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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Clara E. Mattei

Economics is sold as pure and apolitical: scientific, neutral, exact. This urgent book exposes its true role: to convince us there’s no alternative to capitalism. We live in a world dominated by the dogma that austerity is necessary, unemployment natural, endless wars inevitable and central banks all-powerful. It doesn’t have to be this way.In her bold, ground-breaking manifesto, economist Clara E. Mattei tears the mask off our economic system. She unpacks key concepts like growth, inflation, unemployment and balanced budgets to show how they’re weaponized to enforce market dependence, not freedom, stripping us of the power to shape the democratic decisions that govern our daily lives. Enduring problems such as poverty and inequality are not accidents or bugs in the economy, but core features – justified with pseudoscientific models to support a system that unfairly rewards people with the most resources.Why should we accept this? Capitalism, Mattei argues, isn’t inevitable, scientific, or natural – it's a relatively young system that can be replaced. Inspired by a lineage of political resistance, Escape from Capitalism calls for us to challenge the broken economics of our times, and pave the way towards liberation.

Escape From Capitalism

Economics is Political, and Other Liberating Truths

Steven D. Levitt

Stephen J. Dubner

Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? Why do drug dealers still live with their mums? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. 
 
Freakonomics is the groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and award-winning journalist Stephen J. Dubner, that turns the conventional wisdom of economics on is head. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives — how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. 
 
From parenting to crime, sport to politics, fear to traffic jams, asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation, Freakonomics will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens.

Freakonomics

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Maya Shankar

An unexpected diagnosis. 
A breakup. 
A redundancy. 
 
When life throws a curveball, this book helps you overcome. 
 
After an incident in her own life left her reeling, pioneering cognitive scientist Maya Shankar spent decades researching the mind. Her powerful book now invites us to rethink our relationship with change altogether. 
 
Sharing the riveting stories of others who have also gone through remarkable disruption, Maya unpicks scientific insights to illuminate the universal lessons hidden within them. Exploring our complex reactions to all kinds of change, from denial and guilt to rumination and stagnation, we’re offered tools and strategies to unlock our full potential in the face of upheaval. 
 
We see how change isn’t something to just endure. It doesn't have to leave us feeling stuck, hopeless or broken. Approached in the right way, it can lead us to uncover new abilities, perspectives and values, transforming us in extraordinary ways. 
 
Whether you're processing a past change, grappling with a present one, or bracing for a future one, discover who you can become on the other side of change.

The Other Side of Change

Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans

Timothy Armoo

In What’s Stopping You?, Timo Armoo reveals the secrets behind his meteoric rise from a council estate on Old Kent Road to collaborating with global giants like Nike and the British Government, culminating in a highly publicized eight-figure exit before turning 30. 
 
Sharing his actionable cheatcodes to success, Timo imparts the hard-earned lessons he learned so you don’t have to. He guides readers on how to:<ul><li>Manage their internal scorecard</li><li>Understand why ego is the enemy</li><li>Recognize how we become the stories we tell ourselves</li><li>Embrace doing it scared</li></ul> 
Through 11 practical frameworks, Timo empowers you to unlock your potential and achieve extraordinary success, no matter where you’re starting from.

What’s Stopping You?

Cheatcodes to Unlock the Life You Want

Rob Dix

'A masterpiece' Rory Sutherland, author of Alchemy 
 
Have you been told that cutting spending is the key to financial freedom? 
Or that only a fool would try to make money by picking stocks? 
Or that buying your home is always a smart investment? 
 
There’s just one problem: none of them are true. Here, a leading investor debunks seven of the most common misconceptions about money, and explains why the true path to wealth is dramatically different from what you’ve been told. Confounding and eminently practical, Seven Myths About Money sketches out a radically new route to financial freedom – one fit for the twenty-first century.

Seven Myths About Money

And the Truth About Finding Financial Freedom

Tim Wu

Today’s tech platforms are some of history's most advanced tools for extracting as much as possible – data, attention, profit-margins – from everyone else. As they become essential, we are at risk of building an economy that is perpetually unfair for much of humanity. 
 
