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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Adam J. Kurtz

This book could be anything: a journal, a keepsake, a calendar, a friend, all of the above. It gently (and not gently) pushes you through the year, gets you writing about your past, present, and future, facing your fears and then turning the page. Each of the 365 prompts presents a chance to draw, write, make a list, imagine, dream, or otherwise create something new. It's a warm, weird, wonderful counterpart to your inner artist, an engaging invitation to express yourself in ways you may never have imagined.

1 Page at a Time

A Daily Creative Companion

Dina Rose

You already know how to give your children healthy food, but the hard part is getting them to eat it. After years of research and working with parents, Dina Rose discovered a powerful truth: when parents focus solely on nutrition, their kids - surprisingly - eat poorly. But when families shift their emphasis to behaviors - the skills and habits kids are taught - they learn to eat right. 
 
Every child can learn to eat well, but only if you show them how to do it. Dr. Rose describes the three habits - proportion, variety, and moderation - all kids need to learn, and gives you clever, practical ways to teach these food skills. 
 
With It's Not About The Broccoli you can teach your children how to eat and give them the skills they need for a lifetime of health and vitality.

It's Not About the Broccoli

Three Habits to Teach Your Kids for a Lifetime of Healthy Eating

Daniel Lieberman

In The Story of the Human Body, Daniel Lieberman, Professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, shows how we need to change our world to fit our hunter-gatherer bodies 
 
This ground-breaking book of popular science explores how the way we use our bodies is all wrong. From an evolutionary perspective, if normal is defined as what most people have done for millions of years, then it's normal to walk and run 9 -15 kilometres a day to hunt and gather fresh food which is high in fibre, low in sugar, and barely processed. It's also normal to spend much of your time nursing, napping, making stone tools, and gossiping with a small band of people. 
 
Our 21st-century lifestyles, argues Daniel Lieberman, are out of synch with our stone-age bodies. Never have we been so healthy and long-lived - but never, too, have we been so prone to a slew of problems that were, until recently, rare or unknown, from asthma, to diabetes, to - scariest of all - overpopulation. 
 
The Story of the Human Body asks how our bodies got to be the way they are, and considers how that evolutionary history - both ancient and recent - can help us evaluate how we use our bodies. How is the present-day state of the human body related to the past? And what is the human body's future? 
'Monumental. The Story of the Human Body, by one of our leading experts, takes us on an epic voyage' - Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish 
 
'Riveting, enlightening, and more than a little frightening' - Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run 
 
Daniel Lieberman is the Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard and a leader in the field. He has written nearly 100 articles, many appearing in the journals Nature and Science, and his cover story on barefoot running in Nature was picked up by major media the world over. His research and discoveries have been highlighted in newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Discover, and National Geographic.

The Story of the Human Body

Evolution, Health and Disease

Matilda Tristram

Matilda Tristram was 17 weeks pregnant and looking forward to having her first baby when she discovered she had cancer. 
 
This touching graphic memoir, never morose or self-pitying, starts when Matilda was diagnosed and ends when her chemotherapy finished. Recording the awkward conversations, the highs and lows of treatment, and the reality of still having to queue too long for croissants, Matilda captures her experiences with style and warmth. Along the way she cherishes the small details of life, and learns not to sweat the big things. Her beautiful and boisterous son James was born without complications.

Probably Nothing

A Diary of Not-Your-Average Nine Months

Bill Wasik

Monica Murphy

The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind's oldest and most fearsome foes. 
 
"A searing narrative." 
-The New York Times 
 
"In this keen and exceptionally well-written book, rife with surprises, narrative suspense and a steady flow of expansive insights, 'the world's most diabolical virus' conquers the unsuspecting reader's imaginative nervous system. . . . A smart, unsettling, and strangely stirring piece of work." 
-San Francisco Chronicle 
 
"Fascinating. . . . Wasik and Murphy chronicle more than two millennia of myths and discoveries about rabies and the animals that transmit it, including dogs, bats and raccoons." 
-The Wall Street Journal

Rabid

A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus

Jay Griffiths

In Kith, Jay Griffiths seeks to discover why we deny our children the freedoms of space, time and the natural world. Visiting communities as far apart as West Papua and the Arctic, as well as the UK, and delving into history, philosophy, language and literature, she explores how children's affinity for nature is an essential and universal element of childhood. It is a journey deep into the heart of what it means to be a child, and it is central to all our experiences, young and old.

