Alex Shearer

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, PhD, has spent two decades studying people, technology, and the worlds they make. A Silicon Valley-based futurist and consultant, he has worked with governments and Fortune 500 companies; spoken at venues ranging from CIA headquarters to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Googleplex; and held academic positions at Stanford and Oxford universities. His is the author of the bestselling Rest and Shorter, a guide for companies on how to work less and get more done. Follow @askpang on Twitter and Instagram, or visit strategy.rest.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Alex Stone

Alex Tapscott

Alex Thompson

THE AUTHOR HAS CHOSEN TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS OUT OF CONCERN FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS OR HER SOURCES.

Alex Urban

Alex Wheatle

Alex is an author and best-selling children’s book illustrator. Since he could first hold a pencil, Alex has been drawing characters, bringing each to life with a sense of mischief and fun. After studying Illustration for Children’s Publishing at the North Wales School of Art and Design, he went on to illustrate The Runaway Pea, which was selected for the BookTrust’s 2020 Time to Read Campaign. Alex has won the Inspiread 2023 Book Award for his picture book I Did See a Mammoth, the 2020 Shrewsbury Book Fest award and The FCBG 2020 award for his illustrations in The Runaway Pea, as well as being nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal and was a finalist in the 2020 Oscar’s Book Prize. His books have been translated into multiple languages. A love of fun storytelling and growing up on 80’s cartoons lead Alex to write his own books, which combine captivating characters and quirky exploits, along with a positive moral message. Alex currently lives in his hometown of Northampton with his wife, two sons, and their chihuahua.

Alex Willmore

Alex Y. Ferguson

Alex de Campi's mostly-indie career stretches from her Eisner-nominated debut Smoke (Dark Horse) through recent Eisner nominees Bad Girls (Gallery 13) and Twisted Romance (Image). Plus company work: she's killed off most of Riverdale, twice, in Archie vs Predator I &amp; II. Her next projects are YA adventure The Backups (Imprint / MacMillan, 2020) and a thriller with director Duncan Jones. Catch her YA adventure Reversal on her Patreon, and action-thriller Bad Karma on Panel Syndicate. She also writes for TV and film (the Blade Runner anime &amp; more). She is on social media as @alexdecampi and lives in Manhattan.

Alex de Campi

Alexa Chung

Alexander Aciman

Alexander Armstrong is one half of the comedy duo Armstrong &amp; Miller who had a regular series on Channel 4 from 1997 to 2001 and then returned with three series of the BAFTA winning Armstrong &amp; Miller Show on BBC1 in 2007. Alexander’s many straight acting roles have included Love Life, Life Begins, Mutual Friends and the sitcomHunderby. He frequently hosts Have I Got News For You?, is the voice of Danger Mouse and the narrator of CBeebies cult hit Hey Duggee. Alexander is also a presenter on Classic FM and has a number one bestselling classical album to his name, but is probably best known for presenting the highly successful daytime quiz show Pointless, now in its twelfth series.

Alexander Armstrong

Alexander Barabanov

Alexander Betts

Alexander Breeze

Alexander C. Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. The company, established in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, builds software and artificial intelligence capabilities that are used by defense and intelligence agencies in the United States and allied nations around the world, as well as companies across the commercial sector. Karp is a graduate of Haverford College and Stanford Law School. He earned his doctorate in social theory from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alexander C.Karp

Alexander Chee won a Whiting Award for his first novel, Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and NPR, among others, and he is a contributing editor at the New Republic. He has recently been selected as a prestigious LA Times critic-at-large. He lives in New York City.

Alexander Chee

Alexander Douglas was born in Canberra, Australia where he studied music and philosophy. He now teaches the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics at the University of St Andrews. He has published two books on the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza and one on the philosophy of debt. He has grown increasingly interested in combining ideas from Western and East Asian philosophy. He loves music, literature, history, and engineering. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh.

Alexander Douglas

Alexander Freed is the author of the Star Wars Alphabet Squadron trilogy, Star Wars: Battle­front: Twilight Company and Star Wars: Rogue One and has written many short stories, comic books, and videogames. Born near Philadelphia, he currently re­sides in San Francisco, California. He enjoys the city’s culture, history, and secrets, but he misses snow.

Alexander Freed

Alexander Garros

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Humboldt

Alexander Kent's great interest in the ships and men of the eighteenth century navy was aroused when he was still at school. Although he attended fleet reviews and explored modern warships and dockyards with his father, he found that the great days of square riggers and battles at close quarters captured his imagination. H.M.S. Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, was always high on his list of regular visits. 
 
