Aeschylus

Aesop lived in the early sixth century BC on the island of Samos, which lies off the coast of modern Turkey. He originally came from Thrace which was a separate country in those days, though it now forms part of Greece and Bulgaria. Very little is known about his life except that he worked as a slave on Samos for a master called Iadmon, and that he became a very famous storyteller. He was so famous that almost any fable which could have been told by him became attributed to him.

Aesop

Afsaneh Knight

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

Afua Hirsch

AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS is an author, blogger and international speaker who inspires audiences around the world. She has spoken at many corporations and conferences, such as Nike Women, Starbucks,Time Inc., Virgin, Johnson &amp; Johnson and the American Heart Foundation. She was born in Athens and trained in London at RADA before gaining a Master’s in psychology at the University of Santa Monica. She has collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to develop talks and seminars, and has worked with the Oprah Winfrey network. She is currently hosting a new podcast series in collaboration with The Huffington Post, entitled ‘Sundays with Agapi’, which includes guided meditations and interviews with prominent guests. She lives in Los Angeles.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Agatha Christie

Aggie MacKenzie

Aghnia Mardiyah is a London-based Illustrator and Character Designer with a passion for children's books and animation. She is drawn to fun, bright and vibrant colours. When she isn't disappearing under piles of work, she loves to travel! Exploring foreign places, exciting new sights and sensations is what inspires her the most!

Aghnia Mardiyah

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Boston Review, and penned a monthly column for the Point. From 2019 to 2020, she held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the research that contributes to this book.

Agnes Callard

Agnes Jekyll

Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855-29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, dubbed the 'Queen of Ices'. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for 'cornets with cream', possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone. Marshall was born in Walthamstow. She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs A B Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs A B Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894).

Agnes Marshall

Agnes Prus

Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3:AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow &amp; RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.

Agri Ismaïl

Aharon Appelfeld authored more than 45 acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction and received many international awards including the MLA Commonwealth Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, the prix Médicis étranger, the Israel prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine) in 1932, he survived the Holocaust and passed away in Israel in 2018.

Aharon Appelfeld

Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist based in London. He is the co-founder and director of We Are Not Numbers and a journalist with Palestine Deep Dive. Ahmed holds a degree in English Literature from Al-Azhar university in Gaza, and an MA in International Journalism from Leeds University, where he was a Chevening Scholar. 
 
Pam Bailey is a social-justice activist and journalist based in Washington DC. She lived and worked in the Gaza Strip following the 2008/9 Israeli assault, and co-founded We Are Not Numbers. Today, in addition to her ongoing dedication to the Palestinian cause, she dedicates herself to two nonprofits that advocate for people detained in American prisons -- including one she co-founded in 2020, called More Than Our Crimes.

Ahmed Alnaouq

Ahmed Errachidi

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahron Bregman is the author of four books about Israel and the Arabs: The Fifty Years War (with Jihan el Tahri), Israel's Wars, A History of Israel and Elusive Peace. He teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Ahron Bregman

Ai Qing is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Ai Qing

Ai Weiwei

Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Aidan Chambers

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Mathews

Aidan Potts

Aidan Smith

Aidan Storey

Aidan Trimble is the Chief Instructor to the Federation of Shotokan Karate and a former British, European and World Karate Champion, winning the world title in Tokyo - the home of Karate. Aidan has trained with some of the world's leading teachers of 'traditional' and 'sport' karate and is now an award-winning instructor and teacher who is in demand throughout the world. He can be contacted via www.fsk-karate.com.

Aidan Trimble

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Tom Marcus

In the boot were six homemade pipe bombs, all linked to detonate at the same time from a single call on a brand-new pay-as-you-go phone found on the target. 
 
Special Branch also found Chinese Type 56 assault rifles with eight full magazines full of ammunition. 
 
His target was a local school. He planned to attack two coaches of teenagers returning home after a school trip to France. Approximately sixty children, their accompanying teachers and their waiting parents. 
 
He was going to kill them all. 
 
'My world was dark, no colour, no right or wrong and no back-up. People like me exist to fight those no one else dares face. I wasn't the last resort; I was the only option' 
 
Tom Marcus was recruited by MI5 in the wake of the 7/7 attacks on London. After five years spent undercover as part of a covert British Army special operations unit he offered the Security Service the edge they so desperately needed. 
 
Following months of intensive training, Marcus was thrown into a world of relentless, unimaginable pressure; a never-ending struggle to prevent terrorist atrocities on our city streets, foil devastating strikes against the nation's infrastructure, and keep our country's secrets safe from foreign spies. Split second decisions carried life or death consequences. And not all his colleagues would survive the fight. 
 
