Showing 49–60 of 174 resultsSorted by latest
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£25.00
In a hyper-competitive world obsessed with rankings, super-wealth and greatness, how can we live up to democratic ideals of equality?Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about these questions from different angles in different countries – from post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to post-communist Poland, with sudden gaps of wealth and security, and the US and South Africa with their legacies of slavery and racism. ‘Adventures in Democracy’ draws on her experiences and the deep history of democracies – in ancient Rome and Athens, the American and French revolutions and Renaissance Florence – to offer an unflinching portrait of modern democracy. To salvage democratic institutions and ideals, Benner argues, we need to pay more attention to inequalities and struggles for power among citizens.
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£25.00
We all notice when the poor get poorer: when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow. But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn’t change. Or at least, not immediately. In this eye-opening intervention, philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past 50 years silently spiralling out of control. In moral, political, economic, social, environmental and psychological terms, she shows, extreme wealth is not only unjustifiable but harmful to us all – the rich included. In place of our current system, Robeyns offers a breathtakingly clear alternative: limitarianism. The answer to so many of the problems posed by neoliberal capitalism – and the opportunity for a vastly better world – lies in placing a hard limit on the wealth that any one person can accumulate.
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£30.00
‘The End of Enlightenment’ offers a radical re-evaluation of one of the most important moments in human history. Tracing around the world the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians, and polemicists, historian Richard Whatmore argues that, for figures as diverse as David Hume, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. Returning us to the tumultuous events and ideas of the eighteenth century, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, this book is a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured.
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£35.00
When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. In retrospect we understand the French Revolution as the outcome of such factors as a faltering economy and Enlightenment thought. But what did the Parisians themselves think they were doing – how did they understand their world? In this dazzling history, Robert Darnton draws on decades of study to conjure a past as vivid as today’s news.
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£40.00
A new history of the people at the centre of Europe, from the Second World War to today. In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe, welcoming over one million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis, but this book asks another vital question: how, and how far, have the Germans since reinvented themselves?
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£25.00
A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity’s relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next.
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£14.99
Let us journey, with beloved physicist Carlo Rovelli, into the heart of a black hole. Let us slip beyond its boundary, the horizon, and tumble – on and on – down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we’ll see geometry fold, we’ll feel the equations draw tight around us. Eventually, we’ll pass it: the remains of a star, deep and dense and falling further far. And then – the bottom. Where time and space end, and the white hole is born. With lightness and magic, here Rovelli traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research, of the uncertainty and joy of going where we’ve not yet been. Guiding us to the edge of theory and experiment, he invites us to go beyond, to experience the fever and the disquiet of science. Here is the extraordinary life of a white hole.
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£30.00
Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of the place where he had ended up, Moser threw himself into the world of the painters of Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer among them, and found himself confronting the bigger questions those artists asked. Why do we make art, and why do we need it? Who, and what, is an artist? How can art help us see ourselves and others? And in a world without religion, can art provide a substitute for God? As he explored the Dutch museums, Moser met a crowd of fascinating personalities: the stormy Rembrandt, the intimate Ter Borch, the mysterious Vermeer. Now, in this colourful, brilliant and idiosyncratic book, he unveils the whole hidden world of the Dutch Masters (and one Mistress).
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£25.00
This is the story of Britain’s islands and how they are woven into its culture, history and collective psyche. From Neolithic Orkney and druidical Anglesey to the joys and strangeness of modern Thanet, we explore the furthest reaches of Britain’s island topography, once known by the collective term, Britanniae (the Britains). Alice Albinia takes the reader over borders and through disparate island cultures, past and present, listening to neglected voices and subversive stories. ‘The Britannias’ examines how the smaller islands have wielded disproportionate influence on the mainland, becoming the fertile ground of political, cultural and technological innovations which have gone on to change history throughout the archipelago.
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£35.00
Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger’s enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet’s turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms – the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
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£25.00
In this work, Nathan Thrall tells a gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision.
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£25.00
Sam Bankman-Fried wasn’t just rich. Before he turned 30 he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Then it all fell apart. Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? Michael Lewis was there when it happened, having got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise. In this book, he tells us a story like no other, taking us through the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own.
