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.

Setting sail, hero Odysseus dreams of lying in the arms of his beloved wife Penelope, and of teaching his son Telemachus a warrior's ways. However, gods toy with the desires of little mortals. Angered by this upstart's presumption, Poseidon - God of the ocean realms - curses our hero to wander the seas for ten long years. Encountering one-eyed giants, six-headed monsters, terrible storms, titanic whirlpools, hypnotic sirens, seductive witches and jealous goddesses, Odysseus is tempted and tormented beyond any man's endurance. Yet he is no mere mortal - and the lure of his wife and son draws him, step by step, stroke by stroke, ever closer to home and his destiny...

<p><b>Welcome to <i>The Museum of Witchcraft, </i>an eclectic exploration of witchcraft and magic through 100 objects, practices and symbols. </b><br/><br/>Every sense is tingling. Even the dust here is rich, imbued with the past. It's cold, and quiet, so why don't you feel completely alone? On your skin, you can feel the subtle caress of the power in the objects here. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You are beginning to understand that witches have power...<br/><br/>From cauldrons, candles and curses to Tarot, trees and toads, this book is a fascinating tour of the occult, exploring the icons, artifacts and traditions that have stirred fear and fascination for centuries. With magical bespoke illustrations and text written by an expert in witchcraft and the supernatural, <i>The Museum of Witchcraft</i> is a beautifully illustrated almanac of all things esoteric.</p>

<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>

<p></p><b>AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW</b><br/><br/><b>From the multi-million copy bestselling author <i>Demon Copperhead</i>: a true story of female-led resilience during the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 - now available for the first time in the UK.<br/><br/>'[Kingsolver] means to save us by telling us stories . . . She comes closer than anyone else I know.' ANNE PATCHETT</b><br/><br/><b>'Clear and emotional . . . This is a report from the trenches of where the political meets the personal.' JOHN SAYLES</b><br/><br/>It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as a scientific writer spending weekends cutting her teeth as a freelance journalist when she landed an assignment at a constellation of small, strike-gripped mining towns strung out across southern Arizona. Her mission was to cover the Phelps Dodge mine strike.<br/><br/>Over the year that followed Kingsolver stood with those miners and their families, increasingly engaged and heartbroken, as they cried out to a wide world that either refused to believe what was happening to them, or didn't care, or simply could not know.<br/><br/>Kingsolver recorded stories of striking miners and their stunningly courageous wives, sisters, daughters. Sometimes visiting them in jail, witnessing the outrageous injustices they suffered. She saw rights she'd taken for granted denied to people she had learned to care about.<br/><br/>This book is not precisely about the mine strike of 1983, and not at all about copper. It is the true story of the families who held the line, and of Kingsolver's commitment to tell the story of the women and girls who discovered themselves in their fight to keep their families from destitution.<br/><br/><i>Made in Dagenham </i>meets <i>Erin Brockovich, </i>this book is about the sparks that fly when the flint of force strikes against human mettle.<br/><br/><b>FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER AND WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023</b>

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.