Abilio Estévez

Abir Mukherjee is the bestselling author of the award-winning Wyndham &amp; Banerjee series of crime novels set in 1920s India and the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year 2025 Hunted. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and won various awards including the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, the Prix du Polar Européen, and the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing. 
 
 
He also co-hosts the popular Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast which takes a wry look at the world of books, writing, and the creative arts, tackling everything from bestsellers to pop culture. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons. 
 
 
Website: abirmukherjee.com Twitter, Threads &amp; Instagram: @radiomukhers Facebook: AuthorAbir

Abir Mukherjee

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He is a 2022-2023 Berlin Prize winner and his work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.

Abraham Newman

Abraham Verghese

Absolut Vodka

Ad Putter

Ada Moncrieff is the author of Murder Most Festive, Murder at the Theatre Royale and Murder at Maybridge Castle. She lives and works in London.

Ada Moncrieff

Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of over two million. As a linguistics student at Harvard College, he founded and served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. He’s discussed online language on NPR, repeatedly contributed to The Washington Post, and his work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He’s lectured on language and social media at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities, including a TEDx talk at the University of Pennsylvania. Adam is based in New York City, where he spends a lot of time scrolling TikTok for “research.”

Adam Aleksic

Adam Alter is an Associate Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, and holds an affiliated appointment within the Psychology Department. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel and Behave and has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Wired, Popular Science and numerous other publications.

Adam Alter

Professor Adam Balen is lead clinician at one of the UK's largest and most successful IVF units at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. In recognition of his research on fertility and related conditions, he holds a DSc (the highest academic degree in medicine) from the University of Leeds. Adam is internationally renowned, holding roles with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Federation of Gyneacology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gyneacologists (RCOG). He runs both NHS and private fertility clinics so he understands the issues that arise from both sides and he works closely with fertility patient support organisations across the UK. Adam regularly features in the media on all aspects of reproductive health and lectures widely throughout the world.

Adam Balen

Adam Baron

Adam Bornstein

Adam Brookes grew up in the UK and was a journalist with BBC News for many years. As a foreign correspondent he was based in Indonesia, China and the United States. Along the way he reported from many other countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. He lives in Washington DC.

Adam Brookes

Adam Buxton

Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town. He has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored video game franchise. Co-creator of the twenty-first-century incarnation of Archie Comics superhero The Shield, Adam has also written for the universes of Doctor Who and World of Warcraft, and is a contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anniversary anthology series and the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic. Adam’s original novels include Made to Kill and The Burning Dark, among many others, and his debut novel Empire State was both a SciFi Now and Financial Times book of the year.

Adam Christopher

Adam Foulds's most recent books are In the Wolf’s Mouth, The Quickening Maze, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and The Broken Word, which won the Costa Poetry Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. He has recently been awarded the E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Adam Foulds

Dr Adam Fox is a highly qualified and respected allergy specialist and consultant paediatric allergist and clinical lead for Allergy at Guy's &amp; St Thomas' Hospitals. The Times recently named him as one of Britain's top 100 children’s doctors. 
 
www.allergyfreebabyandtoddler.com

Adam Fox

Adam Frost

Adam Galinsky is currently the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Princeton University in Social Psychology and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Adam Galinsky

Adam Glasser

Adam Goodfellow

Adam Goodwin

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books have sold millions of copies, his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcast Re:Thinking. His pioneering research on motivation and meaning has enabled people to reach their aspirations and exceed others' expectations. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across platforms. He has been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune's 40 Under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their three children.

Adam Grant

Adam and Charlotte met in Zanzibar while working with Voluntary Services Overseas. Upon their return to the UK, Charlotte completed an MA at Oxford Brookes and started her career in publishing. Adam in the meantime became writer-in-residence at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre before co-founding Storytelling Schools, an international organisation dedicated to training teachers in oracy, literacy and creativity. Adam and Charlotte's first book together was the best-selling and award-winning Spaghetti with the Yeti. Since then, Adam and Charlotte have continued to follow their passion for creating engaging books that inspire interaction and creativity in young readers.

Adam Guillain

ADAM HAMDY is a bestselling author and screenwriter. His most recent novel, The Other Side of Night, was an NPR best book of 2022 and a New York Times best thriller of the year, and has been described as ingenious and deeply moving. He is the author of the Scott Pearce series of modern spy thrillers, Black 13, Red Wolves and White Fire, and the Pendulum trilogy. Keep up to date with his latest books and news at www.adamhamdy.com.

