Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Michael Moss

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a "gripping" (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health. 
 
"The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco-which is why Michael Moss's new book is so important."-Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit 
 
Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions and to find the true peril in our food. 
 
Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover the shocking ways that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products and ways to exploit our evolutionary preference for fast, ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry -- including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg's -- has not only tried to hide the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits. 
 
A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.

Hooked

How We Became Addicted to Processed Food

How Processed Food Became Addictive

Tom Petch

'Awesome!' ANDY McNAB | 'You must read this book' Colonel TIM COLLINS OBE | 'Extraordinary' Sir RANULPH FIENNES 
 
Forget what you thought you knew. Discover the REAL story of how the SAS was created. 
 
From ex-SAS Commander Tom Petch, this is the never-before-told story of how the world's preeminent Special Forces came into existence. Flashing between dramatic accounts from the frontlines and power negotiations in Westminster, it's an adventure that reaches from the trenches of the Western Front to piracy in the deserts of North Africa, to the final assault on Germany. 
 
Drawing on hidden archives and told with captivating drama, it focuses on two characters largely overlooked in the traditional narrative - Dudley Clarke the mastermind, and William Fraser the frontline operator. Without them there would never have been an SAS. 
 
'Gripping and fascinating... Packed with unforgettable characters and thrilling adventures' WILL IREDALE, bestselling author of The Pathfinders

Speed, Aggression, Surprise

The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service

The Untold Secret Origins of the SAS

Kai-Fu Lee

Chen Qiufan

A WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 
*Now with a new foreword on ChatGPT* 
_____________ 
 
How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years? 
 
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. However, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order and bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it. 
 
In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our AI world in 2041 in ten gripping short stories. 
 
Gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future and reminds us that we are the authors of our own destiny.

AI 2041

Ten Visions for Our Future

Terry Stiastny

The true story of the the misfits and mavericks who waged psychological warfare against the Nazis 
 
September, 1939. While Britain hovered on the brink of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation. Their goals: to weaken enemy morale, sow confusion and encourage resistance. In the ‘hush-hush’ village of Aspley Guise near Woburn Abbey (8 miles from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), they set to work. 
 
The once top-secret wartime efforts of the Political Warfare Executive were remarkable in their variety and inventiveness – from pornographic leaflet drops to rumour campaigns, underground publications and fake French and German radio shows. But to break Nazi morale, these men and women found themselves skirting the edges of their own morality. What do you lose when you deploy lies – even brilliant, believable lies – to achieve your ends?

Believable Lies

The Misfits Who Fought Churchill's Secret Propaganda War

Jamie Bartlett

'An astonishing read, plunging you into a toxic world of Insta-wealth, betrayal and ruthless ambition... A con that made Theranos look like small fry' - The Telegraph 
 
'The largest financial scam ever' - Fortune 
 
'The story of OneCoin stands out even among the outlandish capers of the cryptocurrency era' - Wall Street Journal 
____________________________________________________ 
 
In 2014, a brilliant Oxford graduate called Dr Ruja Ignatova vowed to revolutionise money. The self-styled Cryptoqueen launched OneCoin, a bold new cryptocurrency that she promised would earn its investors untold fortunes and change the world. But by the end of 2017, with billions of dollars invested from every country on earth, Ruja Ignatova had disappeared - along with the money. 
 
The Missing Cryptoqueen tells the outrageous true story of the world's most wanted woman and the author's five-year hunt for the truth. It is a modern tale of greed, rivalry and herd madness that reveals how OneCoin became the biggest scam of the 21st Century.

The Missing Cryptoqueen

The Crypto Con That Fooled the World

Jake Bernstein

Now a Major Motion Picture The Laundromat from Director Steven Soderbergh, starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, and Antonio Banderas. 
 
The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein takes us inside the world revealed by the Panama Papers, illicit money, political corruption, and fraud on a global scale. 
 
A hidden circulatory system flows beneath the surface of global finance, carrying trillions of dollars from drug trafficking, tax evasion, bribery, and other illegal enterprises. This network masks the identities of the individuals who benefit, aided by bankers, lawyers, and auditors who get paid to look the other way. 
 
