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This miscellany is a gathering together of a rich and hugely entertaining collection of Muir’s writings. Although he is famed in the USA for both his writing and his accomplishments in helping establish the US National Parks system, he is still relatively unknown this side of the Atlantic. This book may well change this.
Francis Willughby lived and thrived in the midst of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with his Cambridge tutor John Ray, Willughby was determined to overhaul the whole of natural history and impose order on its complexity. It was exhilarating, exacting and exhausting work. Yet before Willughby and Ray could complete their monumental encyclopaedia of birds, Ornithology, Willughby died. In the centuries since, Ray’s reputation has grown, obscuring that of his collaborator. Now, for the first time, Willughby’s own story and genius are given the attention they deserve. Tim Birkhead celebrates how Willughby’s endeavours set a standard for the way birds and natural history should be studied. Rich with glorious detail, ‘The Wonderful Mr Willughby’ is a fascinating insight into a thrilling period of scientific history and a lively biography of a man who lived at its heart.
A charming and poignant memoir of growing up during the eighties as both a Pakistani Muslim and Bruce Springsteen fan, this book is Sarfraz Manzoor’s journey from the frustrations of his childhood to his reactions concerning the tragedies of 9/11 and 7/7. It is an inspiring tribute to the power of music to transcend race and religion.
Helen Clark has been a political leader for more than 40 years, since first running in local elections in the 1970s. She entered the New Zealand parliament as a 31-year-old in 1981, led the Labour Party to victory in 1999 and was Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years. She then took on a critical international role as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in New York. One of her key focuses throughout this time has been the empowerment of women, and she has paved the way for other women to step up and lead. With a foreword by the Rt Hon. Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, this is a timely and important celebration of Helen Clark’s career.
In between the sleep-obsessed lows and oxytocin-fuelled highs, Backman takes a step back to share his own experience of fatherhood and how he navigates such unchartered territory. Part memoir, part manual, part love letter to his son, this book relays the big and the small lessons in life. As he watches his son take his first steps into the world, he teaches him how to navigate both love and IKEA and tries to explain why, sometimes, his dad might hold his hand just a little bit too tightly.
The last book that John Berger wrote was this precious little volume about time titled ‘What Time Is It?’, now posthumously published. Berger died before it was completed, but the text has been assembled and illustrated by his longtime collaborator and friend Selçuk Demirel, and has an introduction by Maria Nadotti.
When ‘The Change’ was published in 1991, ‘menopause’ was a word of fear. Then, as now, expensive magazines advertised even more expensive anti-ageing preparations, none of which worked. Big pharma was pushing replacement hormones, but doctors were dragging their feet. Some women told horror stories of their experiences with replacement hormones; others called them lifesavers. Nobody knew why some women went through this change of life without difficulty. Then large-scale studies revealed that the protective effects of hormone replacement had been vastly exaggerated; given the perceived increase in the risk of life-threatening disease, the studies had to be called off. Now more than ever, the individual woman has to manage her passage through menopause for herself. Germaine Greer provides a commonsense guide to a very interesting and important stage of women’s lives.
At the time of his death at the age of 95, Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) was the most famous historian in the world. His books were translated into more than fifty languages and he was as well known in Brazil and Italy as he was in Britain and the United States. In ‘A Life in History’, Richard Evans tells the story of Hobsbawm as an academic, but also as witness to history itself, and of the twentieth century’s major political and intellectual currents.
What really causes depression and anxiety – and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking anti-depressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true – and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong. Across the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are not caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. In fact, they are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. Once he had uncovered nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions – ones that work.
Anne Lister was a wealthy Yorkshire heiress, a world traveller and an out lesbian during the Regency era – a time when it was difficult simply to be female. She wrote her diary in code derived from Ancient Greek, including details of her liaisons with women. Liberated by her money, she remained unmarried, opened a colliery and chose to dress all in black. Some locals referred to her as Gentleman Jack and sent her poison pen letters, but this did not dissuade her from living mostly as she pleased. On inheriting Shibden Hall, Anne chose to travel abroad, before returning to Halifax and courting Ann Walker, another wealthy heiress twelve years her junior. They renovated Shibden Hall together and considered themselves married, to the horror of Walker’s relatives. The biography combines excerpts of Lister’s own diaries with Angela Steidele’s erudite and lively commentary.
‘The World Broke in Two’ tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers – Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence – make over the course of one pivotal year. The literary ground is shifting, as ‘Ulysses’ is published in February and Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, by the end of the year, Woolf has started ‘Mrs Dalloway’, Forster returned to work on ‘A Passage to India,’ Lawrence has written ‘Kangaroo,’ his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished ‘The Waste Land.’
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