Adam Hamdy

Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Imagine Me Gone and Union Atlantic. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. His journalism on culture and politics has appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He lives in New York City.

Adam Haslett

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Will Gompertz

Why do some people seem to find it easy to come up with fresh, brilliant ideas? And how do they turn them into something worthwhile? 
 
After spending years getting up close and personal with some of the world's greatest creative thinkers, the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz has discovered a handful of traits that are common to them all. Basic practices and processes that allow their talents to flourish, and which we can adopt - no matter what we do - to help us achieve extraordinary things too. It's time to Think Like an Artist and ... 
 
Become Seriously Curious 
(Caravaggio's discovery of optical lenses changed art for ever.) 
 
Think Big Picture and Fine Detail 
(Turner transformed a masterpiece with a tiny dab of red paint.) 
 
And realize ... It's Nearly Always Plan B 
(Mondrian spent years painting trees before becoming a master of abstraction.)

Think Like an Artist

. . . and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life

Sue Roe

The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps, but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization of painting, writing, music and dance produced a panorama of activity characterized by the early works of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Modigliani, the appearance of the Ballet Russe and the salons of Gertrude Stein. 
 
In In Montmartre, Sue Roe vividly brings to life the bohemian world of art in Paris between 1900-1910.

In Montmartre

Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910

Deyan Sudjic

This an essential tool kit for understanding the world around us. It's about our obsession with collecting, the quest for authenticity and the creation of national identities. It's about Hitchcock's film sets and why we value imperfection. It's about fashion and technology, about politics and art. 
 
'A memoir and a master class in musing on modern design . . . It's a collection of thoughtful, absorbing essays about many aspects of modern design, a subject nobody writes better about than Sudjic' - Evening Standard

B is for Bauhaus

An A-Z of the Modern World

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Drawing on his own experiences and inspirations - from staging his first exhibition in his tiny Zurich kitchen in 1986 to encounters with artists, exhibition makers and thinkers - Hans Ulrich Obrist looks to inspire all those engaged in the creation of culture. 
 
Moving from meetings with artists to the creation of the first public museums in the 18th century, recounting the practice of inspirational figures such as Diaghilev, skipping between exhibitions, continents and centuries, Ways of Curating argues that curation is far from a static practice. Driven by curiosity, at its best it allows us to create the future.

Ways of Curating

Shumon Basar

Douglas Coupland

Planet Earth needs a self-help book, and this is it 
 
The future is happening to us far faster than we thought it would and this book explains why 
 
Fifty years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture The Medium is the Massage, Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that's redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'. 
 
The Age of Earthquakes is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and 'mindsource' images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly's striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It's like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read. 
 
Welcome to The Age of Earthquakes, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn't just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it's also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket.

The Age of Earthquakes

A Guide to the Extreme Present

Charles Montgomery

Happy City is the story of how the solutions to this century's problems lie in unlocking the secrets to great city living 
 
This is going to be the century of the city. But what actually makes a good city? Why are some cities a joy to live in? 
 
As Charles Montgomery reveals, it's not how much money your neighbours earn, or how pleasant the climate is that makes the most difference. Journeying to dozens of cities - from Atlanta to Bogotá to Vancouver - he talks to the new champions of the happy city to explore the urban innovations already transforming people's lives. He meets the visionary Colombian mayor who turned some of the world's most dangerous roads into an urban cycling haven; the Danish architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan towns to modern-day Copenhagen; and the New York City transport commissioner who turned the gridlock of Times Square into a place to lounge in the sun. 
 
Drawing on the lessons from their stories, from brain science, and from the fascinating realm of urban experimentation, Happy City offers solutions we can all use to improve our livesandshows that simple changes can make all the difference. 
 
'Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy? Montgomery encourages us to ask without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Excellent . . . Montgomery believes in the importance of smart town planning and Happy City is a compendium of its major ideas' Will Dean, Independent 
 
Charles Montgomery is a journalist and urban experimentalist from Vancouver, Canada. His writings on urban planning, psychology, culture, and history have appeared in magazines and journals on three continents. He is the author of one previous book, and was an original member of the BMW Guggenheim Lab.

