Search results for ""PROFILE BOOKS""

WINNER OF BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020: LEADERSHIP FOR THE FUTURE A Financial Times Business Book of the Month 'A brilliant set of leadership tools that will help you succeed whatever your goal' - Sir Clive Woodward 'A punchy, plainly written guide, offering a readable and enlightened view of what leaders do and how they should do it' - Financial Times 'A new rubric on leadership' - Evening Standard Inspiration behind the No Bullsh*t Leadership Intelligence Squared podcast Leadership is not some special club, open only to elites. It's not a gold star given only to those with expensive degrees. Leadership is for everyone. Based on the author's hard-won experience as a Global CEO, this smart, fun book delivers a step-by-step working manual on how to lead - for anyone. Full of simple and direct approaches, it demystifies an over-analysed subject to get to the heart of modern leadership: the life-changing, career-transforming power to get stuff done. These principles and actionable steps apply to every field, from small businesses to community initiatives, from schools to sports teams to global enterprises. No matter your goal, this book will show you how to: - make effective decisions - build a world-class team - take care of yourself and others - achieve results

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A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Irreverently funny ... kept me giggling all week.' Scotland on Sunday "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?" Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms. Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices.

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In 1981 Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune in a small village in Suffolk. It was modelled on the teachings of the famous Indian "guru", Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy and sexual freedom. Both were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange and instructed to completely abandon their former identities. Tim - or Yogesh, as he was now known - spent the rest of his childhood in Bhagwan's various communes in England, Oregon, Pune and Cologne. While his mother meditated, chanted and ran therapy groups, Yogesh lived a life of unsupervised freedom, occasionally catching glimpses of the strange behaviour of the adults around him. In 1985 the movement collapsed after Bhagwan's arrest and Yogesh was once again Tim, about to start life at a secondary school in North London, alone with the secret of his extraordinary childhood. In his first book, now in a new edition, Guest describes the other-worldly experience of growing up in an environment of unsupervised freedom and often disturbing adult behaviour.

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A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR Without our realising it, a single, slippery concept has become a secular deity throughout the modern industrial world. We make terrible sacrifices in its name: of our money, our health, and our planet. That deity is nature itself. From supermarket shoppers to evolutionary biologists, from atheists to pastors, from Alex Jones to Gwyneth Paltrow, we are all prone to the intuitive faith that life should be lived 'naturally'. But nature can't teach us how to live. If we try to stick to its imagined commands, eschewing human artifice in pursuit of Edenic purity, we jeopardise the environment, our health, and our society. (We also waste a lot of money on pots of weird slime). It is time to accept our profound responsibility to shape the world of which our technology and our selves are wholly a part.

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A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR The ten years leading up to the First World War were the most exciting, frenzied and revolutionary in the history of art. They were the crucible of Modernism, when Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Abstract Art all burst forth. Simultaneously the Old Master market boomed, and art itself was politically weaponised in advance of approaching war. What was the conventional art against which Modernism was rebelling? Why did avant-garde artists become so obsessed with themselves? What persuaded a few bold collectors to buy difficult modern art? And why did others pay so much money for Old Masters? Art expert Philip Hook brings to bear a unique perspective on the art of a unique and extreme decade.

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'Williams has chosen an engaging cast of characters; his collection is full of well-lived lives and grisly endings ... Consume it as a whole or dip in and out. Either way, he leaves you a lot wiser.' - Philip Aldrick, Times Opinions vary about who really counts as a classical economist: Marx thought it was everyone up to Ricardo. Keynes thought it was everyone up to Keynes. But there's a general agreement about who belongs to the heroic early phase of the discipline. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Marx: scarcely a day goes by without their names being publicly invoked to celebrate or criticise the state of the world or the actions of governments. Few of us, though, have read their works. Fewer still realise that the economies that many of them were analysing were quite unlike our modern one, or the extent to which they were indebted to one another. So join the Economist's Callum Williams to join the dots. See how the modern edifice of economics was built, brick by brick, from their ideas and quarrels. And find out which parts stand the test of time.

