Alexandra McCollum grew up in rural northeast Ohio and now lives in Nevada with their husband and dog. Among other jobs, they’ve worked in a bakery in Austria, managed a coffee shop in Ohio, and taught high school in Las Vegas. When not writing, they can be found studying languages and exploring local coffeehouses in search of the perfect americano.

Alexandra McCollum

A graduate of Yale University, Alexandra Oliva grew up in a small town deep in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School University and undertook intensive wilderness survival training while researching The Last One. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their brindled mutt, Codex. The Last One is her first novel.

Alexandra Oliva

John Peel was born the day before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. His 38-year career as a radio DJ is the stuff of legend and the bands he went on to discover too numerous to mention, though David Bowie, Roxy Music, T Rex, Genesis, Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, Radiohead and the White Stripes would do as a start. He lived in Suffolk with his wife Sheila and their children William, Thomas, Alexandra and Florence, plus various dogs and cats, until his death in October 2004.

Alexandra Ravenscroft

Alexandra Shulman

ALEXANDRA SOVERAL founded her award-winning eponymous skin care line in 2005, where she still hand-blends every product. Originally from Portugal, Alexandra moved to London 1987 to study Philosophy of Science, before dedicating her research to Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry, becoming a respected skin specialist and product formulator for high quality brands.

Alexandra Soveral

Alexandra Wood

Born in 1986, Alexandra Zelman-Doring is a graduate of Brown, Columbia, and Oxford Universities. She is a poet, playwright, and actor, and recent co-founder of Throes Theater (www.throestheater.com). Based in New York City, she lives with her husband, clarinet player Naum Goldenstein.

Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Alexandre Antonelli is Director of Science of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he leads the work of over 350 scientists. A botanist by training, he was made Full Professor of Biodiversity at University of Gothenburg in Sweden aged 36, and founded the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre and served as Cisneros Visiting Scholar at Harvard University before joining Kew. He remains an active researcher at the University of Gothenburg and the University of Oxford in the UK. This is his first book.

Alexandre Antonelli

Alexander Dumas was born in 1802 at Villes-Cotterets. He received very little education but when he entered the household of the future king, Louis-Philippe, he began to read veraciously and then to write. In 1839 he began writing novels dealing with the wars of religion and the Revolution, but he is most remembered for his historical novels, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandria Bellefleur is a bestselling and award-winning author of swoony contemporary romance often featuring loveable grumps and the sunshine characters who bring them to their knees. Her debut novel, Written in the Stars, was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner and a 2020 winner of The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction.

Alexandria Bellefleur

ALEXEI NAVALNY was a Russian opposition leader, an anti-corruption campaigner, and political prisoner who won international recognition and respect. His many international honours included the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament’s annual human rights prize. He died in 2024.

Alexei Navalny

Alexei Sayle

Alexi Zentner

Alexia Casale is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, as well as a script consultant and specialist human rights editor. Her young adult novel, The Bone Dragon, was shortlisted for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize and her first adult novel, The Best Way to Bury Your Husband, set the darkly comic stage for her adult fiction. This is her second adult novel.

Alexia Casale

Alexina Anatole is a chef, presenter, and writer based in London. After reaching the final of MasterChef in 2021, she made a brave career change from the trading floor to the food world. Her debut cookbook – Bitter – was published by Square Peg, Vintage in September 2023 to critical acclaim from the likes of Nigella Lawson, Rukmini Iyer, and Waterstones. Anatole also writes Small Wins, a Substack newsletter that enhances your cooking and your life in small, manageable ways. She has been featured on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, and BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme as well as social media platforms including MOB and TopJaw. She also runs sell-out events, including Sel, London’s most intimate supper club, and Cocoa POP, a chocolate-themed pop-up with chocolatier Octavia Lamb. Alexina is of mixed heritage: the granddaughter of chicken farmers from Cambridgeshire and Saint Lucian grandparents who arrived in London during the Windrush.

Alexina Anatole

Alexis Calder writes sassy heroines and sexy heroes with a sprinkle of sarcasm. She lives in the Rockies and drinks far too much coffee and just the right amount of wine.