Kith

The Riddle of the Childscape

Verne Varona

Based on a solid foundation of the healing properties of good nutrition, this book empowers readers with the information they need to make the best choices and to gain control over their total health and well-being - physical, emotional, and spiritual. While addressing the specific needs of those with a diagnosis of cancer, Varona explores the key factors that science and experience have shown to influence the path of prevention and recovery. 
 
Grounded in documented research from leading medical institutions - along with studies of the world's healthiest populations - nutrition educator Verne Varona has developed a breakthrough nutritional and lifestyle programme for immunity building and cancer prevention and recovery. This book provides detailed diet and lifestyle modifications that will reinforce the body's immunity and reduce cell-damage to an absolute minimum. 
 
While the bulk of this book is devoted to physical nutrition, eating the right foods is not the whole picture. No matter what course of treatment a patient may choose, clinical research and anecdotal testimony have shown that those who have embraced a range of self-healing choices not only see a positive impact on their physical and psychological well-being but inevitably enhance their chances of survival. The most influential of these choices are: life purpose; positive attitude; managing stress; sense of humor; love and social support; emotional expression; and faith. Along with good nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, and physical exercise, these choices contribute to a more comprehensive 
and complete healing.

Nature's Cancer-Fighting Foods

Prevent and Reverse the Most Common Forms of Cancer Using the Proven Power of Whole Food and Self-Healing Strategies

Tom Burns

In this deeply thoughtful, descriptive and sympathetic book, Tom Burns reviews the historical development of psychiatry. What he reveals is that mental illnesses are intimately tied to that which makes us human in the first place and have always followed us. The drive to relieve the suffering they cause is even more human. Psychiatry, for all its flaws, currently represents our best attempts to discharge this most human of impulses. It is not something we can just ignore or decide to leave. It is our necessary shadow.

Our Necessary Shadow

The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry

Suzanne Corkin

When he was twenty-seven, Henry Molaison underwent surgery for his epilepsy. He awoke with part of his brain destroyed, and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment, unable to remember anything for more than a few seconds. For nearly five decades, distinguished neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin studied Molaison and oversaw his care. In Permanent Present Tense she tells his extraordinary story, showing how his amnesia revolutionized our understanding of the brain, and also challenged our very notions of who we are.

Permanent Present Tense

The man with no memory, and what he taught the world

David Stuckler

Sanjay Basu

The Body Economic puts forward a radical proposition. Austerity, it argues, is seriously bad for your health. We can prevent financial crises from becoming epidemics, but to do so, we must acknowledge what the hard data tells us: that, throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Even amid the worst economic disasters, negative public health effects are not inevitable: it's how communities respond to challenges of debt and market turmoil that counts. Now and for generations to come, our commitment to the building of fairer, more equal societies will determine the health of our body economic.

The Body Economic

Eight experiments in economic recovery, from Iceland to Greece

Leah Hardy

Susie Rogers

Daniel Sister

Take control of your health, your moods and your future! This is the first accessible book that helps women how to handle the unwanted effects of hormonal imbalances. 
 
Did you know: 
 
- the average 50-year-old has 12 times as much cortisol (stress hormone) as a 30-year-old 
- you can instantly boost your sexy hormones by slightly changing the way you sit and stand 
- when you eat may be as important as what you eat 
 
Your Hormone Doctor reveals exactly why hormones matter and how they change with age. Written by 3 experts, this looks set to become the bedside handbook for all women from 35 upwards who want to stay well and vibrant in the second half of their lives.

Your Hormone Doctor

Be healthier, happier, sexier and slimmer at any age

Hugh Aldersey-Williams

In Anatomies, bestselling author Hugh Aldersey-Williams investigates that marvellous, mysterious form: the human body. 
 
Did you know that your bladder has a snooze button? Or that a child's arm can support the weight of a car? That one in two hundred of us has a spare rib, and some have an extra X or Y chromosome? That while the British fall 'flat on their face', the Germans fall, more precisely, 'on their nose'? That in Ancient Egypt, the symbol for a heart was a vase, and that in contemporary sweden it is used for unisex lavatories? 
 