In The Laundromat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jake Bernstein explores this shadow economy and how it evolved, drawing on millions of leaked documents from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca – a trove now known as the Panama Papers – as well as other journalistic and government investigations. Bernstein shows how shell companies operate, how they allow the superwealthy and celebrities to escape taxes, and how they provide cover for illicit activities on a massive scale by crime bosses and corrupt politicians across the globe. 
 
The Laundromat offers a disturbing and sobering view of how the world really works and raises critical questions about financial and legal institutions we may once have trusted.

The Laundromat

Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

Naoíse Mac Sweeney

*A BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week* 
'A fantastic achievement' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 
'Bright, expansive, and iconoclastic, this deliciously witty book has the potential to upset the applecart of "Western Civilisation" itself... Magnificent' Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb 
_________________ 
 
A radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascinating lives. 
 
We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread stretching from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern Western world. But what if this is wrong? 
 
Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical figures - including a formidable Roman matriarch, an unconventional Islamic scholar, an enslaved African American poetess and a British prime minister with Homeric aspirations – archaeologist and historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney charts how the idea of the West was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today. 
 
The result is a bold and empowering new story of the people and ideas who made us who we are today.

The West

A New History of an Old Idea

Joshua Wong

Jason Y. Ng

'Joshua Wong is a brave and inspiring young leader.' - GRETA THUNBERG 
 
 Imprisoned on 2 December 2020 for the third time, read Joshua Wong's urgent and powerful story - the Hong Konger fighting for democracy. 
 
INTRODUCTION BY AI WEIWEI, FOREWORD BY CHRIS PATTEN 
 
 Unfree Speech is Joshua's urgent call for us to defend our democratic values, whoever we are. 
 
It chronicles Joshua's path to activism, collects the letters he wrote as a political prisoner, and closes with a powerful and urgent manifesto for us to defend our democracies at time of global flux and change. 
 
Joshua Wong made history when he was 14. While the adults stayed silent, Joshua staged the first ever student protest in Hong Kong to oppose National Education - and won. 
 
 Since then, he led the Umbrella Movement, founded a political party, and rallied the international community around the Hong Kong protests, which saw 2 million people take to the streets. Now, he is in jail again. His actions have sparked worldwide attention and earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, as he continues to fight for what he believes in. 
 
 His message is clear: when we stay silent, no one is safe. When we free our speech, our voice becomes one. 
 
 'If we want freedom, we need to learn from Hong Kong. With values, tactics, and courage, Joshua Wong shows us the way.' - Timothy Snyder, bestselling author of On Tyranny 
 
'A guide to mobilising for democracy and representation in and far beyond Hong Kong.' - Julia Lovell, award-winning author of Maoism 
 
- The Times Book of the Week - 
 - Observer Book of the Week - 
 - Named by the Financial Times as one of the 50 people who shaped the decade -

Unfree Speech

The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now

Will Iredale

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER! 
 
Military History Matters Book of the Year Bronze Award Winner 
'Compelling... sensitive, colourful and moving' -- Saul David, Telegraph 
'Fascinating and utterly gripping' -- James Holland 
'Absorbing' -- Daily Mail Book of the Week 
 
The incredible story of the crack team of men and women who transformed RAF Bomber Command and helped the Allies deliver decisive victory over Nazi Germany. 
 
 The Pathfinders were ordinary men and women from a range of nations who revolutionised the efficiency of the Allies' air campaign over mainland Europe. They elevated Bomber Command - initially the only part of the Allied war effort capable of attacking the heart of Nazi Germany - from an impotent force on the cusp of disintegration in 1942 to one capable of razing whole German cities to the ground in a single night, striking with devastating accuracy, inspiring fear and loathing in Hitler's senior command. 
 