Places and spaces where people can exchange information and goods have been at the heart of every economy and every civilization in history, but today’s global platforms - as provided by Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta and others - are different: instead of providing value they extract it, creating vast disparities in wealth and power between the haves and have-nots. For the first time in history, we have the ability to create sustainable prosperity for all, but currently that wealth is concentrated in a tiny number of hands. It isn't abundance that's the problem; it is distribution. 
 
In this brilliantly engaging, frequently surprising account, Tim Wu, one of the world’s foremost experts on anti-monopoly law, draws on fascinating case studies in the history of technology's explosive rise to demonstrate emphatically that breaking monopolies will ultimately unleash creativity and growth - and reduce the vast inequality that inevitably leads to social upheaval and political chaos. Wu also sets out an alternative blueprint that preserves the economic flourishing that platforms catalyze, allowing tech platforms to play a major role in creating and sustaining an economic model of prosperity not just for the few but for the many.

The Age of Extraction

How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

James Reed

'James Reed is this country's leading voice on effective, strategic philanthropy. His new book is both a persuasive argument for the PhilCo movement and a call to arms for entrepreneurs and executives who want to make the world – and their own companies – a better place. Read it, then go and put his ideas into action.' EDWIN SMITH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF SPEAR'S MAGAZINE 
 
'If you believe, as every successful business leader should, that giving back must be baked into your DNA, then James Reed provides the recipe' DAME IRENE HAYS, OWNER AND CHAIR OF HAYS TRAVEL 
 
'Now that I’ve read this book, I cannot unsee the potential and necessity of Karma Capitalism and the concept of a PhilCo. I will be building these ideas into my business from day one' SHARMADEAN REID MBE, FOUNDER, CREATIVE CONSULTANT AND ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT 
 
‘Businesses (when they’re not cheating you out of your pants) have the power to transform and support our society for the better and James Reed’s insightful book tells us exactly how. I know him personally and believe these ideas could lead the way’ RUBY WAX, COMEDIAN, PERFORMER AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR 
What's the point of a business without a purpose? 
 
James Reed, Chairman and CEO of Reed and author of Why You? 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again, is on a mission to reform capitalism. Corporations, he argues, are largely ignoring their employees, customers and wider community in the pursuit of short-term gain and profit, while charities suffer in the wake of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. However, there is an alternative. 
 
In his most important business book to date, James sets out his vision to encourage a whole new generation of PhilCos – philanthropic minded businesses with at least 10 per cent of shares owned by a charitable foundation. Inspired by his own company's commitment to charity, James shares how PhilCos are more likely to: 
 
- Stay in business for 40 or more years 
- Foster shareholders that work toward a lasting legacy 
- Retain and motivate colleagues 
- Improve lives through charity work 
 
Best of all, being a PhilCo isn't a different way of doing business. It is a different way of being a business. Based on his own experiences of running Reed as a PhilCo – and drawing on examples of other successes including IKEA, Lego and Rolex – James explains how to choose the right business model for your PhilCo, how to establish a charitable foundation and how to reinvest your profits to make the most impact in the shortest space of time. 
 
Part-manifesto, part-guide, Karma Capitalism is a compelling and accessible introduction to the PhilCo movement, proving that it's good business to be a good business.

Karma Capitalism

Why being a good business is good business

Branko Milanovic

Global neoliberalism is on its last legs, while a new international economic order is taking hold. Trade blocs, tariff wars, economic sanctions, and national champions are in; nationalism, anti-immigration movements and the far-right are on the rise. Liberalism is being rejected by the civic realm, as the status quo of the past fifty years crumbles. What remains in its wake? 
 
Drawing on original research, leading economist Branko Milanovic reveals the seismic shifts that are shaping our world. He details the facts: how the rising economic power of Asia is creating a new global ‘middle class’ in the greatest reshuffle of incomes since the Industrial Revolution. He explores our fears: why are we becoming increasingly unhappy, when the world is becoming richer and more equal? And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving malcontent to breaking point. In The Great Global Transformation, Milanovic provides an invaluable guide to the new 21st century.

The Great Global Transformation

National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World

César A. Hidalgo

We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern its motion. The Infinite Alphabet unravels the laws describing the growth and diffusion of knowledge by taking you from a failed attempt to build a city of knowledge in Ecuador to the growth of China’s innovation economy. Through dozens of stories, you will learn why aircraft manufacturers in Italy began manufacturing scooters after the Second World War and how migrants like Samuel Slater shaped the industrial fabric of the United States. 
 
