"Harlem 1969; it's the height of the Civil Rights era and the community is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King. Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, takes his protest to the stage and establishes...
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In this moving story, the New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation chronicles the values and lessons he absorbed from his parents and other people who worked hard to build lives on the prairie during the first half of the twentieth century....
*The Millions Most Anticipated List of 2023**A Vogue Best LGBTQ+ Book of 2023*"Deeply researched and featuring a cast of characters who can truly be described as fabulous, Glitter and Concrete is urban history on fire."--Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New...
HE YEAR IS 1975. A young Irish-American is on a mission to enlist in an elite unit of the US Marine Corps. His goal: to receive the most intensive military training possible and then go to Ireland to join the IRA and fight to end the British occupation of the...
Archaeologist Jim Leary reanimates the past with this riveting 'archaeology of movement' All too often we think of the past as static, 'frozen in time', and indeed movement is not always easy to decipher from the archaeological record. With Jim Leary's expert...
Columnist, critic and award-winning author Craig Brown is well known for his Private Eye parodies lampooning politicians and celebrities. He has written for numerous newspapers, both under his own name and as his alter egos Wallace Arnold and Bel Littlejohn....
From a bold new historian comes a vibrant history of Rome as seen through its most influential persona throughout the centuries: the pope. Rome is a city of echoes, where the voice of the people has chimed and clashed with the words of princes, emperors, and...
From the presenter of BBC One's Scotland from the Sky You scramble up over the dunes of an isolated beach. You climb to the summit of a lonely hill. You pick your way through the eerie hush of a forest. And then you find them. The traces of the past. Perhaps...
Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen's Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator's compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women's work and feminist...
The behind-the-scenes story of the quintessential film noir and cult classic, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity--its true crime origins and crucial impact on film history--is told for the first time in this riveting narrative published for the film's 80th...
An enthralling BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of the fifth novel in C.J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime series, featuring lawyer-detective Matthew ShardlakeSummer, 1545, and England is preparing for war. Facing imminent invasion by the French fleet, King...
From Peter Marshall, winner of the Wolfson Prize 2018, Storm's Edge is a new history of the Orkney Islands that delves deep into island politics, folk beliefs and community memory on the geographical edge of Britain. Peter Marshall was born in Orkney. His...
Brought to you by Penguin.Discover the rich history of Britain's millennia-old network of pathways, and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again...Hundreds of thousands of miles of paths reach into, and connect, communities across England and...
"The Nine follows the true story of the author's great aunt Helene Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris. The...
Step inside his home and you'll see papier-mâché birds, a life-sized cardboard tiger, model cars; his work bench a vibrant collage of creativity, from hand-drawn maps and postcards to newly devised toys for his beloved grandchildren. Tom Karen is a toymaker,...
"A childhood memoir about growing up in the middle of nowhere and watching too much TV, from beloved comedian, Josh Widdicombe. 'Read any history of the Nineties in Britain and you will read about Britpop, Blair, the birth of the Premier League and the rise of...
In this incredible companion to the second and third seasons of Netflix's acclaimed series The Crown, renowned biographer and the show's historical consultant Robert Lacey takes us through the real history that inspired the drama. Covering two tumultuous...
Every December, a huge Christmas tree arrives in Trafalgar Square. Bedecked in lights, it is a shimmering, festive beacon in the heart of London. But even more enchanting than the twinkling decorations and scented pine is the story behind the tree; a story of...
As a humble barman at the M25 Orbital raves, Kirk Field witnessed the moment acid house exploded. Inspired by media lies to start writing the truth about what he saw unfolding, Kirk became a 'raving' reporter for the clubbers' bible Mixmag, covering the...
"A unique 'A to Z' biography from music journalist and Queen biographer Mark Blake that will shed new light on the story of the biggest rock band of all time. The story of Queen is rich with anecdotes, trivia, humour and tragedy - accompanied by some of the...
"In How to produce Comedy Bronze, legendary TV producer Jon Plowman lifts the hood on the comedy industry so you can peer inside and wonder how any of it ever got made in the first place. In a career spanning 30 years Jon has learned (almost) everything there...
The moments in life of "knowing". On Bognor Beach, with Grandpa England, she had "known" that he, and Papa, and she, would carry something on, something given, something bigger than themselves. Lilibet: a carefree child, a lover of horses and dogs, devoted to...