 With exclusive interviews with remaining survivors, personal diaries, previously classified records and never-before seen photographs, The Pathfinders brings to life the characters of the airmen and women - many barely out of their teens - who took to the skies in legendary British aircraft such as the Lancaster and the Mosquito, facing almost unimaginable levels of violence from enemy fighter planes to strike at the heart of the Nazi war machine.

The Pathfinders

The Elite RAF Force that Turned the Tide of WWII

John Heilemann

Mark Halperin

‘What am I supposed to do when he starts spewing his bullshit?’ Barack Obama preparing for his first debate with Mitt Romney 
 
 
In their runaway bestseller Game Change / Race of a Lifetime, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen – facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful finance figures and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrestle back control of the White House – and the country. 
 
So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of Republican contenders – ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish – as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination, while Obama is seen storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal, and gradually transforming a tense détente with Bill Clinton into political gold. 
 
Double Down takes you into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign in a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.

Double Down

Michael Meyer

‘Makes the case for Annie Besant as a truly eminent Victorian, as brilliant and fearless as she was beautiful’ The Times 
_________ 
 
London, 1877. A petite young woman stands before an all-male jury, about to risk everything. She takes a breath, and opens her defence. 
 
Annie Besant and her confidant Charles Bradlaugh are on trial for the crime of publishing a birth control pamphlet. Remarkably, Annie is defending herself against obscenity charges 45 years before women can practice law in England. At a time when women were expected to be obedient, Annie’s fearless voice was a sensation and spotlighted issues of sex, censorship and morality. 
 
A Dirty, Filthy Book tells the gripping story of a little-known pioneer who refused to accept the role that the establishment assigned her, and chose instead to resist.

A Dirty, Filthy Book

Annie Besant’s Fight for Reproductive Rights

Sex, Scandal, and One Woman’s Fight in the Victorian Trial of the Century

Al Gore

In The Future, former US Vice President Al Gore, explores the political, social and economic forces that are shaping what America and the world will become in ensuing decades. From demographics to democracy, Gore explores what he calls the 'Drivers of Global Change', framing the international conversation about the future in fresh and provocative ways. 
 
With this new work, Gore hopes to help start a conversation about the large-scale drivers of change that are defining and shaping our future - from the rapid development and integration of radically new technologies to the planet-changing impact of the climate crisis, to poverty, globalization, and the democratisation of knowledge accompanying the emergence of a ubiquitous internet linking ever more intelligent devices.

The Future

Adam Grant

WINNER of the Chartered Management Institute's (CMI's) Mangement Book of the Year Awards 2017, JP Morgan's Best Summer Read 2018, and a #1 New York Times Bestseller! 
 
‘Extraordinary’ JJ Abrams 
‘Fascinating’ Arianna Huffington 
‘Inspire creativity and change’ Richard Branson 
‘One of my favourite thinkers’ Malcolm Gladwell 
‘Masterful’ Peter Thiel 
‘One of the great social scientists of our time’ Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet 
‘Fresh research, counter-intuitive insights, lively writing, practical calls to action’ The Financial Times 
 
 
The New York Times bestselling author examines how people can drive creative, moral, and organisational progress—and how leaders can encourage originality in their organisations. 
 
How can we originate new ideas, policies and practices without risking it all? Adam Grant shows how to improve the world by championing novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battling conformity, and bucking outdated traditions. 
 
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt. Parents will learn how to nurture originality in children, and leaders will discover how to fight groupthink to build cultures that welcome dissent. 
 
Told through dazzling case studies of people going against the grain, you’ll encounter an entrepreneur who pitches the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who challenged secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees who don’t criticize him, and the TV executive who saved Seinfeld from the cutting room floor. Originals will give you groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and how to change the world.

Originals

How Non-conformists Change the World

Robert Gates

'As I look back, there is a parallel theme to my years at war: love. By that I mean the love - there is no other word for it - I came to feel for the troops, and the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility I developed for them. So much so that it would shape some of my most significant decisions and positions.' 
 
When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he’d long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&amp;M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty. 
 