Knowledge is the secret to the wealth of nations. But to understand it, we must accept that it is not a single thing, but an ever-growing tapestry of unique ideas, experiences and received wisdom. An Infinite Alphabet that we are only beginning to fathom. 
 
César A. Hidalgo, a world-renowned scholar for his work on economic complexity, will walk you through the “three laws” and the many principles that govern how knowledge grows, moves, and decays. By the end of this journey, you will understand why knowledge grows exponentially in the electronics industry and what mechanisms govern its diffusion across geographic borders, social networks, and professional boundaries. 
 
Together these principles will teach you how knowledge shapes the world.

The Infinite Alphabet

And the Laws of Knowledge

David Graeber

'The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently,' wrote David Graeber, as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes. 
 
There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future — to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time — inequality, technology, the identity of 'the West,' democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest — he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different. 
 
During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovksy and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker.

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World

Richard H. Thaler

Alex O. Imas

Nobel Prize-winner and co-author of Nudge, Richard Thaler, and rising star economist Alex Imas explore behavioral economics in this fully updated edition of the seminal work The Winner’s Curse 
 
Why do people cooperate with one another when they have no incentive to do so? Why do we hold onto possessions of little value? And why is the winner of an auction so often disappointed? 
 
Over thirty years ago, Richard Thaler introduced readers to behavioral economics in his seminal Anomalies column, written with collaborators including Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. These provocative articles challenged the fundamental idea at the heart of economics that people are selfish, rational optimizers, and provided the foundation for what became behavioral economics. That was then. Now, three decades later, Thaler has teamed up with economist Alex Imas to write a new book. Every chapter starts with an original Anomaly, retaining the spirit of its timestamp. Then, shifting to the present, they provide current updates to each, asking how the original findings have held up and how the field has evolved since then. 
 
It turns out these findings still show up almost everywhere. Anomalies pop up in people’s decisions to save for retirement and how they carry outstanding credit card debt. Even experts fail to optimize. The key concept of loss aversion explains missed putts by golf pros and the selection of which stocks to sell by portfolio managers. In this era of meme stocks and Dogecoin, it is hard to defend the view that financial markets are highly efficient. The good news, however, is that the anomalies have got much funnier. 
 
With both readability and rigor, The Winner’s Curse illuminates these ideas for anyone – from those with a cursory understanding of economics to fellow economists. Each chapter provides a key insight into human behavior so readers learn how to better understand the choices made by their friends, colleagues, and customers, and might just become better at making decisions themselves.

The Winner's Curse

Behavioral Economics Anomalies Then and Now

Andrew Ross Sorkin

In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. 
 
With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivety in an endless boom led to wreckage. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. 
 
This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that “this time is different.” It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late. 
 
Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time—with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.

1929

The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History

Michèle Lamont

How do we measure our self-worth? 
 
For many of us, it signifies accomplishment, self-reliance, and wealth. Decades of neoliberalism have driven our definition of success. Yet, as we have amassed more achievements, we have been overwhelmed and overworked in a world of growing inequality. Should we start judging others, and ourselves, differently? 
 
In this capstone work, acclaimed sociologist Michèle Lamont argues that it is time to move our focus from having to being. We will only heal ourselves by the power of recognition: by rendering others visible and valued. By drawing on nearly forty years of research and interviews, as well as new interviews with Gen Z, change agents, and cultural icons who intentionally practice and promote recognition, she shows how new narratives are essential to shifting our metrics of success to focus on respect and dignity. Seeing Others fills a gaping hole left by recent economic and psychological thinking, with its focus on nudging, grit, and constant striving, offering a powerful, sociological alternative. 
 
This book is a clarion call: it strikes at the heart of our struggles and illuminates an inclusive path forward.

Seeing Others

How to Redefine Worth in a Divided World

Dominic Frisby

The Secret History of Gold tells the epic tale of the world’s oldest, and most treasured, currency. From its origins in the formation of the solar system to its pivotal role in both ancient myth and modern finance, Dominic Frisby explores, with wit and brevity, how gold has defined the entire course of human civilisation. 
 