From ancient body art to plastic surgery, early anatomists to conceptual artists, grave-robbers to bionic athletes, Anatomies blends history and science, art and the everyday, to chart our ever-changing understanding of the human body, providing a treasure trove of surprising facts, remarkable stories and startling information.

Anatomies

The Human Body, Its Parts and The Stories They Tell

Nick Hornby

'I decided that I wanted to write a little book of essays about songs I loved ... Songs are what I listen to, almost to the exclusion of everything else.' 
 
In his first non-fiction work since Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby writes about 31 songs that either have some great significance in his life - or are just songs that he loves. He discusses, among other things, guitar solos and losing your virginity to a Rod Stewart song and singers whose teeth whistle and the sort of music you hear in Body Shop. 
 
'The soundtrack to his life ... a revealing insight into one of Britain's most popular writers' Evening Standard

31 Songs

Allen Carr

Following the enormous success of his bestselling Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Allen Carr provides smokers with the motivation to break free from addiction for ever. 
 
This book will help you: 
 
- Achieve the right frame of mind to quit 
- Avoid weight gain 
- Quit without dependence on rules or gimmicks 
- Enjoy the freedom and choices that non-smokers have in life 
- Quit without willpower 
 
It's time to begin your new life as a non-smoker.

The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently

Quit cigarettes for good with this groundbreaking method

Flora Schreiber

'How are you today?' the doctor asked. 'I'm fine', was the reply. 'But Sybil isn't. She was so sick she couldn't come. So I came instead.' 
 
A collaboration between journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber and Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, Sybil is the story of a woman with sixteen separate personalities, and was instrumental in influencing the definition and diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. 
 
Sybil's diagnosis has since been called into question - but, forty years after it was first published, her story remains a gripping and disturbing account of one woman's struggle for mental stability and happiness.

Sybil

The True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities

David Gillespie

David Gillespie was fat, lethargic, the father of six kids under nine - and had failed at every diet out there. But when he cut out sugar he started to lose weight dramatically, and kept it off. Slim, with new reserves of energy, David set out to investigate the connection between sugar, our soaring obesity rates and some of the more worrying diseases of the twenty-first century. 
Part personal story, part self-help and part exposé of the food manufacturing industry, this is a must-read for those on the endless treadmill of dieting and weight gain.

Sweet Poison

Learn how to break your addiction with sugar for life

Lyn Macdonald

On the face of it', writes Lyn Macdonald, 'no one could have been less equipped for the job than these gently nurtured girls who walked straight out of the Edwardian drawing-rooms into the manifest horrors of the First World War...' 
 
Yet the volunteer nurses rose magnificently to the occasion. In leaking tents and draughty huts they fought another war, a war against agony and death, as men lay suffering from the pain of unimaginable wounds or diseases we can now cure almost instantly. 
 
It was here that young doctors frantically forged new medical techniques - of blood transfusion, dentistry, psychiatry and plastic surgery - in an attempt to save soldiers shattered in body or spirit. And it was here that women achieved a quiet but permanent revolution, by proving beyond question they could do anything. 
 
All of this is superbly captured in The Roses's of No Man's Land, a panorama of hardship, disillusion and despair, yet also of endurance and supreme courage.

The Roses of No Man's Land

David Gillespie lost 40kg when he cut sugar from his diet. He did not have to count calories, measure ingredients or follow complex exercise plans. The approach was simple: eat what you like, when you like, but don't eat sugar. 
 
With this accessible diet plan, you will:	 
 
	- understand why sugar makes us fat and damages our health	 
	- break your addiction to sugar 
- interpret confusing food labels	 
- eliminate cravings 
 
With delicious recipes for sugar-free treats, the latest scientific research and easy-to-follow advice, this is the most sensible guide to losing weight and improving well-being you're ever likely to read.

The Sweet Poison Quit Plan

How to kick the sugar habit and lose weight fast

Professor Dame Sally Davies

Jonathan Grant

Mike Catchpole

This is a story that affects us all: our friends, our family and our children. Antibiotics add, on average, 20 years to everyone's lives. Since the manufacture of penicillin in 1943, for over 70 years we have survived extraordinary operations and life-threatening infections. We are so familiar with these wonder drugs that we take them for granted. The truth is that we have been abusing them: as patients; as doctors; as travellers; in our food. 
 
