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Stumbling upon Berlin's gruesome past.
From 1933 to 1945, Germany was gripped by Nazi tyranny. During those turbulent years many minorities suffered. Amongst them were the non-Aryan, political opponents, trade unionists, the disabled, homosexuals and ...the Jews. Any person who opposed the regime or did not fit their racial profile was persecuted or murdered.
Berlin is one of Trevor Carroll's favourite cities. In recent years, he happened upon the largest decentralised memorial in the world - Stolpersteine or 'Stumble Stones'. Intrigued, he started researching the stories behind each Stolperstein that rests among the cobblestones outside that victim's final home of choice. The Stolperstein, a unique brass plaque is stamped with its victim's name.
Follow Trevor as he stumbles from one Stolperstein to the next, uncovering the stories of some of the many who were taken by the Nazis. He uncovers stories of sacrifice, bravery and survival and the few who evaded Hitler's bloodlust.

Top Deck double deckers offered a revolutionary form of long-distance transport from the 70s to the 90s. The large British Lodekkas carried under-35s vast distances through SE Asia, the Middle East and Australia in a new innovative mode of no-frills adventure tourism.

Taken on by Top Deck as a double decker bus driver in early 1977, Trevor Carroll conducted European tours for a year before he was set loose on his first overland tour, London to Kathmandu and return. A three-week dash to Kathmandu had the tour stumbling into the start of the civil war in Afghanistan mixing with a government crackdown and soldiers and tanks on the roads. Trevor describes his exciting and sometimes harrowing experiences on six overland trips as both driver and courier.

Finally, he embarked on the massive 20-week Sydney to London tour in 1980 with its third and final leg aboard 'Casper' and its 20 occupants across India, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. The tour passed through 21 countries and covered 34,000 kilometres, conquering places where the buses' designers never meant it to go.

Trevor met his future wife Hilde on tour, and they have now been married for 34 years.

Skroo Turner the founder of Top Deck and today's Flight Centre provides an introduction to these stories, his foresight has continued his travel revolution from those lumbering old buses to today's conglomerate, The Flight Centre Group.

The Cops - Not Just a Job is not a book for the faint hearted or sensitive reader. However if you want a taste of the day to day life of a cop attempting to deal with people most of us would not like to encounter, this is the book for you. Dealing with everyday events, such as break enters, suicides, drug overdoses, thefts, home invasions, gang rapes and murders. All are seen through the eyes of a first responder and an investigator.
The book is essentially in two parts - reflecting the author's working life. The first deals with time as a general duties officer. Here the events occur rapidly leaving many questions to be asked - who were these people, what were their backgrounds, what happened. However, it reveals that a general duties cop often does not know these answers. He/she just has to deal with the event, on the spot, the best they can.
The second part of the book describes the author's life as a detective. Here we begin to be able to understand the background to the crimes and what happened after the initial event. It is where we meet some very undesirable people - a group of teenagers who gang rape a woman. The experience, so horrific, that she hoped that she would quickly die during the ordeal; a man who kidnapped his partner who was attempting to leave him. He shot her and, as she was dying, raped her; an escapee, who was determined not to return to goal, attempts to knife the author. Fortunately, for the reader, humorous incidents intersperse these crimes to give the reader some relief.
The Cops - Not Just a Job gives an insight into a side of life most of us do not experience. It raises many issues - ethical, practical and psychological - which would be helpful for both serving and prospective police officers to discuss.