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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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Dana Mattioli

**LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024** 
 
‘Riveting and explosive. This is the business story of our time.’ 
Christopher Leonard, New York Times Bestselling Author of Kochland and The Lords of Easy Money 
 
'A hard-hitting analysis of Amazon’s dominance. Makes a compelling case that no company should be this powerful.' 
Financial Times 
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From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon's endless strategic greed, its pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary, and the growing efforts to stop it. 
 
For over twenty years, Amazon was the quintessential American success story, whilst its “customer obsession” approach made it indelibly attractive to consumers across the globe. But the company was not benevolent; it operated in ways that ensured it stayed on top, coming to dominate over a dozen industries beyond retail, growing voraciously by abusing data, exploiting partners, copying competitors, and avoiding taxes—leveraging its power to extract whatever it could, at any cost and without much scrutiny. Until now. 
 
With unparalleled access, and having interviewed hundreds of people – from Amazon executives to competitors to small businesses who rely on its marketplace to survive – Dana Mattioli exposes how Amazon was driven by a competitive edge to dominate every industry it entered, bulldozed all who stood in its way, reshaped the retail landscape, transformed how Wall Street evaluates companies, and altered the very nature of the global economy. 
 
In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission filed a monopoly lawsuit against Amazon in what may become one of the largest antitrust cases in the 21st century. As Amazon’s supremacy is finally challenged, The Everything War is the definitive, inside story of how it grew into one of the most powerful and feared companies in the world – and why this is the most consequential business story of our times. 
 
 
Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award 2024, announced August 2024.

The Everything War

Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power

Wes Moore

A powerful memoir from 'the Democrats’ most talented political newcomer since Barack Obama' (Time) 
 
'Spectacular . . . Wes Moore is a proper leader' George Clooney 
 
 
Two kids named Wes Moore shared much more than a name; they shared remarkably similar circumstances. Both grew up father­less and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police. 
 
How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and leading politician, while the other became a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? 
Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound ques­tion. 
 
In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also featured an article about a botched armed robbery in which a police officer had been killed. Two of the suspects had gone on the run. One was named Wes Moore. 
 
After following the case to its conclusion, Wes Moore wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter asked the questions that had been haunting him: who are you? How did this happen? 
 
Through dozens of letters and prison visits, over the course of years, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own. 
 
Told in alternating dramatic narratives, The Other Wes Moore takes readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, and sheds a powerful light on modern America. 
 
 
'I always walk away from a conversation with Wes Moore with a new perspective…new ideas...with a new way of seeing things...with a new burst of positive energy.' Oprah Winfrey

The Other Wes Moore

Leor Zmigrod

Why do some people become radicalized? Who is most susceptible to ideological thinking? Can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas? 
 
Drawing on her groundbreaking research, Dr Leor Zmigrod uncovers the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours. She uses the powerful tools of neuroscience to show that our political beliefs are not transient thoughts in our minds, divorced from our bodies – ideologies actually change our neural architecture, our cells. For instance, she demonstrates how a simple card sorting game can reveal your entire approach to life. Cognitive rigidity in such tasks – struggling to adapt to new rules – mirrors the rigidity with which you cling to social and political ideologies. While some individuals are more susceptible to dogmatic thinking than others, all of us can strive to be more flexible. 
 
The Ideological Brain is essential reading in today’s polarized and polarizing world. To foster a more informed, resilient and freer society, we need to zoom into the processes happening inside each of us and learn to spot rigid thinking in ourselves and others. We need to learn to avoid black-and-white thinking and embrace ambiguity. We need to recognize our ability to resist irrational rules and authority. Regardless of your political stance, this book will challenge you to reassess your convictions – and what they are doing to your brain.

The Ideological Brain

How Rigid Beliefs Harm Our Minds & Bodies – And Why It Matters

A Radical Science of Susceptible Minds

Noam Chomsky

Nathan J. Robinson

The land of the free. The home of the brave. But what has America achieved in the aim of ‘spreading democracy’ – except wreak havoc across the globe and establish a reckless foreign policy that serves the interest of few and has endangered all too many? 
 
In this timely book, Noam Chomsky writing with Nathan J. Robinson, vividly traces America’s pursuit of global domination – from Washington’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – offering an incisive critique of the self-serving myths that dominant elites in the United States continue to push. 
 