Happy City

Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Keith Houston

Where does the ampersand get its name from? What does the hashtag have to do with commerce in ancient Rome? Keith Houston gives the answers in this delightfully entertaining book. 
 
From the pilcrow ¶ to the ampersand, the entire cast of Shady Characters reflects the changes in written communication through the ages, charting how punctuation has adapted to each new technological innovation. Together, these shady characters form a rich, entertaining and surprising history of the written word and our ongoing attempts to shape it. 
 
'Engaging typographical journeys . . . Houston brings to life a history of ingenuity and imagination' The Times 
 
'Entertaining, informative, a must-read. If ever a book deserved its hardbacked, reverse-embossed, lavishly illustrated, thick white heavy paper incarnation, and a place on an actual bookshelf, it is Shady Characters' Guardian 
 
'Houston brings considerable wit to the 5,000-year-old enigma of how we attempt to communicate our thoughts through visible signs . . . Shady Characters might make you look at books - in print or online - in an entirely new way' Nature 
 
'Refreshing . . . the stories he uncovers along the way are fascinating' Telegraph 
 
'Ventures into the previously untrodden history of punctuation marks . . . scholarly, highly readable' Spectator 
 
Keith Houston is the founder of ShadyCharacters.co.uk, where he writes about the unusual stories behind some well-known - and some rather more outlandish - marks of punctuation.

Shady Characters

Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities

Philip Hook

Fascinating and highly subjective, built on Philip Hook's thirty-five years' experience of the art market, Breakfast at Sotheby's explores the artist and his hinterland (including -isms, middle-brow artists, Gericault and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), 'wall-power', provenance and market weather. Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid and absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby's is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation.

Breakfast at Sotheby's

An A-Z of the Art World

Tamara Mellon

'From her troubled childhood and her time as a young editor, to her partnership with Jimmy Choo and her very public relationships, Mellon offers a gripping account of the episodes that have made her. A book Jackie Collins would be proud of, with the added bonus that it is all true. A voyeuristic joy from start to finish' Harpers Bazaar 
 
'Pure Danielle Steel, with added MBA, that jets from Vogue shoots in Nepal and dates with Christian Slater, to trade fairs, boardroom takeovers and a family showdown over missing millions. Perfect for grown-up fashionistas and wannabe entrepreneurs' Sunday Times 
 
'A juicy and honest memoir from one of the most successful and self-made British businesswomen of her generation' Financial Times

In My Shoes

A Memoir

Leander Kahney

Steve Jobs discovered Ive in 1997, when he found the scruffy British designer toiling away in a studio surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jobs instantly realised he had found a talent who could reverse Apple's decline, and become his 'spiritual partner'. 
 
Their collaboration produced iconic products including the iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone. Designs that overturned entire industries and created the world's most powerful brand. 
 
Little has been known about this shy, softly-spoken designer. Until now. This riveting book tells the story of a creative genius, from his early interest in industrial design to his meteoric rise, as well as the principles and practices that led Ive to become the designer of his generation.

Jony Ive

The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products

Vic Gatrell

The colourful, salacious and sumptuously illustrated story of Covent Garden - the creative heart of Georgian London - from Wolfson Prize-winning author Vic Gatrell 
 
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE HESSELL TILTMAN PRIZE 2014 
 
In the teeming, disordered, and sexually charged square half-mile centred on London's Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the eighteenth century. It was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'. The nation's most significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists lived here. From Soho and Leicester Square across Covent Garden's Piazza to Drury Lane, and down from Long Acre to the Strand, they rubbed shoulders with rakes, prostitutes, market people, craftsmen, and shopkeepers. It was an often brutal world full of criminality, poverty and feuds, but also of high spirits, and an intimacy that was as culturally creative as any other in history. Virtually everything that we associate with Georgian culture was produced here.

The First Bohemians

Life and Art in London's Golden Age

Alain de Botton

In The Architecture of Happiness, bestselling author Alain de Botton explores one of our most intense but often hidden love affairs: with our houses and their furnishings. He asks: 
 
What makes a house truly beautiful? 
Why are many new houses so ugly? 
Why do we argue so bitterly about sofas and pictures - and can differences of taste ever be satisfactorily resolved? 
 
To answer these questions and many more, de Botton looks at buildings across the world, from medieval wooden huts to modern skyscrapers; he examines sofas and cathedrals, tea sets and office complexes, and teases out a host of often surprising philosophical insights. The Architecture of Happiness will take you on a beguiling tour through the history and psychology of architecture and interior design, and will change the way you look at your home.

