Nonfiction

Mirages have long astonished travellers and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Chinese and Japanese poetry and images depicted mirages as the exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources related them to the `thirst...

In this riveting book Gretchen E. Henderson explores perceptions of ugliness through history, from ancient Roman feasts to medieval grotesque gargoyles, from Mary Shelley's monster cobbled from corpses to the...

The humble soybean is the world's most grown and most traded oilseed. But it is also a poorly understood crop that is often viewed in extreme terms as a superfood...

Why do we no longer trust experts, facts and statistics?Why has politics become so fractious and warlike?What caused the populist political upheavals of recent years?How can the history of ideas...

Lesser Dragons is a timely introduction to the fascinating and complex world of China's `national minorities'. Based on detailed research, including the author's first-hand fieldwork in several minority areas, it...

In this robust new account of the Vikings, Tom Shippey explores their mindset, and in particular their fascination with scenes of heroic death. Laughing Shall I Die considers Viking psychology...

In 1600 the Catholic Inquisition condemned the philosopher Giordano Bruno for his heretical beliefs. He was then burned alive in a public place in Rome. Historians, scientists and teachers usually...

Mapping the Middle East explores the many perspectives from which people have visualized the vast area lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Oxus and Indus river valleys over the...

Tea has a rich and well-documented past. The beverage originated in Asia long before making its way to seventeenth-century London, where it became an exotic, highly sought after commodity. Over...

The dramatic life of the revolutionary hero Bolivar, who liberated South America - a sweeping narrative worthy of a Hollywood epic.Simon Bolivar's life makes for one of history's most dramatic...

'A wonderful idea, gloriously put into practice. Greg Jenner is as witty as he is knowledgeable' - Tom Holland'You will love Greg Jenner's jolly account of how we have more...

'Timely and beautifully written' Sunday Times'Phenomenal. An extraordinary insight into a country barely known - an often feared - by the West' Vogue'Utterly compelling' Daily Mail'Gripping, a dark, delicious unveiling...

The average western lifestyle is kept afloat by about 2,000 gallons of H2O a day. The numbers are shocking. Your Water Footprint reveals the true cost of our lifestyle. A...

For two decades before a railway system linked southern Africa's principal cities in the mid-1890s, the world's richest supplies of diamonds and gold were transported by coach and horses to...

Phil Quinlan was a sports-mad fifteen year old when he packed his bag one Sunday morning in 1989 to play a game of football. A clash of heads on the...

A searing study of American poverty from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of EvictedThe United States is the richest country on earth, yet has more poverty than any other advanced democracy....

I once believed that we only had to put in place the conditions for equality for the remnants of old-fashioned sexism in our culture to wither away. I am ready...

Every twenty-or thirty-something women knows these books. The pink covers, the flimsy paper, the zillion volumes in the series that kept you reading for your entire adolescence.Spurred by the commerical...

We all know how important it is to reduce our environmental footprint, but it can be daunting to know where to begin. Enter Kathryn Kellogg, who can fit all her...

A powerful account, by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, of his transformation from a young man who'd grown up in the heart of Israel's elite and served proudly in its...

Napoleon is one of history's most fascinating figures. But his complex relationship with Rome-both with antiquity and his contemporary conflicts with the Pope and Holy See-have undergone little examination. In...

European history is deeply embedded in the global civilization that has emerged in the 21st century. More than two thirds of today's nations were once European colonies or protectorates. Europe's...

The tale of a tormented creature created in a laboratory began on a rainy night in 1816 in the imagination of a nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, newly married to the...

Mikhail Sholokhov is arguable one of the most contentious recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a young man, Sholokhov's epic novel, Quiet Don, became an unprecedented overnight success....

Roberta Gately is a nurse and humanitarian aid worker who has served in war zones ranging from Africa to Afghanistan aiding refugees. Just the word refugee sparks conversation and fuels...

In The Critic as Artist, arguably the most complete exploration of his aesthetic thinking, and certainly the most entertaining, Oscar Wilde harnesses his famous wit to demolish the supposed boundary...

The war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century saw unspeakable acts of violence committed against defenceless civilians, including a macabre night of...

Elite-level Soviet politics, privileged access to state secrets, knowledge about machinations inside the Kremlin-such is the environment in which Andrei A. Kovalev lived and worked. In this memoir of his...

The late 1990s and early aughts were a time of hope-for democracy and free press. The Soviet Union had failed, leaving behind a number of independent countries where the Scorpions'...

During the Cold War, spy stories became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imaginations of readers and film goers alike as secret police outfits quietly engaged...

Late in life, former President Lyndon Johnson told a reporter that he didn't believe the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John Kennedy. Johnson...

This disturbing expose describes a secret alliance forged at the close of World War II by the CIA, the Sicilian and US mafias, and the Vatican to thwart the possibility...

A timely and essential book from the CBS correspondent who has led their coverage of Russia election interference and the FBI counterintelligence investigation into whether the Trump Campaign coordinated with...

This day-by-day account of Abraham Lincoln's last six weeks of life covers a period of extraordinary events, not only for the president himself but for the fate of the nation.From...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Do we need still another Watergate book? The answer turns out to be yes-this one." -The Washington Post * "Dazzling." -The New York Times Book...

How do we talk about porn? Why it is that when we do talk about porn, we tend to retreat into the abstract? How do we have meaningful conversations about...

'Fascinating, panoramic . . . Levi Roach brings an expert eye and page-turning energy' Helen Castor, bestselling author of She Wolves'A fresh retelling . . . written with enthusiasm and...

An engaging, alternative history of the world for children, which helps to make sense of today.The present can loom very large in a child's mind: all the crises and challenges...

To celebrate the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, the most important literary work of the twentieth century, eighteen artists, writers and thinkers respond to an episode each of the...

So shattering were the after-effects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked that it was "nothing less than a prototype for...

In November 2015, the world powers came together in Paris with the hope of reaching an agreement on the most urgent issue of our time: climate change. While it was...