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Riddle of the Sands

Published in 1903, Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands predicted the threat of war with Germany and was so prescient in its identification of the British coast's defensive weaknesses that it influenced the siting of new naval bases. The writing is gripping and it's a marvel that Childers manages to make the minutiae of sailing and navigation so engrossing. Although Riddle was an instant bestseller, Childers never wrote another novel, concentrating instead on military strategy manuals before entering politics and eventually becoming a fervent Irish nationalist.

Remy Charlip

Remy Charlip was a dancer and children's books author.

Rolling Homes

Rolling Homes is a 70s book with photos of handmade houses on wheels.

Rudolf Wanderone

Rudolf Wanderone was an American professional pocket billiards player, best known as "Minnesota Fats". In spite of the fact that he never won a major pool tournament, he was perhaps the most publicly recognized pool player in the United States – not only as a player, but also as an entertainer.

Rollie Free

Rollie Free was a motorcycle racer who broke the American motorcycle land speed record in 1948. He was prone to wearing a bathing suit.

Rondo Hatton

Rondo Hatton was an American actor who had a brief, but prolific career playing thuggish bit parts in many Hollywood B-movies. He was known for his brutish facial features which were the result of acromegaly.

Ravenala madagascariensis

Originally from Madagascar, the Ravenala is currently planted worldwide in tropical areas. As a result, this special exotic reminds inevitably of holidays. The common name “Travelers tree” is due to the myth that travelers would survive due to the accumulated moisture in the leaf bases.

Jules Renard

Spanning from 1887 to a month before his death in 1910, The Journal of Jules Renard is a unique autobiographical masterpiece that, though celebrated abroad and cited as a principle influence by writers as varying as Somerset Maugham and Donald Barthelme, remains largely undiscovered in the United States. Throughout his journal, Renard develops not only his artistic convictions but also his humanity, as he reflects on the nineteenth-century French literary and art scene and the emergence of his position as an important novelist and playwright in that world, provides aphorisms and quips, and portrays the details of his personal life-his love interests, his position as a socialist mayor of Chitry, the suicide of his father-which often appear in his work.

Resolute desk

The Resolute desk is a large, nineteenth-century partners' desk often chosen by presidents of the United States for use in the White House Oval Office. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the timbers of the British Arctic Exploration ship Resolute.

R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. He claimed to have invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery) and used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. A large proportion of the Dr Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but often quite arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

Romeo