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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Louise Brangan

This haunting and immersive book shines a light on the dark history of Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries. 
 
'Compelling, measured and deeply felt' ANNE ENRIGHT 
'A terrific yet harrowing unearthing of Ireland's shadowland. A landmark book' RORY CARROLL 
'Breaking silence is a catalyst for change' CAELAINN HOGAN 
 
Following independence in 1922, Ireland began to chase a dream: to become the perfect Catholic nation. But purity had a price. Throughout the twentieth century, thousands of women and girls who did not conform – the wayward, the poor, the disabled, the abused – were sent to the Magdalene Laundries. Each was perceived to have fallen in some way. Once locked inside, their hair was shorn off, their names were erased – and then they were put to work. They washed, they scrubbed and they prayed, labouring in an attempt to salvage their souls. 
 
When the gates of the last Laundry shut in 1996, Ireland moved on. Or so it seemed. This remains one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods of recent history. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the last Laundry’s closure, The Fallen is the forgotten story of the Magdalene Laundries, told through the voices of the women who endured them, the nuns who presided over them and the communities that lived alongside them. 
 
Unflinching and compassionate, Louise Brangan draws on archives and survivors’ testimonies to dismantle long-held myths about what the Laundries were, who was sent to these places of violence and secrecy, and why. As we move from the past into the present, Brangan compels us not only to confront this shameful history, but to ask a deeper question: what do we choose to remember? 
 
Winner of the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award

The Fallen

The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence

Simukai Chigudu

In my home country, they call me a ‘bornfree’. 
 
Simukai Chigudu was one of the first generation to be born after the end of colonial rule in Zimbabwe. Growing up he heard stories about his grandfather’s murder by the Rhodesian regime, how his father had been imprisoned and tortured as a student before joining the bloody war of independence as a guerilla, and how his mother had thrown off the strictures of the past to build a successful career helping other women do the same. Yet Simukai’s early life was also steeped in British tradition. With his classmates he sang English folk songs, read Shakespeare, played cricket. 
 
Then, in 2002, he was one of thousands to leave the country as it descended into political violence and economic collapse. His new home: a boarding school in the north of England. What followed was a culture shock that unravelled his understanding of the world, his family and himself. 
 
Chasing Freedom is his profound and remarkably moving story – that of a boy shaped through his parents’ buried trauma by the great currents of late-twentieth century history. It is the story of a family haunted by the cause of liberation, and of a new generation, still searching for their promised freedom.

Chasing Freedom

Coming of Age at the End of Empire

Gavin Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom's intimate and poignant account of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics 
 
‘Go slow,’ his political elders advised him, but Gavin Newsom has never known such a speed. For Newsom, the California Dream is what lured his father’s family from Ireland, six generations ago. His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later Newsom would be elected as mayor. 
 
Newsom has never lived anywhere but California. His childhood was spent being tugged between two worlds: his mother worked three jobs in order to care for her children while his father, a close friend of the Getty family, brought Newsom into a world of wealth and connections. But the vantage point was valuable: he inherited his mother’s perseverance and his father’s reverence of California – not only its wildness, but its opportunity. 
 
In Young Man in a Hurry, Newsom traces the forces that have defined his ambitions as a politician. As mayor of San Francisco, he made waves when he violated state law in order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He launched bold efforts to counter climate change, improve mental health care, and enhance gun safety. Elected as governor and entering office into immediate hyper-partisan headwinds from Washington, DC, Newsom has constantly and consistently stuck his neck out. 
 
Here, he reflects on the long journey that ultimately shaped him into one of the most recognizable and accomplished elected officials in America.

Young Man in a Hurry

A Memoir of Discovery

Gisèle Pelicot

The extraordinarily powerful memoir by a heroine of our times, whose story inspires change, compassion and courage. 
 
One November day, Gisèle Pelicot was called to a local police station and life as she knew it ended. Her husband of fifty years had been caught by a supermarket guard filming up women’s skirts. But on his computer was shattering evidence: for nearly a decade, he had been secretly drugging and raping her and inviting dozens of strangers into their home to abuse her. 
 
