Search results for ""PROFILE BOOKS""

Which mathematician elaborated a crucial concept the night before he died in a duel? Who funded his maths and medical career through gambling and chess? Who learned maths from her wallpaper? Ian Stewart presents the extraordinary lives and amazing discoveries of twenty-five of history's greatest mathematicians from Archimedes and Liu Hui to Benoit Mandelbrot and William Thurston. His subjects are the inspiring individuals from all over the world who have made crucial contributions to mathematics. They include the rediscovered geniuses Srinivasa Ramanujan and Emmy Noether, alongside the towering figures of Muhammad al-Khwarizmi (inventor of the algorithm), Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, Bernhard Reimann (precursor to Einstein), Henri Poincaré, Ada Lovelace (arguably the first computer programmer), Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Ian Stewart's vivid accounts are fascinating in themselves and, taken together, cohere into a riveting history of key steps in the development of mathematics.

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Berlin 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a nineteen-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie takes off the yellow star and vanishes into the city. In the years that follow, Marie lives under an assumed identity, moving between almost twenty different safe houses. She is forced to accept shelter wherever she can find it, and many of those she stays with expect services in return. She stays with foreign workers, committed communists and even convinced Nazis. Any false move might lead to arrest. Always on the move, never certain who could be trusted and how far, it is her quick-witted determination and the most amazing and hair-raising strokes of luck that ensure her survival. This is Marie's extraordinary story, told in her own voice with unflinching honesty after more than fifty years of silence.

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Coaching is one of the most sought-after leadership skills - vital for anyone who wants to develop a team of people who will perform effectively, but are also motivated and relish working together. It's also a dynamic discipline which, in recent years, has developed and grown to embrace theory and practice from a wide range of other disciplines, frameworks and models. Mastering Coaching starts by asking what skills an effective coach must now possess to boost the performance of their coachees. In response, it summarises the most important research in areas such as neuroscience, sports psychology and mindfulness, positive psychology, mastery and goal-setting and offers a clear, simple and practical guide to how this new thinking can help coaches and managers to develop their own coaching practice. Written by Max Landsberg, executive coaching and professional development expert and author of the perennial bestseller The Tao of Coaching, Mastering Coaching goes beyond the basics of coaching by providing insights which offer a proven route map to coaching success. Practical and jargon-free, the book will equip readers with the techniques and tools necessary to take their coaching to the next level.

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Everyone loves a Christmas carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic. But how did they get that magic? In Christmas Carols Andrew Gant tells the story of some twenty carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unravelling a captivating - and often surprising - tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys, choirboys, monks and drunks. We delve into the history of such favourites as 'Good King Wenceslas', 'Away in a Manger' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', discovering along the way how 'Hark, the Herald angels sing' came to replace 'Hark, how all the welkin ring' and how Ralph Vaughan Williams bolted the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth-century American pilgrim to make 'O little town of Bethlehem'. Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions.

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This 'engaging history of punctuation' (Wall Street Journal) is not only the first history of its kind, but a complete guide on how to use English punctuation. Behind every punctuation mark lies a thousand stories. The punctuation of English, marked with occasional rationality, is founded on arbitrariness and littered with oddities. For a system of a few dozen marks it generates a disproportionate degree of uncertainty and passion, inspiring organisations like the Apostrophe Protection Society and sending enthusiasts, correction-pens in hand, in a crusade against error. Professor Crystal leads us through this minefield with characteristic wit, clarity and commonsense. He gives a fascinating account of the origin and progress of every kind of punctuation mark over one and a half millennia, and he offers sound advice on how punctuation may be used to meet the needs of every occasion and context.

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Our systems are failing. Old models - for education, healthcare and government, food production, energy supply - are creaking under the weight of modern challenges. As the world's population heads towards 10 billion, it's clear we need new approaches. Futurologist Mark Stevenson sets out to find them, across four continents. From Brazilian favelas to high tech Boston, from rural India to a shed inventor in England's home counties, We Do Things Differently travels the world to find the advance guard re-imagining our future. At each stop, he meets innovators who have already succeeded in challenging the status quo, pioneering new ways to make our world more sustainable, equitable and humane. Populated by extraordinary characters, We Do Things Differently paints an enthralling picture of what can be done to address the world's most pressing dilemmas, offering a much needed dose of down-to-earth optimism. It is a window on (and a roadmap to) a different and better future.