Alexis Calder

Alexis Deacon graduated from the University of Brighton, where he studied Illustration, gaining a first class honours degree. Alexis Deacon was one of Booktrust's ten Best New Illustrators in 2008, and Beegu was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Alexis lives in London.

Alexis Deacon

Alexis G Aïnouz

Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft and cosmic horror. Growing up in one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. When she doesn’t have her nose buried in a book, you can find her painting or watching horror movies with her feline familiar. Her acclaimed adult books include The Year of the Witching, House of Hunger and An Academy for Liars. Her debut YA novel, When I Was Death, publishes in March 2026.

Alexis Henderson

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Born and raised in Yorkshire, Alexis moved to Cardiff where she completed a degree in print-making. She went on to exhibit in and around Wales and Leeds and has had two art residencies. After a stint working as a cook, Alexis moved to London with her small, second-hand printing press and began print-making again. Alexis works in lino which she cuts by hand. For inspiration, she looks to old matchbox covers, record sleeves, tea boxes, postcards, explorers, the circus and films. She has since moved back to Yorkshire, where she works from her studio. Alexis has designed many book covers and illustrated Dr Who: Twelve Angels Weeping but The Bear in the Stars is her first book as an author-illustrator.

Alexis Snell

Alexis Soyer

Alexis Stickland is a midwife, antenatal teacher and mother of three children who has been supporting new mums and their families for over 12 years. She was motivated by her own personal experience to team up with her friend and colleague Beccy Hands to launch The Motherbox – a company that delivers beautiful boxes of nourishing treats and self-care advice to new mums.

Alexis Stickland

Alexis Tocqueville

Alexis Zegerman

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alf Proysen

Alfie Boe

Alfie Moore

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Jason Hazeley

Joel Morris

These delightful books are the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. 
 
The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. The subject of the books will greatly appeal to grown-ups. 
 
The eight books in the series feature original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. The other books in the series are: 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Sheds 
 
- The Ladybird Book of The Hipster 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis 
 
- The Ladybird Book of the Hangover 
 
- The Ladybird Book of Dating 
 
- How it Works: The Husband 
 
- How it Works: The Wife

Can you imagine a world where there aren't just the thirty-two Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups you've seen in your local bookshop or downstairs toilet but hundreds and hundreds more? 
 
If you can't, then this book is here to imagine it for you. 
 
Here is an enormous collection of helpful guides to everything from worryingly high cholesterol to worryingly high mortgages - from teenagers you can't understand to prizewinning novels you can't understand - all presented simply and colourfully, in a way that even the most jaded, exhausted, baffled grown-up can enjoy. 
 
'This is such a good idea I'm currently experiencing all the physical sensations of anger because I didn't think of it, whereas Jason and Joel did, the shits.' Charlie Brooker 
 
'I do not hasten to say that these books are the new Da Vinci Code.' Aisling Bea 
 
'These books are small masterpieces. They make me glad I learned to read.' David Quantick 
 
'HILARIOUS. Beserkly brilliant.' Mel Giedroyc

The Wonderful World of Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups

Ta-Nehisi Coates

From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency was a watershed moment in American history. In those eight years, the political conversation around race, gender, class and wealth shifted drastically - inspiring hope but also attracting criticism and breeding discontent. That discontent ultimately led to a shocking backlash in the election of Donald Trump. 
 
In this essential book, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of Obama's eight years in power, brilliantly navigating the intersections of political, ideological and cultural perspectives. And he reflects on his own journey through these years, weaving the public with the private to create a startlingly intimate and piercingly relevant memoir.

We Were Eight Years in Power

Hilary Spurling

Peerless literary biographer Hilary Spurling turns her attention to Anthony Powell, an iconic figure of English letters. Equally notorious for his literary achievements and his lacerating wit, Powell famously authored the twelve-volume, twenty-five year magnum opus, A Dance to the Music of Time. This enduringly fascinating portrait of mid-20th-century Britain has never been out of print, inspiring TV and radio adaptations and elevating the author to The Times' list of fifty greatest British writers since 1945. 
 
Master novelist, well-connected socialite and keen-eyed social observer, Powell comes into focus as never before in this authoritative biography from one of our generation's greatest biographers.