In this explosive first-hand account, Soldier Spy lifts the lid on the war being waged by MI5 to keep us safe in our towns and cities for the first time; a blistering, visceral insight into life on the front line against terror, revealed in never-before-seen detail. 
 
It was a job which would inevitably exact a heavy price. But when it came down to it, Marcus knew he didn't have a choice. 
 
'Some people join the service out of a sense of duty, some out of wanting to do some good by removing the evil. I did it because it's all I knew. I'm a hunter of people and I'm damn good at it.'

Soldier Spy

David Horspool

Although he styled himself 'His Highness', adopted the court ritual of his royal predecessors, and lived in the former royal palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court, Oliver Cromwell was not a king - in spite of the best efforts of his supporters to crown him. 
 
Yet, as David Horspool shows in this illuminating new portrait of England's Lord Protector, Cromwell, the Puritan son of Cambridgeshire gentry, wielded such influence that it would be a pretence to say that power really lay with the collective. The years of Cromwell's rise to power, shaped by a decade-long civil war, saw a sustained attempt at the collective government of England; the first attempts at a real Union of Britain; the beginnings of empire; a radically new solution to the idea of a national religion; atrocities in Ireland; and the readmission to England of the Jews, a people officially banned for over three and a half centuries. At the end of it, Oliver Cromwell had emerged as the country's sole ruler: to his enemies, and probably to most of his countrymen, his legacy looked as likely to last as that of the Stuart dynasty he had replaced.

Oliver Cromwell (Penguin Monarchs)

England's Protector

Antony Beevor

Olga Chekhova was the niece of Anton Chekhov, a stunning Russian beauty and a famous Nazi-era film actress who Hitler counted among his friends. After fleeing Bolshevik Moscow for Berlin in 1920, she was recruited by her composer brother Lev, to work for Soviet intelligence. In return, her family were allowed to join her. 
 
The extraordinary story of how the whole family survived the Russian Revolution, the civil war, the rise of Hitler, the Stalinist Terror, and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union is a breathtaking tale of compromise and survival in a merciless age. 
 
In Antony Beevor's spellbinding narrative, this single story paints a vivid picture of an extraordinary era.

The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

A Life Torn Apart By Revolution And War

The true story of a family torn apart by revolution and war

Paul Kennedy

Paul Kennedy's now classic book traces Britain's rise and fall as a sea power from the Tudors to the present day. Challenging the traditional view that the British are natural 'sons of the waves', he suggests instead that the country's fortunes as a significant maritime force have always been bound up with its economic growth. In doing so, he contributes significantly to the centuries-long debate between 'continental' and 'maritime' schools of strategy over Britain's policy in times of war. Setting British naval history within a framework of national, international, economic, political and strategic considerations, he offers a fresh approach to one of the central questions in British history.

The Rise And Fall of British Naval Mastery

Deborah Lipstadt

The powerful and deeply disturbing book that was at the heart of the David Irving libel case, now dramatized in the film Denial. 
 
The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the Earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. For years those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But they have now begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas. 
 
In this famous book, reissued now to coincide with the film based on the legal case it provoked, Denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how--despite tens of thousands of witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence--this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with 'independent' research centres, and official publications that promote a 'revisionist' view of recent history. Denying the Holocaust argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another.

Denying the Holocaust

The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory

Dominic Lieven

In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and Russia had triumphed. This is the first history to explore in depth Russia's crucial role in the Napoleonic Wars, re-creating the epic battle between two empires as never before. 
 
Dominic Lieven writes with great panache and insight to describe from the Russians' viewpoint how they went from retreat, defeat and the burning of Moscow to becoming the new liberators of Europe; the consequences of which could not have been more important. 
 
Ultimately this book shows, memorably and brilliantly, Russia embarking on its strange, central role in Europe's existence, as both threat and protector - a role that continues, in all its complexity, into our own lifetimes.

Russia Against Napoleon

The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814

Barbara Tuchman

ONE OF THE GREATEST SPY STORIES OF ALL TIME 
 
Nothing can stop an enemy from picking wireless messages out of the free air - and nothing did. In England, Room 40 was born . . . 
 
In January 1917, with the First World War locked in terrible stalemate and America still neutral, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman gambled the future of the conflict on a single telegram. 
 
But this message was intercepted and decoded in Whitehall's legendary Room 40 - and Zimmerman's audacious scheme for world domination was exposed, bringing America into the war and changing the course of history. 
 