Thorough, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to the conclusions Noam Chomsky has come to after a lifetime of thought and activism.

The Myth of American Idealism

How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

Stephan Malinowski

The disappearance of the Hohenzollern family from the history of Germany in November 1918 as the Kaiser fled into Dutch exile is one of the most startling, rapid instances of a once all-powerful royal family becoming almost overnight irrelevant and marginal. Except this is not exactly what happened. 
 
Stephan Malinowski’s German bestseller is an extraordinary work of recovery. It suited both the Weimar Republic and then the Third Reich to view the Hohenzollerns with contempt, and yet the royal family’s hatred of the former and approval of the latter were for millions of Germans a significant factor in their own view of their country and its government. 
 
With forensic and often shocking detail, Malinowski shows that, far from being ridiculous, marginal figures the Hohenzollerns lay at the heart of Germany’s ongoing nightmare. Despite formally losing power, the members of the royal family remained prominent, catastrophically allowing many other conservative Germans to stay distanced from the new republic and to eventually betray conservative traditions and values. Battered from both left and right, the Republic collapsed in 1933 in part because conservative forces, fearful of both Communism and Fascism, had abandoned their own principles just as much as the leading members of former royal family had, who were themselves beguiled by and fooled by Hitler. 
 
This is an important and shocking book, as well as a devastating picture of an inadequate and trivial royal family painfully underequipped to fulfil its role.

The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis

A History of Collaboration

Sulmaan Wasif Khan

In the overwhelming chaos across Asia at the end of the Second World War, one relatively minor issue was the future of the Japanese colony of Taiwan, a large island some one hundred miles off the coast of Fujian. Handed to the Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China, in 1949 it suddenly became the focus of global attention as a random cross-section of defeated Nationalists, including President Chiang Kai-shek, fled there from Mao's triumphant Communist forces. 
 
The Struggle for Taiwan is a balanced and convincing account of the sequence of events that has left Taiwan for generations as a political anomaly, with issues around its status and future continuing to threaten war. With deepening democratization, Taiwan further goads Beijing, remaining functionally independent from China even as Xi Jinping clamours for unification. 
 
This invaluable book allows readers to understand the complex story of this unique place and its role in international relations. With its striking economic dynamism and commitment to democracy, can Taiwan continue - as Hong Kong once did - to thrive, or will China conquer it? And will the world be able to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait or will it stumble into war?

The Struggle for Taiwan

A History

Kenneth Roth

In three decades under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch conducted investigations in 100 countries to uncover abuses – and pressured offending governments to stop them. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on the most ruthless oppressors of our time, and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts. 
 
The son of a Jew who fled Nazi Germany just before the war began, Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. He has travelled the world to meet cruelty and injustice on its home turf: he arrived in Rwanda shortly after the genocide; scrutinized the impact of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait; investigated and condemned Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. He directed efforts to curtail the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, to bring Myanmar’s officials to justice after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, to halt Russian war crimes in Ukraine, even to rein in the U.S. government. Roth’s many innovations and strategies included the deployment of a concept as old as mankind – the powerful tool of ‘shaming’ – and here he illustrates its surprising effectiveness against evildoers. 
 
This is a story of wins, losses, and ongoing battles in the ceaseless fight for a more decent world.

Righting Wrongs

Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Jake Tapper

Alex Thompson

'Explosive' Guardian 
'Explosive' The Times 
'Explosive' Daily Mail 
'Explosive' Politico 
'Explosive' New York Times 
 
Joe Biden his family and his senior aides were convinced that only he could beat Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election. So convinced, in fact, that they lied to themselves, allies and the public about his condition and limitations – all but dooming the Democrats to defeat. Here, two of America’s best-respected political journalists take us behind closed doors to uncover the full, unsettling truth about Biden’s decline, and exposing the wider cover-up as an unprecedented deception of the public. 
 
Hailed as an instant classic of political journalism, ?this is the book that revealed Biden's decision to run again as the original sin of his presidency - leading directly to Donald Trump’s return to power, and all that has come since.

Original Sin

President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again

Annie Jacobsen

In the chaos following the Second World War, the US government faced a critical decision: what to do with the great scientific minds of the Third Reich. Many were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder. Nevertheless, the US government secretly decided that their knowledge of rocketry and medical advances were vital to the outcome of the Cold War. 
 
Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and dossiers discovered in archives across the world, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the twentieth century. 
 
‘Chilling and riveting ... a remarkable achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing’ Boston Globe 
 
‘The most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts’ New York Times Book Review

Operation Paperclip

Nazi Scientists in America

This is a book about a team of scientists and psychics with top secret clearances. 
 
For more than forty years, the U.S. government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. 
 
The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the Navy, Air Force, and Army-and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs, using never before seen declassified documents as well as exclusive interviews with, and unprecedented access to, more than fifty of the individuals involved. Speaking on the record, many for the first time, are former CIA and Defense Department scientists, analysts, and program managers, as well as the government psychics themselves. 
 
Who did the U.S. government hire for these top secret programs, and how do they explain their military and intelligence work? How do scientists approach such enigmatic subject matter? What interested the government in these supposed powers and does the research continue? 
 
Phenomena is a riveting investigation into how far governments will go in the name of national security.

Phenomena

US Government Investigations into ESP and Psychokinesis

President Bill Clinton

A powerful, candid, and richly detailed memoir from an American icon, revealing what life looks like after the presidency: triumphs, tribulations, and all. 
 
On 20th January 2001, after nearly thirty years in politics &mdash; eight of them as President of the United States &mdash; Bill Clinton was suddenly a private citizen. Only fifty-four years old, full of energy and ideas, he wanted to make meaningful use of his skills, his relationships with world leaders, and all he&rsquo;d learned in a lifetime of politics, but how? Just days after leaving the White House, the call came to aid victims of a devastating earthquake in India, and Clinton hit the ground running. Over the next two decades, he would create an enduring legacy of public service and advocacy work, from Indonesia to Louisiana, Northern Ireland to South Africa, and in the process reimagine philanthropy and redefine the impact a former president could have on the world. 
 
Citizen is Clinton&rsquo;s front-row, first-person chronicle of his post-presidential years and the most significant events of the twenty-first century, including 9/11 and the runup to the Iraq War, the Haiti earthquake, the Great Recession, COVID-19, the January 6th insurrection, and the enduring culture wars of our times. Yet Citizen is more than a presidential memoir. These pages capture Clinton in a rare and unforgettable light: not only as celebrated former president and foundation leader, but also as a father, grandfather, and husband. He shares his support for Hillary Clinton during her tenure as senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate, and openly details the frustration and pain of the 2016 election. 
 
With clarity and compassion, President Clinton also weighs in on the unprecedented challenges brought on by a global pandemic, ongoing inequality, a steadily warming planet, and authoritarian forces dedicated to weakening democracy. In this landmark publication, the highly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling My Life, Clinton pens a clear-sighted account of American democracy on a global stage, offering a frank reflection on the past and, with it, a fearless embrace of our future. Citizen is a testament to one man&rsquo;s unwavering commitment to family and nation, a self-portrait of equal parts eloquence, insight, and candor.

Citizen

My Life After the White House

Kerry Brown

An urgent, indispensable guide to why Taiwan matters – for China, the West and everyone’s future. 
 
When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. 
 
Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society. For the United States and the West, the island is a bastion of freedom against China’s assertive presence in the region. And yet China, increasingly bellicose under Xi Jinping, insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be returned to it. Should China blockade the island and mount an invasion, it would set off a chain reaction that would pitch it against the US – escalating a regional war into a global one. Taiwan is thus a geopolitical powder keg. 
 
The Taiwan Story helps us understand how and why we’ve arrived at this dangerous moment in history. With unparalleled access to Taiwan’s political leaders and a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides a new reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. This is the essential book delving into Taiwan’s unique story, buried beneath the headlines, told in an accessible, expert and urgent way.

The Taiwan Story

How a Small Island Will Dictate the Global Future

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

Stephen Breen

John Hand

THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 
 
‘Grim, forensic and often eye-opening … meticulously researched and soberly written’ Sunday Independent 
 
‘A fascinating book’ Pat Kenny, Newstalk 
 
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Kinahan Assassins is the extraordinary story of how the killers used by Ireland’s most notorious drug gang, the Kinahan Cartel, were taken down. 
 