"The definitive autobiography by renowned Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, looking back across his phenomenal life and career. As the founder of Island Records, fabled music producer Chris Blackwell has discovered and worked with some of the most...
"With her canon of best-selling singles, electrifying stage performances and iconic music videos, Britney Spears is undoubtedly a modern pop superstar. But her story has long been clouded by society's dark obsession with beauty, youth and fame - a relentless...
The little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the height of World War II, and how it was averted. In 1943 only three men stood in Hitler's way; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. As the...
'There is time and then there is Broadmoor time' Broadmoor. Few place names in the world have such chilling resonance. For over 150 years, it has contained the UK's most violent, dangerous and psychopathic. Since opening as an asylum for the criminally insane...
England's villages have survived, developed, persisted and thrived over hundreds of years. Entirely new villages are still being built today. But when did the first villages appear and why is this form of settlement so enduring and endearing? What makes a...
"Blending autofiction and the essay, The Bear Woman takes us on a journey of feminism and literary detective work that spans centuries and continents. In the 1540s, a young French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque, was abandoned by her guardian in the Gulf...
Sent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just 17, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a master of words, and a...
Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off - through luck,...
Today Vegemite is recognised around the world, but when the salty black paste was first produced in 1923 the public wasn't interested. In fact, it took another 15 years and a world war before we embraced it. Vegemite shares the fascinating tale of Cyril...
After victory in World War II, Britain was a relieved but also a profoundly traumatized country. Simon Winder, born into this nation of uncertain identity, fell in love (as many before and since) with the man created as the antidote, a quintessentially British...
There are many reasons to be fascinated by Germany: forests, architecture and fairy tales, not to mention its history and inhabitants' penchant for very peculiar food. Our distant and often maligned cousin, this is a place in which innumerable strange...
David Marr was shocked to discover forebears who served with the brutal Native Police in the bloodiest years on the frontier. Killing for Country is the result - a soul-searching Australian history. This is a richly detailed saga of politics and power in the...
Over 400 million people around the world have been diagnosed with diabetes. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was treated through diet, from eating purely meat to the reliance on fats, and repeated fasting. After two centuries of conflicting medical...
In AD 843, the three surviving grandsons of the great Emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering...
Bangka Island, 1942. Vivian Bullwinkel was just 26 when Japanese soldiers marched her and her fellow nurses into the shallow waters of a remote beach to be executed. Miraculously, Vivian would be the lone survivor - and she committed the rest of her life to an...
An ache, a pain, a mysterious lump, a strange sensation in some part of your body, the feeling that something is not right. The fear that something is, in fact, very wrong. These could be symptoms of illness. But they could also be the symptoms of hypochondria...
Read by the author, Dorian Lysnkey. 'I was blown away by this book. The staggering range of references, the razor-sharp analysis, the wisdom, left me gasping out loud at times. Lynskey also somehow manages to make a book about the end of the world feel . . ....
Literary Theory for Robots reveals the hidden history of modern machine intelligence, taking listeners on a spellbinding journey from medieval Arabic philosophy to visions of a universal language, past Hollywood fiction factories, and missile defense systems...
Samoa is a group of about 20 islands in the South Pacific Ocean, totaling slightly over 1,100 square miles, about a fifth the size of Hawai'i. The ancestors of the Samoans arrived there many centuries ago. Archaeological artifacts suggest Polynesians arrived...
A woman's tale of the transformative power of walking Britain's ancient pilgrim paths 'Raw, honest, powerful. I couldn't put it down.' Cerys Matthews On an assignment to walk the most famous pilgrimage in the world - the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain -...
Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, his own, part of both the Linen Triangle - heartland of the North's defining industry - and the Murder...
Philippa Langley took the world by storm when, against all the odds and a seven-year investigation, she discovered the grave of King Richard III (1452-1485) in a Leicester car park. A king finally laid to rest, the rediscovery and reburial of Richard III was...
'One of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. . . Essential reading for these turbulent times.' Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement Dougald...
The dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all--a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the...
From the medieval souks of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with...
Have you ever wondered why there are so few success stories of women in business leadership? Or maybe you've wondered what life is really like on the other side of The Glass Ceiling? The world of work is supposedly changing, embracing diversity - yet are the...