He served in the Royal Navy as a young man, and saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic and other major theatres of war, but his first love of the great days of sail remained unshaken. 
 
Now firmly established as a leading writer of authentic sea stories, he was the author of twenty-eight acclaimed books featuring Richard Bolitho. Under his own name, Douglas Reeman, and in the course of a career spanning forty-five years, he wrote over thirty novels and two non-fiction books. He died in January 2017.

Alexander Kent

Alexander Lee

Alexander Lernet-Holenia was born in Vienna in 1897. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke. During his life he wrote poetry, novels, plays and was a successful screenwriter. His books were included on the first Nazi blacklist and subsequently burned, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life.

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton in Canada. His first collection, Light Lifting, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won an Atlantic Book Award. In 2019, he won an O Henry Prize for his short story, 'Lagomorph', originally published in Granta, and the first story in Animal Person. MacLeod lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

Alexander MacLeod

Alexander Mackendrick

Alex Maskill was born in Watford, and grew up both there and in Eastbourne, East Sussex. He's has just completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Leicester and now has a degree in Politics. He hopes to follow this with an MSc in Computer Science. 
The Hive Construct is his first novel and won the 2013 Terry Pratchett Prize.

Alexander Maskill

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world's most prolific and most popular authors. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Then, after the publication of his highly successful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers through the world. These include the Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in The Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series, and the Corduroy Mansions series, novels which started life as a delightful (but challenging to write) cross-media serial, written on the website of the Telegraph Media Group. This series won two major cross-media awards - Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Award 2009 for a Cross Media Project and the New Media Age award. In addition to these series, Alexander writes stand-alone books, including The Forever Girl; Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party and Emma - a reworking of the classic Jane Austen novel. He is also the author of a book on Edinburgh, A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, as well as several collections of short stories, academic works, and over thirty books for children. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He holds honorary doctorates from nine universities in Europe and North America. In March of 2011 he received an award from the President of Botswana for his services through literature to that country. Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh. He is married to a doctor and has two daughters.

Alexander McCall-Smith

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Maria Misra

There can be few more discussed countries in the world today than India. From being a seemingly closed off, economically stagnant part of Asia, with intractable problems of poverty and population, India has in a short space of time reached an astonishing level of growth, taking with China the lion's share of the benefits from post-Cold War globalization. In VISHNU'S CROWDED TEMPLE, Maria Misra has written the essential history to allow us to understand this extraordinary transformation.

Vishnu's Crowded Temple

India Since the Great Rebellion

Mark Mazower

Dark Continent is a searching history of Europe's most brutal century. Stripping away the comforting myths and illusions that we have grown up with since the Second World War, Mark Mazower presents an unflinching account of a continent locked in a finely balanced struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.

Dark Continent

Europe's Twentieth Century

Robert Dallek

In this epic and revelatory joint biography, one of America&rsquo;s most distinguished historians probes the lives and times of two unlikely leaders whose partnership dominated the world stage and changed the course of history. Tapping into a wealth of recently declassified documents and tapes, Robert Dallek uncovers fascinating details about Nixon and Kissinger&rsquo;s tumultuous personal relationship and the extent to which they struggled to outdo each other in the reach for foreign policy achievements. He also brilliantly analyzes their dealings with power brokers at home and abroad, while recognizing how both men were continually plotting to distract the American public&rsquo;s attention from the growing scandal of Watergate. Authoritative, illuminating and deeply engrossing, Nixon and Kissinger provides a startling new portrait and a new understanding of the immense power and sway these two men held in affecting world history.

Nixon and Kissinger

Partners in Power

Noam Chomsky

Gilbert Achcar

The volatile Middle East is a site of vast resources, profound passions, frequent crises, and long-standing conflicts, as well as a major source of international tensions and a key site of direct US intervention. 
 
Two of the most astute analysts of this part of the world are Noam Chomsky, the pre-eminent critic of US foreign policy, and Gilbert Achcar, a leading specialist of the Middle East who lived in that region for many years. In their new book, Chomsky and Achcar bring a keen understanding of the internal dynamics of the Middle East and of the role of the United States, taking up all the key questions of interest to concerned citizens, including such topics as terrorism, fundamentalism, conspiracies, oil, democracy and anti-Arab racism, as well as the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the sources of US foreign policy. 
 
