Engelska

A 'Best Book of the Year 2023' in the New Statesman, Spectator and Waterstones 'From plans for flying machines to philosophy - the remarkable joy of jotting things down' Guardian 'Surprisingly revealing' The Sunday Times We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think? In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine. On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world.

<p><b>'My dear, she's on fire!' </b>DAMIAN BARR<br/><b>'A snappy guide to an all-conquering aesthetic' </b> <i>Financial Times</i><br/><br/><i>'The following things have seemed impossibly camp to me at one point or another: a doll whose body acts as a cover for a toilet roll, a tantrum over wire coat hangers, a 1950s muscle magazine featuring a photo of a young man dressed as a gladiator, and a rat underneath a silver serving platter'</i><br/><br/><b>An essential reappraisal of camp across time and across the globe, from the author of <i>Fabulosa!</i> and <i>Outrageous!</i></b><br/><br/>Camp has been an inescapable part of popular culture for at least the last 150 years. Famously unrestrained and ever evolving, it has not only captured the cultural imagination, but also played an important role as a form of protest and resistance.<br/><br/>Paul Baker takes us through camp's rebellious and revolutionary past with warmth, humour and sensitivity, starting with the court of Louis XIV and the dandies of the eighteenth century through to <i>Showgirls</i>, Harlem's drag balls and Columbian telenovelas.<br/><br/>Throughout its history, camp has been a place of refuge and renewal, of heroism and hedonism. This glorious celebration traces camp's journey from the fringes of society to the mainstream.</p>

<p><b>Why is playing games a universal human instinct?</b><br/><b>Why did the same games evolve across wildly different civilisations?</b><br/><b>And how can those games make your life happier, healthier and more fulfilled?</b><br/><br/>The history of board games is really the history of human civilisation. Through it we see how our species has learned to live with one another, make deals, take on different roles and manage the ups and downs of luck.<br/><br/>In this entertaining and thought-provoking look at games through the ages, Tim Clare explores the legal highs of a good dice roll, the thrills of a predatory race game and the tactile pleasures of the games that age with us through our lives to discover how, through play, we become fully ourselves.<br/><br/>Drawing on Roman anti-cheating devices, organised crime card syndicates and the combative domestic bonding ritual of Monopoly, <i>The Game Changers</i> explains why games are more popular now than ever, and how playing them helps us learn to be better losers, make smarter decisions and become more human.</p>

How we live is shaped by how we eat. You can see this in the vastly different approaches to growing, preparing and eating food around the world - from the hunter gatherer Hadza in Tanzania whose traditionally sustainable lifestyle is being squeezed by a crowded planet, and the subsistence rice farmers of Bhutan who toil without machinery to feed themselves from their smallholdings, to Western societies whose food is mostly farmed or bred in vast intensive enterprises. But while traditional approaches to providing food are often more in harmony with the natural environment, they cannot provide for a human population increasing to an historic peak. Most of us rely on a complex global food web of production, distribution, consumption and disposal, which is now contending with unprecedented challenges. We face both hunger and obesity, bumper crops and catastrophic environmental damage, food that is cheap for many and unaffordable for others. Julian Baggini expertly explores the best and worst food practices in a huge array of different societies past and present to identify the principles that can guide our future. The need for a better understanding of how we feed ourselves has never been more urgent. Wide-ranging, eye-opening and definitive, How the World Eats advocates for a pluralistic, humane, resourceful and equitable global food philosophy, with food firmly at its centre, so we can build a food system fit for the twenty-first century and beyond.

As winter comes and the hours of darkness overtake the light, we seek out warmth, good food, and good company. But beneath the jollity and bright enchantment of the festive season, there lurks a darker mood - one that has found expression over the centuries in a host of strange and unsettling traditions and lore. Here, Sarah Clegg takes us on a journey through midwinter to explore the lesser-known Christmas traditions, from English mummers plays and Austrian Krampus runs, to modern pagan rituals at Stonehenge and the night in Finland when a young girl is crowned with candles as St Lucy - a martyred Christian girl who also appears as a witch leading a procession of the dead. At wassails and hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these traditions originated and how they changed through the centuries, and we ask ourselves: if we can't keep the darkness entirely at bay, might it be fun to let a little in?

<p><b>'Quite simply, this book is a work of genius' Matthew Parris, <i>Spectator</i></b><br/><br/><b>The second in a major two-part anthology uncovering the rich reality of life for queer men in London, from the end of the Second World War to decriminalization in 1967</b><br/><br/>In the 1940s, it was believed that homosexuality had been becoming more widespread in the aftermath of war. A moral panic ensued, centred around London as the place to which gay men gravitated.<br/><br/>Peter Parker's fascinating new compendium explores what it was actually like for queer men in London in this period, whether they were well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams, or living lives of quiet - or occasionally rowdy - anonymity in pubs, clubs, more public places of assignation, or at home. It is rich with letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, covering a wide range of viewpoints, from those who deplored homosexuality to those who campaigned for its decriminalization.<br/><br/>This second volume, from 1960 to 1967, shows how key elements in British society gradually changed their views on homosexuality, resulting in the landmark 1967 act by which it was no longer considered a crime if it took place between adults in private. This did not end violence, discrimination and prejudice, but it at least curbed official persecution. <i>Some Men in London </i>is a testament to queer life and its thriving, joyous subculture - a subculture without which the 1960s would have been immeasurably impoverished.<br/></p>

<p>In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe, welcoming almost one million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis, but this book asks another vital question: how, and how far, have the Germans since reinvented themselves?<br/><br/>Trentmann tells the dramatic story of the Germans from the middle of the Second World War, through the Cold War and the division into East and West, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunited nation's search for a place in the world. Their journey is marked by extraordinary moral struggles: guilt, shame and limited amends; wealth versus welfare; tolerance versus racism; compassion and complicity. Through a range of voices - German soldiers and German Jews; environmentalists and coal miners; families and churches; volunteers, migrants and populists - Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait over 80 years of the conflicted people at the centre of Europe.</p>