After an audacious assassination attempt on boss Daniel Kinahan's life, the Kinahan Cartel recruited an unprecedented number of killers to retaliate against their attackers, the Hutch gang. Kinahan Assassins is the compelling behind-the-scenes account of one man's thirst for vengeance and how it proved fatal for his organization. 
 
Kinahan Assassins has the stories of the men who killed for the cartel - including vulnerable drug addicts, a former British soldier, an MMA fighter and an invisible 'Mr Nobody' who acted as a cartel quartermaster - as well as those who gave them orders. 
 
And it details how, one by one, the hit teams were identified, surveilled and captured by the Irish police. Featuring new and exclusive material – conversations from wiretaps, insights from gardaí at the heart of the operations and interviews with the loved ones of innocents caught in the crossfire – Kinahan Assassins is a startling and gripping read that throws a new light on the war on organized crime.

Kinahan Assassins

The Ruthless Hit Squads Who Brought Terror To Dublin Streets And How They Were Stopped

Bernie Sanders

Today, Trump’s USA is a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires. As inequalities grow starker and authoritarianism takes hold, people are deprived of both the basic necessities of life and the right to hold to account the ever-smaller number of corporations in whose hands wealth and power are vested. What’s more, throughout the world, wherever you look it’s the same: from Britain to Brunei, the rich have never had it so good. 
 
So, amid the wreckage of this broken system, where do we go from here? In this powerful, urgent book, Bernie Sanders shows us how. If we are to restore our democracies and build back societies for the good of all, he argues, we must start by questioning the fundamental moral values that underlie the dominant behaviour in our society today, by asking ourselves what wealth really means, and what we are really striving for: for our communities, for our children, for the future of our planet. 
 
Democracy, Sanders emphasizes, is not a spectator sport. If we are to bring about political revolution, we must all join the fight, in whatever way we can. As history shows us, when the ruling class divides us, we lose; when we stand together, we win. Let’s do it.

Fight Oligarchy

Where We Go From Here

Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria first warned of the threat of “illiberal democracy” two decades ago. In Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, he sets our era of populist chaos into the sweep of history. 
 
Based on deep research and conversations with world leaders from Emmanuel Macron to Lee Kuan Yew, this book tells the story of progress and backlash, of the rise of classical liberalism and of the many periods of rage and counter-revolution that followed seismic change. From the Dutch Republic – the first modern republic, techno-superpower, and haven for liberalism almost snuffed out by force – and the French Revolution to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the United States, it traces the rise of the world’s modern superpowers, the birth of the political divides we know today, and the ways in which technology unsettled society and caused backlash from those who felt threatened by this new world. Zakaria also details the revolutions that have convulsed our times: globalization in overdrive, digital transformation, the rise of identity politics, the return of great power politics with a vengeful Russia and an ascendant China, and the democratic decay at home which threatens the very foundations of the world built by the Enlightenment. 
 
The book warns us that liberalism’s great strength has been freeing people from arbitrary constraints – but its great weakness has been leaving individuals isolated, a void that can all too easily be filled by tribalism, populism, and identity politics. Today’s revolutions in technology and culture can even leave people so adrift that they turn against modernity itself.

Age of Revolutions

Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

Tim Blanning

Augustus is one of the great what-ifs of the 18th century. He could have turned the accident of ruling two major realms into the basis for a powerful European state – a bulwark against the Russians and a block on Prussian expansion. Alas, there was no opportunity Augustus did not waste and no decision he did not get wrong. By the time of his death Poland was fatally damaged and would subsequently disappear as an independent state until the 20th century. 
 
Tim Blanning’s wonderfully entertaining and original new book is a study in failed statecraft, showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance. Augustus’s posthumous sobriquet ‘The Strong’ referred not to any political accomplishment, but to his legendary physical strength and sexual athleticism. 
 
Yet he was also one of the great creative artists of the age, combining driving energy, exquisite taste and apparently boundless resources to master-mind the creation of peerless Dresden, the baroque jewel of jewels. Augustus the Strong brilliantly evokes this time of opulence and excess, decadence and folly.

Augustus The Strong

A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco

Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? In a single lifetime, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary about-turns in attitudes to sex and gender in human history, bringing liberation for some and fury and fear for others. 
 