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Shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Non-Fiction Award 2020 'Chappell is a gifted storyteller' - Observer In 2015 Emily Chappell embarked on a formidable new bike race: The Transcontinental. 4,000km across Europe, unassisted, in the shortest time possible. On her first attempt she made it only halfway, waking up suddenly on her back in a field, floored by the physical and mental exertion. A year later she entered the race again - and won. Where There's a Will takes us into Emily Chappell's race, grinding up mountain passes and charging down the other side; snatching twenty minutes' sleep on the outskirts of a village before jumping back on the bike to surge ahead for another day; feeding in bursts and navigating on the go. We experience the crippling self-doubt of the ultra distance racer, the confusing intensity of winning and the desperation of losing a dear friend who understood all of this.

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Some questions you never think to ask. Others, you didn't know you didn't know. And some facts are so surprising they cry out for answers. What can a president actually do? Why do cities sink into the ground? Why is Australia seemingly invulnerable to recessions? Why do people in couples do more housework than singletons? The brilliant minds of the Economist collect these questions. Individually, they might seem bite-sized and inconsequential, but taken together they can reveal a whole new world.

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'Tenacious, revelatory, and humane.' - Paul Theroux 'The Buried is the kind of book that you don't want to end and won't forget. With the eye of a great storyteller Peter Hessler weaves together history, reporting, memoir, and above all the lives of ordinary people in a beautiful and haunting portrait of Egypt and its Revolution.' - Ben Rhodes Winner of the The Peter Mackenzie Smith Book Prize 2021 In 2011, while revolution swept across Egypt, Peter Hessler was reporting on the everyday lives and ancient secrets of a country in turmoil. The result is this unforgettable work of literary and documentary brilliance. In The Buried, Hessler traces the human stories alongside the broader sweep of historic events: Tahrir Square, the massacres and the coup form the background, but so too do ancient cults, buried cities in the desert and dead pharaohs with huge ambitions. Most important are the people forging their lives in this world. We follow rubbish collector Sayyid; Arabic teacher Rifaat; and Manu, a translator. There are also the Chinese immigrants who have built a lingerie empire, politicians and ingenious archaeologists. Together, they raise the question: is revolution just repetition, or can things ever really change?

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In The Beekeeper of Sinjar, the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail tells the harrowing stories of women from across Iraq who have managed to escape the clutches of ISIS. Since 2014, ISIS has been persecuting the Yazidi people, killing or enslaving those who won't convert to Islam. These women have lost their families and loved ones, along with everything they've ever known. Dunya Mikhail weaves together the women's tales of endurance and near-impossible escape with the story of her own exile and her dreams for the future of Iraq. In the midst of ISIS's reign of terror and hatred, an unlikely hero has emerged: the Beekeeper. Once a trader selling his mountain honey across the region, when ISIS came to Sinjar he turned his knowledge of the local terrain to another, more dangerous use. Along with a secret network of transporters, helpers, and former bootleggers, Abdullah Shrem smuggles brutalised Yazidi women to safety through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Eastern Turkey. This powerful work of literary nonfiction offers a counterpoint to ISIS's genocidal extremism: hope, as ordinary people risk torture and death to save the lives of others.

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Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, world expert on concrete and connoisseur of modernist design, has quarantined himself from life by moving to a retirement village. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life, he is determined to be miserable, but is tired of his existence and of the life he has chosen. When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his neighbour, Jan, together, he begins to realise the damage done by the accumulation of a lifetime's secrets and lies, and to comprehend his own shortcomings. Finally, Frederick Lothian has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves. Humorous, poignant and galvanising, this is a novel about all kinds of extinction - natural, racial, national and personal - and what we can do to prevent them.

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'Hugely readable and profoundly important ... Perry's masterly piece of postmodern gothic is one of the great achievements of our century' The Observer SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE OBSERVER FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 'Beautiful, devastating, brilliant' Marian Keyes 'Astonishingly dark ... exquisitely balanced' Francis Spufford 'Packs a punch of atmosphere, creepiness, fear and melancholy' Susan Hill 'Mythic, ominous and sensitively human' Frances Hardinge 'Richly atmospheric, daring and surprising' Melissa Harrison 'Striking and brave, ... moving and terribly beautiful' Sam Guglani Oh my friend, won't you take my hand - I've been so lonely! One winter night in Prague, Helen Franklin meets her friend Karel on the street. Agitated and enthralled, he tells her he has come into possession of a mysterious old manuscript, filled with personal testimonies that take them from 17th-century England to wartime Czechoslovakia, the tropical streets of Manila, and 1920s Turkey. All of them tell of being followed by a tall, silent woman in black, bearing an unforgettable message. Helen reads its contents with intrigue, but everything in her life is about to change.

