Showing 1–12 of 167 resultsSorted by latest
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£20.00
Modern life encourages us to pursue the perfect identity. Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world Рhoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. We achieve these identities but want others to imitate us. We disagree with those whose identities contradict ours Рleading to polarisation and even violence. And yet when they thump against us, we are ashamed to ring hollow. In this book, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers Рancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist Ren̩ Girard Рhe explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth.
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Henry Becquerel’s accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age. ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began innocently and collaboratively, was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s, and following devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the way to a still more terrible possibility: a thermonuclear bomb, the so-called ‘backyard weapon’, that could destroy all life on earth – from anywhere.
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When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. In this book, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.
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£35.00
At a time when we are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, this book provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological crisis and artificial intelligence. John Cassidy adopts a bold new approach: he tells the story through the eyes of the system’s critics. From eighteenth-century weavers who rebelled against early factory automation to Eric Williams’s paradigm-changing work on slavery and capitalism, to the Latin American dependistas, the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, this absorbing narrative traverses the globe.
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In’ Dianaworld’, Edward White offers both a portrait of the princess and a group portrait of those who existed in her orbit – from her royal in-laws, her servants, and the dilapidated ranks of the British aristocracy from which she rose, to drag performers, artists, Britain’s ethnic minorities, and the Gen Z superfans who maintain her status as a cultural icon. Drawing on a wide array of sources and perspectives, many never used in books about Diana or the royal family, White vividly recreates the world Diana lived in, explores the growth of her global reputation, and illuminates her lasting impact on the world she left behind.
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A behind-the-scenes tour through the world’s greatest natural history museums, revealing how their hidden secrets can help us in the fight against climate change.
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A haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, ‘Red Pockets’ confronts the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, while searching for an acceptable offering. What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?
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As the horrors of fascism ran riot through Europe in the 1930s, tens of thousands of central Europeans, most of them Jewish and many of them artists, fled their countries seeking sanctuary in an imperial island at the edge of the continent. The world they found when they reached these shores Рdamp, grey and parochial Рwas a far cry from the modernity and dynamism of Weimar Berlin, Red Vienna or modernist Prague, but it was safe, and it became home. Yet the ̩migr̩s had not arrived alone: they brought with them new and radical ideas, and as they began to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they transformed the face of Britain forever. In this book, historian Owen Hatherley leads us into the technicolour world of this exiled generation of artists and intellects, from celebrated figures like Erno Goldfinger to forgotten luminaries like Ruth Glass.
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Real diversity isn’t skin deep. Over the past 100,000 years, as humans expanded into every biome on the planet, our bodies and our cultures have been fine-tuned to our local environments. Our ability to adapt is at the heart of being human and the engine of our diversity. As an evolutionary anthropologist working with human populations around the globe, Herman Pontzer has conducted research that reveals the wonder of our biological diversity, documenting the connections between lifestyle, landscape, local adaptations and health. In this book, he takes us on a tour of the human body and the surprising ways in which it survives in an uncertain world – from the Andean groups who have developed increased lung capacity to the Sama divers who have larger spleens.
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Who works for the government and why does their work matter? Michael Lewis, bestselling author of ‘The Big Short’ and The ‘Fifth Risk’, along with an all-star team of writers and storytellers, takes us on a riveting journey into a hidden world The government is a vast, complex system that citizens pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.
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In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war. Richard Overy’s book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombing. He explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians followed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began.
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Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture.
