Winner of The Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award, by The Pattis Family Foundation and the Newberry LibraryFrom skyline-defining icons to wonders of the world, the second period of the Chicago skyscraper transformed the way Chicagoans lived and worked. Thomas Leslie’s comprehensive look at the modern skyscraper era vie...

Born in Sondrio, Italy, in 1891, Pier Luigi Nervi was a pioneer in the engineering and architecture of reinforced concrete. His buildings showed how the use of reinforced concrete expanded the possibilities of form and structure. His methods, meanwhile, ingrained his structures with patterns that came directly out of his economical, manual construction processes. The results were buildings that matched awe-inspiring spans with surprisingly human scale.Beauty's Rigor offers...

When I got out of Military Police School, I had orders to go to Korea and Vietnam. Just before boarding the ship for Korea they changed my orders and sent me to Germany. I wasn't mad at them. I was a young man and a "player". I am sure almost any young man who was in the server will see some of themselves in this book. I started it in Germany in 1966 and didn't complete it until Jan of 2014.

The worst has happened. On the eve of their return to Blighty, Brigg and his fellow National Servicemen find themselves sentenced to another six months in Panglin Barracks...Many of the surviving characters from The Virgin Soldiers live again in these pages: dogged Tasker, the odious Sergeant Wellbeloved, the vulnerable Colonel Bromley Pickering and the comically touching Juicy Lucy.But we encounter new characters too: the fanatical and demented Lieutenant Grainger...

A walk through Kensal Green Cemetery, a meat pie in the greasy spoon, a weekend away complete with flannel pyjamas - Dangerous Davies knows how to treat the woman he loves.Detective Constable Davies has two things on his mind: Jemma Duval, the beautiful, black, hymn-singing social worker, and 'Lofty' Brock, the harmless old eccentric who drowned in the canal. To prove that Lofty's death was no accident, our hero sets out to do some undercover detective work. He soon discovers that ...

Fresh from Los Angeles, Mrs Pearl Collingwood and her daughter Rona arrive in the frenzied no-man's-land of Heathrow airport: from the nearby village of Bedmansworth, Edward Richardson jets in and out of it faster than his marriage can tolerate. Yet precisely where village and airport overlap, there exists a world bubbling with intrigues and assignations, with wit, pathos and excitement, that all readers of Leslie Thomas will recognize as his alone.

Lost, baffled, and alone in Willesden's mean streets, Detective Constable Dangerous Davies is up against the cream of criminality. Newspaper theft (the work of organized crime?), household robbery (including cheese from the fridge), it's all grist to his mill. When Dangerous is beaten up, yet again, at a European Friendship dinner dance he reluctantly takes some sick leave.Recuperating in Bournemouth he is approached by a member of the local Widows' Luncheon Club. She wants him to ...

Mid-winter, 1943. Britain is gripped by intense cold and in the darkest days of the war. It is six months before D-Day and the battle to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe.RAF officer Martin Paget is returning home for Christmas He has been on covert operations in France and knows he has to return there. While in England, he rediscovers a passion that he thought was long over.In a freezing hut on Salisbury Plain, Sergeant Harris's mind is occupied by questions of just how his yo...

Bursting with life and bawdy humour, National Serviceman Brigg is now a Regular Army sergeant defending the Empire in the beds and bars of Hong Kong.Peace-time diversions include sensual fireworks with a pair of delicious Chinese twins and a tender, erotic affair with the lonely wife of an American serviceman.

As plain-clothes men go, Dangerous Davies looks like a non-starter. The small fry of petty larceny and minor disturbances in the backwaters of north-west London are his daily round. His philosophising Welsh drinking companion Mod, his outsized and unruly dog Kitty, his quarrels with his landlady Mrs Fulljames - none of these bodes well for the efficient solving of crimes and outwitting of villainy. But Davies is encouraged by his beautiful friend Jemma, and every so often he stumbles upon ...

Summer 1940. The evacuation of Dunkirk proves that the British can rise to a challenge, even against seemingly insurmountable odds. But now the soldiers walk the streets of Dover, even wandering through Woolworths store, and take weary turns on the town's skating rink.Life, despite the threat of invasion and the reality of bombing, must go on and people must take comfort where they find it. Toby Hendry, a fighter pilot, is awaiting orders when he meets Giselle, a young Frenchwoman ...

From Barnardo boy to original virgin soldier; from apprentice journalist in London's Fleet Street to famous novelist...At times funny, at times sad, but always honest and utterly compulsive, Leslie Thomas's story is straight out of fiction. As an orphan, he picked his way through the rubble of post-war Britain and was sent on national service to the Far East. Later he became a Fleet Street reporter, with hilarious experiences to relate, and then became the bestselling author of