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'One of the most beautiful books you will ever read' Kate Mosse In this powerful memoir, Joanna Cannon tells her story as a junior doctor in visceral, heart-rending snapshots. We walk with her through the wards, facing extraordinary and daunting moments: from attending her first post-mortem, sitting with a patient through their final moments, to learning the power of a well- or badly chosen word. These moments, and the small sustaining acts of kindness and connection that punctuate hospital life, teach her that emotional care and mental health can be just as critical as restoring a heartbeat. In a profession where weakness remains a taboo, this moving, beautifully written book brings to life the vivid, human stories of doctors and patients - and shows us why we need to take better care of those who care for us.

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Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Claire Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lord Lucan on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's winter, 1974, Yorkshire, and Eddie Dunford's got the job he wanted - crime correspondent for the Yorkshire Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched into her back. In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of an Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession and greed, and starts a highly acclaimed crime series that has redefined how the genre is approached.

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ESCAPE FROM EARTH is the untold story of the engineers, dreamers and rebels who started the American space programme. In particular, it is the story of Frank Malina, founder of what became Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the scientist who cracked the, as he called it, problem of escape from the Earth by rocket. It's a wild ride. Jack Parsons, Malina's chemistry-expert research partner, was a bed-hopping occultist with delusions of grandeur. We get all the horrible details: drug parties and sex magic, cameos by Aleister Crowley and L Ron Hubbard, and an ill-fated attempt to start a mail-order religion. Armed with hitherto unpublished letters, journals, and documents from the Malina family archives, Fraser MacDonald reveals what we didn't know. Jack Parsons betrayed Frank Malina to the FBI, cooperating fully in their investigation of Malina for un-American activities. The Jet Propulsion Lab's second director secretly denounced Frank as a Communist. Frank's research group had close ties to the spy network of the infamous Rosenbergs - the only Americans executed during the Red Scare. This is a story of soaring ideals entangled in the most human of complications: infidelity and divorce, betrayal and treason.

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It's Summer, 1991, the dawning of the New World Order; a post-MTV, pre-AOL generation. Jerome Shafir and Sylvie Green, two former New Yorkers who can no longer afford an East Village apartment, set off on a journey across the entire former Soviet Bloc with the intention of adopting a Romanian orphan. Unflinchingly dark, hilarious and moving - Torpor is at once a satire and philosophy of cultural history, social identity and failing relationships. Dipping into the trajectory of a life at different moments, Kraus interrogates convention and emotion, creating characters that are flawed, witty, and altogether true to life. Part prequel, part sequel, Torpor continues a project of life-writing; personal, unsparing, and triumphant. If I Love Dick is the book of your 20s, Torpor is the book of your 30s.

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Shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize 2018 On April 4th 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered by a man named James Earl Ray. Before Ray's capture and sentencing to 99 years' imprisonment, he evaded the FBI for two months as he crossed the globe under various aliases. At the heart of his story is Lisbon, where he spent ten days attempting to acquire an Angolan visa. Like a Fading Shadow traces three journeys to the city: Ray's desperate attempt to evade justice in 1968; a research trip undertaken by the young Muñoz Molina for his breakthrough novel Winter in Lisbon in 1987; and the return journey taken by the novelist as he attempts to reconstruct these twin stories from the instability of the past, and interrogates his own obsession with one of the twentieth century's most notorious figures. Aided by the recent declassification of James Earl Ray's FBI case file, Like a Fading Shadow boldly weaves a taut retelling of Ray's assassination of King, his time on the run and his eventual capture together with a highly original, fearlessly honest examination of the novelist's own past.

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This volume by the inimitable poet, comedian and performer John Hegley brings together poetry, prose and drawings on the themes closest to his heart. Contemplating subjects from painting, France and family to Daleks and of course potatoes, these pieces are by turns funny, moving, thought-provoking - and always brilliantly original. Peace, Love and Potatoes opens a new window onto John Hegley's unique and vivid way of seeing the world, and is certain to delight fans old and new.

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When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the '60s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running the coolest club in London, the UFO; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. More than any previous '60s music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well. As well as the '60s heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, The Incredible String Band to Fairport Convention.

