Social & cultural anthropology

  • Counting

    £12.99

    WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COUNT? WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY SPECIES ON EARTH THAT CAN DO IT? WHERE DID COUNTING COME FROM? HOW HAS IT SHAPED SOCIETIES ALONG THE WAY? AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

  • Patria

    £12.99

    ‘Lost Countries of South America’ is an adventurous, ambitious and dazzlingly original study of South America’s past that bridges travel writing, history and rich literary narrative.

  • Against Identity

    £20.00

    Modern life encourages us to pursue the perfect identity. Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world – hoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. We achieve these identities but want others to imitate us. We disagree with those whose identities contradict ours – leading to polarisation and even violence. And yet when they thump against us, we are ashamed to ring hollow. In this book, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers – ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard – he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth.

  • Why We Travel

    £10.99

    Selected as the Independent’s Best Travel book, Why We Travel asks why humans yearn to travel, what motivates us and what we can gain from venturing out into the world.

  • Don’t forget we’re here forever

    £22.00

    With glowing compassion and luminous prose, Lamorna Ash (‘a new star of non-fiction’ William Dalrymple) explores why young people in Britain today are turning to faith in an age of uncertainty.

  • Shifting sands

    £25.00

    Blue-veiled nomads, camels crossing infinite dunes, oases shimmering on the horizon: ready-made images of the Sahara are easy to conjure. But they can never truly capture a region that crosses eleven countries and is home to millions. This sweeping account upends old fantasies, revealing the far more interesting reality of the Earth’s largest hot desert. Drawing on decades of research, and years spent living in the region, anthropologist Judith Scheele takes us from Libya to Mali, Algeria to Chad, from the ancient Roman Empire to contemporary regional battles and fraught international diplomacy, questioning every easy cliché and exposing fascinating truths along the way.

  • Intrepid Women

    £25.00

    Meet the pioneering female anthropologists who coped with illness, shipwreck, loneliness and misogyny to document the remarkable lives of people in distant parts of the world where ‘ladies’ were not meant to travel.

  • The power of women

    £28.00

    True beauty lies in the sum of our qualities, used for positive purposes. In other words, using your power for the good. This book delves deeper into the stories behind the captivating images that have made Mihaela Noroc an online sensation. With 500 portraits from over 60 countries, including Japan, India, Peru, Namibia and the United States, ‘The Power of Women’ is a celebration of courage, resilience and beauty in all its forms.

  • Patria

    £25.00

    ‘Lost Countries of South America’ is an adventurous, ambitious and dazzlingly original study of South America’s past that bridges travel writing, history and rich literary narrative.

  • Sapiens Volume 3

    £22.00

    Sometimes history seems like a laundry list of malevolent monarchs, pompous presidents and dastardly dictators. But are they really the ones in the driving seat? This volume takes us on an immersive and hilarious ride through the human past to discover the forces that change our world, bring us together, and – just as often – tear us apart. Grab a front-row seat to the greatest show on earth and explore the rise of money, religion and empire. Join our fabulous host Heroda Tush, as she wonders: which historical superhero will display the power to make civilisations rise and fall?

  • The invention of good and evil

    £25.00

    For almost five million years, humans have been locked in a relationship with morality, inventing and reinventing the concepts of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, and weaving them into our cities, laws and customs. Morality is often associated with restraint and coercion; restriction and sacrifice; inquisition, confession and a guilty conscience. Joyless and claustrophobic, it is a device used to shames us into compliance. This impression is not entirely incorrect, but it is certainly incomplete. Using our past as a basis for a new understanding of our future, Hanno Sauer traces humanity’s fundamental moral transformations from our earliest ancestors through to the present day, when it seems we have never disagreed more over what it means to be good. Our current political disagreements may feel like the end of the world, but where will the evolution of morality take us next?

Nomad Books