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We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present. Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

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The Battle of Dybbøl, 1864. Prussian troops lay siege to an outpost in the far south of Denmark. The conflict is over control of the Duchy of Schleswig, recently annexed by Denmark to the alarm of its largely German-speaking inhabitants. Danish troops make a valiant attempt to hold out but are overrun by the might of the Prussian onslaught. Of little strategic importance, the struggle for Schleswig foreshadowed the same forces that, fifty years later, would tear Europe apart. Prussia's victory would not only rejuvenate its nascent militarism, but help it claim leadership of the new German Empire. Told in rich detail through first-hand accounts, Tom Buk-Swienty's magisterial account of the Schleswig conflict tells the story of this pivotal war. 1864 shows how a minor regional conflict foreshadowed the course of diplomacy that led to the First World War and brutally presaged the industrialised future of warfare. But most of all, in its human detail, from touching letters between husbands and wives to heartbreaking individual stories of loss, 1864 is a gripping, epic human drama that shows the effect all wars have on the soldiers, on families and on the individual men and women who must live its realities.

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Weaving social, political, and religious history together with church music and architecture, A People's Church is a clear-eyed look at Anglican history through the ages. This history is as tumultuous as it is long. The transformative 1534-1660 period shaped not only the Church of England but the country itself, encompassing the Reformation, the return to Catholicism under Mary, and the Civil War. This was closely followed by the Restoration of the monarchy in 1688, the expulsion of the Dissenters, and the 1689 Bill of Rights. By the time of John Henry Newman and the Industrial Revolution, the church was fragile. How, then, has it endured? And what of its future?

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This is a story about rivalry among artists. Not the kind of rivalry that grows out of hatred and dislike, but rather, rivalry that emerges from admiration, friendship, love. The kind of rivalry that existed between Degas and Manet, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, and Freud and Bacon. These were some of the most famous and creative relationships in the history of art, driving each individual to heights of creativity and inspiration - and provoking them to despair, jealousy and betrayal. Matisse's success threatened Picasso so much that his friends would throw darts at a portrait of his rival's beloved daughter Marguerite, shouting 'there's one in the eye for Matisse!' And Willem de Kooning's twisted friendship with Jackson Pollock didn't stop him taking up with his friend's lover barely a year after Pollock's fatal car crash. In The Art of Rivalry, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee explores how, as both artists struggled to come into their own, they each played vital roles in provoking the other's creative breakthroughs - ultimately determining the course of modern art itself.

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Your hard work is paying off. You are doing well in your field. But there is something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits. Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you where you are - like the drive to win at all costs - is what's holding you back. As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them - and need a "to stop" list rather than one listing what "to do". Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become more successful. His one-on-one coaching comes with a six-figure price tag - but in this book you get his great advice for much less. Recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes, he has worked with over 100 major CEOs and their management teams at the world's top businesses. His clients include corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson and GE.

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The dead talk. To the right listener, they tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died - and who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help justice to be done using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene or the faintest of human traces. Forensics draws on interviews with top-level professionals, ground-breaking research and Val McDermid's own experience to lay bare the secrets of this fascinating science. And, along the way, she wonders at how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine time of death, how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist uncovered the victims of a genocide. In her novels, McDermid has been solving complex crimes and confronting unimaginable evil for years. Now, she's looking at the people who do it for real. It's a journey that will take her to war zones, fire scenes and autopsy suites, and bring her into contact with extraordinary bravery and wickedness, as she traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day.