Robert Gates was US Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011 serving under both George Bush and Barack Obama. Before that he was Director of the CIA. This is his candid and revealing account of US military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Gates oversaw the controversial ‘surge’ of US troops in both countries. As well as this, he also provides commentary on the situations in Syria, Iran, Israel and North Korea and details behind the scenes meetings with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Obama and other major political figures. 
 
Mr. Gates is the only Secretary of Defense to serve under both a Republican and a Democratic president, and in Duty he provides an unsparing, full accounting of his tenure.

Duty

Ulrik Skotte

Discover the page-turning true story of the most iconic Cold War spy killing of all time, perfect for fans of Ben Macintyre, Henry Hemming and the novels of John Le Carre. 
 
London, 1978: exiled Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is murdered on Waterloo Bridge with what appears to be a poison-tipped umbrella. It would become the most infamous unsolved killing of the Cold War. 
 
Many years later, young journalist Ulrik Skotte is approached with explosive new information about a man alleged to be responsible for Markov’s death – a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service. This meeting launched Skotte into a hunt for the killer lasting more than a quarter of a century, bringing him face to face with eccentric conspiracy theorists, a washed-up former dictator, ageing Danish spooks – and, ultimately, with Agent Piccadilly himself. 
 
Drawing on an incredible cache of original documents, interviews and archive material, The Umbrella Murder provides jaw-dropping answers to questions that have persisted for nearly five decades: who killed Georgi Markov? And who has been protecting the assassin ever since?

The Umbrella Murder

The Hunt for the Notorious Cold War Killer

The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer

Jack Fairweather

‘FIVE STARS … Magnificent’ Telegraph 
‘Compulsively readable’ Financial Times 
‘Gripping and timely’ The Times 
'Crackingly told' Philippe Sands 
'A kind of masterclass' Sebastian Junger 
 
 
THE NEW BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING, COSTA PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE VOLUNTEER 
 
The true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after WWII to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past. 
 
At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. 
 
In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay German Jew who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the dark, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler’s former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer lands on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he won’t be intimidated. His journey takes him deep into the rotten heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice will set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies determined to silence him. 
 
In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man’s courage in forcing his people––and the world––to face the truth.

The Prosecutor

One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice

James O'Brien

***THE RUNAWAY BESTSELLER, WITH NEW MATERIAL FOR THE PAPERBACK*** 
 
THE REVEALING, DEFINING ACCOUNT OF THE DARK NETWORK THAT BROKE OUR COUNTRY. 
 
Something has gone really wrong in Britain. 
 
Our economy has tanked, our freedoms are shrinking, and social divisions are growing. Our politicians seem most interested in their own careers, and much of the media only make things worse. We are living in a country almost unrecognisable from the one that existed a decade ago. But whose fault is it really? Who broke Britain and how did they do it? 
 
Bold and incisive as ever, James O'Brien reveals the shady network of influence that has created a broken Britain of strikes, shortages and scandals. He maps the web connecting dark think tanks to Downing Street, the journalists involved in selling it to the public and the media bosses pushing their own agendas. Over ten chapters, each focusing on a particular person complicit in the downfall, James O'Brien reveals how a select few have conspired - sometimes by incompetence, sometimes by design - to bring Britain to its knees.

How They Broke Britain

Mark Landler

A Financial Times book of the year 
 
'a first draft of the history of the Obama years' Financial Times 
‘full of compelling narrative and telling anecdotes’ Sunday Times 
'well-researched and engaging' The Financial Times 
‘outstanding’ Washington Post 
‘one of the best reporters working in Washington today’ Jane Mayer 
‘incredibly important… timely and deeply revelatory’ Kai Bird 
‘vivid, page-turning’ Michael Beschloss 
 
As Donald Trump becomes the new American president, we are on the point of a major debate about America’s role in the world. 
 
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were rivals who became partners for a time, trailblazers who shared a common sense of their historic destiny but different instincts about how to project power. While Obama and Hillary tussled over foreign policy questions, their relationship has created the context that Trump will inherit. 
 