Timely, erudite and incisive, Perilous Power provides the best readable introduction for all who wish to understand the complex issues related to the Middle East from a perspective dedicated to peace and justice.

Perilous Power:The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy

Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice

Norman Stone

The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, four empires were destroyed and even the victors&rsquo; empires were fatally damaged. The sheer complexity and scale of the war have encouraged historians to write books on a similar scale. But now Norman Stone, one of Britain&rsquo;s greatest historians, has achieved the almost impossible task of writing a terse, brilliantly written, opinionated and witty short history of the conflict. In only 140 pages he distils a lifetime of teaching, arguing and thinking into what will be one of the most talked about history books of years to come.

World War One

A Short History

Catherine Bailey

Wentworth is in Yorkshire and was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain andbelonged to the Fitzwilliam family. 
 
It is England's forgotten palace which belonged to Britain's richest aristocrats. Black Diamonds tells the story of its demise: family feuds, forbidden love, class war, and a tragic and violent death played their part. But coal, one of the most emotive issues in twentieth century British politics, lies at its heart. 
 
This is the extraordinary story of how the fabric of English society shifted beyond recognition in fifty turbulent years in the twentieth century.

Black Diamonds

The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty

Ian Kershaw

In 1940 the world was on a knife-edge. 
 
The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe's Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history.

Fateful Choices

Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941

Tim Harper

Christopher Bayly

This extraordinary book is a vivid, highly original account of the creation of a new Asia after the Second World War - an unstoppable wave of nationalism that swept the British Empire aside.  It tells the definitive story of how India, Pakistan, Burma and Malaysia came into existence and how British interference in Vietnam and Indonesia fatally shaped those countries' futures.

Forgotten Wars

The End of Britain's Asian Empire

Simon Jenkins

The history of Britain in the last thirty years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has been dominated by one figure &ndash; Margaret Thatcher. Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership. Simon Jenkins analyses this revolution from its beginnings in the turmoil of the 1970s through the social and economic changes of the 1980s. Was Thatcherism a mere medicine for an ailing economy or a complete political philosophy? And did it eventually fall victim to the dogmatism and control which made it possible? This is the story of the events, personalities, defeats and victories which will be familiar to all those who lived through them, but seen through a new lens. It is also an argument about how Thatcher&rsquo;s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. And as the Conservative party reinvents itself as a viable political force once again, is the age of Thatcher finally over?

Thatcher and Sons

A Revolution in Three Acts

Lawrence Wright

THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING BESTSELLER, NOW AN ACCLAIMED TV SERIES 
 
This is the definitive account of the run-up to 9/11: from the man who lit the spark of radical Islam in 1948, to those who built up a terror network, and to the FBI agent whose warnings of 'something big' coming were ignored until the Twin Towers fell. 
 
'The Looming Tower is a thriller. And it's a tragedy, too' The New York Times 
 
'The most detailed (and thrilling) account we have of the events that led to the destruction of the Twin Towers' Observer, Books of the Year 
 
'Possibly the best book yet written on the rise of al-Qaeda ... beautifully written and wonderfully compelling' William Dalrymple 
 
'We meet some formidable schemers and killers ... fabulists crazed with blood and death' Martin Amis

The Looming Tower

Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11

Henry Patterson

Synthesizing a vast body of scholarly work, Henry Patterson offers a compelling narrative of contemporary Ireland as a place poised between the divisiveness of deep-seated conflict and the modernizing - but perhaps no less divisive - pull of ever-greater material prosperity. 
 
Although the two states of Ireland have strikingly divergent histories, Patterson shows more clearly than any previous historian how interdependent those histories - and the mirroring ideologies that have fuelled them - have been. With its fresh and unpredictable readings of key events and developments on the island since the outbreak of the second world war, Ireland Since 1939 is an authoritative and gripping account from one of the most distinguished Irish historians at work today.

Ireland Since 1939

Adam Tooze

This chilling, fascinating new book is the first fully to get to grips with how Hitler's Nazi empire REALLY functioned. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics - it was Hitler's obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler's view, to create a European Empire strong enough to take on the United States - a last chance for Europe to dig itself in before being swept away by the USA's ever greater power. But, as THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION makes clear, Hitler was never remotely strong enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union - and never even had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the USA. It took years of fighting and the deaths of millions of people to destroy the Third Reich, but effectively World War II in Europe was fought in pursuit of a fantasy: the years in which Western Europe could settle the world's fate were, by 1939, long past. This is a major book by a major author and will provoke an enormous amount of controversy and debate.