Four years later, he and fifty other men were put on trial and Gisèle’s courage in waiving her right to anonymity made global headlines. ‘Shame must change sides,’ she declared, giving voice and hope to millions. Her words became a rallying cry and her decision marked a turning point in public feeling about sexual violence. 
 
For the first time, and with unwavering honesty and grace, she describes a difficult childhood, first love, her career and motherhood. It is a life in determined search of happiness, both before and after her devastating discovery. She is an ordinary person who faces extraordinary catastrophe, whose example changes the world. 
 
A Hymn to Life is an unforgettable testament and a promise. Its message is one of defiance and renewal – that victims have no reason to feel ashamed; that even after unimaginable betrayal we can go on; that the colour can come back to life. Ultimately, Gisèle Pelicot emerges with a renewed passion and reverence for living, and for love.

A Hymn to Life

Shame has to Change Sides

Elizabeth Kolbert

Urgent and inspiring lessons from the frontlines of the climate catastrophe – by one of our most important and influential environmental writers. 
 
From Greenland’s melting ice sheets to New Zealand’s protected mountaintops, we join Kolbert on the road as she travels to the places most dramatically affected by climate change – revealing a world which is both dangerously fragile and remarkably resilient. 
 
We encounter newly discovered species and meet the last surviving members of others, witness the power of rewilding up close and are reminded of the abounding wonders of our natural world. Along the way we also meet countless brilliant individuals who are steering us towards a better future: scientists harnessing AI to commune with whales; activists successfully lobbying for the rights of nature; and ordinary people making extraordinary moves, such as the Samsø islanders leading completely carbon-neutral lives. 
 
The natural world is changing profoundly, and the threats to our planet are only growing more serious. Now is the time to deepen our understanding of this incredible world we are in danger of losing – and to act, while we still can.

Life on a Little-Known Planet

Dispatches from a Changing World

Werner Herzog

What if a lie is told to reveal some underlying truth? Are feelings that seem inappropriate, such as hysteria following the death of a celebrity, any less true than the grief we feel over the death of a loved one? Even if the plot of an opera seems preposterous, can’t it still express emotions that ring true with the audience? 
 
At the heart of this fascinating and iconoclastic book lies Werner Herzog’s concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ – a truth that is often hidden behind the facts and our conceptions of reality but can be gleaned through the poetic imagination, in art, literature and cinema, when we open ourselves up to an aesthetic experience. 
 
Written in Herzog’s inimitable style, these stories, anecdotes and reflections take us from present-day deep fakes and the opportunities and perils of AI to ancient Egypt and Rome, where rulers resorted to lies and propaganda in the same way as governments do today; from Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole to alien abduction claims and the making of Herzog’s own films. 
 
With its singular vision and unique voice, The Future of Truth is a compelling meditation on the relationship between fact and fiction – evidence and imagination – by one of today’s most fascinating and idiosyncratic thinkers.

The Future of Truth

Yanis Varoufakis

A captivating portrait of number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis’s political awakening, told through the extraordinary lives of five women, and the West’s tumultuous history from 1924 to the present. 
 
Eleni put an arm around him and said: ‘Come, come, life is ahead of us. Raise your soul now. We have much to do.’ 
 
When Yanis Varoufakis was eight years old, his uncle made him a model airplane out of matchsticks and cigarette papers; all he could find in his cell. Yet, to his dismay, his mother Eleni broke open the fragile gift, revealing a hidden message: instructions for fellow dissidents ahead of their forthcoming court martial. It was 1969 and Uncle Panayis was a political prisoner, captured and tortured for resisting the military dictatorship. 
 
Dramatic in scope and deep in feeling, Raise Your Soul is an intimate portrait of three generations caught up in the whirlwind of history. It is also a remarkable narrative spanning one hundred years, beginning in post-colonial Egypt in the 1920s, and then tracing Greece’s tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, communist resistance, civil war, Cold War fracture, fascist dictatorship, socialist revival and present-day economic crisis. 
 