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Ask around in business circles, and you'll get a thousand different answers. But now, internationally-renowned leadership expert Dr Peter Fuda has created a single, coherent roadmap for greatness: after more than a decade's research and practice, Fuda shares the seven common threads that have enabled hundreds of CEOs across the world to transform themselves into effective, inspiring leaders. Leadership Transformed uses seven easy-to-remember metaphors to distil Fuda's research into a pathway for real, lasting change. The Fire metaphor, for example, will help you shift from burning platforms (fear-driven leadership) to burning ambition (purpose-driven leadership). Fuda has helped leaders on four continents achieve greatness. Previously available only to the select clients of his industry-leading consultancy, now Fuda's expert knowledge can help kick-start your own leadership transformation.

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Life's Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code. This great scientific breakthrough has had far-reaching consequences for how we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world. The code forms the most striking proof of Darwin's hypothesis that all organisms are related, holds tremendous promise for improving human well-being, and has transformed the way we think about life. Matthew Cobb interweaves science, biography and anecdote in a book that mixes remarkable insights, theoretical dead-ends and ingenious experiments with the pace of a thriller. He describes cooperation and competition among some of the twentieth century's most outstanding and eccentric minds, moves between biology, physics and chemistry, and shows the part played by computing and cybernetics. The story spans the globe, from Cambridge MA to Cambridge UK, New York to Paris, London to Moscow. It is both thrilling science and a fascinating story about how science is done.

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In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.

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First published in 1951, The Nightrunners of Bengal is one of John Masters' series of seven novels which followed several generations of the Savage family serving in the British Army in India. Nightrunners of Bengal focuses on the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The central character, Captain Rodney Savage, is an officer in a Bengal Native Infantry regiment, based in the fictional city of Bhowani. When rebellion breaks out, the British community in Bengal is shattered. Savage's empathy for the Indians is shaken, as the British try to discover who is loyal to them and who is not. One of the great novels of India, Nightrunners of Bengal combines John Master's mastery of story-telling with an intuitive sense of history. This was the first novel that Masters wrote in the series, though not the first novel chronologically, and alongside Bhowani Junction is one of his best-known works.

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A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2022 'Simon Jenkins, as ever, writes with clarity and insight' Times 'One of the liveliest commentators in Britain, always worth reading and pleasingly contrarian' Jeremy Paxman, Guardian Who were the Celts? Were they a people, a civilisation, an empire, or a fiction of historical imagination? They flit as ghosts through Europe's ancient past, purported ancestors of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Bretons. Yet they have never been identified with any one land, or with any one history or language. Simon Jenkins argues compellingly that the 'Celts' is a misleading concept, bundling together quite distinct peoples. The word keltoi first appears in Greek, applied generally to aliens or 'barbarians' - and theories of Celticism continue to fuel many of the prejudices and misconceptions that divide the British Isles to this day. Fascinating and increasingly relevant, who the Celts were - or weren't - goes to the heart of the ongoing argument over the future of a dis-United Kingdom.

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'Indispensable' Sir Clive Woodward 'A punchy, practical and inspiring guide for all leaders who wish to transform and grow their team or organisation.' Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO of Mumsnet The no-nonsense guide to change: how to lead it and how to lead through it when the world is still spinning. By the award-winning author of No Bullsh*t Leadership. Nothing stays the same. The only constant we now face is change, and the demand for those who can grasp its opportunities has never been greater. Organisations today must learn to continuously adapt - and adapt faster than their competition. It is this that will drive them forward and it is this that is the modern leader's greatest challenge. Despite what we're told, leading change is not a secret knowledge available only to a chosen few. This book cuts through the bullsh*t to enable everybody to do it and do it well. Drawing on over a decade of experience leading successful change programmes around the world, Chris Hirst cuts through the unworkable guff to reveal his uncomplicated, proven strategies for team, organisational and cultural transformation. For everybody, from leaders of small teams to global enterprises, this book will transform how you lead, your results and the careers of those who work with you.