The Wages of Destruction

The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Anton La Guardia

There are few more compelling and more tragic issues in the world today than the bitter struggle between Palestinians and Israelis. Their tiny patch of land, desperately crowded and with few resources, has been a focus for so many years of rival claims and counter-claims that it has become almost impossible to make sense of the daily reporting. The best guide to the region is Anton La Guardia&rsquo;s highly acclaimed Holy Land, Unholy War. More than any other book, Holy Land, Unholy War disentangles myths and realities and gives a brilliantly clear and thoughtful picture of an unhappy place. This new edition is fully revised and updated to late 2006.

Holy Land, Unholy War

Israelis and Palestinians

Ed Moloney

For decades the British and Irish had 'got used to' a situation without parallel in Europe: a cold, ferocious, persistent campaign of bombing and terror of extraordinary duration and inventiveness. At the heart of that campaign lies one man: GerryAdams. From the outbreak of the troubles to the present day he has been an immensely influential figure. The most compelling question about the IRA is: how did a man who condoned atrocities that resulted in huge numbers of civilian deaths also become the guiding light behind the peace process? Moloney's book is now updated to encompass the anxious and uneasy peace that has prevailed to 2007.

A Secret History of the IRA

Thomas L. Friedman

The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, Friedman argues, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalization &ndash; a &lsquo;flattening&rsquo; of the world. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that suddenly knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, levelling the playing field as never before, so that each of us is potentially an equal &ndash; and competitor &ndash; of the other. The rules of the game have changed forever &ndash; but does this &lsquo;death of distance&rsquo;, which requires us all to run faster in order to stay in the same place, mean the world has got too small and too flat too fast for us to adjust? Friedman brilliantly demystifies the exciting, often bewildering, global scene unfolding before our eyes, one which we sense but barely yet understand. The World is Flat is the most timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and its discontents, powerfully illuminated by a world-class writer. 
 
In his new chapters: 'If It's Not Happening, It's Because You're Not Doing It' and 'What Happens When We All Have Dog's Hearing?' the author explores both the benefits and disadvantages of the very latest developments in global communication. The emergent popularity of blogging, pod-casting, YouTube and MySpace enable the modern world citizen to broadcast their views to a potential audience of billions, and the proliferation of Internet access to even the poorest communities gives everyone who wants to the tools to address issues of social injustice and inequality. On the other hand the technology that seems to improve communication on a global scale causes it to deteriorate on a local scale. Identifying ours as 'The Age of Interruption', Friedman discusses the annoyance and dangers of BlackBerrys in meeting rooms, hands-free kits in conversation and using a phone or iPod whilst driving. In an age when we are always 'connected' via email or mobile phone how can we hope to concentrate on one thing without interruption? As expected the author has revitalised this new edition of The World Is Flat with timely insights into the nature of our flat world.

The World is Flat

The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century

X Malcolm

They called him the 'angriest black man in America' . . . 
 
Celebrated and vilified the world over for his courageous but bitter fight to gain for millions of black men and women the equality and respect denied them by their white neighbours, Malcolm X inspired as many people in the United States as he caused to fear him. 
 
His remarkable autobiography, completed just before his murder in 1965, ranges from Omaha and Michigan to Harlem and Mecca, and tells of a young, disenfranchised man whose descent into drug addition, robbery and prison was only reversed by his belief in the rights struggle for black America, and his conversion to the Nation of Islam. 
 
Not only is this an enormously important record of the Civil Rights Movement in America, but also the scintillating story of a man who refused to allow anyone to tell him who or what he was.

Autobiography of Malcolm X

Alistair Horne

The battle of Verdun lasted ten months.  It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness.  Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there.  It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

The Price of Glory

Verdun 1916

In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne&rsquo;s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry. 
 
To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).

To Lose a Battle

France 1940

Susan Williams

Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana and heir apparent to the kingship of the Bangwato people, brought independence and great prosperity to his nation after colonial rule.  But for six long years from 1950, Seretse had been forced into exile in England, banned from his own country.  His crime?  To fall in love and marry a young, white English girl, Ruth Williams.  Delving into newly released records, Susan Williams tells Seretse and Ruth's story - a shocking account of how the British Government conspired with apartheid South Africa to prevent the mixed-race royal couple returning home.  But it is also an inspiring, triumphant tale of hope, courage and true love as with tenacity and great dignity Seretse and Ruth and the Bangwato people ovecome prejudice in their fight for justice.