The Architecture of Happiness

Alastair Sooke

Henri Matisse was one of the most important and beloved artists of the twentieth century, rivalled only by his friend - and rival - Pablo Picasso. In a body of work spanning over a half-century, he was variously a draughtsman, a printmaker, a sculptor and a painter. 
 
This short book is both a biography and a guide to his art. It focuses on the extraordinary works that Henri Matisse made during the last period of his life - the large-scale cut-outs on coloured paper, including his famous Blue Nudes, The Snail and Large Composition with Masks.

Henri Matisse

A Second Life

Rachel Lichtenstein

Enter Hatton Garden, one of London's most mysterious streets. Home to ancient burial sites, diamond workshops, underground vaults, monastic dynasties, subterranean rivers and forgotten palaces. Here you'll meet sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, geologists and visionaries as Rachel Lichtenstein uncovers the history, secrets and stories that bring this vibrant Clerkenwell street and its environs to life. 
 
'Vivid and amusing, containing so many sparkling things, elegantly organized. Lichtenstein consulted a whole gang of glorious characters, collecting tales, history and lore on her way. An overwhelming trove of stories with a multiplicity of facets to intrigue' Observer

Diamond Street

The Hidden World of Hatton Garden

Alice Rawsthorn

Design is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. When deployed wisely, it can being us pleasure, choice, strength, decency and much more. But if its power is abused, the outcome can be wasteful, confusing, humiliating, even dangerous. None of us can avoid being affected by design, whether or not we wish to. It is so ubiquitous that it determines how we feel and what we do, often without our noticing. 
 
Hello World explores design's influence on our lives. Written by the renowned design critic Alice Rawsthorn and designed by the award-winning book designer Irma Boom, it describes how warlords, scientists, farmers, hackers, activists and designers have used design to different ends throughout history: from the macabre symbol invented by 18th century pirates to terrorise their victims into surrender, to one woman's quest for the best possible prosthetic legs and the evolution of the World Cup ball. 
 
At a time when we face colossal changes, unprecedented in their speed, scale and intensity - from the deepening environmental crisis, to giant leaps in science and technology - Hello Worldexplains how design can help us to make sense of them andto turn them to our advantage.

Hello World

Where Design Meets Life

Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein - architect of Pop art, connoisseur of the comic strip, master of irony and prophet of popular culture. From exhilarating images of ice-cool jet pilots in dog fights, to blue-haired Barbie dolls drowning in scenes of domestic heartache, Lichtenstein's instantly recognisable paintings, with their Ben-Day dots and witty one-liners, defined the art of a generation. But how did a jobbing, unassuming painter of the Fifties become a world-famous Pop artist whose work today sells for millions? What do his paintings really tell us? And what is his legacy? 
 
This book, which can be read in two hours or less, is a perfect introduction to the artist and his work. Spanning Lichtenstein's career, and explaining his unique style, it is a journey through the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest artists.

Roy Lichtenstein

How Modern Art Was Saved by Donald Duck

Mark Ovenden

London Underground By Design is the beautifully illustrated new book from Mark Ovenden, the acclaimed author of Great Railway Maps of the World, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Tube in 2013. 
 
Since its establishment 150 years ago as the world's first urban subway, the London Underground has continuously set a benchmark for design that has influenced transit systems from New York to Tokyo, Moscow to Paris and beyond. London Underground by Design is the first meticulous study of every aspect of that feat, a comprehensive history of one of the world's most celebrated design achievements, and of the visionaries who brought it to life. 
 
Beginning in the pioneering Victorian age, Mark Ovenden charts the evolution of architecture, branding, typeface, map design, interior and textile styles, posters, signage and graphic design and how these came together to shape not just the Underground's identity, but the character of London itself. This is the story of celebrated designers - from Frank Pick, the guru who conceptualised the modern Tube's look under the 'design fit for purpose' mantra, to Harry Beck, Tube diagram creator, and from Marion Dorn, one of the twentieth century's leading textile designers, to Edward Johnston, creator of the distinctive font that bears his name, as well as Leslie Green, designer of central London's distinctive ruby-red tiled stations, and the Design Research Unit's head, Misha Black, who in the 1960s rebranded British Railways and created the Victoria line's distinctive style, and Sir Norman Foster, architect of Canary Wharf station. 
 