At its heart are the women whose resilience, defiance and courage inspired the visionary economist most: Eleni, Anna, Trisevgeni, Georgia and Danaë. Through their lives, Varoufakis not only lays bare his own political soul, but confronts the dark forces of authoritarianism that still haunt Europe and beyond, reigniting hope in all of us that we can rise once more.

Raise Your Soul

A Personal History of Resistance

Stephen Greenblatt

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. 
 
From one of the greatest writers on the Elizabethan era, Dark Renaissance is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light. 
 
In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism. 
 
What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his youthful collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time. 
 
Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his masterpieces about power and its costs. And he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still. 
 
Dark Renaissance is a scintillating life of a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity.

Dark Renaissance

The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe

Madeline Potter

The Roma is a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today. It is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive. 
 
Full of fascinating stories and extraordinary individuals, The Roma is a powerful corrective to the stereotyping and prejudices still faced by Romani communities. We meet the Romani artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany’s light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century Romani woman in London who was accused of kidnapping a girl and sentenced to death only to be exonerated thanks to some detective work by an unconvinced judge. 
 
Throughout, Madeline Potter weaves in her travels though contemporary Romani Europe as well as strands of her own journey as a Romani woman in Romania and now in Britain. Deftly blending explorative history and portraits of a unique and vibrant culture with intimate accounts of racism, The Roma is a celebration of survival – of resilience and resistance in the face of prejudice and persecution.

The Roma

A Travelling History

Rachel E. Cargle

From a highly lauded modern voice in feminism and racial justice comes a deeply personal and insightful testament to the power of reimagining to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do. 
 
There are breaking points in all our lives when we realise that the way things have been done before just don't work for us anymore, be it the way we approach our relationships, our belief systems, our work, our education, even our rest. For activist, philanthropist and CEO Rachel E. Cargle, reimagining - the act of creating in our minds that which does not exist but that we believe can and should - has been a lifelong process. Reimagining served as the most powerful catalyst for Cargle's personal transformation from a small-town Christian wife to an incisive queer feminist voice of a generation. 
 
In A Renaissance of Our Own, we witness the sometimes painful but always inspiring breaking points in Cargle's life that fostered a truer identity. These defining moments offer a blueprint for how we must all use our imagination - the space that sees beyond limits - to live in alignment with our highest values and to craft a world independent of oppressive structures, both personal and societal. Cargle now invites you to acknowledge ways of being that stem from societal expectations instead of your personal truth, and to embark on a renaissance of your own. She provides the very tools and prompts that she used to unearth her own truth, tools that opened her up to being a more authentic feminist and purpose-driven matriarchal leader. 
 
A Renaissance of Our Own gives us the courage to look at the world and say, 'I want something different.' It serves as a reminder of the power and possibility of reimagining a life that feels right, all the way down to the marrow of your bones.

A Renaissance of Our Own

A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining

What does it take to care for a stranger? Really care. 
 
The Case for Love is a reflection on a career treating patients with brain trauma - people whose thoughts and feelings are largely unknowable - and how and why those treatments failed. 
 
It is a reconstruction of three haunting cases in which the patients were tragically misunderstood - and an attempt through the power of the imagination to understand and make amends. 
 
It then describes the author's abandonment of his career and his tumultuous quest for healing and redemption. 
 
It is also a story of intimate relationships, pets, fatherhood and heartbreak, culminating in a moment of psychedelic transcendence and rebirth. 
 
It is about the overpowering need for connection - and how, increasingly, we are trapped in ourselves. 
 
It is a meditation on empathy and an act of atonement. 
 
It is a unique, hybrid work of clinical case study and pure invention that destroys the boundary between fact and fiction in order to bring us face-to-face with the shocking, liberating truth. 
 