The story of how this happened, and the incalculable consequences are thrillingly told in Barbara Tuchman's brilliant exploration.

The Zimmermann Telegram

The Astounding Espionage Operation That Propelled America into the First World War

Eric Partridge

Passion-killers: Airwomen's service knickers, whether twilights (the lighter, summer-weight variety) or black-outs (the navy-blue winter-weights). A wise directive has purposely made them as unromantic in colour and in design as a wise directive could imagine. 
 
Thanks to the work of Eric Partridge in 1945, the hilarious slang of the Royal Air Force during the first two World Wars has been preserved for generations to come. While some phrases like 'chocks away!' have lasted to this day, others deserve to be rediscovered. The Dictionary of RAF Slang is a funny and fascinating insight into the lives of our RAF heroes, in a time gone by.

A Dictionary of RAF Slang

On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes on the Belgian/German border. Although Hitler's generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. The Ardennes offensive, with more than a million men involved, became the greatest battle of the war in western Europe. 
 
In January 1945, when the Red Army launched its onslaught towards Berlin, the once-feared German war machine was revealed to be broken beyond repair. The Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the Wehrmacht.

Ardennes 1944

Hitler's Last Gamble

Christopher Tyerman

In this highly original and enjoyable book, Christopher Tyerman focuses on the massive, all-encompassing and hugely costly business of actually preparing a crusade. The efforts of many thousands of men and women, who left their lands and families in Western Europe, and marched off to a highly uncertain future in the Holy Land and elsewhere have never been sufficiently understood. How to Plan a Crusade is fascinating on diplomacy, communications, propaganda, the use of mass media, medical care, equipment, voyages, money, weapons, credit, wills, ransoms, animals, and the power of prayer. It brings to life an extraordinary era in a novel and surprising way.

How to Plan a Crusade

Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages

Noam Chomsky

For over fifty years, one fact has dominated global politics: the United States can respond to any challenge to its power however it sees fit. Whatever the world may think, US actions are legitimate simply because they say so. 
 
With charateristic clarity and authority, Chomsky takes American imperialism head-on. From Edward Snowden and Palestinian-Israeli relations to political philosophy and how we structure democracy, Because We Say So offers a cross-section of perspectives on the question of America's ongoing hegemony.

Because We Say So

Guy Lawson

In January 2007, three young stoners from Miami Beach won a $300 million US Government contract to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. Instead of fulfilling the order with high-quality arms, they bought cheap Communist-style surplus ammo from Balkan gunrunners. The dudes then secretly repackaged millions of rounds of shoddy Chinese ammunition and shipped it to Kabul - until they were caught by Pentagon investigators. 
 
That's the 'official' story. The truth is far more explosive. Originally published as 'The Arms and the Dudes', this is a trip that goes from a dive apartment in Miami Beach to mountain caves in Albania, the corridors of power in Washington, and the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
This is a story you were never meant to read.

War Dogs

The True Story of How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History

Tim Judah

An urgent, insightful account of the human side of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine by seasoned war reporter Tim Judah 
 
Making his way from the Polish border in the west, through the capital city and the heart of the 2014 revolution, to the eastern frontline near the Russian border, Tim Judah brings a rare glimpse of the reality behind the headlines. Along the way he talks to the people living through the conflict - mothers, soldiers, businessmen, poets, politicians - whose memories of a contested past shape their attitudes, allegiances and hopes for the future. Together, their stories paint a vivid picture of what the second largest country in Europe feels like in wartime: a nation trapped between powerful forces, both political and historical. 
 
'Visceral, gripping, heartbreaking' Simon Sebag Montefiore 
 
'Haunting . . . timely . . . Interviewing a wide range of people who have been caught up in the recent conflict, Judah concentrates skilfully and affectingly on the human cost' Alexander Larman, Observer 
 
'Comes close to the master, Ryszard Kapuscinski' Roger Boyes, The Times 
 
'A kaleidoscopic portrait . . . Judah looks at the present - what Ukraine looks and feels like now' Marcus Tanner, Independent

In Wartime

Stories from Ukraine

Peter Hennessy

James Jinks

'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep. 
 
Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever before. 
 
In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent Deep provides an essential historical perspective.

The Silent Deep

The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945

Ian Kershaw

'Superb ... likely to become a classic' Observer 
 
In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a second conflict that managed to be even worse - a war in which the killing of civilians was central and which culminated in the Holocaust. 
 
