The islands off the coast of Ireland have long been a source of fascination. Seen as repositories of an ancient Irish culture and the epitome of Irish romanticism, they have attracted generations of scholars, artists and filmmakers, from James Joyce to Robert O'Flaherty, looking for a way of life uncontaminated by modernity or materialism. But the reality for islanders has...

'A refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like ... It's an amazing tale' Bill Gates 'The best book I read last year was Shoe Dog, by Nike's Phil Knight. Phil is a very wise, intelligent and competitive fellow who is also a gifted storyteller' Warren Buffett In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50...

The book of the landmark documentary, The Vietnam War , by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick**The definitive work on the Vietnam War, the conflict that came to define a generation, told from all sides by those who were there.More than forty years after the Vietnam War ended, its legacy continues to fascinate, horrify and inform us. As the first war to be fought in front of TV cameras and beamed...

‘I read everything he writes. Every time he writes a book, I read it. Every time he writes an article, I read it . . . he’s a national treasure.’ Rachel Maddow Patrick Radden Keefe’s work has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US to the Orwell Prize in the UK for his meticulously reported, hypnotically...

America, with all its warts, lies naked under the laser-like scrutiny of legendary outlaw journalist and brilliant reporter Hunter S. Thompson. Fearlessly, he hurls himself into each assignment, gouges out the truth, then returns with a fresh story no one else on earth could write. From Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine, hippies to himself, Thompson's razor-sharp...

NOW WITH NEW AFTERWORD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND THE SUBJECT OF THE VIRAL TED TALK The opposite of addiction is connection. What if everything we've been told about addiction is wrong? One of Johann Hari's earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of his relatives and not being able to. As he grew older, he realised there was addiction in his...

Now a major BBC drama starring Forest Whitaker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Laurence Fishburne Tracing his ancestry through six generations – slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects – back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and in torment and anguish...

Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk―the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to...

The Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulag provide the context for this acclaimed examination of the human capacity for moral life. Drawing on a striking array of documents, Tzvetan Todorov reconstructs a vivid portrait of the conduct of those who ran the camps and those who suffered their outrages. Challenging the widespread view that moral life was extinguished in the...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly...

What happens to those girls who go missing? What happens to the Zoe Nolans of the world?' In the early hours of Saturday, December 17th, 2011, Zoe Nolan, a 19-year-old Manchester University student, walked out of a party taking place in the shared accommodation where she had been living for three months. She was never seen again.

'Anyone who can read should read this book' Maya Angelou 'Estés points to storytelling, our ancient narratives, as a way for women to reconnect to the Wild Woman all women have within themselves, but have lost' Emma Watson Go out in the woods, go out. If you don't go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin. Within every woman, there lies a powerful force of...

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world’s most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict. You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer...

Under USSR rule, the subject matter and style of literary expression in Ukraine was strictly controlled and censored. But once Ukraine gained independence in 1991 its literary scene flourished, as the moving and delightful poems, essays and extracts collected here show. There are fifteen authors included in this book, both established and emerging, and in this anthology we see them grappling...

On 24 February 2022, Russia shocked the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on loved ones who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the...

The phenomenal international bestseller that shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? This book is all about Black Swans: the random events...

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev. SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020 With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides - Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others - Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections...

When Betty Friedan produced The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries' general malaise would shake up society. Victims of a false belief system, these women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives only...

A legendary record producer-turned-brain scientist explains why you fall in love with music. This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favourite songs move you. But it's also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince's chief engineer for Purple Rain,...

John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the most influential English writer of his time. His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises of Government (1690) weighed heavily on the history of ideas in the eighteenth century, and Locke’s works are often − rightly − presented as foundations of the Age of Enlightenment. Both the Essay and the Second Treatise (by far the more...