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Praise for Let Me Not Be Mad 
 
'Imagine a gonzo Oliver Sacks communing with Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose, R.D. Laing and the spirit of Kafka's 'The Country Doctor', and you still won't quite have the flavour of this wild and strikingly original book' William Fiennes 
 
'Stunning: clever, troubling, restless, honest, dishonest; one of the best portraits of madness and clinical practice I've read' Olivia Laing 
 
'A perfectly extraordinary - not to mention extraordinarily perfect - tense Hitchcockian psychodrama. I have rarely read a more haunting and enthralling account of a descent into madness. An important, profound and fascinating book' Stephen Fry 
 
'Blackly comic, warmly compassionate, a unique take on the human mind offering uncomfortable universal truths' Stewart Lee 
 
'A slow-burn belter of a book ... terrific ... so finely described, the result has the terse force of a classic short story' Roddy Doyle 
 
'Exhilarating ... dazzling ... a miraculous feat' Guardian

The Case for Love

My Adventures In Other Minds

Ibram X. Kendi

In this interactive workbook, one of the world's leading experts in antiracism, Ibram X. Kendi, author of the global bestseller How To Be an Antiracist, provides a series of questions, written exercises, quotes and provocations to help us absorb the key principles of antiracist behaviour and to embed them in our daily thoughts and actions. Kendi's powerful voice and gifts as a teacher combine with arresting graphic design to provide a vital tool for anyone who takes the necessity of being antiracist seriously. The journal can be used in groups as a teaching aid but is also ideal as a resource for individuals.

Be Antiracist

A Journal for Awareness, Reflection and Action

Jeffrey Toobin

What happens when the President of the United States engages in criminal activity? He runs for re-election. 
 
Donald Trump's campaign chairman went to jail. So did his personal lawyer. His long-time political consigliere was convicted of serious federal crimes, and his National Security Advisor pleaded guilty to several more. Multiple Russian spies were indicted in absentia. Career intelligence agents and military officers were alarmed enough by his actions as President that they alerted senior government officials and ignited the impeachment process. Yet despite all this, a years-long inquiry led by Robert Mueller, and the third Presidential impeachment trial in American history, Donald Trump survived to run for presidency again. Why? 
 
Jeffrey Toobin's highly entertaining, definitive account of the Mueller investigation and the impeachment of the President takes readers behind the scenes of the epic legal and political struggle to call Trump to account for his misdeeds. Toobin recounts the mind-boggling twists and turns in the case – Trump's son met with a Russian operative promising Kremlin support; Trump paid a porn star $130,000 to hush up an affair; Rudy Giuliani and a pair of shady Ukrainian-American businessmen got the Justice Department to look at Russian-created conspiracy theories. Toobin shows how Trump's canny lawyers used Mueller's famous integrity against him, and how Trump's bullying and bluster cowed Republican legislators into ignoring the clear evidence of the impeachment hearings. 
 
Based on dozens of interviews with prosecutors in Mueller's office, Trump's legal team, Congressional investigators, White House staffers, and several of the key players, including some who are now in prison, True Crimes and Misdemeanours is a revelatory narrative that makes sense of the seemingly endless chaos of the Trump years. Filled with never-before-reported details of the high-stakes legal battles and political machinations, the book weaves a tale of a rogue President guilty of historic misconduct, and how he got away with it.

True Crimes and Misdemeanors

The Investigation of Donald Trump

Robert A Caro

‘The greatest biography of our era … Essential reading for those who want to comprehend power and politics’ The Times 
 
Robert A. Caro’s legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America. 
 
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Master of the Senate takes Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered body in politics, by the time Johnson arrived the Senate had become a parody of itself and an obstacle that for decades had blocked desperately needed liberal legislation. Caro shows how Johnson’s brilliance, charm and ruthlessness enabled him to become the youngest and most powerful Majority Leader in history and how he used his incomparable legislative genius – seducing both Northern liberals and Southern conservatives – to pass the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction.

Master of the Senate

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 3)

‘The greatest biography of our era … Essential reading for those who want to comprehend power and politics’ The Times 
 
Robert A. Caro’s legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America. 
 
 In this second instalment we witness a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new. Following Johnson through his service in the Second World War, it describes the foundation and the myths of his long-concealed fortune. The explosive heart of the book is Caro’s revelation of the shocking true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, which Johnson won with the the ‘87 votes that changed history’.

