Showing 61–72 of 95 resultsSorted by latest
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£40.00
Petroleum has always been used by humans: as an adhesive by Neanderthals, as a waterproofing agent in Noah’s Ark and as a weapon during the Crusades. Its eventual extraction from the Earth in vast quantities transformed light, heat and power. A fresh, comprehensive in-depth look at the social, economic, political and geopolitical forces involved in our transition to the modern oil age, this title tells an extraordinary origin story, from the pre-industrial history of petroleum through to large-scale production in the mid-19th century and the development of a dominant, fully-fledged oil industry by the early 20th century. In an entirely new analysis, the book shows how the British navy’s increasingly desperate dependence on vulnerable foreign sources of oil may have been a catalytic ingredient in the outbreak of WWI. The rise of oil has shaped the modern world, and this is the book to understand it.
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£25.00
‘Engrossing and deeply troubling’ – The Bookseller. Why is the world so dangerous now? Former senior British diplomat Arthur Snell reveals the role of the United Kingdom in raising tension and creating global flashpoints around the world. He looks at British interventions from Kosovo to Iraq to Afghanistan, as well as policy on Russia, Saudi Arabia, USA, India and China.
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£16.99
Journalist John Sweeney takes readers from the heart of Putin’s Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin’s sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting – from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 – to understand the true extent of Putin’s long war. Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin’s hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.
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£10.99
We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart. In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world’s economy, transport and telecommunications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting. As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard’s work has taken him into many of the rooms where our futures are being decided at every level of society. In seeking to understand the ways that globalisation has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, Leonard explores how we might wrest a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.
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£25.00
In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. In ‘Atoms and Ashes’, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world – Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
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£10.99
Following his acclaimed exploration of the vanished East Prussia, Forgotten Land, Max Egremont turns his attention to the Baltic, another part of the world where the ghosts of history still make their presence felt.
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£20.00
Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In ‘Preventable’ she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic – including her personal experience as a scientist – and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come.
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£14.99
This chronicle unravels the mystery of a master spy’s death by following pipelines and mapping wars in the Middle East. In 1947, Daniel Dennett, America’s sole master spy in the Middle East, was dispatched to Saudi Arabia to study the route of the proposed Trans-Arabian Pipeline. It would be his last assignment. A plane carrying him to Ethiopia went down, killing everyone on board. Today, Dennett is recognized by the CIA as a ‘Fallen Star’ and an important figure in US intelligence history. Yet the true cause of his death remains clouded in secrecy. In this book, investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s postwar counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies – the British, French, and Russians – in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East.
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£9.99
It’s 1990, and Dmitry Kalyagin is about to attain membership in Gorbachev’s politburo when his long-dormant status as a ‘mole’ for the British is suddenly reactivated. English intelligence man George Parker, feeling indebted to Kalyagin, initiates a covert effort to pull the agent out before his identity can be uncovered by the Soviets. But as the body count starts to rise, Parker’s attempts to protect Kalyagin are hampered by both Russian ruthlessness and British indifference. As desperation begins to set in, the battle to save Kalyagin will lead to a climactic showdown in the Moscow streets, between two networks of spies.
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£10.99
The modern world is built on commodities – from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they come from. But we should. In ‘The World for Sale’, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth’s resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries – no matter how corrupt or war-torn – with the world’s financial centres.
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£16.99
In sixteen extended talks with Alternative Radio’s David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky explains why the ‘war on drugs’ is really a war on poor people; how attacks on political correctness are attacks on independent thought; how historical revisionism has recast the United States as the victim in the Vietnam War. Widely recognized as one of the most original and important thinkers of our age, Chomsky’s trenchant analysis of current events is a breath of fresh air in a world more and more polluted by mainstream media.
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£9.99
After decades of peace and prosperity, the international order put in place after World War II is rapidly coming to an end. Disastrous foreign wars, global recession, the meteoric rise of China and India and the COVID pandemic have undermined the power of the West’s international institutions and unleashed the forces of nationalism and protectionism. In this lucid and groundbreaking analysis, one of Britain’s most experienced senior diplomats highlights the key dilemmas Britain faces, from trade to security, arguing that international co-operation and solidarity are the surest ways to prosper in a world more dangerous than ever.