Anthony Powell

Dancing to the Music of Time

Norman Davies

After decades of writing about European history, Norman Davies embarked upon an extended journey that took him round the world. He aimed to test his powers of observation, but equally to encounter history in a new way. Beneath Another Sky is partly a historian's travelogue, partly a highly engaging exploration of events and personalities that have fashioned today's world. 
 
Davies's circumnavigation takes him to Baku, the Emirates, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Tasmania, Tahiti, Texas, Madeira and many places in between. At every stop, he not only describes the current scene but also excavates the layers of accumulated experience that underpin the present. He tramps round ancient temples, delves into the fate of indigenous peoples, uncovers the Nazi origins of Frankfurt airport and lectures on imperialism in a desert oasis. 'Everything has its history', he writes, 'including the history of finding one's way or of getting lost.' As always, Norman Davies watches the historical horizon as well as what is close at hand, and brilliantly complicates our view of the past.

Beneath Another Sky

A Global Journey into History

Lawrence Freedman

Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best forms of defence? How might peace be preserved or conflict resolved? From the French rout at Sedan in 1870 to the relentless contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lawrence Freedman, one of the UK's foremost military thinkers, reveals how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealised notion of it as confined, brief and decisive - hence the stubborn  persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive or nuclear first strike or cyberattacks. He also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred. Freedman's account of a century and a half of warfare and the (often misconceived) thinking that precedes war is a challenge to hawks and doves alike, and puts current strategic thinking into a bracing historical perspective

The Future of War

A History

Rachel Botsman

'Brilliantly describes how the established trust framework is undergoing a radical transformation as digital technologies take root in every facet of our lives' Marc Benioff, Chairman &amp; CEO, Salesforce 
 
'Fascinating and well researched...every reader will gain new insights' Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive, Nesta 
 
'A rare book that will cause you to think deeply about your business, your relationships and your life' Don Tapscott, bestselling author of Wikinomics and Blockchain Revolution 
 
 
TRUST IS FUNDAMENTAL TO EVERY ACTION, EVERY RELATIONSHIP, EVERY TRANSACTION 
 
AND IT MATTERS NOW MORE THAN EVER BEFORE... 
 
From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust--far from it. 
 
In this ground-breaking book world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. We might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people travel in cars with total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. We still trust: but not the way we used to. 
 
If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a definitive guide of this uncharted landscape - and explores what's next for humanity.

Who Can You Trust?

How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart

Suzannah Lipscomb

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Witchcraft is an accessible, authoritative and captivating introduction to the magical myths that have coloured the popular imagination for centuries. 
 
Written by celebrated historian and broadcaster Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, Witchcraft explores the moment in history when witches were perceived to be especially dangerous: the famous witch hunts between 1450 and 1750. 
 
You'll learn how the figure of the witch remains culturally relevant. In horror films, TV shows and pop culture, the figure of the witch retains her potency to attract and repel. 
 
Witch hunts in one form or another have persisted for thousands of years. Understanding why people were and continue to be persecuted for witchcraft matters now, more than ever.

Witchcraft: A Ladybird Expert Book

Mark Forsyth

Almost every culture on earth has drink, and where there's drink there's drunkenness. But in every age and in every place drunkenness is a little bit different. It can be religious, it can be sexual, it can be the duty of kings or the relief of peasants. It can be an offering to the ancestors, or a way of marking the end of a day's work. It can send you to sleep, or send you into battle. 
 
 A Short History of Drunkenness traces humankind's love affair with booze from our primate ancestors through to Prohibition, answering every possible question along the way: What did people drink? How much? Who did the drinking? Of the many possible reasons, why? On the way, learn about the Neolithic Shamans, who drank to communicate with the spirit world (no pun intended), marvel at how Greeks got giddy and Romans got rat-arsed, and find out how bars in the Wild West were never quite like in the movies. 
 
 This is a history of the world at its inebriated best.

A Short History of Drunkenness

Philip Pullman

Penguin Presents Daemon Voices. Written and read by Philip Pullman with an introduction by Simon Mason. 
 
In over 30 essays, written over 20 years and recorded by the author himself in his home city of Oxford, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on the art of story-telling. Warm, engaging and often amusing collection of writing which offers thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin and composition of Philip's own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to Philip. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts: a single, sustained engagement with story and story-telling.