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'Stylish and exhilarating... from a wide-ranging mind and a profound humanity... inspiring' Hilary Mantel 'A wonderful series of meditations - clinical, anthropological, literary and deeply humane - on his patients and their illnesses.' Henry Marsh Timely, thought-provoking and eloquent, brimming both with warmth and insight, he puts himself among the ranks of ... Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande.' The Times Unreliable bodies and shifting symptoms are all in a day's work for a GP. In his years of practising, Gavin Francis has seen it all: the promising law student trapped under the spell of anorexia; the bodybuilder whose use of illegal steroids threatens his fertility; the teenager agonising over the perplexing physical dramas of puberty; and the surprisingly upbeat woman growing a horn in the centre of her forehead. In Shapeshifters he draws on his patients' bodily transformations, both welcome and unwelcome, bringing together case histories and accounts from the history of medicine, art, literature, myth and magic to show how the very essence of being human is change.

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During a single winter, between November 1932 and April 1933, so much went wrong: Hitler came to power; Japan invaded Jehol and left the league of Nations; Mussolini looked towards Africa; Roosevelt was elected; France changed governments three times; and the victors of 1918 fell out acrimoniously over war debts, arms, currency, tariffs and Germany. New hopes flickered but not for long: a world economic conference was planned, only to collapse when the US went its own way. All Against All reveals that collective mentalities and popular beliefs drove this crucial period and set nations on the path to war, as much as the rational calculus of 'national interest'. Weaving together stories from across the world, historian Paul Jankowski offers a cautionary tale relevant for Western democracies today. The rising threat from dictatorial regimes and the ideological challenges from communism and fascism gave the 1930s a unique face, just as global environmental and demographic crises are shaping our own precious age.

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A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

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Before television and radio, people would gather on porches, on the steps outside their homes, and tell stories. Their bewitched listeners would sit and listen long into the night as moths flitted around overhead. Storytelling phenomenon The Moth recaptures this lost each week in cities across America, Britain, Australia and beyond, playing to packed crowds at sold-out live events. Occasional Magic is a selection of 50 of the finest Moth stories from recent shows, from storytellers who found the courage to face their deepest fears. The stories feature voices familiar and new. Alongside Neil Gaiman, Adam Gopnik, Andrew Solomon, Rosanne Cash, and Cristina Lamb, there are stories from around the world describing moments of strength, passion, courage and humour - and when a little magic happened. In finest Moth tradition, Occasional Magic encourages us all to be more open, vulnerable and alive.

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Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: one is a former modelling sensation, stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged proofreader with a meticulous eye. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly between the glamorous and gritty '80s, when beauty and style gave licence to excess, and the broken world of the decade's survivors twenty years later, Gaitskill casts a fierce yet compassionate eye on the two eras and their fixations. Veronica masterfully evokes the fragility and mystery of human relationships in a world where love is rife with frightening artificiality. Evocative, raw and entirely unique, Veronica was shortlisted for the prestigious 2005 National Book Award in the USA.

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At the age of 26, Warren Buffett founded Buffett Partnership Limited, which lasted from 1956 to 1970. During this time he wrote 33 letters to his small but growing group of partners. These letters chronicle his thoughts, approaches and reflections in the period immediately prior to his Berkshire Hathaway tenure - one that saw an unprecedented record of investing success. This early period was astonishing: in 1968 he beat the Dow by more than 50%. Because Buffett wanted to ensure that his partners understood his process, he wrote letters. In them, he sets out what he termed "ground rules" for investing that remain startlingly relevant today for every type of investor - from beginners to sophisticated pros. Warren Buffett's Ground Rules brings together, for the first time, and with Buffett's blessing, the key investment principles and teachings the letters reveal. Here you will find the basis for Buffett's contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest and his tactics for bettering market results by at least 10% annually. Quoting extensively and directly from Buffett, equity research expert Jeremy Miller introduces us to the timeless advice the letters contain, demonstrating a set of highly effective investment strategies that continue to resonate today.