Gold has inspired men to do the most brilliant – and terrible – things. The most stolen metal in history, it has lured explorers, conquerors and thieves. It has sparked wars, it has built empires, it has empowered leaders – from Alexander the Great to Adolf Hitler – good and bad. As nations today such as China and Russia mine and hoard gold at record rates, Frisby examines its enduring significance in the digital age and its potential to influence global peace and power. 
 
This is the untold story of gold: its past, its present and its future.

The Secret History of Gold

Myth, Money, Politics and Power

Phillips Payson O'Brien

War and power are two of the most-widely discussed issues in all of human history, and yet they are, time and again, misunderstood — often disastrously so. 
 
Whilst we might think the outcome of war is determined by so-called ‘Great Powers’ who dominate their opponents with their impressive size and military prowess, the reality of modern conflict, as renowned strategic historian Professor Phillips Payson O’Brien demonstrates, is very different. He urges us instead to look for ‘Full Spectrum Powers’. 
 
For if we are considering how powerful a nation is and who will win a war, we need to think less about weapons, and more about the economies and societies that produce them; less about individual battles, and more about sustaining campaigns and alliances in which states operate. 
 
Using fascinating examples from the late 19th century to the present day, War and Power explains how misunderstanding war and power has led to terrible, even preventable conflicts – such as the war in Ukraine – and how more accurate analysis can help us consider the potential conflict between the US and China. 
 
War and Power provides a bold new way of understanding the dangerous world around us.

War and Power

Who Wins Wars — and Why

Dan Wang

America used to pride itself on ambition. Today, it looks stuck. Meanwhile, China has been busy building the future. Over the past six years, technology analyst Dan Wang lived through China’s astonishing, messy progress and the dissolution of its relationship to the West. 
 
In Breakneck, Wang offers a new framework for understanding China — which helps us to see global geopolitics more clearly too. While China is an engineering state, fearlessly building megaprojects, America is a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. Building big has fuelled China’s economic ascent. At the same time, social engineering has led to unbearable costs, including the traumas of zero-Covid and the one-child policy. Wang traverses China’s dazzling metropolises and factory complexes, blending political and economic analysis with reportage to show how the Communist Party’s darkening ambitions have unsettled its people. 
 
As the US and China are gearing up for a new Cold War, Breakneck reveals both the remarkable strengths and the appalling weaknesses of the engineering state. China has learned from the West's successes and failures - and now we in turn can learn from China, not least by taking its global ambitions seriously.

Breakneck

China's Quest to Engineer the Future

Noah Giansiracusa

In today’s data-driven world, maths is a weapon wielded by banks, insurance companies, tech firms, and government agencies. These organizations use sophisticated algorithms to calculate odds, make predictions, uncover patterns, manage risk, and optimize actions. And they treat you as another number to crunch along the way. 
 
Robin Hood Maths explains the mathematical methods these companies and agencies use to manipulate and profit off of you. It’s easy to assume these algorithms are too complex to even understand, let alone use for yourself. But maths professor Noah Giansiracusa makes the compelling case that anyone can use these same methods, without any special training or advanced knowledge. He offers simple hacks and streamlined formulas for beating the number crunchers at their own game. 
 
With Professor Giansiracusa as your guide, you’ll learn how to use maths to rescue your credit score and make better investments, take control of your social media, and reclaim agency over the decisions you make every day. In a society designed to take from the poor and give to the rich, maths has the potential to be a powerful democratizing force. Robin Hood Maths gives you the tools you need to think for yourself, act in your own best interest, and thrive.

Robin Hood Maths

Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life

Richard Whatmore

The Enlightenment is popularly seen as the Age of Reason, a key moment in human history when ideals such as freedom, progress, natural rights and constitutional government prevailed. In this radical re-evaluation, historian Richard Whatmore shows why, for many at its centre, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. 
 
By the early eighteenth century, hope was widespread that Enlightenment could be coupled with toleration, the progress of commerce and the end of the fanatic wars of religion that were destroying Europe. At its heart was the battle to establish and maintain liberty in free states &ndash; and the hope that absolute monarchies such as France and free states like Britain might even subsist together, equally respectful of civil liberties. Yet all of this collapsed when states pursued wealth and empire by means of war. Xenophobia was rife and liberty itself turned fanatic. 
 