Daemon Voices

Jonathan Safran Foer

'I simply wanted to know - for myself and my family - what meat is. Where does it come from? How is it produced? What are the economic, social and environmental effects? Are there animals that it is straightforwardly right to eat? Are there situations in which not eating animals is wrong? If this began as a personal quest, it didn't stay that way for long . . . ' 
 
Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals is the most original book on the subject of food written this century. It will change the way you think, and change the way you eat. 
 
For good.

Eating Animals

Chidera Eggerue

Manjit Thapp

Scribble yourself feminist with this AMAZING journal, designed to empower, inspire and entertain. 
 
To include: 
*A series of colouring pages, featuring inspirational quotes and feminist heroes from around the world. 
*Witty comebacks for everyday sexism! 
*Design your feminist wardrobe: t-shirts, badges, sashes, power panties for you to fill in your feminist slogans and doodle on. 
*Make your own 'Galentine's Day' card 
*Rewrite your favourite FEMI-CLASSICS: books and films from a feminist perspective 
*Create your own FEMINIST HALL OF FAME: draw your feminist heroes 
 . . . AND MUCH MORE!

Scribble Yourself Feminist

David Cannadine

To live in Victorian Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent in the human experience. There were revolutions in transport, communication, work; cities grew vast; scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognizable. This was an exhilarating time, but also a horrifying one. 
 
David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of Victorian Britain. This was a country which saw itself at the summit of the world. And yet it was a society also convulsed by doubt, fear and introspection. Repeatedly, politicians and writers felt themselves to be staring into the abyss and what is seen as an era of irritating self-belief was in practice obsessed by a sense of its own fragility, whether as a great power or as a moral force. Victorious Century catches the relish and humour of the age, but also the dilemmas of a kind with which we remain familiar today.

Victorious Century

The United Kingdom, 1800–1906

Chris Renwick

Today, everybody seems to agree that something has gone badly wrong with the British welfare state. This major new history tells the story of one the greatest transformations in British intellectual, social and political life: the creation of the welfare state, from the Victorian workhouse, where you had to be destitute to receive help, to a moment just after the Second World War, when government embraced responsibilities for people's housing, education, health and family life, a commitment that was unimaginable just a century earlier. Though these changes were driven by developments in different and sometimes unexpected currents in British life, they were linked by one over-arching idea: that through rational and purposeful intervention, government can remake society. It was an idea that, during the early twentieth century, came to inspire people across the political spectrum. 
 
In exploring this extraordinary transformation, Bread for All explores and challenges our assumptions about what the welfare state was originally for, and the kinds of people who were involved in creating it. In doing so, it asks what the idea continues to mean for us today.

Bread for All

The Origins of the Welfare State

Sigrid Rausing

For years Sigrid Rausing watched helplessly as her brother Hans and his wife Eva succumbed to drug addiction. It afflicted a terrible toll on their family, culminating in Eva's tragic early death. As this death led to inquest and media circus, the world looked on in horror, but few understood the suffering endured by the Rausing family. 
 
 In Mayhem, Sigrid explores the collateral damage addiction wreaks on loved ones. Telling her family's story, she examines painful and rarely discussed questions. What is it like to live with addiction in the family? How can you help without hurting the one you love? And what does it mean to survive another's addiction?

Mayhem

A Memoir

Jacqueline Yallop

On her fortieth birthday Jacqueline Yallop built a pig sty in rural south-west France. She and her husband Ed had decided to turn their Aveyron cottage and garden into a small holding. They bought two pigs - Big and Little - to rear and slaughter. The locals were full of advice, and with just a small amount of plastic poles and metallic string and some new Wellington boots, they were off. 
 
They will cultivate the land. They will raise, then kill and eat their pigs. Or so they keep telling themselves. Because the reality is so very different from the romantic dreams of two stubborn English writers . . .

