How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? Tim Parks – lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. With brutal honesty and dry wit, he recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the great mysteries of our time – how to survive in this modern age.

Selected from the book Teach us to Sit Still by Tim Parks

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Swimming by Roger Deakin
Motherhood by Helen Simpson
Work by Joseph Heller
Liberty by Virginia Woolf

How do you remember the summers of your childhood? For Laurie Lee they were flower-crested, heady, endless days. Here is an evocation of summer like no other – a remote valley filled with the scent of hay, jazzing wasps, blackberries plucked and gobbled, and games played until the last drop of dusk. Lee’s joyful and stirring writing captures the very essence of England’s golden season.

Selected from the book Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human

Also in the Vintage Minis series:
Liberty by Virginia Woolf
Eating by Nigella Lawson
Swimming by Roger Deakin
Drinking by John Cheever

Containing chapters on emergencies and villa and apartment rental, this Hungarian phrase book also has an enlarged shopping section covering markets and services, and additional useful everyday phrases. It includes chapters on hotels, camping and caravann

The Weimar era was a politically turbulent, economically uncertain but culturally dazzling age, which began with the end of the First World War in 1918 and ended abruptly when the National-Socialists came to power. The documentary photographs in this book take the reader on an extraordinary journey through time, as it was in Berlin during the 1920s that the age of the visual mass media began. In addition to recording the great events of the age, journalists began to take a keener interest in people's daily lives, capturing them in superb photo essays. This new approach found expression in the high circulation illustrated magazines of the Weimar Republic, which helped fore the bond between photographs and the press reports that has shaped modern journalism. THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC showcases the society of the 1920s in all its kaleidoscopic variety. The work of photojournalists is further brought to lie by the voices of contempoary people -- through extract from diaries, songs, memoirs and political speeches. Each chapter is introduced by a commentary that sets the historical scene. No other city was as typical of the Weimar Republic as its political and cultural center: Berlin. Teh journalistic focus of the age is therfore also the focus of this book, which devotes a whole chapter to Berliners and a portrait of their city. Together with the photojournalists of the 1920s and 1930s, the reader can stroll through Berlin's streets from its boulevards to its red-light districts. In the richly illustrated glossary the reader will find biographical sketches of the people who each left their individual mark on the Weimar epoch. This book is an extremely valuable reference work on the history of the Weimar era.

When the Nazi power was broken, I asked myself what was the best advice I could give to my fellow citizens here in this island and across the channel in our ravaged continent. There was no difficulty in answering the question. My counsel to Europe can be given in a single word: Unite! - Sir Winston Churchill in 1947 After the Second World War, with Europe in ruins, the victorious Winston Churchill swore to build a peace that would last. Together with a group of thinkers and politicians, Churchill began to build the institutions and the political will that would eventually lead to what we now know as the European Union. He believed in a united Europe, and wanted Britain to play a leading role. This book, based in part on new evidence, reveals his vision: Britain as a leading member of the European family. On the 23rd June this book asks us all to think carefully: what would Churchill have done?

La commémoration du centenaire de la loi de séparation des Églises et de l'État du 9 décembre 1905 ne peut pas rester franco-française et tournée vers le passé. Elle doit au contraire se situer à la hauteur de l'enjeu, permettre de percevoir de nouveaux horizons et de relancer la marche en avant de la laïcité. La véritable liberté de religion et la véritable liberté de l'agnosticisme et de l'athéisme ont sans doute, aujourd'hui, les mêmes adversaires. La laïcité constitue-t-elle une chance pour le XXIe siècle ? Sans doute, mais à condition qu'elle se nourrisse d'un dialogue, d'une confrontation, au sens positif du terme, entre ses différentes formes. Cet ouvrage propose de confronter le modèle français à la diversité des pratiques dans le monde (Brésil, Canada, États-Unis, Italie, Royaume-Uni, Turquie, Union européenne...). Certaines surprendront peut-être le lecteur. Toutes, nous semble-t-il, donnent une belle matière à la réflexion.

Depuis le milieu des années 1980, dans de nombreux pays d'Europe, des mouvements politiques caractérisés comme populistes, nationaux-populistes ou populistes de droite radicale se sont imposés sur la scène politique, portés par la crise de confiance à l'égard des institutions et des élites gouvernantes. Ces nouveaux partis, tous fortement personnalisés, exploitent les sentiments " anti-politiques " des citoyens et traduisent dans leur discours démagogique le rejet de l'immigration, le sentiment d'insécurité, l'hostilité à l'Europe et à la globalisation. Dans ces mobilisations constituant à la fois une menace et un défi pour les démocraties libérales, l'appel au peuple va de pair avec la défense de l'identité nationale supposée menacée. S'agit-il d'une simple résurgence de l'extrême droite ? D'un retour de la démagogie nationaliste ? De l'apparition d'une nouvelle droite extrême ou radicale ? Ou bien de l'émergence d'un nouveau type de contestation de la démocratie représentative ?

Penchées sur leur miroir, nos sociétés occidentales se voient vieillir et se détournent avec effroi. L'allongement de l'espérance de vie serait-il le dernier cadeau empoisonné que nous aurait fait le XXe siècle ? Faire face à son propre vieillissement et à celui de ses proches demeure un sujet tabou. A ce silence paralysant, des professionnels du vieillissement, gériatres, économistes, sociologues, ici réunis, opposent pourtant des constats positifs radicalement nouveaux. Vivre plus longtemps et en bonne santé est une chance sans précédent. La vieillesse n'est pas une maladie. La longévité pour tous est un programme politique et social, dans lequel la personne, à tout âge, doit être prise en compte en tant qu'adulte, comme un acteur autonome de sa propre trajectoire de vie. Renverser des représentations mentales obsolètes, apporter les éclairages nécessaires à une prise de conscience individuelle et collective de cette nouvelle donne - avec les engagements législatifs et budgétaires qu'elle comporte -, telles sont les ambitions de ce livre.

The National Book League was a precursor to the current Booktrust, and was set up in 1924 by the Society of Bookmen in order to promote reading, particularly among the young. To that end, the NBL issued Reader's Guides on a variety of subjects, each written by an author with expertise in that field and containing an annotated bibliography of recommended titles on the subject. First published in 1955, this guide by British actor Alec Clunes, father of Martin, includes a bibliography not only of British theatre in general, but also histories of individual theatres in Britain, biographies of theatrical figures and books on acting technique.

Since 1989 Romania has gone from communist isolation under the megalomaniac Nicolae Ceauescu to being a key player in America's war against terrorism. Because of this strategic location it has become a front-line state for nervous Western governments keen to secure oil routes from the Middle East. It joined NATO in 2004 and is due to enter the European Union in 2007-08 despite its economy being unprepared to meet the competition challenges from established members. Tom Gallagher analyses how the country is seeking to recover from a disastrous period in its history while many of the key legacies of dictatorship remain. Having lynched the discredited Ceauescu in 1989, former acolytes have spent the past fifteen years trying to retain a monopoly of control behind the facade of a Western-style democracy. They combined their political ambitions with acquiring the control of vast amounts of private property denied to them by Ceauescu. Political institutions were given a facelift, as in the case of the intelligence services which became a crucial power-base for the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD). The state continued to be used to serve narrow private interests. Replacing the communist dynasty of the Ceauescus, there is now an oligarchy drawn from the PSD and its satellites in the bureaucracy, major industries, and the intelligence world which grew wealthy through insider privatisation and the looting of the country's banks. Romania is now at a crucial turning-point. In 2004 the mobilisation of civil society contributed to the narrow victory of Traian B sescu in presidential elections. It is unclear whether he can win control over the key levers of state necessary to stem the corruption and abuse of power which have blighted Romania's hopes of breaking free from its communist-era legacy. The PSD is now led by Mircea Geoana, the son of a general in Ceauescu's Securitate. He has recruited a string of Western politicians to block pressure for meaningful change from Brussels and to ensure that accession to the EU occurs without serious reform.