Means of Ascent

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 2)

‘The greatest biography of our era … Essential reading for those who want to comprehend power and politics’ The Times 
 
Robert A. Caro’s legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America. 
 
This first instalment tells of the rise to national power of a desperately poor young man from the Texas Hill Country, revealing in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy and ambition that set LBJ apart. It charts his boyhood through the years of the Depression to his debut as a Congressman, his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate and his attainment, nonetheless, at the age of thirty-one of the power for which he hungered.

The Path to Power

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 1)

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro is 'simply one of the best non-fiction books in English of the last forty years' (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times): a riveting and timeless account of power, politics and the city of New York by ‘the greatest political biographer of our times’ (Sunday Times); chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time and by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize; a Sunday Times Bestseller; 'An outright masterpiece' (Evening Standard) 
 
The Power Broker tells the story of Robert Moses, the single most powerful man in New York for almost half a century and the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever once being elected to office, he created for himself a position of supreme and untouchable authority, allowing him to utterly reshape the city of New York, turning it into the city we know today, while at the same time blighting the lives of millions and remaining accountable to no one. 
 
First published in the USA in 1974, this monumental classic was a Sunday Times bestseller when published in the UK in 2015 and is now widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest books of its kind.

The Power Broker

Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Philip Caputo

The first memoir of the Vietnam War and an all-time classic of war literature 
|40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION| 
 
In March 1965, Marine Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed in Danang with the first ground combat unit committed to fight in Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home - physically whole but emotionally destroyed, his youthful idealism shattered. 
 
A decade later, having reported first-hand the very final hours of the war, Caputo sat down to write ‘simply a story about war, about the things men do in war and the things war does to them’. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest war memoirs of all time. 
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‘A singular and marvellous work – a soldier’s-eye account that tells us, as no other book that I can think of has done, what it was actually like to be fighting in this hellish jungle’ The New York Times 
 
‘Unparalleled in its honesty, unapologetic in its candour and singular in its insights into the minds and hearts of men in combat, this book is as powerful to read today as the day it was published in 1977. Caputo has more than earned his place beside Sassoon, Owen, Vonnegut, and Heller’ Kevin Powers 
 
‘To call this the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it. A Rumour of War is a dangerous and even subversive book, the first to insist that readers asks themselves the questions: How would I have acted? To what lengths would I have gone to survive? A terrifying book, it will make the strongest among us weep’ Los Angeles Times Book Review 
 
‘Caputo’s troubled, searching meditations on the love and the hate of war, on fear and the ambivalent discord warfare can create in the hearts of decent men are amongst the most eloquent I have read in modern literature’ New York Review of Books 
 
‘Superb. At times it is hard to remember that this is not a novel’ New Statesman

A Rumor of War

Timothy Snyder

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
‘A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close’ Rachel Maddow 
 
'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer 
 
History does not repeat, but it does instruct. 
 
In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances. 
 
History can familiarise, and it can warn. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny. 
 
Now is a good time to do so.

On Tyranny

Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age. 
 
Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires and fears, and by reconnecting with this historic reality we are able to experience the true character of the playwright himself. Greenblatt traces Shakespeare's unfolding imaginative generosity - his ability to inhabit others, to confer upon them his own strength of spirit, to make them truly live as independent beings as no other artist has ever done. 
 
Digging deep into the vital links between the playwright and his world, Will in the World provides the fullest account ever written of the living, breathing man behind the masterpieces.

Will In The World

How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Walter Benjamin

Illuminations contains the most celebrated work of Walter Benjamin, one of the most original and influential thinkers of the 20th Century: 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', ‘The Task of the Translator’ and 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', as well as essays on Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, Proust and an anatomy of his own obsession, book collecting. 
 
This now legendary volume offers the best possible access to Benjamin’s singular and significant achievement, while Hannah Arendt’s introduction reveals how his life and work are a prism to his times.

Illuminations

John Sugden

The Sword of Albion concludes the most comprehensive and intimate life of Nelson ever written, one that teems with a glittering array of sailors and civilians, heroes and villains, husbands, wives and lovers. 
 