Big Pig, Little Pig

A Year on a Smallholding in South-West France

Henry Eliot

Matt Lloyd-Rose

Curiocity is a new A to Z exploring every aspect of life in London. Its 26 chapters weave together the city's stories with striking reflections, practical ideas and itineraries, and contributions from London voices such as Monica Ali and Iain Sinclair. The book is illustrated by artists including Chris Riddell, Isabel Greenberg and Steven Appleby, and at the heart of each chapter is an original hand-drawn map, charting everything from the city's international communities, underground spaces and children's dreams, to its unrealised plans, erogenous zones and dystopian futures. Curiocity is a unique guide that will transform the way you see and experience London.

Curiocity

An Alternative A-Z of London

Anne Applebaum

Winner of the Duff Cooper and Lionel Gelber prizes 
 
In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. 
 
The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. 
 
The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.

Red Famine

Stalin's War on Ukraine

Don Tapscott

Alex Tapscott

PAPERBACK EDITION UPDATED WITH A FOREWORD AND NEW CHAPTER ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS WITH CRYPTOCURRENCY. 
 
Blockchain is the ingeniously simple technology behind Bitcoin. But it is much more than that. It is a public ledger to which everyone has access, but which no single person controls. It enables companies and individuals to collaborate with an unprecedented degree of trust and transparency. It is cryptographically secure, but fundamentally open. And soon it will be everywhere. 
 
In Blockchain Revolution, Don and Alex Tapscott reveal how this game-changing technology will shape the future of the world economy, dramatically improving everything from healthcare records to online voting, and from insurance claims to royalty payments. Brilliantly researched and highly accessible, this is the essential text on the next major paradigm shift. Read it, or be left behind.

Blockchain Revolution

How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World

Noam Chomsky

David Barsamian

What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? How are the discontents kindled today likely to blaze and explode tomorrow? 
 
From escalating climate change to the devastation in Syria, pandemic state surveillance to looming nuclear war, Noam Chomsky takes stock of the world today. Over the course of ten conversations with long-time collaborator David Barsamian, spanning 2013-2016, Chomsky argues in favour of radical changes to a system that cannot possibly cope with what awaits tomorrow. 
 
Interwoven with personal reflections spanning from childhood to his eighth decade of life, Global Discontents also marks out Chomsky's own intellectual journey, mapping his progress to revolutionary ideas and global prominence.

Global Discontents

Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy

Maria Alyokhina

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 
 
'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 
 
'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 
 
'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic 
 
People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. 
 
That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. 
 
When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. 
 
It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. 
 
Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. 
 
This is the story about how I made a choice.

Riot Days

Keith Lowe

How does the experience and memory of the Second World War - one of the most catastrophic events in human history - affect our lives today? 
 
 The years after 1945 were a time of both terror and wonder, whose impact still dominates our lives. Out of the ashes of war came the superpowers and nations of the modern world. From the new technologies delivered by scientists came the possibility of nuclear war. Politicians fantasized about overhauled societies, with some arguing for global government, others for independence, leading to the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today. 
 
 As well as analyzing the major changes and the myths that emerged, The Fear and the Freedom uses individual stories to examine the philosophical and psychological impact of the war, by showing how leaders and ordinary people coped with the post-war world and turned one of the greatest traumas in history into an opportunity for change. This is the definitive exploration of the aftermath of WWII - and the impact it still has.

The Fear and the Freedom

Why the Second World War Still Matters

How the Second World War Changed Us

Niall Ferguson

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
'Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson has provided it' Eric Schmidt 
 
Most history is about the people at the top of the towers of power. But what if the real action is in the social networks down below, in the town squares? Niall Ferguson, the international bestselling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, brilliantly recasts past and present as an unending contest between hierarchies and networks. 
 
'Provocative, snappy, a rare book ... fasten your seatbelts' Peter Frankopan, Daily Telegraph 
 
'Immensely stimulating, absorbing, illuminating ... sends ideas blazing all over the place ... one of the best popular historians of our time' David Goodhart, Prospect 
 
'Powerful, fast-paced ... a pull-yourself-together warning to the present by way of arresting historical precedent' Andrew Anthony, Guardian 
 
'Captivating and compelling' Jonathan A. Knee, The New York Times

The Square and the Tower

Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power

Charles Spence

Why do we consume 35% more food when eating with one more person, and 75% more when with three? Why are 27% of drinks bought on aeroplanes tomato juice? How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home? 
 