Elon Musk is an inspirational role model for young entrepreneurs, breaking boundaries and revolutionising the tech-world. He is also the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films, starring Robert Downey Junior. From his humble beginnings in apartheid South Africa, he showed himself to be an exceptionally bright child, and overcame brutal bullying to become the world’s most exciting entrepreneur, founding PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City.

He has emerged as something of a superhero-like figure for today’s generation of children. He’s not only seen as an entrepreneur in the spirit of a Steve Jobs but as an inventor and bold thinker. He’s the guy offering children the possibility of a brighter, more exciting future and has come to symbolize innovation and optimism.

Describes and gives an analysis of the extent to which the European Community intervenes in the automobile industry through legal measures. It gives an introduction to the automobile industry and the EC treaty, and examines the Community measures that hav

Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics is a dense masterpiece of sustained argumentative reasoning. It earned its place as one of the most important and influential books in Western philosophy by virtue of its uncompromisingly direct arguments about the nature of God, the universe, free will, and human morals. Though it remains one of the densest and most challenging texts in the entire canon of Western philosophy, Ethics is also famous for Spinoza’s unique approach to ordering and constructing its arguments. As its full title – Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order – suggests, Spinoza decided to use the rigorous format of mathematical-style propositions to lay out his arguments, just as the Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid had used geometrical propositions to lay out the basic rules of geometry. In choosing such a systematic method, Spinoza’s masterwork shows the crucial aspects of good reasoning skills being employed at the highest level. The key use of reasoning is the production of an argument that is well-organised, supports its conclusions and proceeds logically towards its end. Just as a mathematician might demonstrate a geometrical proof, Spinoza sought to lay out a comprehensive philosophy for human existence – an attempt that has influenced generations of philosophers since.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s 1843 book Fear and Trembling shows precisely why he is regarded as one of the most significant and creative philosophers of the nineteenth century. Creative thinkers can be many things, but one of their common attributes is an ability to redefine, reframe and reconsider problems from novel angles. In Kierkegaard’s case, he chose to approach the problems of faith and ethics in a deliberately artful and non-systematic way. Writing under the pseudonym “John the Silent,” he declared that he was “nothing of a philosopher,” but an “amateur,” wanting to write poetically and elegantly about the things that fascinated him. While Fear and Trembling is very much the work of a philosopher, Kierkegaard’s protests showed his intent to take a different path, approaching his topic like no one else before him. The book goes on to ask what the real nature of our personal relationship with God might be, and how faith might interact with ethics. What, Kierkegaard asks, can we make of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and of Abraham obeying? Arguing the unorthodox position that in following God’s incomprehensible will Abraham had acted ethically, Kierkegaard set out the parameters of a moral argument that remains strikingly novel over a 150 years later.

Elizabeth Anscombe’s 1958 essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” is a cutting intervention in modern philosophy that shows the full power of good evaluative and analytical critical thinking skills. Though only 16 pages long, Anscombe’s paper set out to do nothing less than reform the entire field of modern moral philosophy – something that could only be done by carefully examining the existing arguments of the giants of the field. To do this, she deployed the central skills of evaluation and analysis. In critical thinking, analysis helps understand the sequence and features of arguments: it asks what reasons these arguments produce, what implicit reasons and assumptions they rely on, what conclusions they arrive at. Evaluation involves judging whether or not the arguments are strong enough to sustain their conclusions: it asks how acceptable, adequate, and relevant the reasons given are, and whether or not the conclusions drawn from them are really valid. In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe dispassionately turns these skills on figures that have dominated moral philosophy since the 18th-century, revealing the underlying assumptions of their work, their weaknesses and strengths, and showing that in many ways the supposed differences between their arguments are actually negligible. A brilliantly incisive piece, “Modern Moral Philosophy” radically affected its field, remaining required – and controversial – reading today.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality is a sustained feat of incisive interpretation. Well known as one of Nietzsche’s greatest works, and as one of the most important books of nineteenth-century philosophy, On the Genealogy of Morality also provided the inspiration for the methodologies of several key philosophers of the modern age. Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, among others, cite Nietzsche as an influence specifically because of the interpretative techniques laid out in this work – techniques which are a model for the ways in which interpretation can be used to power critical thinking of the highest order. The key aspects of interpretation are understanding, clarifying, and questioning definitions; what Nietzsche brings to the process is a sense of how important context, history and culture are to understanding any term. In the case of morals, for instance, he argues that if we are to truly understand what we mean by “good” or “evil,” we cannot ever assume the two concepts have a stable meaning, outside of a given moment in history. Indeed, to understand what they mean now, and might mean in the future, we need to trace the genealogy of concepts back to their very roots – a feat of interpretation that Nietzsche undertakes masterfully.

Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit is renowned for being one of the most challenging and important books in Western philosophy. Above all, it is famous for laying out a new approach to reasoning and philosophical argument, an approach that has been credited with influencing Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many other key modern philosophers. That approach is the so-called “Hegelian dialectic” – an open-ended sequence of reasoning and argument in which contradictory concepts generate and are incorporated into a third, more sophisticated concept. While the Phenomenology does not always clearly use this dialectical method – and it is famously one of the most difficult works of philosophy ever written – the Hegelian dialectic provides a perfect template for critical thinking reasoning skills. A hallmark of good reasoning in the construction of an argument, and the searching out of answers must necessarily consider contradictory viewpoints or evidence. For Hegel, contradiction is key: it is precisely what allows reasoning to progress. Only by incorporating and overcoming contradictions, according to his method, is it possible for thought to progress at all. While writing like Hegel might not be advisable, thinking like him can help take your reasoning to the next level.

Many still consider Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1953 Philosophical Investigations to be one of the breakthrough works of twentieth-century philosophy. The book sets out a radically new conception of philosophy itself, and demonstrates all the attributes of a fine analytical mind. Taking an argument from Plato and subjecting it to detailed (and very clear) analysis, Wittgenstein shows his understanding of how the sequence and function of differing parts of a highly-complex argument can be broken down and assessed. In so doing, he reaches a logical position of simultaneous agreement and disagreement with Plato’s philosophical position. Philosophical Investigations is also a powerful example of the skill of interpretation. Philosophical problems often arise from confusions in the use of language – and the way to solve these problems, Wittgenstein posits, is by clarifying language use. He argues that philosophers must study ordinary uses of language and examine how people use it as a tool in their everyday lives. In this highly-interpretative way, the meaning of a word or sentence becomes relative to the context (people, culture, community) in which it is used. Rather than debate abstract problems, Wittgenstein urges philosophers to concern themselves with ordinary life and the concrete situations in which humans find themselves.

The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant is as daunting as he is influential: widely considered to be not only one of the most challenging thinkers of all time, but also one of the most important. His Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason takes on two of his central preoccupations – the reasoning powers of the human mind, and religion – and applies the full force of his reasoning abilities to consider the relationship between them. In critical thinking, reasoning is all about constructing arguments: arguments that are persuasive, systematic, comprehensive, and well-evidenced. And any examination involves stripping reasoning back to its barest essentials and attempting to get at the nature of the world by asking what we can know about God and morality from the power of our minds alone. Beginning from the axiom that God is, by definition, unknowable, Kant reasons that it is humans who bear the responsibility of creating the Kingdom of God. This, he suggests, we can do by acting morally in the world we experience – with a morality that can be shaped by reason alone. Dense and challenging, but closely and persuasively reasoned, Kant’s case for human responsibility shows reasoning skills at their most impressive.

David Hume’s 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a modern philosophical classic that helped reshape epistemology – the philosophy of knowledge. It is also a classic of the critical thinking skills of analysis and reasoning. Analysis is all about understanding how arguments work and fit together. Having strong analytical skills helps to break down arguments, pull out the evidence on which they rely, and understand the kinds of implicit assumptions and reasons on which they work. Reasoning, meanwhile, means building and presenting arguments, forming well-structured, evidenced, and organised cases for a particular point of view. Hume applied his analytical skills to arguments about how humans know and understand the world, and how our minds work. At base, he was trying to analyse human reason itself – to show the workings and limitations of the human mind, and show the origins of our beliefs. Hume went on to apply his reasoning skills, creating an enduring argument about the nature of human knowledge. The result was one of the most striking and famous works in the history of philosophy.

Hannah Arendt’s 1958 The Human Condition was an impassioned philosophical reconsideration of the goals of being human. In its arguments about the kind of lives we should lead and the political engagement we should strive for, Arendt’s interpretative skills come to the fore, in a brilliant display of what high-level interpretation can achieve for critical thinking. Good interpretative thinkers are characterised by their ability to clarify meanings, question accepted definitions and posit good, clear definitions that allow their other critical thinking skills to take arguments deeper and further than most. In many ways, The Human Condition is all about definitions. Arendt’s aim is to lay out an argument for political engagement and active participation in society as the highest goals of human life; and to this end she sets about defining a hierarchy of ways of living a “vita activa,” or active life. The book sets about distinguishing between our different activities under the categories of “labor”, “work”, and “action” – each of which Arendt carefully redefines as a different level of active engagement with the world. Following her clear and careful laying out of each word’s meaning, it becomes hard to deny her argument for the life of “action” as the highest human goal.

John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government is a key text in the history of political theory – one whose influence remains marked on modern politics, the American Constitution and beyond. Two Treatises is more than a seminal work on the nature and legitimacy of government. It is also a masterclass in two key critical thinking skills: evaluation and reasoning. Evaluation is all about judging and assessing arguments – asking how relevant, adequate and convincing they are. And, at its heart, the first of Locke’s two treatises is pure evaluation: a long and incisive dissection of a treatise on the arguments in Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha. Filmer’s book had defended the doctrine that kings were absolute rulers whose legitimacy came directly from God (the so-called “divine right of kings”), basing his arguments on Biblical explanations and evidence. Locke carefully rebutted Filmer’s arguments, on their own terms, by reference to both the Bible and to recorded history. Finding Filmer’s evidence either to be insufficient or unacceptable, Locke concluded that his argument for patriarchy was weak to the point of invalidity. In the second of Locke’s treatises, the author goes on to construct his own argument concerning the sources of legitimate power, and the nature of that power. Carefully building his own argument from a logical consideration of man in “the state of nature”, Locke creates a convincing argument that civilised society should be based on natural human rights and the social contract.

Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential career–it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century. Kissinger initially trained as a university professor before becoming Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon in 1973 – a position in which he both won the Nobel Peace Prize and was accused of war crimes by protesters against American military actions in Vietnam. While a controversial figure, Kissinger is widely agreed to have a unique level of practical and theoretical expertise in politics and international relations – and World Order is the culmination of a lifetime’s experience of work in those fields. The product of a master of the critical thinking skill of interpretation, World Order takes on the challenge of defining the worldviews at play in global politics today. Clarifying precisely what is meant by the different notions of ‘order’ imagined by nations across the world, as Kissinger does, highlights the challenges of world politics, and sharpens the focus on efforts to make surmounting these divisions possible. While Kissinger’s own reputation will likely remain equivocal, there is no doubting the interpretative skills he displays in this engaging and illuminating text.

The German sociologist Max Weber is considered to be one of the founding fathers of sociology, and ranks among the most influential writers of the 20th-century. His most famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is a masterpiece of sociological analysis whose power is based on the construction of a rigorous, and intricately interlinked, piece of argumentation. Weber’s object was to examine the relationship between the development of capitalism and the different religious ideologies of Europe. While many other scholars focused on the material and instrumental causes of capitalism’s emergence, Weber sought to demonstrate that different religious beliefs in fact played a significant role. In order to do this, he employed his analytical skills to understand the relationship between capitalism and religious ideology, carefully considering how far Protestant and secular capitalist ethics overlapped, and to what extent they mirrored each other. One crucial element of Weber’s work was his consideration the degree to which cultural values acted as implicit or hidden reasons reinforcing capitalist ethics and behavior – an investigation that he based on teasing out the ‘arguments’ that underpin capitalism. Incisive and insightful, Weber’s analysis continues to resonate with scholars today.

C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a perfect example of one of the most effective aspects of critical thinking skills: the use of reasoning to build a strong, logical argument. ¶Lewis originally wrote the book as a series of radio talks given from 1942-1944, at the height of World War II. The talks were designed to lay out the most basic tenets of Christianity for listeners, and to use these to make a logical argument for Christian belief and Christian ethics. While Lewis was not an academically-trained theologian or philosopher (specializing instead in literature), his own experience of converting from atheism to Christianity, along with his wide reading and incisive questioning, power a charming but persuasive argument for his own beliefs. ¶Whether or not one agrees with Lewis’s arguments or shares his faith, Mere Christianity exemplifies one of the most useful aspects of good reasoning: accessibility. When using reasoning to construct a convincing argument, it is crucial that your audience follow you, and Lewis was a master at constructing well-organised arguments that are immediately understandable to readers. The beautifully written Mere Christianity is a masterclass in cogently walking an audience through an elegant and well thought-through piece of reasoning.

On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump won the American presidential election, to the surprise of many across the globe. Now that Trump is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful country on earth, Americans and non-Americans alike have been left wondering what this will mean for the world. It has been claimed that Trump's foreign policy views are impulsive, inconsistent and that they were improvised on the campaign trail. However, drawing on interviews from as far back as 1980, Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms show that this assumption is dangerously false. They reveal that Trump has had a consistent position on international trade and America's alliances since he first considered running for president in the late 1980s. Furthermore, his foreign policy views have deep roots in American history. For the new President, almost every international problem that has confronted the United States can be explained by the mistakes of its leaders. Yet, after decades of dismissing America's leaders as fools and denouncing their diplomacy, Trump must now prove that he can do better.Over the past three decades, he has been laying out in interviews, articles, books and tweets what amounts to a foreign policy philosophy. This book reveals the world view that Trump brings to the Oval Office. It shows how that world view was formed, what might result if it is applied in policy terms and the potential consequences for the rest of the world.

American scholar Jared Diamond deploys his powers of interpretation to great effect in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which seeks to understand the meaning behind the available evidence describing societies that have survived and those that have withered and died. Why, for example, did the Norsemen of Scandinavia who colonized Greenland in the early tenth century not survive, while the inhabitants of Highland New Guinea did? With the evidence to hand, Diamond notes that a society’s collapse tends to be preceded by a severe reduction in population and considerable decreases in political, economic and social complexity. Delving even deeper, Diamond isolates five major factors determine the success or failure of human societies in all periods of history: environmental degradation, which occurs when an ecosystem deteriorates as its resources are exhausted; climate change (natural or man-made); hostile neighbors; weakened trading partners; and access or otherwise to the resources that enable the society to adapt its challenges. The breadth of Diamond’s research provides the springboard from which to reach these definitions, but it inevitably also introduces complications; how can evidence produced by specialists in so many different disciplines be compared? Diamond’s ability to understand the meaning of the evidence at hand – and his readiness to seek and supply clarifications of meaning where necessary – underpin his achievement, and comprise a textbook example of how interpretative skills can provide a framework for strong critical thinking.

Franz Boas’s 1940 Race, Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline, collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the ‘father of American anthropology.’ An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called ‘scientific racism’ that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century, Race, Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field – and central to its arguments and impact are Boas’s formidable interpretative skills. It could be said, indeed, that Race, Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world. In critical thinking, interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas’s work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas, who argued passionately for ‘cultural relativism,’ it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context – not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach, he suggested, a better understanding of humankind. Though our own questions might be smaller, it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition?

The Anti-Politics Machine (1990) examines how international development projects are conceived, researched, and put into practice. It also looks at what these projects actually achieve. Ferguson criticizes the idea of externally-directed ‘development’ and argues that the process doesn’t take proper account of the daily realities of the communities it is intended to benefit. Instead, they often prioritize technical solutions for addressing poverty and ignoring its social and political dimensions, so the structures that these projects put in place often have unintended consequences. Ferguson suggests that until the process becomes more reflective, development projects will continue to fail.

The Gift exploits Mauss’s high-level analytical and interpretative skills to produce a brilliant investigation of the forms, meanings, and structures of gift-giving across a range of societies. Mauss, along with many others, had noted that in a wide range of societies – especially those without monetary exchange or legal structures – gift-giving and receiving was carried out according to strict customs and unwritten laws. What he sought to do in The Gift was to analyse the structures that governed how and when gifts were given, received, and reciprocated in order to grasp what implicit and unspoken reasons governed these structures. He also wanted to apply his interpretative skills to asking what such exchanges meant, in order to explore the implications his analysis might have for modern, western cultures. In Mauss’s investigations, it became clear that gift-giving is, in many cultures, a crucial structural force, binding people together in a web of reciprocal commitments generated by the laws of gifting. Indeed, he concluded, gifts can be seen as the ‘glue’ of society..

Charles Darwin called on a broad and unusually powerful combination of critical thinking skills to create his wide-ranging explanation for biological change, On the Origin of Species. It’s one of those rare books that takes a huge problem – the enormous diversity of different species – and seeks to use a vast range of evidence to solve it. But it was perhaps Darwin’s towering creative prowess that made the most telling contribution to this masterpiece, for it was this that enabled him to make the necessary fresh connections between so much disparate evidence from such a diversity of fields. All of Darwin’s critical thinking skills were required, however, in the course of the decades of work that went into this volume. Taken as a whole, Darwin’s solution to the problem that he set himself is carefully researched, considers multiple explanations, and justifies its conclusions with well-organised reasoning. At the time of the publication, in 1859, there were various explanations for the changes that Darwin – and others – observed; what separated Darwin from so many of his contemporaries is that he deployed critical thinking to arrive at a significantly new way of fitting explanation to evidence; one that remains elegant, complete and predictive to this day.

Joan Scott's work has influenced several generations of historians and helped make the topic of gender central to the way in which the discipline is taught and studied today. At root a new way of conceptualizing capitalist societies, Scott's theories suggest that gender is better understood as a social construct than as a biological fact. Scott’s original contribution to the debate, however, stems in her use of the critical thinking skill of analysis to understand how the arguments of earlier generations of historians were built in order to fully grasp both their structure and the assumptions that underpinned them. From there, Scott was able to use problem-solving to resolve the issues that emerged from her analysis, asking productive questions focused on better ways to build a model capable of explaining the historical phenomenon of gender difference. Scott answered these questions by introducing models created by deconstructionist scholars – notably Jacques Derrida, who challenged the idea that any term or concept has a stable or dependable meaning rooted in material reality. She was able, in consequence, to refute that idea that gender inequality is the natural (hence justifiable) consequence of biological sexual differences, and issue a fundamental challenge to the capitalist system itself.

Few historians can claim to have undertaken historical analysis on as grand a scale as Geoffrey Parker in his 2013 work Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It is a doorstop of a book that surveys the ‘general crisis of the 17th century,’ shows that it was experienced practically throughout the world, and was not merely a European phenomenon, and links it to the impact of climate change in the form of the advent of a cold period known as the ‘Little Ice Age.’ Parker’s triumph is made possible by the deployment of formidable critical thinking skills – reasoning, to construct an engaging overall argument from very disparate material, and analysis, to re-examine and understand the plethora of complex secondary sources on which his book is built. In critical thinking, analysis is all about understanding the features and structures of argument: how given reasons lead to conclusions, and what kinds of implicit reasons and assumptions are being used. Historical analysis applies the same skills to the fabric of history, asking how given chains of events occur, how different reasons and factors interact, and so on. Parker, though, takes things further than most in his quest to understand the meaning of a century’s-worth of turbulence spread across the whole globe. Beginning by breaking down the evidence for significant climatic cooling in the 17th-century (due to decreased solar activity), he moves on to detailed study of the effects the cooling had on societies and regimes across the world. From this detailed spadework, he constructs a persuasive argument that accounts for the different ways in which the effects of climate change played out across the century – an argument with profound implications for a future likely to see serious climate change of its own.

To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the European Union – the nationalism that was such a potent force in the history of the 20th-century has made a comeback in recent years. Now, more than ever, it seems important to understand what it is, how it works, and why it is so attractive to so many people. A fine place to start any such exploration is with Ernest Gellner's seminal Nations and Nationalism, a ground-breaking study that was the first to flesh out the counter-intuitive – but enormously influential – thesis that modern nationalism has little if anything in common with old-fashioned patriotism or loyalty to one's homeland. Gellner's intensely creative thesis is that the nationalism we know today is actually the product of the 19th-century industrial revolution, which radically reshaped ancient communities, encouraging emigration to cities at the same time as it improved literacy rates and introduced mass education. Gellner connected these three elements in an entirely new way, contrasting developments to the structures of pre-industrial agrarian economies to show why the new nationalism could not have been born in such communities. He was also successful in generating a typology of nationalisms in an attempt to explain why some forms flourished while others fizzled out. His remarkable ability to produce novel explanations for existing evidence marks out Nations and Nationalism as one of the most radical, stimulating – and enduringly influential – works of its day.

A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which "subalterns" – her term for the indigenous dispossessed in colonial societies – were able to achieve agency, this paper concentrates specifically on describing the ways in which western scholars inadvertently reproduce hegemonic structures in their work. Spivak is herself a scholar, and she remains acutely aware of the difficulty and dangers of presuming to "speak" for the subalterns she writes about. As such, her work can be seen as predominantly a delicate exercise in the critical thinking skill of interpretation; she looks in detail at issues of meaning, specifically at the real meaning of the available evidence, and her paper is an attempt not only to highlight problems of definition, but to clarify them. What makes this one of the key works of interpretation in the Macat library is, of course, the underlying significance of this work. Interpretation, in this case, is a matter of the difference between allowing subalterns to speak for themselves, and of imposing a mode of "speaking" on them that – however well-intentioned – can be as damaging in the postcolonial world as the agency-stifling political structures of the colonial world itself. By clearing away the detritus of scholarly attempts at interpretation, Spivak takes a stand against a specifically intellectual form of oppression and marginalization.

The essay for which The Sacred Wood is primarily remembered is one of the most famous pieces of criticism in English: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” helped to re-orientate arguments about the study of literature and its production by redefining the nature of tradition and the artist's relation to it.At a time when the word “traditional” had become a way of damning with faint praise by reference to the past, Eliot reinterpreted the term to mean something entirely different. It is not, he argues, something just “handed down,” but, instead, a prize to be obtained “by great labour,” not least in the making of a huge effort of understanding how the past fits together. Seen thus, Eliot suggests, a literary and artistic tradition “has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order” – and it is not just past, but present as well. For Eliot, “art never improves,” but only changes, and each part of the tradition is constantly being reinterpreted in light of what is added to the whole. The role of the poet, in Eliot's view, is to subjugate their own personality, and become “a receptacle,” in which “numberless feelings, phrases, images… can unite to form a new compound.” Redefining the issue of poets' relations to the past in this new way is a fine example of creative thinking, and Eliot’s ability to connect existing concepts in new ways was what gave weight to the argument that he advanced: that poets cannot succeed without understanding that they are taking their place on a continuum that stretches back to all their predecessors, and incorporate the ideas, strengths and failings of the entire body of work that those poets represented.

David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical classic that displays a powerful mastery of the critical thinking skills of reasoning and evaluation. Hume’s subject, the question of the existence and possible nature of God, was, and still is, a persistent topic of philosophical and theological debate. What makes Hume’s text a classic of reasoning, though, is less what he says, than how he says it. As he noted in his preface to the book, the question of ‘natural religion’ was unanswerable: so ‘obscure and uncertain’ that ‘human reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it.’ Hume chose, as a result, to cast his thoughts on the topic in the form of a dialogue – allowing different points of view to be reasoned out, evaluated and answered by different characters. Considering and judging different or opposing points of view, as Hume’s characters do, is an important part of reasoning, and is vital to building strong persuasive arguments. Even if, as Hume suggests, there can be no final answer to what a god might be like, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion shows high-level reasoning and evaluation at their best.

Few can say they’ve seen some of the most significant moments of the twentieth century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them.

Born in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she travelled to Cuba where she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate the Fidel. Torn by love and loyalty, she failed to slip him the lethal pills.

Her life would take many more twists and turns ― including having a child with ex-dictator of Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez; testifying about the John G Kennedy assassination; and becoming a party girl for the New York Mafia, as well as a police informant.

Caught up in Cold War intrigue, espionage and conspiracy ― this is Marita’s incredible true story of a young girl, turned spy.

For over 20 years Joe Carter has worked for the police as an undercover cop. He travelled the globe on different passports. He fraternised with thieves, international drugs and arms dealers. He worked alongside the most dangerous criminals. Always fearing that this life would come crashing down around him at any point.

His story is a gripping account of the secret, solitary work of an undercover officer and the many ‘sticky’ situations he found himself in, as well as the moving confession of the difficulty in reconciling his two identities with his family life. It’s a story of his beginnings from a being a young east end apprentice to the mean streets he walks today – it reveals the many highs and the painful lows of going undercover.

This book explores the resilience needed to lead a double life, the thrilling challenge of working with the biggest criminals in Britain, and maintaining a sense of justice through the many adventures he encounters.

This deftly written single volume reference will tell you everything you need to know about American History. From Abington to Zimmerman, from Jamestown to Enron, this concise accessible volume spans American history from its beginnings through to 2002. Its 1,500 entries include articles on every presidential election through to 2000, on every presidential administration through to Clinton's, on the U.S. Supreme Court and its landmark cases and on all the key events and concepts that have shaped American History.

La criminologie est la science qui étudie les caractéristiques et les causes du phénomène criminel. Elle permet de construire un savoir rigoureux sur le crime et sur tout ce qui s’y rapporte. Dans cet ouvrage, le lecteur trouvera des réponses aux questions : Que savons-nous sur la dynamique de l'action criminelle ? Sur le milieu criminel ? Sur les délinquants et leur style de vie ? Sur l'efficacité des moyens de lutte contre le crime ? En d’autres termes, cet ouvrage d’initiation expose les notions principales et fait le bilan des connaissances les plus actuelles de cette discipline.Cette cinquième édition mise à jour propose de nouveaux développements : premièrement, sur la pensée stratégique en criminologie, notamment sur la dynamique des relations entre le délinquant, la victime et les acteurs du contrôle social ; deuxièmement, des chiffres récents sur l'évolution de la criminalité ; troisièmement, un état des connaissances actuelles sur l'efficacité des moyens de lutte contre le crime.

An elegant and witty writer, poet laureate from 1668, Dryden was one of the main dramatists, critics and poets of his age.

In August 2014, Farida Khalaf was just a normal Yazidi girl, living in a village high in the mountains of northern Iraq. Then her village was attacked and swiftly taken by ISIS fighters, and her whole world changed. The jihadists murdered the men and the boys of her village, including her father and brothers, before taking Farida prisoner along with the rest of the women.

This is the story of what happened to Farida after she was captured: the beatings, the rapes, the markets where ISIS sold their female prisoners like cattle, and Farida's realisation that the more difficult and resistant she became, the harder it was for her captors to continue their atrocities against her. So she struggled, she bit, she kicked, she accused her captors of going against their religion, and then, one day, the door to her room was left unlocked. She took her chance along with 5 other women, and set out across the Syrian desert ...

This is a story of incredible courage in the face of unthinkable atrocity. As the battle against ISIS continues to ravage the Middle East, The Girl Who Escaped Isis provides an astonishing perspective on this very terrifying global threat.

‘I’ve lived through ten iOS upgrades on my Mac – and that’s just something I use to muck about on Twitter. Surely capitalism is due an upgrade or two?’

When Caitlin Moran sat down to choose her favourite pieces for her new book she realised that they all seemed to join up. Turns out, it’s the same old problems and the same old ass-hats.

Then she thought of the word ‘Moranifesto’, and she knew what she had to do…

This is Caitlin’s engaging and amusing rallying call for our times. Combining the best of her recent columns with lots of new writing unique to this book, Caitlin deals with topics as pressing and diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits, boarding schools, and why the internet is like a drunken toddler.

And whilst never afraid to address the big issues of the day – such as Benedict Cumberbatch and duffel coats – Caitlin also makes a passionate effort to understand our 21st century society and presents us with her ‘Moranifesto’ for making the world a better place.

The polite revolution starts here! Please.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer

History does not repeat, but it does instruct.

In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances.

History can familiarise, and it can warn. Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny.

Now is a good time to do so.

'I cannot think of a better biography of a spy chief'
Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator

Sir Maurice Oldfield was one of the most important British spies of the Cold War era. A farmer’s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn’t come to the role via the traditional public school and Oxbridge route.

Oldfield was the voice of British Intelligence in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK, and was largely responsible for keeping the UK out of the Vietnam War. Working his way to the top of the secret service, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Philby, Burgess and Maclean spy scandals.

This is the fascinating life story, told in detail for the first time, of a complex, likable character as well as a formidable intelligence chief.

'POWERFUL AND SOMETIMES SHOCKING ...' SUNDAY TIMES

In this powerful book, Dr Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights lawyer and activist, tells of her fight for reform inside Iran, and the devastating backlash she faced after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Having fought tirelessly for democracy, equality before the law and freedom of speech, Ebadi became a global voice of inspiration. Yet, inside her own country, her life has been plagued by surveillance, intimidation and violence.

Until We Are Free tells shocking stories of how the Iranian authorities eventually forced her into exile. Her sister and daughter were detained, her husband was enmeshed in an espionage plot with another woman, her Nobel medal was stolen from her safety deposit box, and her offices in Tehran were ransacked.

An illuminating depiction of life in Iran today as well as the account of Ebadi's personal struggle to uphold her work and keep her family together, Until We Are Free is ultimately a work of hope and perseverance under circumstances of exceptional difficulty.

'An enthralling adventure story, honest and powerful. The Wars of the Roses are imagined here with energy, with ferocity, with hunger to engage the reader.' Hilary Mantel

Lent, 1469

The recent wars between the House of York and the House of Lancaster seem over. The Yorkist King Edward sits on his throne in Westminster, while the Lancastrian claimants are in exile or under lock and key in the Tower.

But within the family of York there is discord. The Earl of Warwick conspires against his King, and while to one another's faces they are all smiles, their household men speak in lies and whispers.

No man comes to court unarmed.

Thomas and Katherine have returned to Marton Hall, the only home they know.

But what lies buried in the past cannot remain so for long, and soon they are forced to take up arms once more in one of the most savage wars in history.

The Wars of the Roses . . .

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM PABLO ESCOBAR’S SON

Until now, we believed that everything had been said about the rise and fall of the most infamous drug lord of all time, Pablo Escobar – from books to film to the cult series ‘Narcos’. But these versions have always been told from the outside, only capturing half the truth, and never from the intimacy of his own home. Now, more than two decades after the full-fledged manhunt finally caught up with Escobar, his son brings us the dramatic truth as never before.

Here we find a man of contradictions – generosity and infinite love for his family; yet capable of the most extreme acts of cruelty and violence. In a deeply personal exploration of his father, we see the inner world of a man who was celebrated by some as a benevolent Robin Hood figure and by others, as a dangerous leader of the most ruthless mafia organisation in human history, reaping vengeance and death on anyone that might stand in his way.

When Escobar died, his then teenage son vowed revenge. But Escobar Jr. quickly recognised that meant following in his father's footsteps―something neither of them had ever wanted. With his change of heart, he denounced the Pablo Escobar legacy. This is far from the story of a child seeking redemption, but a shocking look at the consequences of violence and his attempt to come to terms with it.

'Maggie Nelson’s short, singular books feel pretty light in the hand... But in the head and the heart, they seem unfathomably vast, their cleverness and odd beauty lingering on' Observer

In 1969, Jane Mixer, a first-year law student at the University of Michigan, posted a note on a student noticeboard to share a lift back to her hometown of Muskegon for spring break. She never made it: she was brutally murdered, her body found a few miles from campus the following day.

The Red Parts is Maggie Nelson’s singular account of her aunt Jane’s death, and the trial that took place some 35 years afterward. Officially unsolved for decades, the case was reopened in 2004 after a DNA match identified a new suspect, who would soon be arrested and tried. In 2005, Nelson found herself attending the trial, and reflecting with fresh urgency on our relentless obsession with violence, particularly against women.

Resurrecting her interior world during the trial – in all its horror, grief, obsession, recklessness, scepticism and downright confusion – Maggie Nelson has produced a work of profound integrity and, in its subtle indeterminacy, deadly moral precision.

Not Dead Yet is Phil Collins’ candid, witty, unvarnished story of the songs and shows, the hits and pans, his marriages and divorces, the ascents to the top of the charts and into the tabloid headlines. As one of only three musicians to sell over 100 million records both in a group and as a solo artist, Collins breathes rare air, but he has never lost his talent for crafting songs that touch listeners around the globe.

This is the story of his epic career, from child actor to one of the most successful songwriters of the pop music era. A drummer since almost before he could walk, Collins received on-the-job training in the seedy, thrilling bars and clubs of 1960s swinging London before finally landing the drum seat in Genesis. Later he would step into the spotlight on vocals after the departure of Peter Gabriel, and compose the songs that would rocket him to international solo fame with the release of Face Value and ‘In the Air Tonight’.

Whether he’s recalling jamming with Eric Clapton and Robert Plant, pulling together a big band fronted by Tony Bennett, playing twice at Live Aid, or writing the Oscar-winning music for Disney’s smash-hit animated film Tarzan, Collins keeps it intimate and his storytelling gift never wavers.

Peter Wilding offers an arresting answer, plotting out a new course for Britain's troubled relationship with Europe. He channels the pride Britain draws from its heritage through the prejudice Britain has historically had against Europe, and proposes a new popular-based platform for British influence in Europe: 'smart power'. Wilding identifies how British leaders from Pitt to Cameron have attempted to use exactly this 'smart power' in their approach to Europe. He tells the story of their shared experiences in forging Churchill's strategy - a long-term plan which put Britain at the heart of Europe and the Commonwealth and alongside the United States - and applies it to Britain today. Outlining a new approach for Britain's leaders, Wilding proposes a new, positive vision to position Britain in a fast-changing and fractured world. His book will provide valuable new perspectives on the debate about what Britain does next after the EU referendum.

Why are words so important to Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism's most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, comprise the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation. Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly-female author of the "Song of Songs" through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals, but rather on written words and an ongoing conversation between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humour, "Jews and Words" offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the dialogue.

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation's enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. "My Bondage and My Freedom" is Douglass' masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains. This classic is revisited with a new introduction and annotations by celebrated Douglass scholar David W. Blight. Blight situates the book within the politics of the 1850s and illuminates how "My Bondage" represents Douglass as a mature, confident, powerful writer who crafted some of the most unforgettable metaphors of slavery and freedom – indeed of basic human universal aspirations for freedom – anywhere in the English language.

An indelible portrait of one of the most famous and beloved authors in the canon of American literature – a collection of letters between Harper Lee and one of her closest friends that reveals the famously private writer as never before, in her own words.

The violent racism of the American South drove Wayne Flynt away from his home in Alabama, but the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s classic novel about courage, community and equality, inspired him to return in the early 1960s and craft a career documenting and teaching Alabama history. His writing resonated with many, in particular three sisters: Louise, Alice and Nelle Harper Lee. The two families first met in 1983, and a mutual respect and affection for the state’s history and literature matured into a deep friendship between them.

Wayne Flynt and Nelle Harper Lee began writing to one other while she was living in New York – heartfelt, insightful and humorous letters in which they swapped stories, information and opinions on topics including their families, books, social values, health concerns and even their fears and accomplishments. Though their earliest missives began formally – ‘Dear Dr Flynt’ – as the years passed, their exchanges became more intimate and emotional, opening with ‘Dear Friend’ and closing with ‘I love you, Nelle.’

This is a remarkable compendium of a correspondence that lasted for a quarter century – until Harper Lee’s death in February 2016 – and it offers an incisive and compelling look into the mind, heart and work of one of the most beloved authors in modern literary history.

In January 2014 Henning Mankell was informed that he had cancer.

However, Quicksand is not a book about death, but about what it means to be human. Mankell writes about love and jealousy, courage and fear, about what it is like to live with a fatal illness.

This book is also about why the cave painters 40,000 years ago chose the very darkest places for their fascinating pictures. And about the dreadful troll that we are trying to lock away inside the bedrock of a Swedish mountain for the next 100,000 years.

It is a book about how humanity has lived and continues to live, and about how Henning lived his own life.

And, not least, about the great zest for life, which came back when he managed to drag himself out of the quicksand that threatened to suck him down into the abyss.

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the content of E. R. Vincent's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Professor of Italian at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Italian literature, Romanticism and literary criticism.

The National Book League was a precursor to the current Booktrust, and was set up in 1924 by the Society of Bookmen in order to promote reading, particularly among the young. To that end, the NBL issued Reader's Guides on a variety of subjects, each written by an author with expertise in that field and containing an annotated bibliography of recommended titles on the subject. This bibliography by H. Stanley Hyland, Senior Library Clerk in the House of Commons Library, first published in 1951, is in three sections: Section One lists books on the history of the monarchy, as well as on court procedure and information on the royal palaces. Section Two deals mostly with the history of Parliament in the various jurisdictions of the British Isles, and Section Three concerns the meeting of the monarchy and Parliament throughout history.

Originally published in 1944, this book presents the content of Sir George Norman Clark's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the nature of historical scholarship and historiography.

Tony Blair's decision to back George W. Bush in his attack on Iraq will go down as a defining moment for Britain. First as Ambassador to the UN, and then as Special Envoy for Iraq, the UK’s highest authority on the ground, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was centre stage in the tumultuous days leading up to the Iraq war and witnessed first-hand its tremendous impact. This extraordinary book is a record of what he saw.

Greenstock writes openly about US―UK relations, taking his readers behind closed doors and revealing the actions of key players in New York, Washington, London, Paris and the Middle East. To what extent was the Bush administration determined to attack Iraq come what may? What promise did Blair extract in exchange for backing Bush? Was the war legal? What effect is it continuing to have on Britain’s long-term relations with America and Europe?

Held back from publication when originally written in 2005, and now revised with a new foreword and epilogue following the publication of the Chilcot Report, Iraq: The Cost of War is a groundbreaking blow-by-blow account of one of the most pivotal and controversial conflicts in recent world history.

Originally published in 1947, this book contains the text of James Turner's poem 'The Hollow Vale'. The poem describes a mystical journey taken by the author towards the hollow vale of the title. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English poetry or the works of Turner.

The 37th Parallel tells the true story of a computer programmer whose investigations into alien activity lead him deep into a vast conspiracy stretching 3000 miles across America.

Chuck Zukowski is obsessed with tracking down UFO reports, but this innocent hobby takes on a sinister urgency when he makes a horrifying discovery. As he traces a series of incidents across Utah, Colorado and Kansas, a pattern emerges: a horizontal line of unexplained activity stretching right across America, a line some are calling the ‘UFO Highway’ or the ‘37th Parallel’.

His extraordinary journey takes him from El Paso to the Pentagon, into secret underground military caverns and Indian sacred sites. This terrifying account will keep you awake at night, pondering some of the biggest and most inescapable questions humanity faces: are we really alone in this vast universe? And if not, who are our neighbours?

‘War is too important to be left to the generals’ snapped future French prime minister Georges Clemenceau on learning of yet another bloody and futile offensive on the Western Front.
One of the great questions in the ongoing discussions and debate about the First World War is why did winning take so long and exact so appalling a human cost? After all this was a fight that, we were told, would be over by Christmas.
Now, in his major new history, Allan Mallinson, former professional soldier and author of the acclaimed 1914: Fight the Good Fight, provides answers that are disturbing as well as controversial, and have a contemporary resonance. He disputes the growing consensus among historians that British generals were not to blame for the losses and setbacks in the ‘war to end all wars’ – that, given the magnitude of their task, they did as well anyone could have. He takes issue with the popular view that the ‘amateur’ opinions on strategy of politicians such as Lloyd George and, especially, Winston Churchill, prolonged the war and increased the death toll. On the contrary, he argues, even before the war began Churchill had a far more realistic, intelligent and humane grasp of strategy than any of the admirals or generals, while very few senior officers – including Sir Douglas Haig – were up to the intellectual challenge of waging war on this scale. And he repudiates the received notion that Churchill’s stature as a wartime prime minister after 1940 owes much to the lessons he learned from his First World War ‘mistakes’ – notably the Dardanelles campaign – maintaining that in fact Churchill’s achievement in the Second World War owes much to the thwarting of his better strategic judgement by the ‘professionals’ in the First – and his determination that this would not be repeated.

Mallinson argues that from day one of the war Britain was wrong-footed by absurdly faulty French military doctrine and paid, as a result, an unnecessarily high price in casualties. He shows that Lloyd George understood only too well the catastrophically dysfunctional condition of military policy-making and struggled against the weight of military opposition to fix it. And he asserts that both the British and the French failed to appreciate what the Americans’ contribution to victory could be – and, after the war, to acknowledge fully what it had actually been.

‘A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity.’ Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads)

‘This vivid and engaging book brings to life some of the most important moments in ancient history, moments that have shaped not only the politics and culture of bygone eras, but the institutions, thoughts and fantasies of our time.’ Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)

‘As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalised world.' Tom Holland (Dynasty, Rubicon)

Acclaimed historian and TV presenter Michael Scott guides us through an epic story spanning ten centuries to create a bold new reading of the classical era for our globalised world.

Scott challenges our traditionally western-focused perception of the past, connecting Greco-Roman civilisation to the great rulers and empires that swept across Central Asia to India and China – resulting in a truly global vision of ancient history.

With stunning range and richness Ancient Worlds illustrates how the great powers and characters of antiquity shared ambitions and crises, ways of thinking and forms of governing: connections that only grew stronger over the centuries as political systems evolved, mighty armies clashed, universal religions were born and our modern world was foreshadowed.

Scott focuses on three epochal ‘moments’ across the ancient globe, and their profound wider significance: from 509-8 BCE (birth of Athenian democracy and Rome’s republic, also the age of Confucius’s teachings in China); to 218 BCE (when Hannibal of Carthage challenged Rome and China saw its first emperor); to 312 CE, when Constantine sought to impose Christianity on the Roman world even as Buddhism was pervading China via the vast trading routes we now know as the ‘Silk Roads.’

A major work of global history, Michael Scott’s enthralling journey challenges the way we think about our past, re-draws the map of the classical age to reveal its hidden connections, and shows us how ancient history has lessons for our own times.

Winner of the Saltire Society First Book Award 2016
An Economist Book of the Year 2016
A Spectator Book of the Year 2016

In 2011, Isabel Buchanan, a twenty-three-year-old Scottish lawyer, moved to Pakistan to work in a new legal chambers in Lahore. The chambers was run by a determined thirty-three-year-old Pakistani lawyer, Sarah Belal, who had finally found her calling in defending inmates on Pakistan’s death row.

Belal and Buchanan struck up an unlikely friendship, forged through working in a system that was instinctively hostile to newcomers – and doubly so if they were female. At Sarah’s side, and with the help of Nasar, the firm’s legendary clerk, Buchanan plunged into the strange and complex world of Pakistan’s justice system. The work was arduous, underfunded, and dangerous. But for a young Scottish lawyer like Buchanan it was an unparalleled education, offering a window onto a much-misunderstood country and culture. Filled with beautifully drawn characters, she creates a narrative brimming with ideas and bursting with humanity. It is a story of Pakistan, but it is also a universal story of the pursuit of justice in an uncertain world.

'A thrilling blow-by-blow account' The Times

In February 1944, a rag-tag collection of clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews managed to hold out against some of the finest infantry in the Japanese Army, and then defeat them in what was one of the most astonishing battles of the Second World War.

What became know as The Defence of the Admin Box, fought amongst the paddy fields and jungle of Northern Arakan over a fifteen-day period, turned the battle for Burma. Not only was it the first decisive victory for British troops against the Japanese, more significantly, it demonstrated how the Japanese could be defeated. The lessons learned in this tiny and otherwise insignificant corner of the Far East, set up the campaign in Burma that would follow, as General Slim’s Fourteenth Army finally turned defeat into victory.

Burma '44 is a tale of incredible drama. As gripping as the story of Rorke's drift, as momentous as the battle for the Ardennes, the Admin Box was a triumph of human grit and heroism and remains one of the most significant yet undervalued conflicts of World War Two.

Originally published in 1947, this book contains the text of the 1947 Leslie Stephen Lecture, delivered by Vita Sackville-West's ex-husband Harold Nicolson on the fate of Tennyson's two brothers Frederick and Charles. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Tennyson's life and family.

Originally published in 1909, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by William Paton Ker at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Tennyson, English poetry and literary criticism.

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Sir Cedric Hardwicke at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in drama and English literature.

Originally published in 1938, this book presents the content of Sir Harold Walter Bailey's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Chair of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in linguistics and the history of Sanskrit.

Originally published in 1946, this volume contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by Basil Willey on his accession to the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature in the University of Cambridge. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Arthur Quiller-Couch, known to his friends as 'Q'.

Originally published in 1939, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by the renowned literary critic John Dover Wilson at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the critical reception of Wordsworth.

Originally published in 1929, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by John Buchan at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in historical scholarship and historiography.

Originally published in 1943, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Max Beerbohm at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group.

Originally published in 1929, this book contains the text of D. S. Robertson's inaugural lecture upon taking up the Regius Professorship of Greek in the University of Cambridge on 6 May of that year, and will be of value to anyone with an interest in the state of Classics, particularly the study of Greek, in interwar Britain.

Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 by the Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman, Observer, The Millions and Emerald Street

'Flâneuse [flanne-euhze], noun, from the French. Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities.

That is an imaginary definition.'

If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then what exactly is a flâneuse?

In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as ‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.

From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.

Sir George Rostrevor Hamilton (1888–1967) was an English literary critic and acclaimed war poet of WWI. Originally published in 1944, this collection of his poetry includes conventional poetic forms as well as more modern styles, with themes including antiquity, England and WWII. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in twentieth-century British poetry.

Selected as a Book of the Year in the Telegraph and Evening Standard

'A gripping, vivid, deeply researched chronicle of the Russian Revolution told through the eyes of a surprising, flamboyant cast of foreigners in Petrograd, superbly narrated by Helen Rappaport.' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs

'Next year's centenary will prompt a raft of books on the Russian Revolution. They will be hard pushed to better this highly original, exhaustively researched and superbly constructed account.' Saul David, Daily Telegraph

Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport’s masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eye-witness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold.

Between the first revolution in February 1917 and Lenin’s Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St Petersburg) was in turmoil – felt nowhere more keenly than on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt where the foreign visitors and diplomats who filled hotels, clubs, bars and embassies were acutely aware of the chaos breaking out on their doorsteps and beneath their windows.

Among this disparate group were journalists, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses and expatriate socialites. Many kept diaries and wrote letters home: from an English nurse who had already survived the sinking of the Titanic; to the black valet of the US Ambassador, far from his native Deep South; to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, who had come to Petrograd to inspect the indomitable Women’s Death Battalion led by Maria Bochkareva.

Helen Rappaport draws upon this rich trove of material, much of it previously unpublished, to carry us right up to the action – to see, feel and hear the Revolution as it happened to a diverse group of individuals who suddenly felt themselves trapped in a ‘red madhouse.’

The first day of the Somme has had more of a widespread emotional impact on the psyche of the British public than any other battle in history. Now, 100 years later, Robert Kershaw attempts to understand the carnage, using the voices of the British and German soldiers who lived through that awful day.
In the early hours of 1 July 1916, the British General staff placed its faith in patriotism and guts, believing that one ‘Big Push’ would bring on the end of the Great War. By sunset, there were 57,470 men – more than half the size of the present-day British Army – who lay dead, missing or wounded. On that day hope died.
Juxtaposing the British trench view against that from the German parapet, Kershaw draws on eyewitness accounts, memories and letters to expose the true horror of that day. Amongst the mud, gore and stench of death, there are also stories of humanity and resilience, of all-embracing comradeship and gritty patriotic British spirit. However it was this very emotion which ultimately caused thousands of young men to sacrifice themselves on the Somme.

The UK's Brexit vote on 23rd June 2016 provided perhaps the most dramatic proof that the era of political and economic globalization has ended. Populism, nationalism and xenophobia are surging across Europe and Brexit adds to the problems facing the established political order. This book shows how we reached this stage and what needs to be done now. As a former MP and Europe minister under Tony Blair, and latterly as a commentator and writer on European issues, Denis MacShane has a unique insider perspective on the events that led to Brexit and the behind-the-scenes discussions that followed. He argues that Brexit will not mean full rupture with Europe and that British capitalism will overcome the ultra-right-wing forces of the Conservative back-bench and UKIP. Although the path to Article 50 and beyond will be fraught and tensely-negotiated, Britain cannot and will not divorce itself from the continent of Europe and the European question will continue to be a defning feature of politics into the future.

Originally published in 1944, this book presents the content of Zachary Nugent Brooke's inaugural lecture upon taking up the position of Professor of Medieval History at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval history and European history.

All families have their myths and Juliet Nicolson’s was no different: her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother’s Tory-conventional background.

A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siècle Washington DC, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from.

Originally published in 1937, this volume contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by celebrated medieval historian C. W. Previté-Orton upon his accession to the Professorship of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in medieval historiography and the study of medieval Europe.

Originally published in 1950, this book contains the text of the seventh annual lecture of the National Book League, delivered the previous year by economic historian and social critic R. H. Tawney. Tawney concerns himself with no less a topic than the significance of great literature for the student of social history, and connects the social, historical and literary aspects of European civilization. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in social history and the role of literature in society.

'Remarkable . . . rare, intimate . . . Samer is an understated hero of our time.' Anthony Loyd, The Times

'A clarion call to all of us that we should not give up. Somewhere there is a voice in the wreckage.' Michael Palin

'This is brutal non-fiction, plainly and urgently told.' Robin Yassin-Kassab, Guardian

'The simple act of bearing witness is one of the most powerful human responses available . . . The Raqqa Diaries is so important.' Evening Standard

‘Everyone should spend a couple of hours of their life reading it, to remind themselves that, even in the darkest depth of human misery, the bravest souls still exist.’ Sunday Times

Since ISIS occupied Raqqa in eastern Syria, it has become one of the most isolated and fear-ridden cities on earth.

The sale of televisions has been banned, wearing trousers the wrong length is a punishable offence, and using a mobile phone is considered an unforgivable crime.

No journalists are allowed in and the penalty for speaking to the western media is death by beheading.

Despite this, after several months of nervy and often interrupted conversations, the BBC was able to make contact with a small activist group, Al-Sharqiya 24. Finally, courageously, one of their members agreed to write a personal diary about his experiences.

Having seen friends and relatives butchered, his community's life shattered and the local economy ruined by these hate-fuelled extremists, Samer is fighting back in the only way he can: by telling the world what is happening to his beloved city.

This is Samer's story.

First published in 1946, and originally delivered in 1944 as a lecture to students of Bedford College, London, who had been evacuated to Cambridge, this book provides 'a historical sketch of the intermingling of the peoples in the making of the American Nation'. Benians examines what role played by race in the history of America, a country not based on racial foundations but upon the liberal notion of freedom. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the impact of race on the development of the United States.

Originally published in 1917, this book presents the content of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Charles Whibley at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in perspectives on Swift and his writings.

Originally published in 1937, this volume contains the text of the Rede Lecture for that year, delivered by Vita Sackville-West's ex-husband Harold Nicolson. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of British diplomacy and British nationalism.

Originally published in 1949, this book contains the text of an inaugural lecture delivered by Roy Franklin Nichols, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in the same year. Nichols praises Transatlantic historical scholarship as rewarding for both American and British audiences, and suggests that an increase in mutual study would widen the historian's field of vision and prevent historians from becoming too narrow-minded and exclusive. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of scholarship and the historical connection between the United States and Great Britain.