No new class of antibiotic has been discovered for 26 years and the bugs are fighting back. If we do not take action now, in a few decades we may start dying from the most commonplace of ailments that can today be treated easily. This book is vital in raising awareness for the future health of our children and our grandchildren.

The Drugs Don't Work

A Global Threat

Susannah Cahalan

Brain on Fire is the stunning debut from journalist and author Susannah Cahalan, recounting the real-life horror story of how a sudden and mysterious illness put her on descent into a madness for which there seemed to be no cure 
 
'My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the same person ...' 
 
Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year old. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of what had happened or how she had got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis, undergoing rages and convulsions, hallucinating that her father had murdered his wife; that she could control time with her mind. Everything she had taken for granted about her life, and who she was, was wiped out. 
 
This is Susannah's story of her terrifying descent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of tests and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric ward. It is also the story of how one brilliant man, Syria-born Dr Najar, finally proved - using a simple pen and paper - that Susannah's psychotic behaviour was caused by a rare autoimmune disease attacking her brain. His diagnosis of this little-known condition, thought to have been the real cause of devil-possessions through history, saved her life, and possibly the lives of many others. Cahalan takes readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, piecing it together using memories, journals, hospital videos and records. Written with passionate honesty and intelligence, Brain on Fire is a searingly personal yet universal book, which asks what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back. 
 
'With eagle-eye precision and brutal honesty, Susannah Cahalan turns her journalistic gaze on herself as she bravely looks back on one of the most harrowing and unimaginable experiences one could ever face: the loss of mind, body and self ... a mesmerizing story', Mira Bartók, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Palace 
 
Susannah Cahalan is a reporter on the New York Post, and the recipient of the 2010 Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, and is frequently picked up by the Daily Mail, Gawker, Gothamist, AOL and Yahoo among other news aggregrator sites.

Brain On Fire: My Month of Madness

Samantha Logan

Intermittent fasting, also known as the 5:2 diet, has become incredibly popular in recent months. And with good reason - it works! By reducing your calorie intake for just 2 days a week, you will reset your metabolism and rev up your body's fat-burning ability to cause dramatic weight loss without deprivation. 
 
This book is the key to learning what to eat on these low-calorie fasting days. With delicious dishes like Cinnamon-Swirl Pancakes for breakfast, Fast-astic French Onion Soup for lunch and Slow-Cooking Provence Chicken for dinner, which are all easy to make and packed with flavour, you won't even realise you're dieting. 
 
There's even a special "dessert" section in the back that will give you low-calorie rewards to look forward to on non-fasting days.

The 5:2 Fast Diet Cookbook

Easy low-calorie & fat-burning recipes for fast days

Read this book and flying will become a happy, stress-free experience for life. 
 
The unique method: 
* Removes the root of the fear, not just the symptoms 
* Dispels all the most common flying fears 
* Reveals the truth behind media scare stories 
* Packed with tips to help you on your next flight 
 
Allen Carr, author of the world's bestselling guide to stopping smoking, uses his unique approach to help make flying an enjoyable part of your work or holiday. 
 
By the time you have finished reading this book you will be looking forward to taking your next flight. 
 
A happy Amazon customer says: 
'I still can't believe that something as simple as reading a book could allay what had pretty much become a phobia, but I can assure you it really does work. I consider myself CURED!'

The Easy Way to Enjoy Flying

The life-changing guide to cure your fear of flying once and for all

Jim Stynes

In July 2009, Jim Stynes was diagnosed with cancer and given less than a year to live. The diagnosis caught him by surprise - he was 42, healthy, fit - and he didn't have time for illness: he was director of a foundation for young people, president of Melbourne Football Club, father of two primary school-aged kids, husband of Sam. Knowing his odds weren't good, but with so much to lose, Jim put everything he had into trying to beat the disease. 
 
He was well equipped to beat the odds - he'd been getting the most out of himself in every aspect of life since his childhood in Dublin. Jim's ability to use mind over matter and his will to succeed gave him two extra years on the prognosis. He had more than 25 tumours removed from his brain and stomach, and defied expectations time and time again. 
 
This book is Jim's legacy. Unflinching in its detail, Jim talks about what he found out about himself when things were at their worst - about what really counts when you're stacking it all up. It's a moving, inspiring story of a life lived fearlessly.