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Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox. The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

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What difference do individuals make to history? Are we all swept up in the great forces like industrialisation or globalisation, or is the world we inhabit shaped just as much by real people - leaders for example - and the decisions that they make? For better or for worse, the personalities of the powerful can affect millions of people and the future of countries: it matters who is in the driving seat, and who is making plans. Equally important: how is history itself made by those who keep the records? In History's People Margaret Macmillan explores the lives of the great and lesser-known figures of the past: men, women, explorers, rulers, dreamers, politicians, observers, campaigners. She looks at the concept of leadership, from Bismarck to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but also at the role of observers such as Babur, first Mughal emperor of India, and asks how explorers and visionaries such as Fanny Parkes and Elizabeth Simcoe managed to defy or ignore the constraints of their own societies. And, in doing so, she uncovers the important and complex relationship between biography and history, and between individuals and their times. Like all the best history, this book will change the way you see the past, as well as your own times - and perhaps introduce you to some people you didn't know.

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From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009 'Just as the father in the house in which we live is our father, so Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our country. And just as the mother in the house in which we live is our mother, so Comrade Elena Ceausescu is the mother of our country. Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu is the father of our children. All the children love comrade Nicolae and comrade Elena, because they are their parents.' The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, the village miller, faces after he applies for permission to migrate to West Germany. Herta Müller describes with poetic attention the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat, in the Danube Plain. In sparse, lyrical language, Herta Müller captures the forlorn plight of a trapped people. This edition is translated by Martin Chalmers, with a new foreword by Paul Bailey. Also by Herta Müller: Nadirs, The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, and The Hunger Angel.

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'Thorough and engaging ... you can't understand England without understanding the BBC' New York Times 'Fascinating and informative' Daily Telegraph 'A dramatic tale of innovation and determination' Guardian In 1922, a tiny group of men and women came together to found the BBC, using what had been a weapon of war - Marconi's wireless - to remake culture for the good of humanity. Twenty years later, when George Orwell famously quit the Corporation, he decided he was done 'doing work that produces no result'. Yet the BBC is now one of Britain's most beloved institutions. Stars once fainted at the microphone; now a select few spend their Saturdays waltzing for the nation's entertainment in front of studio cameras. From Daleks to Desert Island Discs, the BBC has blazed a trail for British entertainment. Yet it has also always been at the forefront of global change, both breaking and covering the most important stories of the century on Panorama and BBC News. This is a stirring and monumental history of the British cultural stalwart which created modern broadcasting one hundred years ago.

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Winner of the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 2019 By August 1918, the outcome of the Great War was not in doubt: the Allies would win. But what was unclear was how this defeat would play out - would the Germans hold on, prolonging the fighting deep into 1919, with the loss of hundreds of thousands more young lives, or could the war be won in 1918? In The Last Battle, Peter Hart, author of Gallipoli and The Great War, and oral historian at the Imperial War Museum, brings to life the dramatic final weeks of the war, as men fought to secure victory, with survival seemingly only days, or hours away. Drawing on the experience of both generals and ordinary soldiers, and dwelling with equal weight on strategy, tactics and individual experience, this is a powerful and detailed account of history's greatest endgame.

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Writing tends to make people anxious, and with good reason. The first sentence of a job application letter can consign it to the bin. A speech intended to rouse can put a room to sleep. A mistimed tweet can cost you your job. And a letter to a beloved may aim to convey feelings of tenderness but end up making the recipient laugh rather than melt. In this complete guide to persuasive writing, Sam Leith shows how to express yourself fully across any medium, and how to maximise your chances of getting your way in every situation. From work reports to Valentine cards, and from emails of condolence to tweets of complaint, Leith lays bare the secrets to successful communication, eloquence and off- and online etiquette. How do you write a job application, a thank-you card, or an email to your bank manager, to your children's headteacher, to your clients or your boss? How do you prepare a speech to win the argument, get the vote of confidence, or embarrass the bridegroom? Getting these things right - or wrong - can be life-changing. Succinct treatments of the most general principles of style and composition, as well as examinations of specific modes of address (What is a subtweet? How do I write a moving elegy?) are accompanied by concrete and well-illustrated dos and don'ts and examples of wins and fails. Astute, sprightly and illuminating, Write to the Point will give you the skills and confidence you need to get your message across on every occasion.

