21st century history: from c 2000 -

  • Existential Englishman

    £25.00

    ‘The Existential Englishman’ is both a memoir and an intimate portrait of Paris – a city that can enchant, exhilarate and exasperate in equal measure. As Peppiatt remarks: ‘You reflect and become the city just as the city reflects and becomes you’. This, then, is one man’s not uncritical love letter to Paris. Intensely personal, candid and entertaining, it chronicles Peppiatt’s relationship with Paris in a series of vignettes structured around the half-dozen addresses he called home as a plucky young art critic. Having survived the tumultuous riots of 1968, Peppiatt traces his precarious progress from junior editor to magazine publisher, recalling encounters with a host of figures at the heart of Parisian artistic life – from Sartre, Beckett and Cartier-Bresson to Serge Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuve.

  • Becoming

    £25.00

    In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America – the first African-American to serve in that role – she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerising storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world.

  • Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

    £16.99

    Ever since the Ottoman Empire was defeated and British colonial rule began in 1917, Jews and Arabs have struggled for control of the Holy Land. Israel’s independence in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust was a triumph for the Zionist movement but a catastrophe – ‘nakba’ in Arabic – for the native Palestinian majority. Ian Black has written a gripping, lucid and timely account of what was doomed to be an irreconcilably hostile relationship from the beginning. He traces how, half a century after the watershed of the 1967 war, hopes for a two-state solution and an end to occupation have all but disappeared. The author, a veteran Guardian journalist, draws on deep knowledge of the region and decades of his own reporting to create a uniquely vivid and valuable book. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the story so far – and why both peoples face an uncertain future.

  • Patronising Bastards

    £16.99

    Not since Marie Antoinette said ‘Let them eat cake’ have the peasants been so revolting. Western capitalism’s elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates ‘a basket of deplorables’, Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the ‘Patronising Bastards’. Their downfall is largely of their own making – their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. Political columnist and bestselling author Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals.

  • Diary of a Wartime Affair: The True Story of a Surprisingly Modern Romance

    £9.99

    London in 1934. Clever young civil servant Doreen Bates is working in the same office as E, an older married man. In the years just before the war, they develop an irresistible attraction to one another and strike up a passionate affair. Doreen records it all with startling candour in her diary – secret midnight walks, countryside escapades and stolen moments of intimacy. But Doreen starts to long for a child with E. Despite all the taboos of the time, and against the wishes of E, she is determined to become a mother – even though she knows that her decision will provoke anger and shame from her family, friends and colleagues. Eventually she gets pregnant and is amazed when twins are born during the war. However, Doreen faces an uncertain future – will E ever leave his wife and join his new family?

  • Exile

    £25.00

    The extraordinary inside story of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in the years after 9/11. Following the attacks on the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, eluded intelligence services and Special Forces units for almost a decade. Using remarkable, first-person testimony from bin Laden’s family and military closest aides, ‘The Exile’ chronicles this astonishing tale of evasion, collusion and isolation.

  • Queen Elizabeth II Penguin Monarchs

    £10.99

    Just as this book is being published, Elizabeth II will become the longest serving monarch who ever sat on the English or British throne. Yet her personality and influence remain elusive. This book, by a senior politician who has spent significant periods of time in her company, and is also a distinguished historian, portrays her more credibly than any other yet published.

  • Nothing To Envy

    £9.99

    A spectacularly revealing and harrowing portrait of ordinary lives in the world’s least ordinary country, North Korea. Newly updated in 2013

Nomad Books