To Hell and Back tells this story with humanity, flair and originality. Kershaw gives a compelling narrative of events, but he also wrestles with the most difficult issues that the events raise - with what it meant for the Europeans who initiated and lived through such fearful times - and what this means for us.

To Hell and Back

Europe, 1914-1949

Jonathan Dimbleby

The Battle of the Atlantic was - though often overlooked - crucial to victory in the Second World War. If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery across the Atlantic would have been severed. Mass hunger would have consumed Britain, and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe. There would have been no D-Day. 
 
Through fascinating contemporary diaries and letters, from the leaders and from the sailors on all sides, Jonathan Dimbleby creates a thrilling narrative that uniquely places the campaign in the context of the entire Second World War. Challenging conventional wisdom on the use of intelligence and on Churchill's bombing campaign, The Battle of the Atlantic tells the epic story of the decisions that led to victory, and the horror and humanity of life on those perilous seas.

The Battle of the Atlantic

How the Allies Won the War

Martin Middlebrook

On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk slowly towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns and defended by thick barbed wire. By the end of that day, as old tactics were met by the reality of modern warfare, there had been more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatalities. 
 
Martin Middlebrook's classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources, local newspapers, autobiographies, novels and poems from the time. Most importantly, it also takes in the accounts of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror. Compelling and intensely moving, it describes the true events behind the sacrifice of a generation of young men -killed as much by the folly of their commanders as by the bullets of their enemies.

The First Day on the Somme

1 July 1916

'As much as anything, World War I turned on the fate of Ukraine' 
 
The decision to go to war in 1914 had catastrophic consequences for Russia. The result was revolution, civil war and famine in 1917-20, followed by decades of communist rule. Dominic Lieven's powerful and original new book, based on exhaustive and unprecedented study in Russian and many other foreign archives, explains why this suicidal decision was made and explores the world of the men who made it, thereby consigning their entire class to death or exile and making their country the victim of a uniquely terrible political experiment under Lenin and Stalin.

Towards the Flame

Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia

Livy

We have nothing left in the world but what we can win with our swords.

Hannibal

John M. Myers

Hugh Glass was left to die. 
 
Attacked 
Whilst hunting in the fur-rich, Native American-held territory of the Upper Missouri River, Hugh Glass was attacked and mauled by grizzly bear. 
 
Hundreds of miles away from help; his fellow hunters were unable to carry him out. Two men were paid to wait for him to die. 
 
Abandoned 
Unable to wait to the end, Glass's comrades left him alone in the wilderness - taking his supplies, his knife, and his rifle. Ultimately taking his life. 
 
Alive 
But Glass didn't die. Inch by inch, he crawled 200 miles toward survival and his revenge. . . 
 
 
Previously published as The Saga of Hugh Glass, The Man Who Returned From The Dead is the remarkable true story behind the film, The Revenant.

The Man Who Returned From The Dead

Brian Dillon

In April 1916, a fire started in a vast munitions works located in the marshes of Kent. The resulting series of explosions killed 108 people and injured many more. 
 
In a brilliant piece of storytelling, Brian Dillon recreates the events of that terrible day - and, in so doing, sheds a fresh and unexpected light on the British home front in the Great War. He offers a chilling natural history of explosives and their effects on the earth, on buildings, and on human and animal bodies. And he evokes with vivid clarity one of Britain's strangest and most remarkable landscapes - where he has been a habitual explorer for many years. The Great Explosion is a profound work of narrative, exploration and inquiry from one of our most brilliant writers.

The Great Explosion

Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes

Stephen Grey

Spying has changed. In this era of email intercepts and drone strikes, spooks are expected to uncover plots buried in mountains of data. Yet this makes the need for trained field operatives who can verify facts and uncover secrets more acute than ever. The human factor endures. 
 
In The New Spymasters, the first real account of how modern espionage works, we follow riveting stories of dramatic missions and the larger-than-life characters who undertook them. These were moments when success - and ultimately life or death - depended on whether the right person was in the right place... at exactly the right time.

The New Spymasters

Inside Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror

James Webb

As the Second World War enters its final days, Jay Marsh is an eager young aide-de-camp to the great General MacArthur, helping him to engineer the Allies' triumph in the Pacific and the surrender of Japan. But the arrogant, majestic MacArthur has a more ambitions aim in mind: supreme control over Japan and its eighty-three million inhabitants. Trusted with his secrets, Jay becomes ensnared in a labyrinthine world of diplomacy, double-dealing and corruption, as he negotiates with the Japanese of behalf of his mentor and hero. 
 
