The measurement of time has always been essential to human civilization, from early Roman sundials to the advent of GPS. But while we have one eye on the time every day, are we aware of the power clocks have given governments, military leaders and business owners, and how they have shaped our lives and our world? In this spectacularly far-reaching…
Now in paperback featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A, the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama…
Meet the three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history; a gripping story of sisterhood and betrayal from the bestselling author of Wild Swans. They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history. Red Sister rose to be Mao's vice-chair. Little Sister became…
Meet 30 positive male role models from throughout history. From activists like Mahatma Gandhi and Frederick Douglass to creative innovators like Prince and David Hockney, these men have fought conventional stereotypes to prove that modern-day masculinity can be defined freely. Instead of a single model of how a boy can grow into a man, this book offers 30 stories of…
On 26 April 1986 the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occured in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. While the official Soviet narrative downplayed the accident's impact, Svetlana Alexievich wanted to know how people understood it. She recorded hundreds of interviews with workers at the nuclear plant, refugees and resettlers, scientists and bureaucrats, crafting their…
The internationally bestselling author portrays the great clash of East and West in his new epic: China China in the nineteenth century: a proud and ancient empire forbidden to foreigners. The West desires Chinese tea above all other things but lacks the silver to buy it. Instead, western adventurers resort to smuggling opium in exchange. The Qing Emperor will not…
'Thoroughly engrossing' Michael Pollan, The Atlantic 'Wonderful, energising' Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities in the history of the global economy and the world's most popular drug. The very word 'coffee' is one of the most widespread on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's brilliant new history tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to…
The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released…
Our choices can help alleviate the most pressing issues we face today: the climate crisis, infectious and chronic diseases, human exploitation and, of course, non-human exploitation. Undeniably, these issues can be uncomfortable to learn about but the benefits of doing so cannot be overstated. It is quite literally a matter of life and death. Through exploring the major ways that…
Now with a new preface to mark the ten year anniversary of publication, Roberto Saviano's groundbreaking and utterly compelling book is a major international bestseller which has to date sold 750,000 copies in Italy alone. Since publishing his searing expose of their criminal activities, the author has received so many death threats from the Camorra that he has been assigned…
From her days as a wild child in prohibition America to the blitz and glitz of wartime London, from the rugged shores of New Zealand to a lonely iceshelf in Antarctica, Marian Graves is driven by a need for freedom and danger. Determined to live an independent life, she resists the pull of her childhood sweetheart, and burns her way…
Hellhound on His Trail is the story of two very different men whose lives catastrophically interweaved over the course of some nine months in the late 1960s: one was a thief and con man called James Earl Ray, the other one of the greatest American figures of the twentieth century, Martin Luther King Jr. Hampton Sides follows in Ray's footsteps…
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth…
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER SAPIENS Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we’re going. War is obsolete. You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict. Famine is disappearing. You are at more risk of obesity than starvation. Death is just a technical problem. Equality is out -…
Go on a journey from bean to brew and explore the history of coffee, its production and how to become an expert barista at home. Are you a coffee lover who wants to learn how to extract the perfect brew? This coffee guide is a must-have for anyone looking for information and inspiration to experiment with different beans, methods, and…
The New York Times bestseller based on the Oscar nominated documentary film In June 1979, the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin embarked on a project to tell the story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. He died before it could be completed. In his…
Illustrator Jules Scheele teams up with Dr Laura Locker in this comic-book introduction to the political history of the Land of Opportunity. How did a political outsider like Trump win the 2016 presidential election? Why do some Americans feel so strongly about gun rights? Is there a role for more than two political parties in the system?Politics isn't something that…
Extraordinary stories about what it was like to be a Soviet child during the upheaval and horror of the Second World War, from Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich What did it mean to grow up in the Soviet Union during the Second World War? In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich started interviewing people who had experienced war as children, the generation…
'The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin's trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 'Splendid ... a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it…
A defining collection from Alistair Cooke's legendary BBC Radio broadcasts, guiding us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States 'No one else succeeded in explaining to the English-speaking world ... the idiosyncrasies of a country at once so familiar, and yet so utterly foreign' Independent When Alistair Cooke retired in February 2004 he was acclaimed as one…
On 26 April 1986 the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occured in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. While the official Soviet narrative downplayed the accident's impact, Svetlana Alexievich wanted to know how people understood it. She recorded hundreds of interviews with workers at the nuclear plant, refugees and resettlers, scientists and bureaucrats, crafting their…
'I am one of few Jewish survivors of World War Two, but one of many Jewish people to fight the Nazi regime. My story illustrates what happened to thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike. I have recorded the small details that made up our lives, the sheer luck that saved some of us and the atrocities that led to the…
When a tornado crashes through Kansas city, Dorothy and her dog Toto are whisked far away, over the rainbow, to a strange land called Oz. How will they ever get home? And what is at the end of the yellow brick road? Plucky Dorothy and Toto embark on a magical adventure to search for the Wizard of Oz and along…
A celebratory 20th anniversary edition of this landmark collection from black writers across the literary spectrum This ground-breaking anthology was first published twenty years ago, into a different literary landscape. Showcasing the work of more than 100 black British authors, this 20th anniversary edition celebrates their lasting contributions to literature and to our wider culture. Including poetry from Roger Robinson,…
'The story of the negro in America is the story of America ... it is not a very pretty story' James Baldwin's breakthrough essay collection made him the voice of his generation. Ranging over Harlem in the 1940s, movies, novels, his preacher father and his experiences of Paris, they capture the complexity of black life at the dawn of the…
Dear Reader, In February 2013 I gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great. Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater…