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'A mad, moving, beautiful novel' IndependentThe world of Mood Indigo is a stained-glass cartoon kind of a place, where the piano dispenses cocktails, the kitchen mice dance to the sound of sunbeams, and the air is three parts jazz. Colin is a wealthy young aristocrat with a big heart. The instant he sees Chloe, bass drums thump inside his shirt, and soon the two are married. Typically generous, Colin gives a quarter of his fortune to his best friend Chick so he can marry Chloe's friend Alyssum. But a lily grows in Chloe's lung, and Colin must spend his remaining fortune on the only available treatment: surrounding her daily with fresh flowers. Chick squanders his share of Colin's money on rare books and it is not long before the friends are forced to sacrifice their carefree lives to soul-crushing work. A surreal cult classic that continues to inspire and endure, Mood Indigo is an animated and delightful satire.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2018 'If we get another literary biography in 2018 as astute and feelingful as this one, we shall be lucky.' - John Carey, Sunday Times Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Aged sixteen, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, embarking on a relationship that was lived on the move across Britain and Europe, as she coped with debt, infidelity and the deaths of three children, before early widowhood changed her life forever. Most astonishingly, it was while she was still a teenager that Mary composed her canonical novel Frankenstein, creating two of our most enduring archetypes today. The life story is well-known. But who was the woman who lived it? She's left plenty of evidence, and in this fascinating dialogue with the past, Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the story. She uncovers a complex, generous character - friend, intellectual, lover and mother - trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly. Published for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, this is a major new work of biography by a prize-winning writer and poet.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 'With intelligence and care (as well as with a trove of sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes heart-opening true stories) Heather McGhee shows us what racism has cost all of us' - Elizabeth Gilbert Picked for the Financial Times Summer Books by Gillian Tett What would make a society drain its public swimming baths and fill them with concrete rather than opening them to everyone? Economics researcher Heather McGhee sets out across America to learn why white voters so often act against their own interests. Why do they block changes that would help them, and even destroy their own advantages, whenever people of colour also stand to benefit? Their tragedy is that they believe they can't win unless somebody else loses. But this is a lie. McGhee marshals overwhelming economic evidence, and a profound well of empathy, to reveal the surprising truth: even racists lose out under white supremacy. And US racism is everybody's problem. As McGhee shows, it was bigoted lending policies that laid the ground for the 2008 financial crisis. There can be little prospect of tackling global climate change until America's zero-sum delusions are defeated. The Sum of Us offers a priceless insight into the workings of prejudice, and a timely invitation to solidarity among all humans, 'to piece together a new story of who we could be to one another'.

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 * LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PEN AMERICA OPEN BOOK AWARD A Times Book of the Month One of Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Picks 'A feat of monumental thematic imagination' - The New York Times Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Brooklyn after the Civil War, Libertie Sampson was all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, had a vision for their future together: Libertie would go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother's choices and is hungry for something else - is there really only one way to have an autonomous life? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother who can pass, Libertie has skin that is too dark. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it - for herself and for generations to come. 'A soaring exploration of what "freedom" truly means ... an elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 WINNER OF THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2022 Shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics' Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book As heard on BBC Radio 4's Front Row February 2021 Book of the Month for Roxane Gay's Book Club Selected for The New York Times Notable Books of 2021 and The Times Best Books of 2021 'Irresistible ... Detransition, Baby is the first great trans realist novel' Grace Lavery, Guardian 'A voraciously knowing, compulsively readable novel' Chris Kraus 'Tremendously funny and sexy as hell' Juliet Jacques Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?