Mark Landler, White House correspondent for the New York Times, offers a deeply reported, first-hand account of the Obama administration and gives us a different way to think about the relationship between Obama and Hillary that shaped the US over the last eight years. With all the sweep of a grand history, enlivened by an insider’s access, dozens of interviews, and breaking news, ALTER EGOS is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand these two supremely ambitious figures, and the storm-tossed world of modern politics.

Alter Egos

Obama’s Legacy, Hillary’s Promise and the Struggle over American Power

Johannes Krause

Thomas Trappe

Humanity has often found itself on the precipice. We've survived and thrived because we've never stopped moving... 
 
In this eye-opening book, Johannes Krause, Chair of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Humanity, offers a new way of understanding our past, present and future. 
 
Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, Krause charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival, culminating in the triumph of Homo Sapiens as we swept through Europe and beyond in successive waves of migration - developing everything from language, the patriarchy, disease, art and a love of pets as we did so. 
 
We also meet our ancestors, from those many of us have heard of - such as Homo Erectus and the Neanderthals - to the wildly unfamiliar but no less real: the recently discovered Denisovans, who ranged across Asia and, like humans, interbred with Neanderthals; the Aurignacians, skilled artists who, 40,000 years ago, brought about an extraordinary transformation in what our species could invent and create; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt did; and the Gravettians, big game hunters who were Europe's most successful early settlers until they perished in the face of the toughest opponent humanity had ever faced: the ice age. 
 
As well as being a radical new telling of our shared story, this book is a reminder that the global problems that keep us awake at night - climate catastrophe; the sudden emergence of deadly epidemics; refugee crises; ethnic conflict; over-population - are all things we've faced, and overcome, before.

A Short History of Humanity

How Migration Made Us Who We Are

Eliza Filby

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

Inheritocracy

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

Monty Halls

"A thrilling story of bravery and resilience, superbly told” - DAN SNOW 
 
"The epic story of how ordinary men were trained and transformed to set Europe ablaze…” - BEAR GRYLLS 
 
"Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the true foundations of elite military operations.” - ALDO KANE 
 
In the summer of 1940, Britain was under siege. Poland, Belgium, Holland, Norway and France had already fallen, and the British army had been routed on the continent, leading to the chaotic evacuation at Dunkirk.In the rubble of the Allies' crumbled defence, Inverailort House was established as a new symbol of defiance. Signed off by Churchill himself, this austere building became an academy for the brightest and best of all Allied volunteers, where they were transformed from ordinary foot soldiers into a new breed of warrior – the commando. 
 
The list of instructors, advisors, and trainees that passed through Inverailort included some of the greatest fighting men of World War II: Lord Lovat, “Mad Mike” Calvert, Freddy Spencer Chapman, Tommy Macpherson, Fairbairn and Sykes, and both David and Bill Stirling, who would go on to form the SAS.Churchill’s Killing House tells, for the first time, the remarkable human story of those who created a new type of soldier, forged new techniques in battle, and ultimately led the way to Allied victory over fascism.

Churchill's Killing House

The Origins of World War II's Legendary Commando Fighting Force

John Duncan

The big questions of our lives bring fierce debates. Right and wrong. Freedom and responsibility. Women and men. Democracy and justice. Ambition and fulfilment. Where do answers lie in a mind that produces the many sides and needs of humanity? 
 
In The Animal and the Thinker, pioneering neuroscientist John Duncan lays out the principles, strengths and weaknesses of two sides of ourselves. One side follows the principles of instinctive animal behaviour. It is elaborate, sophisticated, conflicted yet essential - without it, our life would have no meaning. On the other side is our rational brain. It generates an infinite world of new ideas, but often, its need for focus generates sterile social beliefs and destructive culture wars. Our rational side is brilliant, but often, it is wrong. 
 
For thousands of years, writers, thinkers and philosophers have seen human life as a war between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Duncan shows that there is no war. To bring humanity and reality to the great, conflicted questions of our lives, we need the dance between these two essential sides of ourselves.