The End of Enlightenment traces the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists around the world, including figures as diverse as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent colonialism. 
 
Returning us to these tumultuous events and ideas, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, Whatmore offers a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured - especially as the problems addressed at the end of Enlightenment are still with us today.

The End of Enlightenment

Empire, Commerce, Crisis

Lionel Barber

Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world’s least known but most consequential investors. Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen.This book takes you on Son’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. It speeds through Donald Trump’s golden skyscraper in Manhattan, the royal palaces of Riyadh and the throne rooms of China’s Marxist rulers; all places where Son has deployed his unique blend of financial engineering and crazy risk-taking.Son’s story captures a 25 year-span of hyper-globalisation in which money, technologies and ideas flowed freely. From the launch of the microchip to the advent of artificial intelligence, he has ridden the technological wave which has created extraordinary wealth and economic change. His topsy-turvy business career is testimony to the power of optimism, daring to dream, ever in search of the Next Big Thing.As an ethnic Korean in Japan, Son has overcome adversity and discrimination to become Japan’s best-known businessman and empire-builder but he remains an elusive, intensely private figure. This book, by a former editor of the Financial Times, contains a wealth of new information and has had the co-operation of many of the key participants, including Son himself. Written with a verve appropriate to its subject, Gambling Man reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.

Gambling Man

The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son

Partha Dasgupta

'the most important person you've never heard of' - The New York Times 
 
'Partha Dasgupta provides the compass we urgently need… by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves.’ - David Attenborough 
 
'This is the best book in economics for a general reader since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.' - Paul R Ehrlich 
 
 
‘Imagine a football team which measures its success only on the basis of the goals it scores and doesn’t count the goals it concedes. That football team could be losing right through without recognising it…’ 
 
For as long as they have existed, our economic models have served us an incomplete picture. 
 
The models and metrics tells us that our economies are healthy because they are growing. However, this doesn't account for the fact that our growth is driven by a resource that we take for free and treat as infinite: nature. For centuries we have been using it as if it were both, but we know now, more than ever, that our demand on the natural world is unsustainable. It's no longer sufficient to only see part of the picture; it's time that our economic models show us the whole thing. 
 
In On Natural Capital, renowned Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta lays out a seminal and groundbreaking new approach to economics. Challenging everything that has come before, he asks, what if we were to put a value on nature just as we value everything else? 
 
An urgent call to transform the focus and structures of global economics, On Natural Capital is a bold and groundbreaking book that could, truly, change everything.

On Natural Capital

The Value of the World Around Us

Eliza Filby

The Sunday Times Bestseller! 
 
Many of us grew up believing in a meritocracy, where hard work and a good education brings rewards. Go to university, get a job, put in the hours and things will be OK. That’s what we were told – but the reality is that life chances and opportunities are no longer shaped by what we learn or earn but by whether we have access to the Bank of Mum and Dad. We’re living in an inheritocracy, where parental support is what matters most – whether that’s covering the cost of university, stumping up for a house deposit or helping with childcare. And let’s be honest, this isn’t something we like to talk about with our friends, families or as a society. It’s a modern taboo. 
 
In this timely and revealing book, generational expert Eliza Filby explores the emergence of this inheritocracy through her own life story, revealing how her family’s financial circumstances shaped everything from her education to her dating life, from her career to her class identity. Inheritocracy is a thought-provoking and candid blend of memoir and cultural commentary, told through Eliza’s humorous and insightful voice. 
 
With trillions of pounds set to be passed down the generations over the next two decades, a significant divide is emerging between those who can rely on family wealth and those who can’t. Inheritocracy offers a fresh, captivating and honest look at our recent past and a future that will be shaped – for better or worse – by family fortunes.

Inheritocracy

It’s Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad

Dean Spears

Michael Geruso

If we continue as we are, with birth rates falling globally, the world’s human population will peak in the next few decades – and then begin a sudden and rapid decline. It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better: better for the planet, better for the people who remain. In After the Spike, two leading population economists ask us to think again. 
 