 Here are Nelson's famous victories at the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar as well as his lesser-known yet equally gripping campaigns. But behind the military prowess is a man riven with paradoxes and schisms: the fighting admiral and the glory-hunter, the national hero and the indigent commoner, the family man and the adulterer. 
 
 This is an epic, triumphant and tragic life, and a masterpiece of the biographer's art.

Nelson

The Sword of Albion

Hailed as 'the greatest biography of our era' (The Times) this is the fourth part of Robert Caro's multi-award-winning best-selling work on American President Lyndon Johnson. 
 
The Passage of Power, 'the series' crowning volume' (Economist), spans the years 1958 to 1964, arguably the most crucial years in the life of Johnson and pivotal years for American history. This era saw some of the most frustrating moments of Johnson's career, but also some of his most triumphant. His battle with the Kennedy brothers over the 1960 Democratic nomination for president was a bitter one, and the ensuing years of Johnson's vice-presidency were marked with humiliation. But, thrust into power following the assassination of J. F. Kennedy, Johnson grasped the presidential role with unprecedented skill. Caro also provides a fresh perspective on Kennedy’s assassination from Johnson's viewpoint, and penetrates deep into what it was like for him to assume a position of such power at a time of national crisis. 
 
The Passage of Power documents Johnson's extraordinary early presidency, forcing previously abandoned bills on the budget and civil rights through an uncooperative Congress and striving to achieve what he saw to be the highest standard of office. 
 
In The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro shows a delicacy of touch and a profoundness of insight into the state of a nation under the hand of a political master. Collectively these volumes constitute a major history of America in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.

The Passage of Power

The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 4)

Simon Schama

* 'Great art has dreadful manners...' Simon Schama observes at the start of his epic exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. 'The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality...' 
 
* With the same disarming force, Power of Art jolts us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery, as Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who, under extreme stress, created something unprecedented, altering the course of art for ever. 
 
* The embattled heroes - Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko - faced crisis with steadfast defiance. The masterpieces they created challenged convention, shattered complacency, shifted awareness and changed the way we look at the world. With powerfully vivid story-telling, Schama explores the dynamic personalities of the artists and the spirit of the times they lived through, capturing the flamboyant theatre of bourgeois life in Amsterdam, the passion and paranoia of Revolutionary Paris, and the carnage and pathos of civil-war Spain. 
 
* Most compelling of all, Power of Art traces the extraordinary evolution of eight world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works 'tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver. And when they do that they answer, irrefutably and majestically, the nagging question of every reluctant art-conscript... "OK, OK, but what's art really for?"'

The Power of Art

Mona Chalabi

Ten Lives

How What We Have Shapes Who We Are

Kevin Fong

No plan survives the first five minutes of contact with reality – so how should we prepare for what follows? 
 
Kevin Fong has spent his working life in high-risk, high-performance teams – flying as doctor with the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, working with NASA’s human space flight directorate, and serving as National Clinical Adviser to NHS England during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as being part of the UK’s frontline response to several major incidents and terror attacks. 
 
Drawing on these experiences, Minute Six provides key insights into how teams and organisations succeed against the odds and why they sometimes fail. Fong explains why decisions in the face of irreducible uncertainty are the ultimate team sport, and the success of teamwork depends in turn on the crucial partnership between humans and technology. But too often we misunderstand the place of the human in the loop and why – when it comes to managing the unknown – the edge of chaos is a good place for us to be. 
 
Minute Six is a timely and essential survival guide for an increasingly complex, volatile and uncertain world.

Minute Six

How High Performance Teams Navigate the Unknown

Dave Grimstead

Every two minutes someone is reported missing in the UK. Most return, but some do not. The police are unable to investigate every case fully, and so too often these people disappear from memory. But the missing always leave behind traces – clues to who they might have been and where they might have gone. 
 
Dave Grimstead, a retired Detective Inspector, has built an eclectic team of passionate volunteers who follow these clues wherever they lead in the hunt for answers, closure and the truth. Someone Must Know is their extraordinary story. Through ten fascinating cold cases, ranging from bodies discovered at sea to individuals who slipped through the cracks of everyday life, Someone Must Know explores the reality of what it means to search for those who are lost, to reconstruct whole lives from fragments of evidence, and to follow the stories of people who are gone but do not deserve to be forgotten.

