The Rebel is Camus\'s \'attempt to understand the time I live in\' and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Published in 1951, it makes a daring critique of communism - how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. It questions two events held sacred by the left wing - the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 - that...

Shah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete...

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...

From legendary FBI profiler John Douglas and Mark Olshaker -- authors of the nonfiction international bestsellers Mindhunter, Journey into Darkness, and Obsession -- comes an unprecedented, insightful look at the root of all crime. Every crime is a mystery story with a motive at its heart. With the brilliant insight he brought to his renowned work inside the FBI's elite...

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...

"Radical and inspiring ... Yanagi's vision puts the connection between heart and hand before the transient and commercial" - Edmund de Waal The daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These objects are our constant companions in life. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with...

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,...

Auschwitz and Birkenau were separate from each other,by about a 45 minute walk. Auschwitz was adapted to hold political prisoners in 1940 and evolved into a killing machine in 1941. Later that year a new site called Birkenau was found to extend the Auschwitz complex. Here a vast complex of buildings were constructed to hold initially Russian POWs and later Jews as a labour...

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...

Ich kann nichts Wesentliches finden, das ich an diesem Buch heute andern wurde, wohl auch deshalb, weil nicht ich mich im Besitz des Schussels fur die Zukunft der Sowjetunion fuhle. Daher wage ich keine Prognosen, sondern ziehe es vor, festzuhalten und lebensfahigen Krafte sind, die zur Formund dieser Zukunft in der Lage sein konnten. Und die Photographien, heute viellecht sogar mehr denn...

As one of Britain’s leading newspapers for more than 200 years The Times has covered every major world events as they happened. This book profiles the ones that have had the most impact on the world today from the fall of the Berlin Wall to stepping onto the Moon. News-breaking stories as told from The Times with commentary setting each event in context. Historian and editor, James Owens,...

The Legendary Philanthropist Tackles the Dangers We Must Face for the Survival of Civilisation 'Soros has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy' - Financial Times George Soros - universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics and investment success, and now under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites around the world - gives an impassioned...

When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured? Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that...

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a...

'This is one of those rare books that have something really important to say. Anatol Lieven, one of the most original and independent-minded foreign policy thinkers, is telling his fellow realists that at this moment the world's great powers are far more threatened by climate change than they are by each other.' - Ivan Krastev, author of The Light That Failed In the past two...

We leven in tijden van angst. Wat kunnen we doen om IS te stoppen? Hoe voorkomen we dat ze jongeren indoctrineren en rekruteren? Hoe verdedigen we onze samenleving? Met verwijten en simplistische oorlogstaal komen we er niet. Deze tijd verdraagt geen lichtzinnigheid. We hebben een coherente aanpak nodig, die veiligheid verzoent met vrijheid en die opnieuw hoop biedt aan alle burgers...

In 1961, a Douglas DC-6B aeroplane transporting the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, disappeared over the Congolese jungle at the height of the Cold War. Soon afterward, Hammarskjöld was discovered in the smoking wreckage, an Ace of Spades playing card placed on his body. He had been heralded as the Congo's best hope for peace and independence. Now he was dead. The...

As the market consolidates under fewer and larger companies, it's increasingly in the interest of private companies to behave like nations. And when the government is bogged down in bureaucratic negotiations and culture wars, people begin to look to nimble, powerful companies to solve society's problems - and to be our moral standard-bearers. It shouldn't be like this. New York Times...