Carefully weighing the evidence and the many claims that surround this controversial subject, Dean Spears and Mike Geruso explain why depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for the climate crisis, nor will it improve lives. Far more likely is that the progress which has raised living standards so dramatically over the last two centuries will slow or even reverse. As humanity’s future shrinks, it will become more fragile and less certain, and harder for us to escape from global poverty, disease and injustice. 
 
Halting this decline and stabilising the population need not mean sacrificing a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. In fact, they argue, it can only be achieved with women’s reproductive rights and individual choice as driving forces. But if we want future generations to enjoy lives even better than our own, it’s time to take seriously society’s collective task of lifting the burdens of parents and other carers. 
 
Deeply reasoned and uncompromisingly humane, After the Spike sheds important light on a dramatic shift in the human story and asks us to consider what future we should want for our planet, our children, and one another.

After the Spike

The Risks of Global Depopulation and the Case for People

Tim Gregory

What if climate change isn't an environmental challenge, but an energy challenge? 
 
In this visionary book, Dr Tim Gregory urges us to rethink the path to net zero. He argues that the solution to climate change lies not simply in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but in fully embracing another energy source that emits zero carbon dioxide: nuclear power. 
 
Gregory dismantles the conventional wisdom that renewables such as wind and solar are completely ‘green’, and debunks myths surrounding nuclear waste and radiation, demonstrating that nuclear power is not only reliable, safe and potent, but the most environmentally responsible way to harvest energy. 
 
Going Nuclear calls for decarbonisation to be the twenty-first century's Apollo programme. By interweaving scientific optimism, myth-busting data, and ambitious policy ideas, Gregory illustrates the boundless potential of the atom beyond just clean energy: from advanced medicine and forensics to atomic gardening and space exploration. 
 
This is a bold case for an alternative, sustainable and prosperous future: a world in which abundant energy is available to all.

Going Nuclear

How the Atom Will Save the World

How the Atom Will Save the Planet

Paul Collier

Left behind places can be found in prosperous countries—from South Yorkshire, integral to the industrial revolution and now England’s poorest county, to Barranquilla, once Colombia’s portal to the Caribbean and now struggling. More alarmingly, the poorest countries in the world are diverging further from the rest of humanity. Why have these places fallen further behind? And what can we do about it? 
 
World-renowned development economist Paul Collier has spent his life working in neglected communities. In this book he offers his candid diagnosis of why some regions and countries are falling further behind, and a new vision for how they can catch up. Collier lays the blame for widening inequality on stale economic orthodoxies that prioritize market forces and centralized bureaucracies like the UK Treasury. In contrast, a new wave of academic research has revealed the crucial role of collective learning, social capital and local agency in reversing decline and equalising life-chances. 
 
Drawing on insights from social psychology, moral philosophy and behavioural economics, as well as a range of illuminating case studies, Collier shares a galvanizing vision for a more inclusive, prosperous world.

Left Behind

A New Economics for Neglected Places

Ruchir Sharma

What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma’s explanation is unlike any you have heard before. Progressives are partly right when they mock modern capitalism as “socialism for the rich,” but what really happened in recent decades is that government in developed nations expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending and regulation to the sheer scale of its rescues each time the economy wobbled. The result, Sharma says, is “socialized risk,” expensive government guarantees, for everyone—welfare for the poor, entitlements for the middle class, and bailouts for the rich. 
 
Voters say they are disillusioned with capitalism, but a system so distorted by government interventions is a dysfunctional version of free market ideals. As a result, productivity and economic growth have slowed sharply, shrinking the pie for everyone and stoking popular anger. Since these flaws developed as the government expanded, building an even bigger state will only double down on what’s gone wrong. The answer Sharma offers is a series of seven fixes to restore the balance between state support and free markets and lay the path to a more prosperous and happier future.

What Went Wrong With Capitalism

John Cassidy

At a time when we are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological crisis and artificial intelligence. 
 
John Cassidy adopts a bold new approach: he tells the story through the eyes of the system’s critics. From eighteenth-century weavers who rebelled against early factory automation to Eric Williams's paradigm-changing work on slavery and capitalism, to the Latin American dependistas, the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, this absorbing narrative traverses the globe. It looks at familiar figures – Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polanyi – from a fresh perspective, but also focuses on many less familiar, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist whose work influenced Marx; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labour union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism; and J. C. Kumarappa, the Indian exponent of Gandhian economics. 
 