The Animal and the Thinker

Instinct, Reason and the Dance of Our Divided Selves

Maajid Nawaz

Born and raised in Essex, Maajid Nawaz was recruited into politicised Islam as a teenager. Abandoning his love of hip hop music, graffiti and girls, he was recruited into Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Liberation Party) where he played a leading and international role in the shaping and dissemination of an aggressive anti-West narrative. While studying for his Arabic and law degree, he travelled around the UK and to Denmark and Pakistan, setting up new cells. 
 
Arriving in Egypt the day before 9/11 his views soon led to his arrest, imprisonment and mental torture, before being thrown into solitary confinement in a Cairo jail reserved for political prisoners. There, while mixing with everyone from the assassins of Egypt's president to Liberal reformists, he underwent an intellectual transformation and on his release after four years, he publically renounced the Islamist ideology that had defined his life. This move would cost him his marriage, his family and his friends as well as his own personal security. 
 
Six years after his release, Maajid now works all over the world to counter Islamism and to promote democratic ideals through his organisation, The Quilliam Foundation, which he co-founded with former Islamist and bestselling author Ed Husain. 
 
Following in the wake of the extraordinary democratic change in the Arab world, that few would have foretold, Radical is Maajid's intensely personal account of life inside and out of Islamic extremism. It also highlights one man's quest to inspire change and challenge extremism in all its forms. 
 
This is a hard-hitting memoir of one man's journey into and out of Islamic extremism.

Radical

My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening

Emma Holten

*AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* 
WINNER OF THE POLITIKEN LITERATURE PRIZE 2024 
 
'Brilliantly rewrites the history of economic thought to place 'her story' at its heart. A must-read' - Kate Raworth, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS 
 
How can we create a better future – one that truly prioritises health and happiness? 
 
For too long, economic thinkers have left out acts of care - written off as 'women's work' for centuries - from their calculations. The result? Terrible real-world consequences today: crumbling public services, struggling schools and care systems on the brink of collapse. 
 
In Deficit, prominent Danish feminist Emma Holten reveals how and why this happened, and argues that the things that matter – doing homework with your child, checking in on loved ones, talking to a 
colleague who doesn’t seem well – might seem inconsequential, but are in fact the building blocks of the economy. Urgent and incisive, this is a call to rethink the economic value of care. 
 
'One of the most important feminist voices of the 21st century' - Sofie Hagen

Deficit

The Hidden Value of Care

Beeban Kidron

In 2013, former Hollywood director Beeban Kidron made a ground-breaking documentary about the lives of children online. She uncovered a shocking story of exploitation and greed that changed everything – and ignited her relentless crusade to hold the tech giants accountable. 
 
In Users, Kidron reveals everything she’s learned from her life as a campaigner and legislator, taking you inside the halls of Parliament and the UN to the White House and Silicon Valley. Through her encounters with lobbyists and tech bros, you’ll witness the ruthless tactics these powerful men use to lie, cheat and steal their way to unchecked power, all while avoiding the rules and regulations meant to protect us. 
 
You’ll see how the issue is not technology itself, but its use and abuse. How tools built to connect people are redeployed to divide, punish, distract, and control; while our tech overlords come to own everything – but continue to be held responsible for nothing. Now that we know their game, it's time to fight back. This book will show you where it all went wrong, who's really to blame, and what we can do about it.

Users

How Big Tech F*cked Us Up and What to Do About It

Roman Krznaric

'This is the book our children's children will thank us for reading' – The Edge, U2 
 
How can we be good ancestors? 
 
From the first seeds sown thousands of years ago, to the construction of the cities we still inhabit, to the scientific discoveries that have ensured our survival, we are the inheritors of countless gifts from the past. Today, in an age driven by the tyranny of the now, with 24/7 news, the latest tweet, and the buy-now button commanding our attention, we rarely stop to consider how our actions will affect future generations. With such frenetic short-termism at the root of contemporary crises, the call for long-term thinking grows every day – but what is it, has it ever worked, and can we even do it? 
 