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'An addictive read that will remain with you long after you emerge from the rabbit hole' - THE TIMES 'A marvellously twisty whodunnit [with] the brutal, clockwork ingenuity of an Agatha Christie mystery' - FT 'A pacy, exciting and most unusual crime story' - GUARDIAN ________________________________________ SHARING A BODY CAN BE MURDER The Earth's spiralling population has finally been controlled. Lifespans are limited to eighty years, except for those who make an extreme choice: to become a commune. Five minds sharing one body, each living for four hours at a time. But with a combined lifespan of nearly 150 years. Alex, Kate, Mike, Sierra and Ben have already spent twenty-five years together in what was once Mike's body, their frequent personality clashes leading to endless bickering, countless arguments, and getting themselves stranded on a Russian Arctic freighter. Wanting to buy upgrades for their next host body, they decide to travel to a Death Park where time can be gambled like money. But things go very wrong when Kate accepts a dangerous offer, and one of them disappears. Someone is trying to kill off members of the commune. But why? Is one of them responsible? Or is an outsider playing a deadly game? It's hard enough to catch a murderer. It's almost impossible when you might be sharing a body with them... This brilliant murder mystery blends classic crime with speculative fiction in a stunning debut. ______________________________________ 'This clever, twisty debut really delivers. Gripping, well-written and intriguing on every level' - SARAH PEARSE 'Brilliantly inventive. If you liked The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, you'll love this' - EVE SMITH 'Morpuss is set to become a powerhouse in speculative crime. A feast of a book' - HELEN FIELDS 'A whip-smart, searing debut, which grinds into the mind like cursed clockwork' - MATT WESOLOWSKI 'A mind-stretching and irresistible premise deftly spun into a twisty, page-turning action-thriller' - PHILIPPA EAST 'Consider my single mind blown! An astonishing and original concept, deftly executed' - DAVID JACKSON 'A mind-bendingly original debut. Nothing short of a cross-genre masterpiece' - ADAM CHRISTOPHER 'The world-building of Gibson with the pace of The Running Man. A fantastic ride' - TIM GLISTER

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'Roy has a journalist's unflinching eye, a poet's talent for detail, and a radical sense of empathy ... a stunning achievement.' - Kiran Desai, Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss 'If you read one book about India, read this one.' - Geeta Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of The Cure All of Mumbai's memories and castaway possessions come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. And among these vast, teetering piles of discarded things - medical waste, rotten food, old clothes, broken glass and twisted metal - a small, forgotten community lives and works. Scouring the dump for whatever can be resold or recycled, waste pickers also mark the familiar milestones of babies born, love found, illnesses suffered and recovered from. Like a mirror image, their stories are shaped by the influx of unwanted things from the world outside. But now, as Deonar's toxic halo becomes undeniable, a change is coming. And as officials try to close it, the lives that the pickers have built on the Mountain seem more fragile than ever.

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If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. But what could you achieve with $1 trillion? You could solve the problem of the pandemic, for one, and eradicate malaria, and maybe cure all disease. You could end global poverty. You could settle on the Moon and explore the solar system. You could build a massive particle collider to probe the nature of reality like never before. You could build quantum computers, develop artificial intelligence, or increase human lifespan. You could even create a new life form. Or how about transitioning the world to clean energy? Or preserving the rainforests, or saving all endangered species? Maybe you could refreeze the melting Arctic, launch a new sustainable agricultural revolution, and reverse climate change? How to Spend a Trillion Dollars is the ultimate thought experiment but it is also a call to arms: these are all things we could do, if we put our minds to it - and our money.

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A Sunday Times fiction book of the year A Times Book of the Year A Daily Mail Historical Book of the Year 'An extraordinary, quite brilliant book' - C. J. Sansom 'Original and gripping' - The Times 'Powerful and unsettling' - Andrew Taylor 'Engrossing ... compelling' - The Sunday Times 'Powerful, imaginative' - Literary Review What kind of person keeps a man underground for seven years? And who would agree to be part of such an experiment? Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable cultivation of exotic plants and trees. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science - something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: for seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the cellar of the manor house, fitted out with books, paintings and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay? Fifty pounds per annum, for life. Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included. In this seductive tale of self-delusion and obsession, Alix Nathan has created an utterly transporting historical novel which is both elegant and unforgettably sinister. BBC History Magazine Best Historical Fiction of 2019