'In the beginning was the Word,' says the Gospel of John, and this sentence - and the words of all four gospels - are central to the teachings of the Christian church. They have shaped Western art, literature and language, and the Western mind. Yet in the...
This is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular. A single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of...
As scientists confidently look forward to average life expectancies hitting 100+ years in some Western societies, it's easy to forget how precarious our grasp on good health has been. It is a struggle no better demonstrated than by the myriad and extraordinary...
Acclaimed historian Alison Weir looks into the life of the first Tudor queen, revealing the woman behind the image Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. One of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses, daughter of...
Brought to you by Penguin. What do three murderers, Karl Marx's daughter and a vegetarian vicar have in common? They all helped create the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian...
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide.The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was...
Evocatively read by the author, Tom Chatfield. 'Combining compelling storytelling with erudite, compassionate and often profound insight about the human condition, this book will transform how you navigate the world.' - Richard Fisher, author of The Long View...
"Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people. There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in...
Brought to you by Penguin. Four Hundred Souls is an epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, told by ninety leading Black voices.The story begins with the arrival of twenty Ndongo people on the shores of the first British...
"The story of Messalina, third wife of the emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world. The image of the empress Messalina as a ruthless, sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as...
Brought to you by Penguin. Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's...
The epic story of the imperial rivalry between two of the greatest empires of the ancient world - Parthian and Persian - and how they rose and eventually fell. The Roman empire shaped the culture of the western world against which all other great powers are...
Today, Tipperary-born priest Patrick Ryan cuts a modest but strong figure, to the layperson. A man of God who has been entrusted with the confessions of hundreds of earnest parishioners. But in fact his story is dark, dramatic, and pivotal to Irish history, on...
An epic account of the decades-long battle to control the world's most critical resource--microchip technology Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a...
In Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia, our master storyteller Jim Haynes has collected a fascinating cast of characters who embody the resourcefulness, bravery, defiance, successes and tragedies of the convict era, men and women who forged the...
One of NPR's 11 Books to Look Forward to in 2024One of Good Morning America's 15 New Books to Read for the New Year"Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a...
An illuminating and thought-provoking examination of the uniquely American institution of marriage, from the Colonial era through the #MeToo age. Perfect for fans of Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Traister. Americans hold marriage in such high esteem that we push...
This highly revelatory book, based on original research and completely new analysis, presents a compelling new suspect as the most notorious serial killer of all time. Using a different analytical approach, for the first time, Sarah Bax Horton identifies a...
The love story of Zippa and Tony is nothing without the context of the Second World War. The war introduced them - they met as blackout wardens in London. It gave them darkened streets to wander in, hand in hand, then, by sending Tony away to officer training...
Brought to you by Penguin.A portrait of a radical age via the writers who gather around a publisher's dining table - from William Wordsworth to Mary WollstonecraftOnce a week, in late eighteenth-century London, writers of contrasting politics and personalities...
We are all too familiar with the stories of Jews who were tortured and killed in concentration camps throughout the Third Reich. But less is known about the persecution of Polish prisoners housed in Majdanek, a concentration and extermination camp on the...
Through the eyes of two frontline journalists comes a gripping narrative history of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement centered around a cast of core activists, culminating in the 2019 mass protests and Beijing's brutal crackdown. Hong Kong was an experiment...
Brought to you by Penguin.From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, about the fundamental unit of life. Rich with Mukherjee's revelatory and...
By acclaimed royal biographer Robert Hardman, Charles III is a brilliant account of a tumultuous period in British history, full of intriguing insider detail and the real stories behind the sadness, the dazzling pomp, the challenges and the triumphs as Charles...
Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson takes the listener on an entertaining journey from jazz's early stirrings in America's south through to the present day, when almost every country in the world has its own vibrant jazz scene. En route...
THE MODERN-DAY SURVIVAL BIBLE FROM EX-SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIER AND NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OLLIE OLLERTON Do you know how to thrive, not just survive? Can you build a fire? Administer critical first aid? Could you stay alive out in the wilderness? Fend off...
Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues's notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure has never been told-until now. A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan vividly recounts...
In his gritty and inspirational memoir, Jack Riewoldt reveals all about his remarkable AFL career and his personal journey of growth off the field. Jack grew up in picturesque Tasmania, playing sport with his family and admiring his older cousin Nick. When...
The compelling story of Martin Luther King's life and achievements has become simplified and domesticated in a way that fails to do full justice to his radical vision and importance. Now, in King, we get the most comprehensive and complete portrait ever...
It's time to take your seat for a dinner party like no other. Discover the long, long history of the dildo. Hear James Joyce celebrate the beauty of his wife's farts. And you'll never guess Albert Einstein's thoughts on marital relations. Kinky History draws...
A stirring account of how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the wartime pastIn 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal "Ode to Joy," he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European...
At the age of thirty, Rory Stewart was appointed coalition deputy Governor of two provinces in the Marsh region of southern Iraq. He kept a journal of his experiences struggling to control assassinations and tribal conflict, rebuild the region's infrastructure...
Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against...
The explosive new book from longtime royal journalist Omid Scobie and author of the international blockbuster Finding Freedom, Endgame a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy. An unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the...
When Kashmir Hill stumbled upon Clearview AI, a mysterious startup selling an app that claimed it could identify anyone using just a snapshot of their face, the implications were terrifying. The app could use the photo to find your name, your social media...
Capturing everyday lives and exceptional dreams, novels have held up a mirror to the nation, reflecting the good and the bad. Touching on colonial invasion, the bush myth, world wars, mass migration, the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the emergence...
This nostalgic and absorbing memoir tells the story of a real-life female police detective in post-war Britain, as she navigates a man's world. It's 1956, and the Berkshire Constabulary has never had a woman detective before. That is, until bright and...
"An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society."--Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The...
The hidden history of one of the world's greatest inventors, a man who disrupted the status quo and then disappeared into thin air on the eve of World War I--this book answers the hundred-year-old mystery of what really became of Rudolf Diesel. September 29,...
Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Inspired by her...
Czechoslovakia, October 1937. Vast crowds have gathered to watch the threatened nation's most prestigious sporting contest: the Grand Pardubice steeplechase. Notoriously dangerous, the race is considered the ultimate test of manhood and fighting spirit. The...
How did Vladimir Putin galvanize the Russian people to back his genocidal war in Ukraine, and why are so many of them willing to embrace fascism? This vivid, on-the-ground narrative reveals how Russia's fascist generation came into being-and the dark future...
In every coastal town in Australia, there's a bait shop and a boat ramp. Fishing rods are strung up in laundries and garages around the country, waiting for their next outing. Walk over a bridge, look across to a wharf and there will be people casting a line....
The twists and turns of the last 15 years of the Qantas story contain all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, with constant shocks to the system, and boardroom dramas and disasters narrowly avoided. During this tumultuous period, as CEO of Australia's...
Late one afternoon in the winter of 2003 art critic Richard Dorment answered a telephone call from a stranger. The caller was Joe Simon, an American film producer and art collector. He was ringing at the suggestion of David Hockney, his neighbour in Malibu. A...
In 1810, Matthew Flinders made his final voyage home to his beloved wife, Ann, his body ravaged by the deprivations of years of imprisonment by the French. Four years later, at the age of just 40, he would be dead - a premature, tragic end to one of the...
For Service, the great unanswered question is how to reconcile the two vital narratives that underpin the extraordinary but troubled events of 1917. One puts the blame squarely on Tsar Nicholas II and on Alexander Kerensky's provisional government that deposed...
When Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, announced in October 2022 that he was stepping down from the company he founded forty-seven years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio achieved...
Charles Wheeler, the BBC's longest-serving foreign correspondent, was one of Britain's greatest news reporters. For more than four decades, he reported for radio and television from most of the world's trouble spots. Present at many of the key episodes of the...
In October 2022, Elon Musk marched through Twitter's front doors carrying a kitchen sink, tweeting a message to his millions of followers: 'let that sink in'. His takeover came with the promise of fundamental changes, but nothing could prepare the company for...
THE OFFICIAL STORY OF A MUSICAL ICON - TOLD IN FULL FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS OWN WORDS 'I went to a lot of trouble to create Boy George and then I went through a whole battle for years about not wanting to be him. But now I enjoy and embrace it in a way that...
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