'Fascinating ... authoritative ... bristles with photographs I've never seen before ... the book does ample justice to a network that - overcrowded and overpriced - is a glorious palimpsest of design' Andrew Martin, Observer 
 
'I wouldn't ordinarily enthuse about one book at such length, but this is an important work...not because it's an entertaining read (it is), but because it identifies the birth of a brand...and records the birth of a new idea - the transport interchange' Kevin McCloud, Grand Designs Magazine 
 
'Mark Ovenden has devotedly documented the designs associated with [the Underground] ... "addictive" for anyone interested in the look of everyday life' Telegraph 
 
'This beautifully illustrated history is a worth tribute [to 150 years of design]' Shortlist 
 
'A wonderful, handsome book ... it makes me want to nerd out, get a travel card and whiz out to the strange ends of Metroland or the UFO shape of Southgate station' Robert Bownes/Andrew Tuck, Monocle Weekly (Radio programme) 
 
Mark Ovenden is a British writer and broadcaster. His previous books are Metro Maps of the World, Paris Metro Style and Great Railway Maps of the World. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and lives in London.

London Underground By Design

Choking the chicken, spanking the monkey, airing the orchid-whatever you call it, none of the images in this book will encourage the gentle art of self-pleasure. This deceptively simple and strangely addictive book presents a laugh-out-loud collection of random pictures virtually guaranteed to dampen the urge of even the strongest libido.

Images You Should Not Masturbate To

Scott Schuman

Scott Schuman is back with a completely new collection of beautiful images of the men and women who have caught his attention. From its origins on the streets of New York, his much-loved blog, thesartorialist.com remains a vivid and growing source of inspiration for readers everywhere. 
 
In The Sartorialist: Closer, Scott Schuman looks more deeply and with greater breadth at human style, telling diverse and compelling stories of its expression around the world. These images encompass the varied taste and visual attitude of people as far afield as Seoul, London, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and beyond. Presenting a rich tapestry of global style and always capturing an inspirational moment, the images in this new book continue to reflect Scott's unique sensibility and vision.

The Sartorialist: Closer (The Sartorialist Volume 2)

Lisa Chaney

Coco Chanel was many things to many people. Raised in emotional and financial poverty, she became one of the defining figures of the twentieth century. She was mistress to aristocrats, artists and spies. She broke rules of style and decorum, seducing both men and women, yet in her work expected the highest standards. She took a 'plaything' and turned it into a global industry which defined the modern woman. Filled with new insights and thrilling discoveries, Lisa Chaney's Chanel provides the most defining and provocative portrait yet.

Chanel

An Intimate Life

Neil MacGregor

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. 
 
Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

Matthew Parris

'Stands apart... This Englishman's castle might have started as a dream, but it has ended up being an extraordinary reality' Sunday Times 
 
Walking in the Pyrenees one spring morning Matthew Parris stumbled upon a magnificent ruined mansion standing on the edge of a line of huge cliffs. Later he was to discover that parts of the house dated back to the 14th century though it had not been completed until 1559; and that it had survived two massive earthquakes before falling into disrepair in the early 1960s. 
A few years later, seduced by 'one of those foolish challenges that grip us in middle life', Parris bought the house, L'Avenc, and set about restoring it to its full glory. This delightful book chronicles it all: the original discovery, the attempts to discover its history, and then the long effortful years trying to bring it back to life in the face of scepticism from family, friends and Spanish neighbours. The original edition of A Castle in Spain was published in 2005 when the renovations were a work in progress; this new edition triumphantly records all that has happened since.

A Castle in Spain

Minoru Mori

From building office blocks in the charred ruins of post-war Tokyo to creating Japan's largest ever urban development, Mori Building Co. has revolutionized how cities are made. 
 
In the late 1960s, after the success of its early 'number buildings', the company changed its focus from individual sites to whole neighbourhoods as Japan's economic miracle fuelled a building boom. By the 1980s Mori had completed the groundbreaking redevelopment at Ark Hills, home to the country's first 'intelligent building' which became Tokyo's international finance hub. This was the forerunner to the Roppongi Hills project - a cultural quarter which has attracted 40 million visitors a year since it was completed in 2003 and is Japan's biggest private development to date. 
 