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Shortlisted for the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 'Utterly, utterly perfect and brilliant - I think it is, simply, a new classic, and the book every woman will be able to trust to make her happy when she picks it up' - Caitlin Moran 'Utterly wonderful ... full of love. Enormously uplifting, funny and witty and wry' - Marian Keyes 'Such a perfectly precise rendering of life with small children, I felt like I was reading my own diary ... had I been cleverer, wittier and more intent on finding the joy and hope and humour amid all the mess of life' - Meg Mason 'A glorious, outrageously funny retelling of E.M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady. At once, a celebration of the joy of family life and a cry of anguish at the utter hell of it. Laugh out loud, compulsive reading' - Nina Stibbe Meet Liz: all she wants is some peace and quiet so she can read a book with her cat Henry, love of her life, by her side. But trampling all over this dream is a group of wild things also known as Liz's family. Namely: Richard - a man, a husband, no serious rival to Henry. Thomas - their sensitive seven year old son, for whom life is a bed of pain already. Evie - five year old acrobat, gangster, anarchist, daughter. And as if her family's demands (Where are the door keys? Are we made of plastic? Do 'ghost poos' really count?) weren't enough, Liz must also contend with the madness of parents, friends, bosses, and at least one hovering nemesis. Are We Having Fun Yet? is a year with one woman as she faces all the storms of modern life (babysitters, death, threadworms) on her epic quest for that holy grail: a moment to herself.

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Most of us worry that we're not very good negotiators - too quick to concede or too abrupt in our approach. But negotiation is present in almost every social interaction - we cannot avoid it. Neale and Lys present a practical new approach that will help you master this crucial everyday skill in every situation. Instead of focusing on reaching agreement at any cost, Neale and Lys reveal how to overcome our psychological biases and assess the hidden value in any negotiation. They explain how to know what a good deal is; when to negotiate and when to walk away; why keeping a straight face can prevent you from getting the best deal; when to make the first offer and when to wait; and why meeting in the middle can result in both sides being worse off. Drawing on three decades of ground-breaking research into behavioural economics, psychology and strategic thinking, Getting (More of) What You Want will revolutionise the way you approach negotiation. Whether you're looking for a better deal on your new car, asking for a pay rise, selling your company or just deciding who does the washing up, this book will help you become a more successful, more efficient negotiator - and get more of exactly what you want.

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From bestselling author Robert Greene comes a brilliant distillation of the strategies of war that can help us gain mastery in the modern world. Spanning world civilisations, and synthesising dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts, The 33 Strategies of War is a comprehensive guide to the subtle social game of everyday life. Based on profound, timeless lessons, it is abundantly illustrated with examples of the genius and folly of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher and Hannibal to Ulysses S. Grant, as well as diplomats, captains of industry and Samurai swordsmen.

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Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land. Six walks span a period of twenty-six years, in the hills around Ramallah, in the Jerusalem wilderness and through the ravines by the Dead Sea. Each walk takes place at a different stage of Palestinian history since 1982, the first in the empty pristine hills and the last amongst the settlements and the wall. The reader senses the changing political atmosphere as well as the physical transformation of the landscape. By recording how the land felt and looked before these calamities, Raja Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that many Palestinians will never know.

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Al Ries and Jack Trout, two of the world's most successful marketing strategists, call upon over 40 years of marketing experise to identify the definitive rules that govern the world of marketing. Combining a wide-ranging historical overview with a keen eye for the future, the authors bring to light 22 superlative tools and innovative techniques for the international marketplace. The authors examine marketing campaigns that have succeeded and others that have failed, why good ideas didn't live up to expectations, and offer their own ideas on what would have worked better. The real-life examples, commonsense suggestions and killer instincts contained are nothing less than rules by which companies will flourish or fail.

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In this engrossing retelling of Greek myth, Jean-Pierre Vernant combines his profound knowledge of the subject with brilliant and original story-telling. Beginning with the creation of Earth out of Chaos, Vernant continues with the castration of Uranus, the war between the Titans and the gods of Olympus, the wily ruses of Prometheus and Zeus, and the creation of Pandora, the first woman. His narrative takes us from the Trojan War to the voyage of Odysseus, from the story of Dionysus to the terrible destiny of Oedipus and to Perseus's confrontation with the Gorgons. Jean-Pierre Vernant has devoted himself to the study of Greek mythology. In recounting these tales, he unravels for us their multiple meanings and brings to life cherished figures of legend whose stories lie at the origin of our civilization.