Colour Bar

The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation

Thomas E. Ricks

Cutting through the headlines and spin, this is the first book to give us a true picture of the reality on the ground, through the words of the people there - from commanders to intelligence officers, army doctors to ordinary soldiers. Providing eye-witness accounts that contradict the official stories and figures, they give a chilling picture of the deceit, stupidity, wishful thinking, lack of forward planning and total intellectual failure of those behind the invasion. The result is an extraordinary new insight into the plight of ordinary soldiers doing nightmarish jobs, and the real nature of the fighting in Iraq.

Fiasco

The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Richard Vinen

In the summer of 1940 the French army was one of the largest and best in the world, confident of victory. In the space of a few nightmarish weeks that all changed as the French and their British allies were crushed and eight million people fled their homes. Richard Vinen's new book describes the consequences of that defeat. It does so not by looking at political leaders in Vichy or Paris or London but rather at those who were caught up in daily horrors of war. It describes the fate of a French prisoner of war who was punished because he wrote a love letter to a German woman, and the fate of a French woman who gave birth to a German-fathered child as the Americans landed in Normandy. It describes the 'false policemen' who proliferated in occupied Paris as desperate men on the run seeking to feed themselves by blackmailing those who were even more vulnerable than themselves. It asks why some gentile French people chose to risk imprisonment by wearing yellow stars. It recounts the fate of a couple of estranged middle-aged Jews, separated by the mobilisation of 1939, who found themselves (in July 1942) on the same train to Auschwitz. Extremely moving and brilliantly readable, The Unfree French is a remarkable addition to the literature of the Second World War.

The Unfree French

Life Under the Occupation

John Lewis Gaddis

In 1950, when Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung met in Moscow to discuss the future, they had reason to feel optimistic. International Communism seemed everywhere on the offensive: all of Eastern Europe was securely in the Soviet camp; America's monopoly on nuclear weapons was a thing of the past; and Mao's forces had assumed control over the world's most populous country. The story of the previous five decades was one of the worst fears confirmed, and there seemed as of 1950 little sign, at least to the West, that the next fifty years would be any less dark. 
 
In fact, of course, the century's end brought the widespread triumph of political and economic freedom over its ideological enemies. In The Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis makes a major contribution to our understanding of this epochal story. Beginning with the Second World War and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union, he provides a thrilling account of the strategic dynamics that drove the age. Now, as Britain once more finds itself in a global confrontation with an implacable ideological enemy, The Cold War tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand.

The Cold War

R.A. Saville-Sneath

When this book was first published in 1941, aircraft recognition was far more than just a pleasant pastime; it was often a matter of life and death&hellip; 
 
 This classic text provides a definitive catalogue of the aeroplanes, enemy and friendly, seen over British skies during the Second World War. R.A. Saville-Sneath set out to produce a handy classification guide, with many diagrams, a full glossary and some useful mnemonics, showing how each type of aircraft could be identified quickly and easily. The basic structures, tail units, positions of the wings and engines, and even the sounds made by the different planes, form part of the essential 'vocabulary' for distinguishing Albacores and Ansons, Beauforts and Blenheims, Heinkels, Hurricanes and Junkers, Messerschmitts and Moths, Spitfires and Wellingtons. For anyone interested in aviation the book provides a mine of information about a golden age. For those who lived through one of the most glorious episodes in the history of combat it will prove vividly evocative of those extraordinary days.

Aircraft Recognition

A Penguin Special

John Hooper

A fully revised, expanded and updated edition of this masterly portrayal of contemporary Spain. 
 
The restoration of democracy in 1977 heralded a period of intense change that continues today. Spain has become a land of extraordinary paradoxes in which traditional attitudes and contemporary preoccupations exist side by side. Focussing on issues which affect ordinary Spaniards, from housing to gambling, from changing sexual mores to rising crime rates. John Hooper's fascinating study brings to life the new Spain of the twenty-first century.

The New Spaniards

R J B Bosworth

For almost all nations the First World War was an unparalleled disaster, but the Italian experience especially was to have catastrophic consequences. Weakened and embittered, trying and failing to come to terms with 600,000 dead and with an entire generation of men militarized by fighting, Italy gave birth to a new form of political life: Fascism. 
 
Richard Bosworth brings to life the period when Italians participated in a vast and ultimately ruinous political experiment under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his fascist henchmen. The fascists were the first totalitarians, aiming to reshape Italy and its people utterly. Their regime was based on a cult of violence and obedience. Yet, despite this, Italians found ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians and their families, struggling through terrible times. Bosworth creates a powerful, plausible and entertaining picture of Italian life and a regime which - as the world hurtled towards the cataclysm of the Second World War - was to force humiliation, defeat, invasion and the utter collapse of the nation state.

Mussolini's Italy

Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945

Amartya Sen

India is a very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. The Argumentative Indian brings together an illuminating selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. 
 
The understanding and use of this rich argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

The Argumentative Indian

Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

Niall Ferguson

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Niall Ferguson's comprehensive The War of the World, read by Sean Barrett. 
 
The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece.

The War of the World

Rod Kedward

Rod Kedward brings to life the great, and often terrible, dramas of modern France - the two cataclysmic wars, the Algerian disaster, the student and worker revolt of 1968 - but also explores the special worlds of the workplace, immigration, minorities, the role of women, and the politics of everyday life and collective memory. La Vie en Bleu is a history of people and events that tells a multitude of stories, some impressive, some shameful and many that starkly divide the French among themselves.

La Vie en bleu

France and the French since 1900

Sean Naylor

At dawn on March 2, 2002, the first major battle of the 21st Century began. Over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot valley - and into the mouth of a buzz-saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, higher-level miscalculations that underestimated the enemy's strength and willingness to fight. 
 
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Coalition forces quickly toppled the Taliban regime from the seat of government. But, believing the war to be all but over, the Pentagon and US Central Command refused to commit the forces required to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. Instead, they delegated responsibility for fighting the war's biggest battle to a tangle of untested units thrown together at the last moment. 
 
Then the world watched as Anaconda seemed to unravel. 
 
Denied the extra infantry, artillery and close air support with which they trained to go to war, the soldiers of this airborne assault fought for survival in brutal high-altitude combat. Backed up by a small, but crucial, team of special forces, they were all that stood between the Coalition and a military disaster. 
 
Now, award-winning journalist Sean Naylor, an eyewitness to the action, vividly portrays the fight for Afghanistan's most hostile battleground and details the failures of military intelligence and planning that left victory hanging by a thread.

Not a Good Day to Die

The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda

Richard J. Evans

The Third Reich in Power examines how it was possible for a group of ideological obsessive to remould a society famous for its sophistication and complexity into a one-party state directed at war and race hate. Richard J. Evans shows how the Nazis won over the hearts and minds of German citizens, twisted science, religion and culture, and transformed the economy, education, law and order to achieve total dominance in German politics and society. Drawing on an extraordinary range of research, blending narrative, description and analysis he creates a picture of a dictatorship consumed by visceral hatreds and ambitions and driven by war.

The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939

How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation

Jack Reacher Short Stories

Jack Ryan

Jack Ryan Jr

Jack Slater

Jack Stalwart

Jack Tanner

Jack and Millie

Jackson Brodie is a private investigator, originally from Yorkshire. A former soldier and policeman he now makes his money working from investigating infidelity and finding missing cats. Jackson's tough-guy exterior belies a deeply empathetic heart. He's unable to resist coming to the rescue and increasingly he becomes a magnet for the bereaved, the lost and the dysfunctional. His ability to connect comes from his own tragic childhood that still haunts him. 
 
Jackson Brodie has appeared in four of Kate Atkinson's novels. Each can be read in isolation but are best enjoyed in order of publication: Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News?, Started Early, Took My Dog.

Jackson Brodie

Jacksonville Rays

Jacky Ha-Ha Series

Jake Cake

Jamaal Target

James Beck

James Bond 007

Jane Smith

Japanese Classics

Meet the hilarious British dilettante Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster who can't seem to help finding himself in the middle of awkward social situations, calling upon his valet Jeeves to escape embarrassment.

Jeeves & Wooster

Jenny Q

Jess Tennant

Joe Rat Adventures

Joey Pigza

Johnny Maxwell

Jon Katz

Jonathon Payne & David Jones

Joseph Stark

Journey into Space

Jumpman

Post-graduation, Allyson Healey decided to embark on a three week tour of Europe. It all goes according to plan until she meets Willem. He is everything she is not; free spirited, a risk taker. She allows herself to be swept away by him for just 24 hours, and then returns home the next day. Willem, determined to find her, puts his trust in fate and travels the world hoping that somewhere he will come across her. This sweepingly romantic trio of novels is filled with emotion, romance and a life affirming belief in fate.

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