Essays

Traces the history of this solitary endurance feat and its place in contemporary popular culture in twenty-six informative and entertaining chapters. Over one million people will run in an organized marathon this year. And fifty million will be standing along the sidelines, cheering them on. From London and Berlin to Los ... read more

Michael Billington's new book looks at post-war Britain from a theatrical perspective. It examines the constant interplay between theater and society from the resurgent optimism of the Attlee years to the satire boom of the Sixties and the growth of political theater under Tony Blair in the post-Iraq period. Written by Britai... read more

Featured in the vast majority of mythologies and religions, birds are generally associated with creativity and the human spirit. From the Christian dove to Quetzalcoatl (the Aztec plumed serpent), and from Raven Man to Plato's description of the soul growing wings and feathers, birds have represented the soul in contrast to t... read more

A practical guide to turning a house into a home, from the authors of Spotless and Speedcleaning. What makes a house a home? What turns it from bricks and mortar into a place you can't wait to get back to? How do you create a welcoming and comfortable environment? In How to be Comfy, Shannon Lush and Jen Fleming will show ... read more

David Rakoff's collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of America's funniest, most insightful writers. In Don't Get Too Comfortable, Rakoff journeys into the land of plenty that is contemporary North America. Rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly and wittily port... read more

"Blending precise research and astute observation with flavorful, fascinating narratives."--"Publishers Weekly," starred review (for Vol. 1) From Lee Gutkind, the "Godfather behind creative narrative nonfiction" ("Vanity Fair"), and the staff of the landmark literary journal "Creative Nonfiction" comes this fresh collection o... read more

'When the American writer Richard Ford read aloud from his novel Independence Day at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington on the night of March 9th, 2004, there was a moment between the end of his prefatory remarks and the beginning of the reading proper when his body seemed to shift slightly to one side, and upwards, if such a ... read more

A book that seamlessly interweaves biography with history, the lives of cricketers with wider processes of social change. C. K. Nayudu and Sachin Tendulkar naturally figure in this book, but so too, in arresting and unexpected ways, do Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The Indian careers of those great English cricketer... read more

Claudia Hammond wrote and presented the acclaimed and very popular Radio 4 series 'Emotional Rollercoaster' which explored the science of emotions: what they are, why they happen and how they are created. Emotional Rollercoaster takes the reader through the full spectrum of emotions: fear, sadness, anger, happiness, disgus... read more

From the remote villages of Afghanistan and Iran, down the ancient trade routes travelled for centuries, to the bazaars of Tehran and the markets of the Western world, every Persian carpet has a story to tell. Coming from a region known for its instability, this art form is one of the few constants, transcending religious and... read more

History of Collectors and Collecting. From amassing sacred relics to collecting celebrity memorabilia, the impulse to hoard has gripped humankind down the centuries. But what drives people to possess objects they do not use? To Have and to Hold is a captivating tour of collectors and their treasures from medieval times to the... read more

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How do the circumstances in which we write affect what we write? In a series of traditional and experimental writings, the author records an intellectual journey, creating new ways of reading and writing. The sociological imagination is applied to the act of writing, as life is connected to work.

Ever racked your brain for a word you're convinced should exist, yet is inexplicably absent from the dictionary? All languages have their limitations - should English fall short, the expression may lie elsewhere. That's where this book comes in: a quirky lexicon of well-known and more obscure 'untranslatables', linguistic gem... read more

In his introduction to the harrowing story of the Scott expedition to the South Pole, Apsley Cherry-Garrard states that Polar Exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. The Worst Journey In The World is his gripping account of an expedition gone disastrously wrong. ... read more

An anthology of the 100 greatest newspaper articles ever published. Including, the exposure of Watergate in "The Washington Post", Tom Wolfe's 1960's social documentary in "The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test" and Robert Fisk's coverage of the slaughter at Chatila.

'On the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - or houses, that is. Cleans them right off the face of the earth. They all go.'Alan Weisman looks to the future to discover what the world might be like, and how it would change, if humans disappeared right now, for good. In the curre... read more

When Alistair Cooke retired in March 2004 and then died a few weeks later, he was acclaimed by many as one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. His Letters from America, which began in 1946 and continued uninterrupted every week until early 2004, kept the world in touch with what was happening in Cooke's wry, liberal and... read more

Leah Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but, aged seventeen, she moved to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, to work as a model. She married and had a son. Then in 1994 she was caught up in the horrific conflict, and escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses. She fled with her son to Uganda, then South Africa wh... read more

Jessica Irvine presents Economics 101 and shows you how to use the power of economics to solve your everyday problems with this witty, accessible and entertaining guide.