This book by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. It beckons us to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity, an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.

Lower than the Angels

A History of Sex and Christianity

Richard J. Evans

Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us. 
 
Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler’s orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways. 
 
Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.

Hitler's People

The Faces of the Third Reich

Rebecca Hall

Hugo Martinez

Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the passage across the Atlantic. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history. 
 
In Wake Rebecca Hall, a historian, a granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery, tells their story. With in-depth archival research and a measured use of historical imagination, she constructs the likely pasts of women rebels who fought for freedom on slave ships bound to America, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. Beneath both is Hall's own tale: of a life lived in the shadow of slavery and its consequences. 
 
Strikingly illustrated in black and white, Wake explores both a personal and a global legacy. Part graphic novel, part memoir, it is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake. 
 
'Not only a riveting tale of Black women's leadership of slave revolts but an equally dramatic story of the engaged scholarship that enabled its discovery' - Angela Davis

Wake

The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

Helen Charman

When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that poses a serious challenge to the status quo. 
 
In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing cuts: groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them too. 
 
Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organize under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act.

Mother State

A Political History of Motherhood

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

A Guardian and Lit Hub most anticipated book of 2024 
 
Read these chapters like a collection of poems that speak in chorus in all directions. Understand each word as an opportunity for Audre’s fierce love, which is the same love that birthed the volcanoes and split the continents, to reach you, wherever you are. 
 
Audre Lorde was a survivor: of childhood disability injustice, of her best friend’s suicide, of the atomic age. She was a college activist against nuclear arms. A mother who knew poetry could help her children survive a racist world. And, ultimately, a cancer survivor, who understood the war going on within her cells was connected to the struggle against oppression taking place all around her. 
 
This stunning new account of Lorde’s life and work illuminates how, for Lorde, survival was not simply about getting through, or about resilience. It was about how to live on, and with, a planet in transformation. Lorde’s commitment to justice was intimately connected to her deep engagement with the natural world; with the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For Lorde, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be on earth, and how to live fully as a Black feminist lesbian warrior poet. 
 
In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Audre Lorde. Her life and work swell to become a cosmic force, showing us the grand possibility of life together on earth.

Survival is a Promise

The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Rob Jackson

Can we really restore the earth’s atmosphere within our lifetime? 
 
Whether through sustainable technologies such as fossil-free steel production, hydrogen-powered ships and electric motorbikes, or natural solutions like rewilding peatlands, people all over the world are finding new ways to travel, feed themselves and drive industry while safeguarding a liveable planet for future generations. 
 
Drawing on decades of research and a vast network of experts, Rob Jackson, Chair of the Global Carbon Project, introduces some of the brilliant innovators behind the boldest solutions to climate change – including an Eritrean agricultural scientist, a Swedish CEO and a Brazilian hydrologist. 
 
Now we have more tools to combat climate change than ever before, Into the Clear Blue Sky traces a clear path to a better future for us all – one that will see us cutting emissions in inventive new ways that protect our health and livelihoods, while repairing the damage we have caused to the atmosphere. This visionary and transformative book is the call to action we need – right now.

Into the Clear Blue Sky

The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere

Geoff White

There's an old saying: 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. It's normally couched in positive terms; that overall economic improvement will benefit everyone. In the case of hi-tech money laundering, however, it offers a dark vision of the future. The better these launderers become at their work, the more crime of all types will be enabled. It's time to understand where the water is rising, before it washes over us all. 
 
Money laundering has been around for centuries. For as long as people have been willing to steal money, there's been an industry ready to wash it. But recent tech innovations have created vastly complex new systems for laundering that threaten to overwhelm authorities, destabilise economies and disrupt societies. 
 
Rinsed is a relevatory investigation into the new army of innovative criminals using tech to launder money, and the consequences for all of us.

Rinsed

From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks

Up to now, no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it. Frantic calls over secure lines work to confirm the worst as armoured helicopters are scrambled to evacuate the chosen few to secure bunkers. One nuclear missile will provoke two dozen in return. Decisions over hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, knowing that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction. 
 
Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts, Nuclear War is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever.