These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which the pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways, and reveals the importance of all the 'off-the-plate' elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more. Whether dining alone or at a dinner party, on a plane or in front of the TV, he reveals how to understand what we're tasting and influence what others experience. Mealtimes will genuinely never be the same again.

Gastrophysics

The New Science of Eating

Slavoj Žižek

In these troubled times, even the most pessimistic diagnosis of our future ends with an uplifting hint that things might not be as bad as all that, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 
 
Yet, argues Slavoj Žižek, it is only when we have admitted to ourselves that our situation is completely hopeless - that the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact the headlight of a train approaching us from the opposite direction - that fundamental change can be brought about. 
 
Surveying the various challenges in the world today, from mass migration and geopolitical tensions to terrorism, the explosion of rightist populism and the emergence of new radical politics - all of which, in their own way, express the impasses of global capitalism - Žižek explores whether there still remains the possibility for genuine change. Today, he proposes, the only true question is, or should be, this: do we endorse the predominant acceptance of capitalism as a fact of human nature, or does today's capitalism contain strong enough antagonisms to prevent its infinite reproduction? Can we, he asks, move beyond the failure of socialism, and beyond the current wave of populist rage, and initiate radical change before the train hits?

The Courage of Hopelessness

Chronicles of a Year of Acting Dangerously

Stuart Hall

Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself caught between two worlds: the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, and working-class Jamaica, grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things were beginning to change. When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall gained unexpected access to this other Jamaica. Also making the journey to Britain were young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean. Now, Hall faced a new struggle: that of building a life in a post-war England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity.

Familiar Stranger

A Life between Two Islands

Clair Wills

The battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers. From all over the world thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country. Drawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes.

Lovers and Strangers

An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain

Geoffrey Wansell

Pure Evil takes a close look at the country's deadliest criminals, from those who horrified the nation to those less famous but equally brutal, such as Jeremy Bamber, Joanna Dennehy and Ian Huntley. 
 
In this shocking, chilling and powerful book Geoffrey Wansell exposes killers' motivations and remorse, but also seeks out an answer to the vital question: should life always mean life? 
 
Having observed lifers over more than twenty years, often up close and very personal, Geoffrey Wansell's Pure Evil reveals more of the criminal mind than has ever before been seen.

Pure Evil

Inside the Minds and Crimes of Britain’s Worst Criminals

Alexander Betts

Paul Collier

Europe is facing its greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War, yet the institutions responding to it remain virtually unchanged from those created in the post-war era. Going beyond the scenes of desperation which have become all-too-familiar in the past few years, Alexander Betts and Paul Collier show that this crisis offers an opportunity for reform if international policy-makers focus on delivering humane, effective and sustainable outcomes - both for Europe and for countries that border conflict zones. Refugees need more than simply food, tents and blankets, and research demonstrates that they can offer tangible economic benefits to their adopted countries if given the right to work and education. Refuge sets out an alternative vision that can empower refugees to help themselves, contribute to their host societies, and even rebuild their countries of origin.

Refuge

Transforming a Broken Refugee System

John Bradshaw

The bestselling author of Dog Sense and Cat Sense explains why living with animals has always been a fundamental aspect of being human 
 
In this highly original and hugely enjoyable work, John Bradshaw examines modern humans' often contradictory relationship with the animal world. Why, despite the apparent irrationality of keeping pets, do half of today's American households, and almost that figure in the UK, have at least one pet (triple the rate of the 1970s)? Then again, why do we care for some animals in our homes, and designate others only as a source of food? 
 
Through these and many other questions, one of the world's foremost anthrozoology experts shows that our relationship with animals is nothing less than an intrinsic part of human nature. An affinity for animals drove our evolution and now, without animals around us, we risk losing an essential part of ourselves.

The Animals Among Us

The New Science of Anthrozoology

Deborah Levy

Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory and shape it to her need. It is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers. 
 
This first volume of the trilogy focuses on the writer as a young woman - the confusion and turbulence of youth, and the uncertainties of carving an identity as a writer. The second volume, The Cost of Living, speaks to the challenges of middle age as a writer and a woman - motherhood, separation, bereavement.

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