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Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big Topics In a world that is constantly changing, understanding the world has never been more important. But by thinking in neat segments, we miss the big picture. When economists think about globalisation, they often see trade; politicians see institutions and power; artists see a new global aesthetic. Social theory is what sees them all together. Renowned theorist William Outhwaite takes us on a journey through the major thinkers and topics of this often misunderstood discipline. We move from the the work of Rousseau to the still powerful insights of Marx and on to the great sociologists, Weber and Durkheim. We probe the big questions - why is religion powerful, where does capitalism come from - and move through the key ideas of the twentieth century thought from the Frankfurt School to Bourdieu and Giddens. Lastly Outhwaite questions the role of social theory today. Where does this vital discipline go next and how will its wide horizons help us stand up to the challenge of the twenty-first century?

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'There's a lot of stigma attached to sex. Particularly with women, you have a big dichotomy between: Do you have sex? Do you not? Do you be a slut? Do you be a virgin? Do you be a prude? Do you be a man-whore? You can't really win.' Women are always being told how to be sexy, but are rarely asked what actually turns them on. Wendy Jones wanted to find out, so she interviewed twenty-four women from all walks of life, including a burlesque dancer, a girl guide leader, a shop assistant, a ninety-four year old who remembers the sexual freedom of the war, a transexual, a nun, a feminist into BDSM, a covered Muslim, a mother, a student, a polyamorist, and a sexual healer. The women talked about their lives, bodies, sexual fantasies and relationships, about what they've learned, how they have been hurt, what they enjoy and what they long for. The interviews are frank, engaging, and surprising. Each woman is unique but together they speak for a majority, and it's time we listened. This honest and inspiring exploration of female desire will change the way we think and talk about sex forever. 'English women have a reputation for being reserved and uptight; actually behind closed doors we're outrageous.'

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Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big Topics This introduction to the ancient world, part of the Ideas in Profile series, covers all its different cultures, from the million people crammed into Rome to the Jews and Syrians who refused to be Romanised. Jerry Toner shows what can be learnt from new approaches to ancient history, from analysing the bones of the dead in Pompeii or assessing the impact of environmental change, and considers how we can discover what it was like to live back then. He looks at every period, not just classical Athens and Republican Rome, but the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed Alexander and the Christian-dominated later Roman Empire. Greece and Rome, he argues, must be fitted into the global history of their day: what did Persians think of Greeks and how does the Roman empire stack up to China's? With vivid examples and animation from award-winning Cognitive at every stage, this is the ideal introduction to the ancient world for general readers and students.

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Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award Wealth and power on the trail of the super-rich In 2012, Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista was the eighth richest man in the world, his $30bn fortune built on Brazil's incredible natural resources. By the middle of 2013 he had lost it all, engulfed in scandal. Brazillionaires is a fast-paced account of Batista's rise and fall: a story of helicopter flights, beach-front penthouses and high-speed car crashes. Along the way, it tells the parallel story of Brazil itself, a country caught in the cycle of boom and bust, renewed hope and dashed promise; a country where the hyper-rich are at the heart of the economy - and where their wealth can buy immense political power. Stefan Zweig said in 1941 that Brazil was the country of the future; Brazilians joke that it always will be. Today, rampant corruption and endemic inequality threaten to derail the new Brazilian Dream. The brazillionaires are the key to understanding that dream; through them Brazillionaires tells the story of their country's past, present and future.

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Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

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The world of economics is changing. Years of turmoil in the global economy mean that nothing will ever be quite the same again. This is the starting point and theme of this radically revised Economist books classic. Richard Davies takes us on a journey through the paper's own analysis of the state of the world's economies, how we reached this point and what to expect in the next decade. He explores: * what's gone wrong since 2008, why it's happened and how we can stop it happening again * the shifting focus of economics from banking to labour economics * a new breed of firm with economics at their operational core * the future hopes and challenges for the world economy Along the way, we encounter the global economy laid bare, from banks, panics and crashes to innovative new policies to improve how markets function; from discussions around jobs, pay and inequality to the promise of innovation and productivity; and from the implications of emerging markets and the globalisation of trade through to the sharing economy and the economics of Google and eBay. The result is a fascinating review of the global economy and the changing role of economics in the new world order.

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The United Kingdom; Great Britain; the British Isles; the Home Nations: such a wealth of different names implies uncertainty and contention - and an ability to invent and adjust. In a year that sees a Scottish referendum on independence, Linda Colley analyses some of the forces that have unified Britain in the past. She examines the mythology of Britishness, and how far - and why - it has faded. She discusses the Acts of Union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and their limitations, while scrutinizing England's own fractures. And she demonstrates how the UK has been shaped by movement: of British people to other countries and continents, and of people, ideas and influences arriving from elsewhere. As acts of union and disunion again become increasingly relevant to our daily lives and politics, Colley considers how - if at all - the pieces might be put together anew, and what this might mean. Based on a 15-part BBC Radio 4 series.