My Journey

Darian Leader

If the post-war period was called the 'Age of Anxiety' and the 1980s and '90s the 'Antidepressant Era', we now live in Bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike, with child prescriptions this decade increasing by 400% and overall diagnoses by 4000%. 
 
What could explain this explosion of bipolarity? Is it a legitimate diagnosis or the result of Big Pharma marketing? Exploring these questions, Darian Leader challenges the rise of 'bipolar' as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and argues that we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression. 
 
What, he asks, do these experiences have to do with love, guilt and rage? Why the spending sprees and the intense feeling of connection with the world? Why the confidence, the self-esteem and the sense of a bright future that can so swiftly turn into despair and dejection? 
 
Only by looking at these questions in a new way will we be able to understand and help the person caught between feelings that can be so terrifying and so exhilarating, so life-affirming yet also so lethal. 
 
Strictly Bipolar is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary views of the self, bipolarity and a deeper understanding of manic-depression.

Strictly Bipolar

Frances Ashcroft

'A wonderful book' Bill Bryson 
 
'Ashcroft achieves the sort of rich simplicity most science writers can only dream about ... this book carries the eponymous spark of life' Sunday Telegraph 
 
From before birth to the last breath we draw, from consciousness to sexual attraction, fighting infection to the beating of our hearts, electricity is essential to everything we think and do. 
 
In The Spark of Life award-winning physiologist Frances Ashcroft reveals the secrets of ion channels, which produce the electrical signals in our cells. Can someone really die of fright? How do cocaine, LSD and morphine work? Why do chilli peppers taste hot? Ashcroft explains all this and more with wit and clarity. Anyone who has ever wondered about what makes us human will find this book a revelation. 
 
'A rare gift for making difficult subjects accessible and fascinating' Bill Bryson 
 
'She communicates complex science with engaging passion and eloquence' Helen Dunmore, Observer 
 
'Compelling and very readable, an excellent writer' Literary Review 
 
'Riveting ... she has a stock of good tales' New Scientist 
 
'Lively, conversational prose, refreshingly accessible to any lay reader ... a positively charged little book' Daily Telegraph 
 
Frances Ashcroft is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College Oxford. She is also Director of OXION, a consortium of scientists studying ion channels, the heroes of this book. Her scientific research focuses on how a rise in your blood sugar level stimulates the release of insulin and what why this process goes wrong in diabetes. She has won many prizes for her research, most recently the L'Oreal/UNESCO 2012 Women in Science award. She is also a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing for The Spark of Life. Her first book for the general reader was Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival.

The Spark of Life

Electricity in the Human Body

Irvin D. Yalom

Love's Executioner offers us the humane and extraordinary insight of renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom into the lives of ten of his patients - and through them into the minds of us all 
 
Why was Saul tormented by three unopened letters from Stockholm? What made Thelma spend her whole life raking over a long-past love affair? How did Carlos's macho fantasies help him deal with terminal cancer? 
 
In this engrossing book, Irvin Yalom gives detailed and deeply affecting accounts of his work with these and seven other patients. Deep down, all of them were suffering from the basic human anxieties - isolation, fear of death or freedom, a sense of the meaninglessness of life - that none of us can escape completely. And yet, as the case histories make touchingly clear, it is only by facing such anxieties head on that we can hope to come to terms with them and develop. Throughout, Dr Jalom remains refreshingly frank about his own errors and prejudices; his book provides a rare glimpse into the consulting room of a master therapist. 
 
'Dr Yalom demonstrates once again that in the right hands, the stuff of therapy has the interest of the richest and most inventive fiction' Eva Hoffman, New York Times 
 
'These remarkably moving and instructive tales of the psychiatric encounter bring the reader into novel territories of the mind - and the landscape is truly unforgettable' Maggie Scarf 
 
'Love's Executioner is one of those rare books that suggests both the mystery and the poetry of the psychotherapeutic process. The best therapists are at least partly poets. With this riveting and beautifully written book, Irvin Yalom has joined their ranks' Erica Jong 
 
'Dr Yalom offers a valuable insight into the delicate process of therapy' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Dr Yalom is unusually honest, both with his patients and about himself' Anthony Storr 
 
'Yalom is a gifted storyteller, and from the sound of these tales, a no-less-gifted psychotherapist' Los Angeles Times

Love's Executioner

Lose weight without dieting, calorie-counting or using will-power. 
 
