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£18.99
The first post to appear read simply: ‘hello world’. Two decades later, Wikipedia has defied the usual tech trajectory of commercialization and corruption and now stands as the largest repository of human knowledge in existence, containing over six million articles, accessed millions times every day by users throughout the world. It has held true to its founding principles: it is still free to use, still worked on by unpaid, amateur and mostly anonymous volunteers, and still home to information as varied as it is glorious. Here, Cooke takes us inside the world of Wikpedian’s, exploring the major schools of thought that underpin the project (Inclusionists and Deletionists), illuminating the concept of Wikidata and the site’s hidden legacy in AI, and investigating the inevitable controversies that have arisen – from specific pages on Jesus, Freddy Mercury, the Scots language, and Phillip Roth, to the problem of gender bias and sexism.
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£20.00
‘Noble Nine’ delves into fascinating botanical history and cutting edge science to explore why wine tastes the way it does, and how biology, weather and human shape it. Hugely informative and entertaining, it opens a unique window onto wine: its qualities, its heritage, and its future, from vine to glass and every stage in between.
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£12.99
Baboons chatter in the zoo. Tadpoles writhe in a pond. A gecko is stuck to the window. And ants are crawling everywhere. Nature runs wild and mysterious in this collection of stories in which the everyday reality of the human world, with its social norms and familial ties, slides into something altogether more strange. As children begin to explore the landscape around them and adults are forced to navigate the bumpy terrain of marriage, parenthood and grief, the non-human world pulsates with a life of its own, and humans are revealed to be the most incomprehensible species of all.
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£9.99
An elusive narrator is beguiled by a poem that returns to him in mysterious ways, echoing across the years. He recounts memories and impressions as they float fleetingly to the surface of his mind: an eccentric and beloved schoolteacher leaves behind a dark secret after his death; a woman lays the table for a son she knows will never return home; a young man, the pariah of his family, finds solidarity and the distant call of freedom in the letters of an estranged Aunt; a black and white photograph tells of another family, afflicted with generations of tragedy. These are some of the people and stories that haunt the pages of ‘Absence’. This hypnotic novel is a stirring evocation of the limitless depth of the present – a symphony subtly constructed out of the murmurs, memories and phantoms that add up to an ordinary human life.
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£14.99
During the Cold War, the battle for ideological and economic supremacy was fought on every front. At the heart of the US’s campaign to inoculate the world against Communism and advance its own liberal democratic ideals was the CIA’s Congress of Cultural Freedom – an organisation that was as clandestine as it was powerful. Drawing on declassified documents and exclusive interviews, this book exposes the astonishing secret campaign to deploy some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West (including Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock) as instruments – whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not – of America’s secret service. One of the great stories of intellectual and artistic corruption by power, this work is a classic of investigative history and a landmark portrait of a period when politics and culture became dangerously intertwined.
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£16.99
Almost from humanity’s very beginning, beloved small dogs have been trotting devotedly by our sides. This work follows in the pawprints of the breeds we have grown to love and cherish, from the small dogs touchingly memorialised in Ancient Rome through to Paris Hilton’s chihuahua and the pet influencers of 21st-century, via the pug who colonised Napoleon’s marital bed, King Charles II’s spaniels and celebrity terriers in Victorian pubs. Drawing on her own experience as a pug-owner, pet historian Stephanie Howard-Smith reveals how small dogs have shaped our lives as much as we have theirs, challenging social dynamics, changing the way we spend our leisure time, contributing to a global industry now worth billions, and offering valuable companionship and a chance for self-expression. A must-read for any lover of small dogs, this book is a paean to the unbreakable bond between humans and their petite pets.
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£18.99
We often think of them as tiny, glittering creatures fluttering about in pastel tulle, but fairies haven’t always been so benign. Here, historian Sarah Clegg explores the true history of fairies, and the menace and ambiguity that always lurks within the shimmering fantasy. This history takes us from elf fires in Iceland to a burial mound in Ireland; and from a stream in Cottingley where two sisters created a fairy hoax to a modern-day fairy ball in Los Angeles. Along the way, Clegg reveals fairies’ connection to ancient gods and their role in the witch-trials, and examines their seductive presence in romantasy today. This is a story of how fairy myths grew and spread across Europe, of how they changed and developed, and why we have, for centuries, been so enthralled by the danger and enchantment of the fae.