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Winner of the New Manager category at the CMI Management Book of the Year Awards 2014 Whatever your job is, chances are you find it hard to switch off. Today, we work longer hours, at weekends, at home and on the move - while the office is only ever a click away via smartphones and the internet. But as much as we assume that this is the price of success - it doesn't have to be this way. Bjergegaard and Milne are here to show you how to build your business into something big, sustainable and widely recognised - and still lead a happy and balanced life. In sixty-six short insights, they re­veal strategies and methods which will allow you to combine professional success with putting friends, family and happiness first. So wave goodbye to guiltily checking your emails on a date, or getting home when your children are already in bed - this is your route to winning on every level. With first-hand advice and profiles of top business mentors, including Caterina Fake, Jake Nickell, Jason Fried, Brad Feld, Derek Sivers and Tony Hsieh.

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Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Is your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Are you curious (perhaps about this book)? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok? Or giddy with dépaysement? The Book of Human Emotions is a gleeful, thoughtful collection of 156 feelings, both rare and familiar. Each has its own story, and reveals the strange forces which shape our rich and varied internal worlds. In reading it, you'll discover feelings you never knew you had (like basorexia, the sudden urge to kiss someone), uncover the secret histories of boredom and confidence, and gain unexpected insights into why we feel the way we do. Published in partnership with the 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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When we spend so much of our time immersed in books, who's to say where reading ends and living begins? The two are impossibly and gloriously wedded, as Hill shows in Jacob's Room Is Full of Books. Considering everything from Edith Wharton's novels through to Alan Bennett's diaries, Virginia Woolf and the writings of twelfth century monk Aelred of Rievaulx, Susan Hill charts a year of her life through the books she has read, reread or returned to the shelf. From beneath a shady tree in a hot French summer, or the warmth of a kitchen during an English winter, Hill reflects on what her reading throws up, from writing and writers to politics and religion, as well as the joy of dandies or the pleasure of watching a line of geese cross a meadow. Full of wry observations and warm humour, as well as strong opinions freely aired, this is a rare and wonderful insight into the rich world of reading from one of the nation's most accomplished authors.

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The Gulf state of Qatar tops the Forbes list of the world's richest countries. In 2010, the country had the world's highest GDP per capita, and its reserves of oil and natural gas are vast. It has been estimated that Qatar will invest more than $120 billion in the energy sector over the next ten years. Yet Qatar has climbed to this pinnacle of wealth and influence in a remarkably short time, and from a starting point of obscurity and insignificance. This astonishing transition is the direct result of the efforts nearly 200 years ago of one visionary man - Jassim bin Muhammad Bin Thani, known as 'the Leader'. Qatar in the 1830s was a fragmented region, a desert peninsula without security or borders, where coastal communities depended on pearling for survival, while constantly at the mercy of tribal raiders. Jassim's background in this precarious environment led to his understanding that the gap between tribal settled peoples must be bridged, and then to his harnessing of regional conflicts to create a unified Qatari state. Skilfully allying with Ottoman forces to fend off the British, Jassim established power in the newly rebuilt capital, Doha, eventually becoming the first leader of the new country. Little known outside Qatar, Jassim's extraordinary achievement cannot be understated. By the time of his death on the eve of the First World War, both the Ottomans and the British had recognised Qatar's autonomy, and the way was open for the country he had created to move steadily forward to its enviable economic position today.

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More than three thousand years ago a sculptor working in the royal city of Amarna carved a limestone bust of an Egyptian queen. The queen was Nefertiti, consort of the 'heretic pharaoh' Akhenaten. Plastered and painted, Nefertiti's bust depicted an extraordinarily beautiful woman. However, Akhenaten's reign was drawing to an end, and the royal family was soon to be written out of Egypt's official history. Not long after its creation the stone Nefertiti was locked in a storeroom and forgotten. In 1912 the bust was re-discovered and transported to Germany. Initially hidden from the public view, the beautiful queen was eventually displayed in Berlin Museum. Instantly, she became an ancient world celebrity. Egypt has yielded more than its fair share of artistic masterpieces, but no other sculpture has so successfully bridged the gap between the ancient and modern worlds. The timeless beauty of the Nefertiti bust both attracts us and sparks our imagination, but in so doing it obscures our view of the past, shifting attention not only from the other members of the Amarna court, but also from other, equally valid, representations of Nefertiti herself. In this book Joyce Tyldesley explores the creation of a cultural icon, from its ancient origins to its modern context: its discovery, its display, and its dual role as a political pawn and artistic inspiration.