All the while he is unravelling the web of deceit that MacArthur and the royal courts and geisha houses of Japan would trap him in, Jay is desperate to get back to Manila and find his beautiful fiancée Divina Clara. But, as each side gets more desperate for power, Jay becomes a helpless pawn in a tragic game that is out of his control.

The Emperor's General

General Stanley McChrystal

David Silverman

Tantum Collins

Chris Fussell

As commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), General Stanley McChrystal discarded a century of management wisdom and pivoted from a pursuit of mechanical efficiency to organic adaptability. 
 
In this book, he shows how any organization can make the same transition to act like a team of teams - where small groups combine the freedom to experiment with a relentless drive to share their experience. 
 
Drawing on a wealth of evidence from his military career and sources as diverse as hospital emergency rooms and NASA's space program, McChrystal frames the existential challenge facing today's organizations, and presents a compelling, effective solution.

Team of Teams

New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Charles Townshend

Before Easter 1916 Dublin had been a city much like any other British city, comparable to Bristol or Liverpool and part of a complex, deep-rooted British world. Many of Dublin's inhabitants wanted to weaken or terminate London's rule but there remained a vast and conflicting range of visions of that future: far more immediate was the unfolding disaster of the First World War that had put 'home rule' issues on ice for the duration. The devastating events of that Easter changed everything. Both the rising itself and - even more significantly - the ferocious British response ended any sense at all that Dublin could be anything other than the capital of an independent country, as an entire nation turned away in revulsion from the British artillery and executions. More than a century after these events, it is time for a new account of what really happened over those fateful few days. What did the rebels actually hope to achieve? What did the British think they were doing? And how were the events really interpreted by ordinary people across Ireland? Vivid, authoritative and gripping, Easter 1916 is a major work.

Easter 1916

The Irish Rebellion

In this collection of essays from 1969-2013, many in book form for the first time, Noam Chomsky exposes the real nature of state power. With unrelenting logic, he holds the arguments of empire up to critical examination and shatters the myths of those who protect the power and privilege of the few against the interests and needs to the many. 
 
This is an indispensable compilation of searing insights into the state of our modern world.

Masters of Mankind

Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013

Stewart Binns

2014 marked the centenary of World War One, and bestselling author Stewart Binns undertook to write a novel a year for every year of the Great War. The Great War series follows the story of five British communities; their circumstances are very different but they will all share in the tragedy that is to come.

1915. The Western Front is a wasteland of barbed wire, shell craters and mud-filled trenches. Winston Churchill, searching for a solution to the stalemate, commits the Allies to a disastrous Gallipoli campaign. 
 
As men on both sides die in droves, miners and mill-workers work tirelessly for the war effort while families confront the broken bodies of returning soldiers. Nurses, soldiers, politicians, factory-workers and children - all are torn apart by war, and for husbands and sons, mothers and wives, the old way of life is vanishing.

The Darkness and the Thunder

1915: The Great War Series

James B. Donovan

With the Cold War at its height, the capture and trial of Colonel Abel, the Soviets' most formidable spy, revealed the chilling depths of the KGB's penetration of the West. 
 
But when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia and its CIA pilot, Gary Powers, was captured, both men's fates hung in the balance. 
 
With East and West staring each other down across the Iron Curtain the stakes couldn't have been higher. And at the heart of it all, from Abel's arrest to his exchange with Powers on Berlin's infamous 'Bridge of Spies', was James B. Donovan.

Strangers on a Bridge

The Case of Colonel Abel

Mai Jia

'Cracking another country's cipher is an undercover fight to the death...' 
 
Hidden deep in the mountains, the recruits at 'Unit 701', China's secret services, operate in a dark, shadowy world. There is the 'wind-listener', a blind surveillance officer who can hear sounds from miles away; the beautiful, unstable maths genius who meets a violent end; the old man who deciphers codes in his dreams; the spy who recounts a dangerous mission from beyond the grave. 
 
In this story of conspiracies, geniuses, revolutionaries and terrible moral choices, people sacrifice everything for a world of secrets - until, ultimately, it destroys them.

In the Dark

Eric Schlosser

'Sitting not far below my feet, there was a thermonuclear warhead about twenty times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, all set and ready to go. The only sound was the sound of the wind.' 
 
Seventy years after the bombing of Hiroshima, Eric Schlosser's powerful, chilling piece of journalism exposes today's deadly nuclear age. Originally published in the New Yorker and now expanded, this terrifying true account of the 2012 break-in at a high-security weapons complex in Tennessee is a masterly work of reportage. 
 
'Schlosser's reportage is as good as it gets' GQ

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