David Downing

Focusing on one of the world's most important and volatile regions, this book provides the background and context students need to understand today's headlines in relation to the governments and politics of the Middle East. A wealth of maps, charts, timelines, and primary-source quotations enhance the narrative and expose students to the variety of ways information is presented in nonfiction text. Correlated to key themes in the social studies curriculum, including global connections, current issues, and conflict and cooperation, this book is a rich source of information and ideal for student reports.

Focusing on one of the world's most important and volatile regions, this book provides the background and context students need to understand today's headlines in relation to the conflicts of the Middle East. A wealth of maps, charts, timelines, and primary-source quotations enhance the narrative and expose students to the variety of ways information is presented in nonfiction text. Correlated to key themes in the social studies curriculum, including global connections, current issues, and conflict and cooperation, this book is a rich source of information and ideal for student reports.

Focusing on one of the world's most important and volatile regions, this book provides the background and context students need to understand today's headlines in relation to the geography and resources of the Middle East. A wealth of maps, charts, timelines, and primary-source quotations enhance the narrative and expose students to the variety of ways information is presented in nonfiction text. Correlated to key themes in the social studies curriculum, including global connections, current issues, and conflict and cooperation, this book is a rich source of information and ideal for student reports.

An England vs Germany football match is one of the most passionate and controversial sporting events there is - whether it's a club match or an international. Here, David Downing, the acclaimed author of "Passovotchka", examines the history of such clashes. He unearths the stories, the statistics, the footballing trends, and is then able to show how events on the football field have often mirrored the cultural and political identities of the two countries. Two nations, one goal.

In 1945, a party from the Moscow Dynamo football club travelled to Britain to play four matches against top British teams. They departed 33 days later, leaving a trail of controversy in their unbeaten wake. This work looks at how both Britain and Russia were unable to keep politics out of sport.

Neil Young is arguably the only rock performer and songwriter whose work has retained the respect of a large following while gaining the allegiance of new generations. He has demonstrated a unique ability to combine commercial success with a willful experimentation. His music has encompassed almost every American popular style, from folk to metal, from rockabilly to punk, from rhythm and blues to country and it is his restless pursuit of new challenges that has led on the one hand to his recognition as one of the few stars who refuses to "sell out," and on the other hand to his being sued by his record company for making albums that were not "characteristic of Neil Young." In A Dreamer of Pictures , David Downing paints an illuminating and entertaining portrait of this contradictory and enigmatic figure. Here we see his childhood in Canada and his first forays into musicmaking his ups and downs with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Crazy Horse the privations and excesses of life on the road his unconventional filmmaking and fundraising ventures his often absurd political pronouncements his two marriages his involvement with his younger son's therapy to combat cerebral palsy and his continuing musical evolution.Neil Young has taken rock beyond generational boundaries and has helped to establish it as a unique art form A Dreamer of Pictures is thus a portrait not only of Young, but of rock itself.

Along with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, Neil Young is one of the handful of 1960s rock musicians who have survived, retained the respect of a large public and gained the allegiance of a new generation. Today, at 46, he continues to pack huge venues and sell millions of critically acclaimed albums. His most recent, "Unplugged" has spent weeks in the Billboard album charts. Young's ability to combine commercial success with an almost wilful experimentation has made him one of the key figures in taking rock music beyond its generational boundaries, and establishing it as a musical form in its own right. A Canadian, Young is a star despite his aversion to stardom, self-indulgent in terms of his own mad sense of humour, and prone to melancholia. A childhood suffer from polio and an epileptic, he is the father of two disabled children. Musically, Young is a rare breed. A gifted singer-songwriter in the folk-rock tradition and an electric guitarist in the realm of pure rock, he is unrivalled as an all-rounder. Presley was his teenage hero, Dylan the man who inspired his performances in the Toronto clubs, and the Stones a model for his work with Crazy Horse.Young's music has been associated with a wide melange of styles - from R & B to country, from folk rock to heavy-metal grunge - but whatever the form, his music has always come from the heart, and has reaffirmed its power and importance.