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It is often the smallest details of daily life that tell us the most. And so it is under occupation in Palestine. What most of us take for granted has to be carefully thought about and planned for: When will the post be allowed to get through? Will there be enough water for the bath tonight? How shall I get rid of the rubbish collecting outside? How much time should I allow for the journey to visit my cousin, going through checkpoints? And big questions too: Is working with left-wing Israelis collaborating or not? What affect will the Arab Spring have on the future of Palestine? What can anyone do to bring about change? Are any of life's pleasures untouched by politics?

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The Art of Counselling is an insightful guide for all who work in professions where counselling is a key part of their work: for doctors who often need to counsel the bereaved and discuss intimate subjects with their patients; for lawyers who advise clients in difficult situations; social workers and the clergy whose work is largely spent helping those in distress; senior management staff looking to relate productively with their staff - all will find this book an essential companion. Rollo May's direct and personal approach, combined with the use of pertinent examples, guides the reader to understanding how to adjust his or her own personality to deal constructively and positively with others.

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The Hidden Science of Lost Civilisations is a guided tour through the most incredible scientific mysteries in the modern world, and a rediscovery of an ancient system of physics and spirituality that has since crumbled almost entirely into ruin. David Wilcock's extensive knowledge of contemporary science has led him to rewrite the Mayan myth; 2012 will not be the end of the world, but will be the start of mankind's golden period. A hidden intelligence, a living energy field that the universe is built from, which David Wilcock calls the Source Field, guides mankind's destiny. David Wilcock has studied this intelligence for over thirty years and has come to understand that the Source Field is the key to unlocking the mysteries mankind have always struggled to answer: who are we, how did we get here and where are we going? Drawing upon alternative science, as well as cutting-edge quantum physics and consciousness research, Wilcock connects the scientific with lost traditions of ancient wisdom to predict what lies in mankind's future.

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'A terrifying story of profit before patients, and a chilling glimpse of what can happen when private companies are allowed to take charge of healthcare.' Gavin Francis Six decades ago, researchers achieved the impossible: developing a treatment that transformed kidney failure from a death sentence to a manageable condition. Yet, in the hands of a predatory medical industry, this triumph led to skyrocketing costs and worsening care. A gripping account of privatised healthcare gone wrong, How to Make a Killing recounts how the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s - when transplants and dialysis machines offered hope - gave way to anguished debates about the ethics of rationing and profiting from life-saving care, and how Big Dialysis proliferated at the expense of its patients. A triumph of investigative research, Tom Mueller's book features an unforgettable cast of characters: CEOs who dress as musketeers to exhort more aggressive profit-seeking, nephrologist insiders who reveal the substandard care this causes, and heroic patients who risk their lives to reveal the truth.

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In her first novel since The Quick and the Dead (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), the legendary writer takes us into an uncertain landscape after an environmental apocalypse, a world in which only the man-made has value, but some still wish to salvage the authentic. 'When the book was over, I missed the awful, cleansing darkness of its eyes upon me ' New Yorker Books of the Year 2021 'This is the apocalypse as reimagined by a committee headed by Dalí, Kafka and Yorgos Lanthimos.' Observer Winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 LA Times Prize Longlisted for the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award Shortlisted for the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Khristen is a teenager who, her mother believes, was marked for greatness as a baby when she died for a moment, then came back to life. After Khristen's boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and her mother disappears, she ranges across the dead landscape and finds a 'resort' on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call 'Big Girl'. In a rotting honeycomb of rooms, these old ones plot actions to punish corporations and people they consider culpable in the destruction of the final scraps of nature's beauty. Rivetingly strange and delivered with Williams' searing, deadpan wit, Harrow is a tale of paradise lost and the reasons to try and recover something of it.

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