It's true! Allen Carr's eating plan allows you to enjoy eating, savour flavours and lose wight. You can:Eat your favourite foodsFollow your natural instinctsAvoid guilt and remorseEnjoy the flavours of fresh foodsDo away with digestive ailmentsLearn to re-educate your tastesLet your appetite be your guide 
 
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking has helped millions of smokers to quit. Now he turns his logical, common-sense approach to food. There are no dos of dont's, only principles to follow that will lead to healthier eating, greater well-being and permanent weight loss.

Allen Carr's Easyweigh to Lose Weight

The revolutionary method to losing weight fast from international bestselling author of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

Nathan D. Wolfe

'Wolfe has an important story to tell and as a virologist at the forefront of pandemic forecasting, he is the perfect person to tell it' Guardian 
 
In The Viral Storm award-winning biologist Nathan Wolfe - known as 'the Indiana Jones of virus hunters' for his work in jungles and rain forests across the world - shows why we are so vulnerable to a global pandemic. 
 
The Viral Storm examines how viruses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu have almost wiped us out in the past - and may do so in the future. It explores why modern life makes us so at risk to global pandemics, and what new technologies can do to prevent them. Wolfe's provocative vision may leave you feeling distinctly uncomfortable - but it will reveal exactly what it is we are up against. 
 
'An excellent piece of scientific gothic, rich in descriptions of the threat we face from emerging viruses' Nature 
 
'Part autobiography, part warning ... enthralling' BBC Focus 
 
'Quietly terrifying ... It's hard not to feel a bit feverish at times while reading' Boston Globe 
 
'The plague-ridden future imagined by this authoritative, measured, yet gripping book is extremely alarming' Sunday Times 
 
'Nathan Wolfe is saving the world from near-inevitable pandemic ... a kick-ass book' Mary Roach, author of Stiff 
 
'The world's most prominent virus hunter' New Yorker 
 
'A good place to start preparing for what might come' New Humanist

The Viral Storm

The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age

Andrew Lees

Britain like the rest of the developed world is in the grip of a silent plague. Its thousands of victims can no longer make sense of the world and are contained for their own safety in fading Victorian piles and nondescript redbrick detention centres around the country. For them the present is a foreign country and the past a lost continent. 
There are now more people in the UK with Alzheimer's than the population of Liverpool, and four million Americans are reported to have the disease. Longevity is a major factor in the increasing incidence of the disease, with the number of over 65s in the UK having trebled in the last 100 years, and forecast to double again in the next 25 years. 
With such an alarming background, the race to find the causes - and therefore potentially a cure - for Alzheimer's is urgent. In this Penguin Special, Dr Andrew Lees, a world expert on the neurodegenerative diseases, explains what we know, and don't know, about Alzheimer's and its amelioration. The drugs that are currently available do not do enough to help, and the various physical and mental exercises we are encouraged to undertake are unproven. Yet it's not entirely a black picture: scientific endeavour has greatly increased our knowledge of the disease's spread and rate of deterioration, and the composition of the starchy plaques and the mechanism of the bindweed tangles in the brain which are core to the illness are much better understood. 
Alzheimer's is tough even to contemplate. But it represents one of the greatest medical mysteries of our age, and Andrew Lees's book provides a fascinating account of our knowledge of this terrible disease to this point.

Alzheimer's

An Essential Guide to the Disease and Other Forms of Dementia

Charlotte Moore

A new updated edition of the classic book 
 
Charlotte Moore has three children: the two oldest, George and Sam, are autistic; the youngest Jake is not. In this extraordinary book, which combines personal memoir with the most recent known information on this most fascinating and elusive of conditions, she describes the circumstances of their birth, behaviour, diagnosis, treatment - and brilliantly conveys what daily life is like for a family with autism. It's an invaluable book for anyone with an interest in childhood and child development. 
 
George and Sam was published to huge acclaim by Viking Penguin in 2004 - it was immediately regarded as one of the key books on autism. In this new edition Charlotte Moore brings the story up to date by describing the boys' passage through adolescence and its impact on her family.

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