WINNER OF THE BAILEYS PRIZE BEST OF THE BEST Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover,…
WINNER OF THE BAILEYS PRIZE BEST OF THE BEST Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover,…
The most beautiful and powerful of Milosz's poems from across his writing life This selection brings together the most beautiful and powerful of Czeslaw Milosz's poems, spanning his writing life. In verses such as 'Café' he considers the upheaval, revolutions and two world wars that he had witnessed, while 'My Faithful Mother Tongue' reflects the loyalty he felt to his…
In Roman Londinium the city was dotted with lupanaria (‘wolf dens’ or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the…
In a tour-de-force that is both an homage to an immortal work of literature and a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age. Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman…
The second volume of an epic, beautifully illustrated graphic history of humankind, based on Yuval Noah Harari's internationally bestselling phenomenon When nomadic Homo sapiens settled to live in one place, they started working harder and harder. But why didn't they get a better life in return? In The Pillars of Civilization, Yuval Noah Harari and his companions including Prof. Saraswati…
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.…
'I've been telling everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler Clara's rebellious older sister is missing. Grief-stricken and bewildered, she yearns to uncover the truth about what happened. Liam, newly divorced and newly unemployed, moves into the house next door and within hours gets a visit from the…
The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle and the story of the twentieth century. Renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne paints vivid and dramatic scenes from start to finish, from Malcolm's clandestine meeting with the KKK in 1961 to a minute-by-minute account of…
'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire…
"WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2019 THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming' GUARDIAN Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden…
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth…
n the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker - a scientific man…
Ellen Lupton, award-winning author of Thinking with Type and How Posters Work, demonstrates how storytelling shapes great design Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital…
The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but…
Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have – and, of course, continue to do so – often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to…
Feminism is the insight that sexism exists, and the struggle against that oppression. The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing is a global anthology of feminist writers, edited and introduced with a major new essay by Hannah Dawson. Beginning in the fifteenth century with Christine de Pizan, who imagined a City of Ladies that would serve as a refuge from the…
'I've been telling everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each of her novels is just a marvel' Anne Tyler Clara's rebellious older sister is missing. Grief-stricken and bewildered, she yearns to uncover the truth about what happened. Liam, newly divorced and newly unemployed, moves into the house next door and within hours gets a visit from the…
Brilliant and disturbing' Yuval Noah Harari The past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, the answer is Russia. In this visionary work of contemporary history, Timothy Snyder shows how Russia works within the West to destroy the West; by supporting the far right…
In 1979, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato—a novel about the Vietnam War—won the National Book Award. In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again clearly demonstrated. Neither a novel nor a short story collection, it is an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of…
An Afghan woman’s life expectancy is just 44 years, and her life cycle often begins and ends in disappointment: being born a girl and finally, having a daughter of her own. For some, disguising themselves as boys is the only way to get ahead. Nordberg follows women such as Azita Rafaat, a parliamentarian who once lived as a Bacha Posh,…
Extraordinary stories about what it was like to be a Soviet child during the upheaval and horror of the Second World War, from Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich What did it mean to grow up in the Soviet Union during the Second World War? In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich started interviewing people who had experienced war as children, the generation…
‘An oppressive, forensic, psychological thriller: J.K. Rowling meets Antony Beevor, Stephen King and Marina Warner … Schiff’s writing is to die for’ THE TIMES It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s niece started to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before panic had infected the entire colony, nineteen…
In over a year of on-the-ground reportage, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled across the US to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today. In an effort to grasp the scale of the response to Michael Brown's death and understand the magnitude of the problem police violence represents, Lowery conducted hundreds of interviews…
'I want you to make a promise to me that you will always take care of your sisters. That you will always be there for one another. That you will not allow anyone to take you away from each other, ever. Do you understand?' When they are little girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father -…
Travels with Herodotus records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays – to India, China and Africa – with the great Greek historian constantly in his pocket. He sees Louis Armstrong in Khartoum, visits Dar-es-Salaam, arrives in Algiers in time for a coup when nothing seems to happen (but he sees the Mediterranean for the first time). At every…
Fear and loathing on the 2020 campaign trail... '26 February, White House Briefing Room The coronavirus feels like it is changing everything. Suddenly it's not just a public health emergency; it has the potential to upend this whole election...' In UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others, BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel presents a diary of…
Meet the little leaders. They're brave. They're bold. They changed the world. Featuring the true stories of 40 inspirational women creators - from writers to inventors, artists to scientists - this book is as inspirational as it is educational. Readers will meet trailblazing women such as revolutionary architect, Zaha Hadid, actor/inventor Hedy Lamarr, environmental activist Wangari Maathai, modernist painter and…
For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging…
Bowie has been written about in just about every conceivable way - but never quite like this. Tracing the star's encounters with fellow icons, We Could Be offers a new history of Bowie, collecting hundreds of short stories that together paint a portrait of humor, humility, compassion, tragedy and more. He embarrasses himself in front of Lennon and Warhol. He…
In 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren't affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' that led to this book. Exploring issues from eradicated black history…
By the spring of 1645, civil war had exacted a terrible toll upon England. Disease was rife, apocalyptic omens appeared in the skies, and idolators detected in every shire. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen began interrogating women suspected of witchcraft, triggering the most brutal witch-hunt in English history. Witchfinders is a spellbinding study of how Matthew…
Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in…
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth…