In this book, Minoru Mori tells the story of the remarkable growth and pioneering vision that made Mori Building Co. Japan's leading developer. He traces the entire history of the company and shows how the unconventional thinking championed by Mori will be vital as Japan faces the challenges of recovering from a devastating tsunami while dealing with a shrinking population and a turbulent global economy.

MORI Building

The Making of Vertical Garden Cities

Colm Tóibín

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is Colm Tóibín's touching memoir. 
 
A Guest at the Feast moves from the small town of Enniscorthy to Dublin, from memories of a mother who always had a book on the go to the author's early adulthood, from a love of literature to the influences of place and family. Tóibín's captivating memoir is the story of a writer coming of age and his connections between home, work and love. It is a perfect gem of a book.

A Guest at the Feast

Charles Nicholl

Leonardo da Vinci is the most mysterious of all the great artists, continuing to inspire and intrigue centuries after his death. Who lies behind the legend of the 'Renaissance genius'? What is the real story behind his elusive masterpieces and tantalizing notebooks? Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an 'intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. This compelling, lyrical biography explores Leonardo's life as never before, brilliantly illuminating the man behind the enigma.

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Flights of the Mind

Andrew Graham Dixon

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. The worlds of Milan, Rome and Naples through which Caravaggio moved and which Andrew Graham-Dixon describes brilliantly in this book, are those of cardinals and whores, prayer and violence. On the streets surrounding the churches and palaces, brawls and swordfights were regular occurrences. In the course of this desperate life Caravaggio created the most dramatic paintings of his age, using ordinary men and women - often prostitutes and the very poor - to model for his depictions of classic religious scenes. Andrew Graham-Dixon's exceptionally illuminating readings of Caravaggio'spictures, which are the heart of the book, show very clearly how he created their drama, immediacy and humanity, and how completely he departed from the conventions of his time.

Caravaggio

A Life Sacred and Profane

The Edifice Complex explores the intimate and inextricable relationship between power, money and architecture in the twentieth century. How and why have presidents, prime ministers, mayors, millionaires and bishops come to share such a fascination with grand designs? From Blair to Mitterrand, from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam Hussein, architecture has become an end in itself, as well as a means to an end. This is a book of genuine timeliness, throwing new light on the motivations of the rich and powerful around the world - and on the ways they seek to affect us.

The Edifice Complex

The architecture of power

David Shields

Reality Hunger questions every assumption we ever made about art, the novel, journalism, poetry, film, TV, rap, stand-up, graffiti, sampling, plagiarism, writing, and reading. In seeking to tear up the old culture in search of something new and more authentic, it is the most vital book of the new century.

Reality Hunger

A Manifesto

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

Poet, aesthete and hedonist, Baudelaire was also one of the most groundbreaking art critics of his time. Here he explores beauty, fashion, dandyism, the purpose of art and the role of the artist, and describes the painter who, for him, expresses most fully the drama of modern life. 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The Painter of Modern Life

Jacob Burckhardt

Pioneering art historian Jacob Burckhardt saw the Italian Renaissance as no less than the beginning of the modern world. In this hugely influential work he argues that the Renaissance's creativity, competitiveness, dynasties, great city-states and even its vicious rulers sowed the seeds of a new era. 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The State as a Work of Art

Atlantia

Avalon

BBC Children's Classics

BBC Classics

BBC Earth

BBC Radio’s The Lord of the Rings

BBC TV Soundtracks

BP Animation

Baby Touch

Ballroom Girls

Barnaby Grimes

Be More...

Bear Mountain Rescue Series

Beasts of Prey

The complete boxed collection of Beatrix Potter's beloved Peter Rabbit books

Beatrix Potter Originals

Beautiful Creatures

Bel Dame Apocrypha

Bella Wallis Victorian Mysteries

Belle

Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom

Bergman Brothers

Big Ideas for Little Philosophers

Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers

Bill Smith / Lydia Chin

Bim Blake

Bindi Babes

Tim and Biscuit, two unlikely friends, always seem to get themselves into difficult situations. From their first meeting in Cliffhanger, where bookish Tim is forced to endure an activities camp, to Buried Alive, where a quiet camping holiday turns out to be full of surprises, there is never a dull moment with these two around.Jaqueline Wilson’s hilarious duo of books catalogues their escapades, triumphs and failures, with a good helping of snacks along the way!

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter