The Hidden Globe
£10.99Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes a parallel universe exempt from the laws of the land and reveals how it became a haven for the rich and powerful.
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Smart
£20.00We encounter the idea of intelligence everywhere in our modern lives. Parents are told that their children will grow up smart if they are made to listen to Mozart, play with the right toys, and eat the healthiest foods. Schools plunge everyone into the ruthless world of testing and academic competition. Those who attend the right universities are likely to earn vastly more over their lifetimes than those who found education a struggle. We are told repeatedly that some of the richest and most successful people in society – tech pioneers, CEOs or financial wizards – are rich and successful precisely because they’re so smart. And we now have to worry about the impact of artificial intelligence on our jobs, our societies, and the very survival of our species. This book draws on science, politics, and popular culture to uncover the stories of the people and projects that built the idea of modern intelligence.
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Leaving Home
£25.00Mark Haddon’s parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood. As bracing as it is embracing, ‘Leaving Home’ is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.
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Patriarchy Inc
£12.99‘Patriarchy Inc.’ offers perceptive and much-needed insight into persistent inequalities in who does what and who gets what, dispels the false visions of gender equality that distract us, and charts a path towards effective, common-sense reforms that will make workplaces and society fairer and freer for everyone.
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Samurai
£45.00The word ‘samurai’ stands for ideals of courage, honour, self-sacrifice and loyalty. Yet much of the common understanding is imaginative fiction. This book explores the concept from medieval reality, through early modern changes, to today’s hugely varied popular culture, challenging preconceptions and exploding myths.
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The North Pole
£11.99The epic adventure story of humanity’s obsession with the North Pole, from Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge who travelled there in 1990. ‘The North Pole’ is an adventure story, a book about enacting hidden human dreams, about difficult fathers and their difficult sons, and a psychological record of what it means to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the face of adversity. It is for anyone who’s gazed out at the horizon – and wondered what happens if you just keep walking.
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Flow Hive’s Book of Bees and Beekeeping
£22.00A complete beekeeping and bee conservation handbook, from beginner to expert, from the creators of the revolutionary Flow Hive – over 130,000 hives sold worldwide!
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The Virago Book of Friendship
£12.99Friendship has never been more talked about. Some of this has to do with the internet (the perils of WhatsApp groups, and of ghosting), and some, with the realisation that loneliness in our society is increasing. Friendship is being written about, and researched, seriously, by therapists and scientists alike. We all now know of the importance of friendship. But it’s hard to get inside friendship: its particular intensity; its singular ease; the way it can wax and wane; its ability to cause uncommon pain. This is the territory of novels and letters, poems and graphic novels – which is where ‘The Virago Book of Friendship’ steps in. Celebratory, but also explanatory and wide in scope – from the Bible to Yellowface, from school friends to the loss of friends in old age – this book includes Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Vivian Gornick, Helen Garner, Dolly Alderton – among nearly one hundred others.
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Find Your Pace
£10.99From running coach and gait analyst Emma Kirk-Odunubi, Find Your Pace explores the power of running to change your life, diving into the motivations behind why she runs and how you can bring the joy of running into your own life.
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A Sicilian Man
£25.00In 1986, the largest Mafia trial in Italy’s history took place in Sicily. The maxi-processo saw 471 men and 4 women take the stand, accused of kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and many thousands of murders. Sitting in the galley was Leonardo Sciascia. One of the greatest European writers of the twentieth century, he had published the first Mafia novel, ‘The Day of the Owl’, and was widely seen by Italians as a true moral figure in a country where corruption had seeped into every corner of public and private life. This is the story of Sciascia’s life against the rise of the Mafia and the devastating struggle that ensued for Italy’s soul.
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Happy on Her Own at 102
£12.99We live in an age where bad news is ever present, and it can often feel like a struggle just to get through the day. Between work, bills, relationship issues, and health scares, it’s no wonder that people are craving a new perspective, a way to approach life that focuses on the positive, while also finding strength in dealing with the negative. Tetsuyo has certainly seen her fair share of ups and downs, but through it all she’s developed a distinct outlook on life, which she now shares here.
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The New Age of Sexism
£10.99How we’re sleepwalking into a new era of misogyny: an urgent and shocking new book from bestselling author and feminist activist Laura Bates
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Lying Abroad
£20.00Lying abroad reconstructs the tumultuous early modern career of a jobbing ambassador, Henry Wotton, the man James I sent to Venice in 1604 to restore Anglo-Venetian relations. It recounts his back-story then follows his daily life in diplomacy, poised between tedium and crisis – a life endlessly theatrical.
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A Spy Amongst Us
£25.00The true story of Daniel Defoe and the dirty tricks which helped bring Scotland into union with England. In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the end of Scottish sovereignty. But unbeknownst to the mob, a spy was in their midst – the English writer Daniel Defoe, now bankrupt and thrice pilloried, had turned a government agent. Marc Mierowsky tells the dramatic story of Defoe and his fellow spies as they sabotaged the Scottish independence movement from the inside. Together they disseminated propaganda and built a network of operatives from London to the upper Highlands, providing the English government with up-to-the-minute intelligence and monitoring its adversaries’ every move.
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Source Code
£12.99‘Source Code’ describes with unprecedented candour Bill Gates’ life from his childhood in Seattle to dropping out of Harvard aged 20 in 1975. Shortly afterwards he wrote, with Paul Allen, the programme which became the foundation of Microsoft and eventually for the entire software industry, changing the way the world works and lives. Gates writes about the centrality of family to his life – his encouraging grandmother and ambitious parents, about struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, and the impact on him of the death of his closest friend. We see his extraordinary mind developing as a teenager, his excitement about the rapidly emerging technology of computing, and the earliest signs of his phenomenal business acumen. ‘Source Code’ is a warm, wise and revealing self-portrait of one of the most influential people of our age.