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In 1909, the largest department store in London's West End, designed and built from scratch, opened in Oxford Street in a glorious burst of publicity. The mastermind behind the façade was American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge: maverick businessman, risk-taker, dandy and one of the greatest showmen the retail world has ever known. His talents were to create the seduction of shopping, and as his success and fame grew, so did his glittering lifestyle: mansions, yachts, gambling, racehorses - and mistresses. From the glamour of Edwardian England, through the turmoil of the Great War and the heady excesses of the 1920s and beyond, Selfridges Department Store was 'a theatre with the curtain going up at 9 o'clock each morning'. Mr Selfridge reveals the captivating story of the rise and fall of the man who revolutionised the way we shop. 'Lively and entertaining' Sunday Telegraph 'Will change your view of shopping forever' Vogue 'Harry Selfridge revolutionised the way we shop ... fascinating' Daily Mail

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A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever. The stuffy conventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first boutique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocaine usher in an age of decadence. Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.

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Ranging from one-page fantasies to novella-length studies of everyday existence, The Walk reveals the irresistible genius of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Under-appreciated even in his own lifetime, Robert Walser has nonetheless been recognised by such writers as W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Herman Hesse and J.M. Coetzee. Like Kafka and Sebald, Walser wrote about the solitude and unease of human existence. Honest, wry and idiosyncratic, his stories are snapshots of the lives great artists, poor young men, beautiful women and talking animals alike. Ranging from the realist to the allegorical, the short fiction collected in this volume demonstrates Walser's uncanny ability to capture both life's strangeness and its small joys.

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Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

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Stories have always had the power to move, but it has only recently become clear that purposeful stories - those created with a specific mission in mind - are essential in persuading others to support a vision or cause. For Peter Guber, what began as a knack for telling stories as one of the world's leading entertainment executives has evolved into a set of principles that anyone can use to achieve their goals - whatever you do in life, you need to be able to tell a good story. In Tell to Win Guber explains how to move beyond PowerpPoint slides and spreadsheets to create purposeful stories that can serve as powerful calls to action. He reveals the best way to get noticed, how to turn passive listeners into active participants, and how technology can be used to ensure audience commitment. Featuring wisdom from Guber's meetings with (and lessons from) everyone from Nelson Mandela to YouTube founder Chad Hurley, and Muhammed Ali to Steven Spielberg (who he tutored in making films), Tell to Win entertainingly shows how to craft, deliver and own a story that is capable of turning others into viral advocates for your goal.

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Great leaders have always understood the power of stories. Through the stories they tell, the most successful leaders educate, persuade and bring about change, but we rarely have the background knowledge to explore how they do so. In this hugely insightful guide to getting to the top, leading journalist Gavin Esler presents first-hand knowledge of the secrets of those who achieve power based on over thirty years' experience interviewing world famous figures from Bill Clinton to Angelina Jolie. Introducing the questions every leader must answer - and the elements that the best stories must contain - Esler explains how creating a leadership story can promote success at all levels, whether running for the United States presidency or applying for a place at university. Spanning fields from business and culture to the military and even taking in lessons from terrorism, Lessons from the Top offers a fascinating portrait of leadership in the modern world - and shows how the methods of the most powerful leaders could work for you.

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WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2008 'The world's most controversial classicist debunks our movie-style myths about the Roman town with meticulous scholarship and propulsive energy' Laura Silverman, Daily Mail The ruins of Pompeii, buried by an explosion of Vesuvius in 79 CE, offer the best evidence we have of everyday life in the Roman empire. This remarkable book rises to the challenge of making sense of those remains, as well as exploding many myths: the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought; or the hygiene of the baths which must have been hotbeds of germs; or the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one; or the massive death count, maybe less than ten per cent of the population. An extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain's favourite classicist.

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Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize 2013 and the 2013 Best Book of Ideas Prize. Memory is an essential part of who we are. But what are memories, and how are they created? A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing a particular memory from our past, like a snapshot, we construct it anew each time we are called upon to remember. Remembering is an act of narrative as much as it is the product of a neurological process. Pieces of Light illuminates this theory through a collection of human stories, each illustrating a facet of memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions. Drawing on case studies, personal experience and the latest research, Charles Fernyhough delves into the memories of the very young and very old, and explores how amnesia and trauma can affect how we view the past. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light blends science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to illuminate the way we remember and forget.

