestern boomtown--"the finest community I have ever lived in," says Bishop Daniel Walsh, who comes from San Francisco. But their picture of Las Vegas as a vibrant, civic-minded metropolis conflicts with evidence of transiency, rootlessness, political impotence, and social dysfunction. In this close-up investigation of the real lives being led in America''s most tourist-jammed, gambling-driven city, readers will discover a Las Vegas very different from the one they may have seen or imagined.

About 2000 country houses - all of them large and opulent and surrounded by extensive estates - remain more or less intact in England today. Whether in public or private hands, they have become a major magnet for British and foreign visitors each year, and have been called `England's one important contribution to art history'. But they are increasingly in danger of disappearing in an inhospitable economic and political climate.This book describes in detail the present state of these houses, those that continue to serve as family houses, as well as those that have been converted into National Trust museums, tourist attractions, convention centres, hotels, country clubs, schools, apartments, hospitals, and even prisons. From extensive conversations with many of the owners, managers, and curators of these houses, Professor Littlejohn extrapolates the probable future of England's historic houses, evaluates the many proposals that have been put forward for their survival, and considers the political, economic, and archaic heritage of the aristocratic past.

Although Las Vegas is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of more than 1,200,000, little attention has been paid to that part of the city where people actually live--the city apart from the Strip and the flashy older gambling strip of Downtown. This book representing the work of young reporters from all over the United States who spent the better part of a year examining the "Real Las Vegas." Each one looked at a single aspect of life--the lives of teenagers, senior citizens, Mexican immigrants, the homeless, houses of worship, prostitutes, education, labor unions, pawn shops, housing, water supply (in a desert). Eventually they came to realize that no other city could duplicate the Las Vegas experience because no other city has depended for so long on the profits of gambling.

What images come to mind when you think of Las Vegas? Mobsters and showgirls, magicians and tigers, multimillion-dollar poker games and prizefights; towering signboards that light up the night in front of ever more spectacular casino hotels. But real people live here, too--over a million today, two million tomorrow. Greater Las Vegas has long been the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. And almost every aspect of its citizens'' lives is influenced by the almighty power of the gambling industry. A team of fifteen reporters led by David Littlejohn, together with prize winning photo-journalist Eric Gran, studied the "real" Las Vegas--the city beyond the Strip and Downtown--for the better part of a year. They talked to teenagers (whose suicide and dropout rates frighten parents), senior citizens (many of whom spend their days playing bingo and the slots), Mexican immigrants (who build the new houses and clean the hotels), homeless people and angry blacks, as well as local police, active Christians, city officials, and prostitutes. They looked into the local churches, the powerful labor unions, pawn shops, the real estate boom, defiant ranchers to the north, and dire predictions that the city is about to run out of water. Proud Las Vegans claim that theirs is just a friendly southwestern boomtown--"the finest community I have ever lived in," says Bishop Daniel Walsh, who comes from San Francisco. But their picture of Las Vegas as a vibrant, civic-minded metropolis conflicts with evidence of transiency, rootlessness, political impotence, and social dysfunction. In this close-up investigation of the real lives being led in America''s most tourist-jammed, gambling-driven city, readers will discover a Las Vegas very different from the one they may have seen or imagined.

Anyone who cares about opera will find The Ultimate Art a thoroughly engaging book. David Littlejohn''s essays are exciting, provocative, sometimes even outrageous. They reflect his deep love of opera--that exotic, extravagant, and perpetually popular hybrid performing art form--and his fascination with the many worlds from which it sprang. From its seventeenth-century beginnings, opera has been decried by its detractors for its elitism, its artifice, its absurd costliness, and its social irrelevance. But Littlejohn makes us see that opera embraces an extraordinary amount of intense human emotion and experience, Western culture, and individual psychology. It is also the most complex, challenging, and demanding form of public performance ever developed--at its most spectacular it pulls together in one evening a play, a concert, a ballet, and a pageant, not to mention an exhibition of painting and sculpture. Every opera is a veritable piece of cultural history. The book begins with "The Difference Is They Sing," a potentially controversial essay on the nature of opera and its place in modern culture. From there Littlejohn goes on to consider everything from "Sex and Religion in French Opera" to "What Peter Sellars Did to Mozart." He tells us about every major staging of Wagner''s Ring cycle since 1876, the troubled fate (in legend, history, and opera) of the city of Nuremberg, and the volatile collaboration of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Littlejohn presents these and many other fascinating moments in the history of opera with conviction and flair. By the end of the book the reader may very well be persuaded that opera is indeed the ultimate art.Anyone who cares about opera will find The Ultimate Art a thoroughly engaging book. David Littlejohn''s essays are exciting, provocative, sometimes even outrageous. They reflect his deep love of opera--that exotic, extravagant, and perpetually popular hybr