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Antiques & Collectibles Audiobooks in Non-Fiction
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Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2014
Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romanée-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine.
In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison-a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder-unless he paid a one million euro ransom. Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal miscalculation and the crime shocked this fabled region of France. The sinister story that Vanity Fair journalist Maximillian Potter uncovered would lead to a sting operation by some of France's top detectives, the primary suspect's suicide, and a dramatic investigation. This botanical crime threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding the world's greatest wine.
SHADOWS IN THE VINEYARD takes us deep into a captivating world full of fascinating characters, small-town French politics, an unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the land that runs through it.
The story of self-made billionaire Jess Jackson, who put Chardonnay on America’s tables as he built the Kendall–Jackson wine empire is a remarkable tale of romance, risk, and reinvention. Admirers and detractors alike have called him the Steve Jobs of wine—a brilliant, infuriating, contrarian gambler who seemed to win more than his share by anticipating consumers’ desires with uncanny skill. Time after time his decisions would be ignored and derided, then envied and imitated as competitors struggled to catch up. He founded Kendall–Jackson with a single, tiny vineyard and a belief that there could be more to California Wine Country than jugs of bottom-shelf screw-top. Today, Kendall–Jackson and its 14,000 acres of coastal and mountain vineyards produce a host of award-winning wines, including the most popular Chardonnay in the world, which was born out of a catastrophe that nearly broke Jackson. Jess Jackson entered the horseracing game just as dramatically — perhaps the greatest second act in the history of American business. He brought con men to justice, exposed industry-wide corruption in court and Congress, then exacted the best revenge of all: race after race, he defied conventional wisdom with one high-stakes winner after another, capped by the epic season of Rachel Alexandra, the first filly to win the Preakness in nearly a century, cementing Jackson’s reputation as America’s king of wine and horses.
This delightfully playful history uses 36 of our most expressive, quirky, beautiful and sometimes baffling stamps to tell us the story of Britain, through Dickens and the potato famine to Thatcher and punk.
Stamps tell a story. Since the Penny Black first burst on the scene in 1840, they have made and mirrored history as it happens - from the 'British Empire Exhibition' of 1924 to the Austerity Olympics of 1948, from the Coronation to the death of Diana, from the advent of computers to the new Millennium.
Chris West is a stamp-obsessive. He has picked his favourites to tell hugely entertaining and idiosyncratic history. We learn about the Penny Lilac which united a nation in 1881; the controversial schoolboy-designed Edward VIII stamp of 1936; the day the Queen's head was nearly chopped off in 1966; the first non-white Briton to grace a stamp in 1982, and many more. Each lovingly-designed stamp is a vintage specimen and a tantalising window onto an era.
David Dickinson is a household name, the king of the catchphrase, undisputed darling of daytime TV and a rising star. He's a respected antiques expert and exudes a taste for the finer things in life. But the road to his success has not been as smooth as his patter and he's learnt a lot at the school of hard knocks. David was first introduced to showbiz when he travelled the world as the manager of his international cabaret star wife, Lorne. After building himself a reputation as an antiques dealer to the rich and famous with an eye for treasures, a chance meeting with a TV exec at a barbecue began David's journey to primetime TV on Bargain Hunt, and in his autobiography David shares some of his experiences of sudden celebrity and reveals many of the highs and lows which have coloured his life so far.
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined...
The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Marcel Proust was briefly his secretary and used Charles as the model for the aesthete Swann in Remembrance of Things Past. Charles's passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objets were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna.
Later, three children - including a young Ignace - would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, smuggled out of the huge Viennese palace (then occupied by Hitler's theorist on the 'Jewish Question'), one piece at a time, in the pocket of a loyal maid - and hidden in a straw mattress.
In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century. And, in prose as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves, he tells the story of a unique collection which passed from hand to hand - and which, in a twist of fate, found its way home to Japan.
Be Happy is a state-of-the-art production featuring Glenn Harrold's highly acclaimed hypnotherapy techniques. The aim of Be Happy is to help you develop a lasting feeling of happiness by using hypnosis to help you connect to the divine, creative source within you. You will be guided to find happiness by developing presence, living in the moment and subjugating your ego. When you achieve this you will have a sense of mastery, which in turn will give you a powerful magnetism that will enable you to live a rich and fulfilling life. The recording has been split into two tracks, the intro and the hypnotherapy session, so you can choose to skip the intro after the first listen if you wish. Please note: This title features two identical tracks with different endings. The first track is for daytime use and will gently bring you back to full waking consciousness at the end. The second track has a sleep ending and will guide you into a peaceful sleep at the end, making it ideal for night-time use.
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Do you remember the best summer of your life?
New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and her best friend, Marty Garrett, arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor, a diamond-filled day job replete with Tiffany blue shirtwaist dresses from Bonwit Teller's, and the envy of all their friends.
Hart takes us back to the magical time when she and Marty rubbed elbows with the rich and famous; pinched pennies to eat at the Automat; experienced nightlife at La Martinique; and danced away their weekends with dashing midshipmen. Between being dazzled by Judy Garland's honeymoon visit to Tiffany, celebrating VJ Day in Times Square, and mingling with Cafe society, she fell in love, learned unforgettable lessons, made important decisions that would change her future, and created the remarkable memories she now shares with all of us.
Es steht für Reichtum, Glanz und Macht. Salomons vergoldeter Tempel in Jerusalem ist Legende, genauso wie 'El Dorado', die geheimnisvolle Stadt in Südamerika, die die spanischen Konquistadoren vorwärts trieb. Die Gier nach dem kostbaren Edelmetall hat ganze Völker ausgerottet. Gold bringt Menschen zum Töten und Träumen.
Auf der Suche nach Gold sterben auch heute noch Menschen, werden Kriege geführt und die Umwelt vergiftet. Die Faszination des gelben Metalls ist wie ein Fieber, für das seit Tausenden von Jahren keine Heilung möglich ist.
It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold.In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie's of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose. Why wouldn't Rodenstock reveal the exact location where it had been found? Was it part of a smuggled Nazi hoard? Or did his reticence conceal an even darker secret?It would take more than two decades for those questions to be answered and involve a gallery of intriguing players among them Michael Broadbent, the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women and staked his reputation on the record-setting sale; Serena Sutcliffe, Broadbent's elegant archrival, whose palate is covered by a hefty insurance policy; and Bill Koch, the extravagant Florida tycoon bent on exposing the truth about Rodenstock. Pursuing the story from Monticello to London to Zurich to Munich and beyond, Benjamin Wallace also offers a mesmerizing history of wine, complete with vivid accounts of subterranean European laboratories where old vintages are dated and of Jefferson's colorful, wine-soaked days in France, where he literally drank up the culture.Suspenseful, witty, and thrillingly strange, The Billionaire's Vinegar is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. It is also the debut of an exceptionally powerful new voice in narrative non-fiction. From the Hardcover edition.