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Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ('loaf') to cutting edge ('twittersphere') and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ('and', 'what') to the more fanciful ('fopdoodle'), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising. In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ('roe', in case you are wondering).

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As a Chinese proverb says 'The fish rots from the head' and so it is with businesses and other organisations - the buck starts and stops in the boardroom. This third edition of Bob Garratt'sbestselling book that highlights the importance of effectivecorporate governance has been extensively updated following the corporate scandals of the early 2000s - Enron, WorldCom, Tyco - and the abysmal boardroom standards that the recent credit crunch and ensuing global financial crisis brought to light. This new edition builds on the Learning Board model developed by the author and now widely used internationally by corporations and public sector organisations such as the NHS. The result is a thought-provoking and highly practical book that will be invaluable to all those with responsibility for corporate governance - and also those who subject them to scrutiny. What Sir Adrian Cadbury, whose committee's groundbreaking report on corporate governance was published nearly twenty years ago, said about the first edition remains as true today as ever:'No director can afford to ignore this book'.

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War is one of the greatest human evils. It has ruined livelihoods, provoked unspeakable atrocities and left countless millions dead. It has caused economic chaos and widespread deprivation. And the misery it causes poisons foreign policy for future generations. But, argues bestselling historian Ian Morris, in the very long term, war has in fact been a good thing. In his trademark style combining inter-disciplinary insights, scientific methods and fascinating stories, Morris shows that, paradoxically, war is the only human invention that has allowed us to construct peaceful societies. Without war, we would never have built the huge nation-states which now keep us relatively safe from random acts of violence, and which have given us previously unimaginable wealth. It is thanks to war that we live longer and more comfortable lives than ever before. And yet, if we continue waging war with ever-more deadly weaponry, we will destroy everything we have achieved; so our struggles to manage warfare make the coming decades the most decisive in the history of our civilisation. In War: What Is It Good For? Morris brilliantly dissects humanity's history of warfare to draw startling conclusions about our future.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER & BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A TELEGRAPH BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 A BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF 2023 A PROSPECT BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 '[Mary Beard] has always had the sharpest eyes for telling detail and colourful anecdote' Sunday Times 'Britain's most famous classicist ... at the peak of her powers' The Times 'Extraordinary ... a deliciously varied tapestry of detail drawn from across nearly three centuries' Telegraph 'The reigning Queen of Classics' Spectator What was it really like to rule and be ruled in the Ancient Roman world? In her international best-seller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

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THE GAME-CHANGING BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BEING MORTAL Today we find ourselves in possession of stupendous know-how, which we willingly place in the hands of the most highly skilled people. But avoidable failures are common, and the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of our knowledge has exceeded our ability to consistently deliver it - correctly, safely or efficiently. In this groundbreaking book, Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument for the checklist, which he believes to be the most promising method available in surmounting failure. Whether you're following a recipe, investing millions of dollars in a company or building a skyscraper, the checklist is an essential tool in virtually every area of our lives, and Gawande explains how breaking down complex, high pressure tasks into small steps can radically improve everything from airline safety to heart surgery survival rates. Fascinating and enlightening, The Checklist Manifesto shows how the simplest of ideas could transform how we operate in almost any field.

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The Great War was the first truly global conflict, and it changed the course of world history In this magnum opus, critically-acclaimed historian Peter Hart examines the conflict in every arena around the world, in a history that combines cutting edge scholarship with vivid and unfamiliar eyewitness accounts, from kings and generals, and ordinary soldiers. He focuses in particular on explaining how technology and tactics developed during the conflict - and determines which battles were crucial to its outcome. Combatants from every corner of Earth joined the fray, but their voices are rarely heard together. This is a major history of the conflict whose centenary is fast approaching. Published in paperback for the anniversary of the conflict, this is a pioneering and comprehensive account of the First World War, comparable to Anthony Beevor or Max Hastings.

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