Blending biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.

Capitalism and Its Critics

A Battle of Ideas in the Modern World

J. Doyne Farmer

We live in an age of increasing complexity, where accelerating technology and global interconnection hold more promise – and more peril – than any other time in human history. The fossil fuels that have powered global wealth creation now threaten to destroy the world they helped build. Automation and digitization promise prosperity for some, unemployment for others. Financial crises fuel growing inequality, polarization and the retreat of democracy. At heart, all these problems are rooted in the economy, yet the guidance provided by economic models has often failed. 
 
Many books have been written about Doyne Farmer and his work, but Making Sense of Chaos is the first in his own words. It presents a manifesto for how to do economics better. A tale of science and ideas, Farmer fuses his profound knowledge and expertise with stories from his life to explain how we can bring a scientific revolution to bear on the economic conundrums facing society. 
 
Using big data and ever more powerful computers, we are now able for the first time to apply complex systems science to economic activity, building realistic models of the global economy. The resulting simulations and the emergent behavior we observe form the cornerstone of the science of complexity economics, allowing us to test ideas and make significantly better economic predictions – to better address the hard problems facing the world.

Making Sense of Chaos

A Better Economics for a Better World

Joseph E. Stiglitz

Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world. By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society - and is therefore morally better. 
 
But, in The Road to Freedom Stiglitz asks, whose freedom are we – should we be – thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? Should the freedoms of corporations be allowed to impinge upon those of individuals in the ways they now do? 
Taking on giants of neoliberalism such as Hayek and Friedman and examining how public opinion is formed, Stiglitz reclaims the language of freedom from the right to show that far from ‘free’ – unregulated – markets promoting growth and enterprise, they in fact reduce it, lessening economic opportunities for majorities and siphoning wealth from the many to the few – both individuals and countries. He shows how neoliberal economics and its implied moral system have impacted our legal and social freedoms in surprising ways, from property and intellectual rights, to education and social media. 
 
Stiglitz’s eye, as always, is on how we might create the true human flourishing which should be the great aim of our economic and social system, and offers an alternative to that prevailing today. The Road to Freedom offers a powerful re-evaluation of democracy, economics and what constitutes a good society—and provides a roadmap of how we might achieve it.

The Road to Freedom

Economics and the Good Society

Daniel Susskind

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer. As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous price: deepening inequalities, destabilizing technologies, environmental destruction and climate change. 
 
Confusion reigns. For many, in our era of anaemic economic progress, the worry is slowing growth - in the UK, Europe, China and elsewhere. Others understandably claim, given its costs, that the only way forward is through 'degrowth', deliberating shrinking our economies. 
 
At this time of uncertainty about growth and its value, award-winning economist Daniel Susskind has written an essential reckoning. In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, he argues that we cannot abandon growth but shows instead how we must redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value. He explores what really drives growth, and offers original ideas for combatting our economic slowdown. 
 
Lucid, thought-provoking and brilliantly researched, Growth: A Reckoning is a vital guide to one of our greatest preoccupations.

Growth

A Reckoning

Stephen Witt

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE FT SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 ** 
 
The riveting account of Nvidia, the tech company that has exploded in value for its artificial intelligence computing hardware, and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s charismatic, uncompromising CEO. 
 
In June of 2024, spurred by the frenzy of investment following the launch of ChatGPT, and thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most-valuable corporation on Earth. In The Thinking Machine, acclaimed journalist Stephen Witt recounts the unlikely story of how a manufacturer of video game components shocked Silicon Valley by conquering the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. 
 
Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI. Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Witt documents for the first time the company’s epic rise and its iconoclastic CEO, who emerges as a compelling, single-minded, and ferocious leader, and now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures. 
 
The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved from providing components for circuit boards to supplying hundred-million dollar supercomputers. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, in the process becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. It is the story of a revolution in computer architecture, and the small group of renegade engineers who made it happen. And it’s the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, which Huang has billed as the 'next industrial revolution', as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and new movies, art, and books, generated on command.

The Thinking Machine

Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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