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£14.99
Legendary producer Toshio Suzuki talks about Zen Buddhism in Studio Ghibli films with three leading Buddhist monks: Shinsuke Hosokawa, Nanrei Yokota and Sokyu Gen’yu. Their playful and enlivening conversations delve into central Buddhist ideas, such as the power of not knowing, how important it is to live in the present, and whether we can ever be original in our thoughts or actions, through reference to many Ghibli masterpieces such as Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. Beautifully illustrated with Japanese artwork and stills from the films, it is an inspiring introduction to Zen Buddhism and a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into Toshio Suzuki’s work with Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Capturing the magic of the films, it is both a celebration of Studio Ghibli and an illuminating guide to happiness.
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£20.00
It is 1381. England, reeling from plague and years of conflict abroad, is a tinderbox waiting to spark. Two childhood friends ride into the town of Brentwood, Essex, where they come upon an altercation with a local Justice bent on squeezing more coin from the masses. Thus begins a rebellion of the common folk – loyal to the king, but not to those wealthy landowners who curtail their freedoms; the multitude finding cause against the powers that threaten their livelihoods.
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£20.00
Which country doesn’t have a national football team? Where is the town with no wifi? Who travelled further on tour: Taylor Swift or Coldplay? Which are the world’s noisiest cities? How many countries are wider than the moon? Maps don’t just show us where we are, they show us how we live. They reveal unexpected connections between far-flung places, they show how history has shaped geography, and they uncover fascinating facts that will spark your curiosity. This stunning collection of 100 maps will take you on a unique visual journey through history, geography, identity sport, the arts, technology, space, and more. If you have ever wondered how many dinosaurs would fit the length of Vatican city, where to go diving for shipwrecked treasure, or which country imports the most ketchup, this is the book for you.
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£9.99
A man heads into the snow to hunt down the bear that has been taking stock from farms in the valley. A father tries to make something go right for the son he no longer lives with. A partner is called to help when a cow’s labour goes horribly wrong. A fierce storm threatens to bring down a tree on powerlines over a family’s home. Fear, vulnerability, tension and resolve course through these arresting and indelible stories from one of the finest British writers at work today.
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£10.99
Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures – Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London – mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana’s personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead. From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island’s hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez’s narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir.
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£10.99
The French have always loved to protest, to strike, to take to the streets in rebellion against the state or the status quo. But in the last few years, the level of anger and violence has taken many by surprise and the atmosphere has changed. The voices of hostility are not only from the extreme far-right, but from the ordinary French who feel excluded from the closed circle of wealth and privilege within the prospering cities. In this work, Andrew Hussey uncovers the past and present of the culture of the working class in France, a culture invisible to most tourists and ignored by the metropolitan classes.
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£14.99
In this revelatory and beautifully illustrated guide to a living tradition of rites and rituals, we journey through some of the gatherings that shape our year, challenge our understanding of the past, and give pattern and meaning to communities across Britain today.
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£9.99
Emigrating alone from Paris to New York after World War II, a young girl, Gazala, befriends two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s beloved brother Samir joins her in Manhattan, this inseparable foursome becomes the beating heart of an untraditional, multigenerational family. The decades are marked by erupting passions within everyday life. Gazala and Samir make a home together, Alma loses a baby, Anne leaves her husband for his sister and her restless daughter grows up to raise a child on her own. The four friends stand by one another through it all, steadfastly unapologetic about their authentic desires and the unorthodox family they have created.
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£9.99
Nestled among rugged mountains, in a remote part of Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, bandits, witches, deserters, ghosts, beasts and demons, sits the old farmhouse called Mas Clavell. Inside, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed while family and caretakers drift in and out. All the women who have ever lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of memories unspool, and the house reverberates with the women’s stories. Stories of mysterious visions, of those born without eyelashes and tongues or with deformed hearts. But it begins with the story of the matriarch Blanca who double-crosses the devil, heedless of what the consequences might be.
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