In The Good Ancestor, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric argues that there is still hope. From the pyramids to the NHS, humankind has always had the innate ability to plan for posterity and take action that will resonate for decades, centuries, even millennia to come. If we want to become good ancestors, now is the time to recover and enrich this imaginative skill. 
 
The Good Ancestor reveals six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long-term, exploring how we can reawaken oft-neglected but uniquely human talents like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Drawing on radical solutions from around the world, Krznaric celebrates the innovators who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.

The Good Ancestor

How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World

Yancey Strickler

Break free from a wealth-obsessed world 
 
Western society is trapped by three assumptions: 1) the point of life is to maximize your self-interest and wealth, 2) we're individuals trapped in an adversarial world, and 3) that this path is inevitable. 
 
These ideas separate us, keep us powerless, and limit our imagination for the future. We see them as the truth, but they are just a point of view that previous generations accepted as inevitable. It's time we replace them with something new. 
 
In this bold, powerful book, Yancey Strickler – co-founder of Kickstarter – lays out an inspiring vision for a new world we have the power to create and how we can change course. While the pursuit of wealth has produced innovation and prosperity, it's also produced dire consequences: environmental collapse, corruption, exploitation, and unhappiness around the world. We don't have to get rid of money entirely, though: we can co-opt the tools we have used toward better measurement of what matters, technology, and specificity of goals--and refocus them to build a more generous, fair, and future-prepared society. By re-calibrating our definition of value, a world of scarcity can blossom into a world of abundance. 
 
Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete examples and bursting with creativity, This Could Be Our Future brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.

This Could Be Our Future

A Manifesto for a More Generous World

Taylor Lorenz

'A terrific history of the online creator economy.' The New York Times 
 
'This book is about a revolution. It has radically upended how we've understood and interacted with our world. It has demolished traditional barriers and empowered millions who were previously marginalized. It has created vast new sectors of our economy, while devastating legacy institutions. It is often dismissed by traditionalists as a vacant fad, when in fact it is the greatest and most disruptive change in modern capitalism.' 
 
Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet-revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off. 
 
For over a decade, Taylor Lorenz has been the authority on internet culture, documenting its far-reaching effects on all corners of our lives. Her reporting is serious yet entertaining and illuminates deep truths about ourselves and the lives we create online. In her debut book, Extremely Online, she reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. 
 
By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms' power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It's the real social history of the internet. 
 
Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations created a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century. 
 
Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.

Extremely Online

The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet

Grigory Rodchenkov

***Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, 2020 - the inside story of the Russian doping programme by the man behind it all*** 
 
One of the Financial Times's 'Fifty people who shaped the decade' 
 
 'The biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen' 
 
In 2015, Russia's Anti-Doping Centre was suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) following revelations of an elaborate state-sponsored doping programme at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Involving a nearly undetectable steroid delivery system known as 'Duchesse cocktail', tampering and switching of urine samples, and a complex state-sanctioned cover-up, the programme was masterminded by Grigory Rodchenkov. 
 
The Rodchenkov Affair tells the full, unadulterated story that was first glimpsed in Bryan Fogel's award-winning documentary and still continues to captivate and shock the world. Charting the author's childhood growing up under the Iron Curtain, his first encounter with doping as a 22-year-old student athlete at Moscow State University, and his subsequent career working for the Soviet Olympic Committee, this breathtakingly candid journey reveals a rigged system of flawed individuals, brazen deceit and impossible moral choices.

The Rodchenkov Affair

How I Brought Down Russia’s Secret Doping Empire – Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2020

David Halpern

With a foreword by Richard Thaler, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics! 
 
New Updated Edition, 2019. 
 
Dr David Halpern, behavioural scientist and head of the government's Behavioural Insights Team, or Nudge Unit, invites you inside the unconventional, multi-million pound saving initiative that makes a big difference through influencing small, simple changes in our behaviour. Using the application of psychology to the challenges we face in the world today, the Nudge Unit is pushing us in the right direction. This is their story.

Showing results for: ‘Michael Symmons Roberts’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter