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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The Familiars
Stress Less, Accomplish More: The 15-Minute Meditation Programme for Extraordinary Performance
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
We Set the Dark on Fire
Cherry
Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere
Past Tense: (Jack Reacher 23)
Battle Scars: A Story of War and All That Follows
Eve of Man: Eve of Man Trilogy, Book 1
Bold Venture tells the nearly forgotten story of the American airmen who flew perilous combat missions over Hong Kong during the Second World War. Steven K. Bailey sheds new light on the American military campaign against Japanese forces in occupied China. From the first reconnaissance flights over Hong Kong by lone pilots in 1942 to the massive multi-squadron air strikes of 1945, he describes the complex history of American air operations in the China theater and paints an indelible portrait of the American air raids on Hong Kong and the airmen who were shot down over the city. Today unexploded aircraft bombs are unearthed with frightening regularity by construction crews in Hong Kong. Residents are eager to know where these bombs originated, who dropped them, when, and what the targets were. Bailey's account answers some of these questions and provides a unique historical perspective for Americans seeking to understand the complexities of military involvement.
Show moreAn urgent call to action from one of Europe's most well-regarded political thinkers. How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship is a field guide to spotting the insidious patterns and mechanisms of the populist wave sweeping the globe - before it's too late. 'It couldn't happen here' Ece Temelkuran heard reasonable people in Britain say it the night of the Brexit vote. She heard reasonable people in America say it the night Trump's election was soundtracked by chants of 'Build that wall.' She heard reasonable people in Turkey say it as Erdoğan rigged elections, rebuilt the economy around cronyism, and labelled his opposition as terrorists. How to Lose a Country is an impassioned plea, a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don't march fully-formed into government; they creep. Award winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early-warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world, in order to define a global pattern, and arm the reader with the tools to root it out. Proposing alternative, global answers to the pressing - and too often paralysing - political questions of our time, Temelkuran explores the insidious idea of 'real people', the infantilisation of language and debate, the way laughter can prove a false friend, and the dangers of underestimating one's opponent. She weaves memoir, history and clear-sighted argument into an urgent and eloquent defence of democracy. No longer can the reasonable comfort themselves with 'it couldn't happen here.' It is happening. And soon it may be too late.
Show moreFierce warriors and skilled craftsmen, the Celts were famous throughout the Ancient Mediterranean World. They were the archetypal barbarians from the north and were feared by both Greeks and Romans. For two and a half thousand years they have continued to fascinate those who have come into contact with them, yet their origins have remained a mystery and even today are the subject of heated debate among historians and archaeologists. Barry Cunliffe's classic study of the ancient Celtic world was first published in 1997. Since then huge advances have taken place in our knowledge: new finds, new ways of using DNA records to understand Celtic origins, new ideas about the proto-urban nature of early chieftains' strongholds, all these developments are part of this fully updated and completely redesigned edition. Cunliffe explores the archaeological reality of these bold warriors and skilled craftsmen of barbarian Europe who inspired fear in both the Greeks and the Romans. From the picture that emerges, we are-crucially-able to distinguish between the original Celts, and those tribes which were "Celtized", giving us an invaluable insight into the true identity of this ancient people.
Show moreA lost history of racial discrimination in America's capital punishment system revealed by seventeen lives lived in the Fort Leavenworth military prison Between 1955 and 1961, seventeen condemned soldiers-eight white, nine black-lived together on death row at Fort Leavenworth military prison. All eight of the white soldiers were eventually paroled and returned to their families, spared by high-ranking army officers, the military courts, the White House staff or President Eisenhower himself, sympathetic doctors, and attorneys highly trained in capital litigation. One white master sergeant was serving time for drowning the eight-year-old daughter of an army colonel in Japan. But when the girl's parents forgave him, it sparked a national effort that opened the prison doors and set him free. During the same six-year period, almost every black soldier was hung, lacking the benefits of political connections, expert lawyers, and public support of their white counterparts. By 1960, only the youngest black inmate, John Bennett remained on death row. His battle for clemency was fought over the backdrop of a strengthening civil rights movement, and between two vastly different presidential administrations. With each year came a new legal twist, his freedom and his life hanging in the balance between evolving ideas and realities of race in America. Now, drawing on interviews, transcripts, and rarely-published archival material, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Serrano uncovers the lost history of these unforgettable characters, the scandalous legal maneuvering that reached the doors of the White House, and the intimate history of the racism that pervaded the armed forces long after its integration.
Show moreFiguring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalysed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman - and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.
Show moreOn the fortieth anniversary of the 1978-79 Iranian revolution, a definitive political picture of the Islamic Republic When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet forty years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and countless other serious challenges. Saikal explores Iran's recent history, beginning with the revolution, which set in motion a number of developments, including war with Iraq, precarious relations with Arab neighbors, and hostilities with Israel and the United States. He highlights the regime's agility as it navigated a complex relationship with Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, survived the Gulf wars, and handled fallout from the Iraqi and Syrian crises. Such success, Saikal maintains, stems from a distinctive political order, comprising both a supreme Islamic leader and an elected president and national assembly, which can fuse religious and nationalist assertiveness with pragmatic policy actions at home and abroad. But Iran's accomplishments, including its nuclear development and ability to fight ISIS, have cost its people, who are desperately pressuring the ruling clerics for economic and social reforms-changes that might in turn influence the country's foreign policy. Amid heightened global anxiety over alliances, terrorism, and nuclear threats, Iran Rising offers essential reading for understanding a country that, more than ever, is a force to watch.
Show moreBorn out of violence and the aspirations of its early settlers, the United States of America has become one of the world's most powerful nations. This audiobook begins in colonial America as the first Europeans arrived, lured by the promise of financial profit, driven by religious piety, and accompanied by diseases that would ravage the native populations. It explores the tensions inherent in a country built on slave labour in the name of liberty, one forced to assert its unity and reassess its ideals in the face of secession and civil war, and one that struggled to establish moral supremacy, military security and economic stability during the financial crisis and global conflicts of the 20th century. Woven through this richly crafted study of America's shifting social and political landscapes are the multiple perspectives of the nation's history: slaves and slave owners, revolutionaries and reformers, soldiers and statesmen, immigrants and refugees. Each of these help define the United States at the dawn of a new century. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Content**
Show morePolicing Saigon isn't Platoon or Apocalypse Now, but the story of Loren W. Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a twenty-three-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition. Nearly eighty stories collectively convey the author's experiences, and his arc-from naive to jaded, angry, confused, anxious, and bone-weary exhausted-is representative of so many GIs who served in the Vietnam War as well as those veterans of today's conflicts around the globe.
Show moreThere has been a great deal written about Tudor queens, but less so about those women who surrounded the throne, who may have held even more power and influence than those who actually wore the golden crown. Some ladies who served at the Tudor court are only faceless silhouettes lost to the sands of time, but there are those who dedicated their lives to please their royal mistresses and left documentation, allowing us to piece their life stories together and link them to the stories of Tudor queens. These female attendants saw their queens and princesses up close and often used their intimate bonds to their own benefit. Some were beloved, others hated. This is the story of the ladies of the Tudor court like you've never heard it before.
Show moreWho tries to ride deep into Iraq just to see if the news reports are accurate, ends up joining a street demonstration against someone else's government, or sticks their arm between the jaws of a wild mountain wolf-dog?After the success of his first book, In Search of Greener Grass, Graham Field hits the road again with his bargain-basement KLR650, recording his experiences in his inimitable and revealingly honest diary style. The Caucasus region is often overlooked by travelers, but Graham may inadvertently be about to change all that.A single pivotal event can transform any journey, and accepting rather than fighting that moment can have glorious consequences for the traveler. In this instant the result ensures a fantastic exploration of eastern Europe and beyond, the discovery of a hidden gem in Georgia, and meanderings that leave us all much richer.Ultimately, Eureka is an almost accidental realization that we cannot control our mood on the road, but merely embracing it can be the most enlightening travel experience of all.
Show moreRandom House presents the audiobook edition of Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham, read by Jacques Roy. The dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history's worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a masterful non-fiction thriller, and the definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will--lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats-remain not just vital but necessary.
Show moreThe Cheese and the Worms is an incisive study of popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, the miller known as Menocchio, who was accused of heresy during the Inquisition and sentenced to death. Carlo Ginzburg uses the trial records to illustrate the religious and social conflicts of the society Menocchio lived in. For a common miller, Menocchio was surprisingly literate. In his trial testimony he made references to more than a dozen books, including the Bible, Boccaccio's Decameron, Mandeville's Travels, and a "mysterious" book that may have been the Koran. And what he read he recast in terms familiar to him, as in his own version of the creation: "All was chaos, that is earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and of that bulk a mass formed-just as cheese is made out of milk-and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels." In a thoughtful new preface, Ginzburg offers his own corollary to Menocchio's story as he considers the discrepancy between the intentions of the writer and what gets written. The Italian miller's story and Ginzburg's work continue to resonate with modern readers because they focus on how oral and written culture are inextricably linked.
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