Nuclear War

A Scenario

Stephen Alford

Robert Cecil, statesman and spymaster, lived through an astonishingly threatening period in English history. Queen Elizabeth had no clear successor and enemies both external and internal threatened to destroy England as a Protestant state, most spectacularly with the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
Cecil stood at the heart of the Tudor and then Stuart state, a vital figure in managing the succession from Elizabeth I to James I & VI, warding off military and religious threats and steering the decisions of two very different but equally wilful and hard-to-manage monarchs. The promising son of Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister Lord Burghley, for Cecil there was no choice but politics, and he became supremely skilled in the arts of power, making many rivals and enemies. 
 
All His Spies is a wonderfully engaging and original work of history. Many readers are familiar with the great events of this tumultuous time, but All His Spies shows how easily these dramas could have turned out very differently. Cecil’s sureness of purpose, his espionage network and good luck all conspired to keep England uninvaded and to create a new ‘British’ monarchy which has endured to the present day.

All His Spies

The Secret World of Robert Cecil

Andrew Hindmoor

Vladimir Lenin, an occasional resident of North London who went on to other things, has been credited with once saying that there are decades where nothing happens but weeks when decades happen. The first two and a half decades of this century in Britain have had plenty of those weeks. Indeed, our recent history has at times resembled an episode of Casualty, the long-running BBC hospital drama in which every hedge trimmer slips, every gas pipe leaks, every piece of scaffolding collapses and everyone ends up in intensive care. 
 
In Haywire Andrew Hindmoor makes sense of the deluge of events which have rained down on Britain since 2000, from the Iraq War to financial collapse, austerity to Brexit, as well as more easily forgotten moments such as the MP’s expenses scandal. He shows not simply how one crisis has quickly followed another, but how each crisis has compounded the next, so that disaster feels like the new normal. Has Britain simply been the victim of a particularly prolonged run of bad luck which will, sooner or later, come to an end? No. Hindmoor argues that the way the British state is organised has, time and again, made a crisis out of a drama – and that it is time to find an alternative before we all go haywire.

Haywire

A Political History of Britain since 2000

Mark Gilbert

The rebirth of Italy after the Second World War is one of the most impressive political transformations in modern European history. In 1945, post-fascist Italy was devastated by war and its reputation in the international arena was nil. Yet by December 1955, when Italy was admitted to the United Nations, the nation had contested three acrimonious but free general elections, had a flourishing press, and was a leader in the re-building of Europe. The contrast with Fascism was stark. 
 
This book charts the descent of Italy into Fascism, the scale of the wartime disaster, the Italian resistance to Nazi occupation, and the establishment of the Republic in 1946. The Cold War divided, in 1947, the coalition of parties that had led the resistance to Fascism and Nazism. 
 
The book’s final chapters deal with the consolidation of Italian democracy and with the statesmanship of Alcide De Gasperi, the premier from December 1945 to August 1953. The book argues, first, that De Gasperi deserves more credit than he has typically been accorded for Italy’s post-war democratization and, second, that Italian democracy was constructed on a sound foundation – which is why it has been able to survive its many post-war crises. 
 
Largely based on contemporary Italian sources, the book is written in an engaging, lively way for both the general reader and specialists in Italian history.

Italy Reborn

From Fascism to Democracy

John Ganz

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER PICK 
 
A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era 
 
‘When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly’ Washington Post 
 
‘A fascinating, provocative challenge to our age – passionate, unexpected, illuminating’ Rory Stewart 
 
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America’. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today. 
 
In this original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new kind of paranoid politics: how a group of con men and conspiracists declared a culture war on liberal elites, rejected ‘globalism’ and called for a ‘populist based 
presidency’. Trumpism was struggling to be born. 
 
A rollicking exposé of the end of the post-World War II order, this book shows the advent of a new, more berserk America. 
 
‘Terrific . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core’ New York Times 
 
One of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024 
One of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024 
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024

When the Clock Broke

Con Men, Conspiracists and the Origins of Trumpism

Anne Applebaum

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another—and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America. 
 
Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies: Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one thing: Their dislike of us, the inhabitants of the democratic world, and their desire to see both our political systems and our values undermine. 
 
That shared understanding of the world—where it comes from, why it lasts, how it works, how the democratic world has unwittingly helped to consolidate it, and how we can help bring it down—is the subject of this book.

Autocracy, Inc

The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

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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