Someone Must Know

The Search for Missing People and Lost Identities

James Marriott

Books are dying. Across the world the number of people reading is in free fall. Literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries. At universities, students are unable to read the books assigned to them by their teachers. Addictive digital entertainment technologies have colonised our free time with infantilising ‘slop’. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through the centuries is breaking for the first time since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages. 
 
The New Dark Ages is an impassioned attack on the trivial and meaningless culture of the screen and a defence of the written word. Drawing on history and classic works of literature and theory, The New Dark Ages argues that reading and writing are essential for innovation, creativity and critical thinking. 
 
Above all, the culture of print is essential to the functioning of modern democracies which require their citizens to grapple with ideas at length and in depth. And as print dies, we risk returning to the chaos, tribalism, and rage of a pre-literate society.

The New Dark Ages

The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society

Ben Rhodes

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? 
 
This sweeping history of the United States through fifteen key speeches relives the battle for American identity – from a New York Times bestselling author and one of President Obama’s former speechwriters. 
 
For 250 years, America has debated what it means to be American. The question shaped the compromises in their constitution and the arguments they’ve had ever since, spawning abolitionism, secession and civil war, populism, mass migration and global leadership, movements for reform and the backlashes to them. All We Say tells the story of the United States through fifteen speeches – some iconic, others long forgotten, all pivotal – from its founding to the intense divisions of our times. 
 
Through riveting and beautifully rendered accounts of the people, movements and moments that produced these speeches, Rhodes traces the history of America's battle over identity. The result is a singular and revealing portrait of the United States: a nation divided between two stories – one of inheritance, power, and exclusion, the other of equality, striving, and belonging. Drawing on a decade writing for Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes also reveals how words can redirect a nation, what makes a speech enduring, and why oratory is a unique form of persuasion in a democracy. 
 
From Benjamin Franklin’s call for compromise at the Constitutional Convention to Alexander Stephens’ case for white supremacy as the cornerstone of the Confederacy, from Martin Luther King’s dream of true equality to Donald Trump’s rallying cry against democracy itself, these speeches remind us that history is a living argument. At a time when American identity – and truth – is contested, All We Say offers a fresh and powerful look at who America really us, and who it could still become.

All We Say

A History of the United States in Fifteen Speeches

Lady Hale

Rowan Williams

Two leading thinkers present alternative answers to one of the most difficult and divisive questions of our times: do we have the right to die? 
 
As pressure grows to legalise assisted dying in the United Kingdom, and reform moves onto the political agenda, public opinion remains deeply divided. For those who feel unsure or undecided, this book offers clarity rather than slogans, illuminating the ethical and legal fault lines at the heart of the debate: between autonomy and safety; between personal choice and collective responsibility. 
 
Lady Hale, former President of the Supreme Court, argues that everyone should have the freedom to decide the time and manner of their own death. Drawing on real cases from around the world, she explores how the law could establish effective safeguards, while preserving an individual’s right to decide for themselves when their suffering becomes unbearable. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, sits in opposition, contending that no such right can ever be absolute, or unqualified. He raises moral and practical concerns about the protection of vulnerable communities, especially those living with disabilities, the pressures facing an already overstretched NHS and the risk that assisted dying could become a substitute for properly funded palliative care. 
 
Both acknowledge that the alleviation of pain is a noble endeavour but differ as to whether it should amount to a legal obligation on the state — and diverge on the risks such an obligation might pose to others, particularly the most vulnerable. Their essays turn on the questions and decisions we all must face: who should be eligible for an euthanasia programme; how decisions would be authorised; who should deliver assistance; and what modern medicine could, and should, provide. 
 
Moving beyond division, both authors confront a deeper challenge: how a public healthcare system can universally uphold dignity, and what it would truly mean to offer us all what we profoundly deserve – a good death.

Do We Have the Right to Die?

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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