Essays

This startling biography explores the remarkable life of an iconic figure of the twentieth century, Vaclav Havel, author and dissident, who became the first president of the Czech Republic.Vaclav Havel: iconoclast and philosopher king, an internationally...

'Fascinating... I loved this book; I really did' David Crystal, Spectator A biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling...

They re lurking in museums, graveyards, and private homes around the world. Their stories have inspired countless horror movies, reality TV shows, campfire tales, books, and even chain emails. They re cursed objects, and in order to unleash a wave of...

'With one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of Firedrops'A selection from Pepys' startlingly vivid and candid diary, including his famous account of the Great FireIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th...

'China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers' Pankaj Mishra'A country does not become corrupt and...

A follow up to "You Did What?", this engrossing and fact-filled compendium of great military disasters and ill-advised battle plans highlights the worst military decisions throughout history and the world. From the ancient Crusades to the modern age of...

NEW EDITION - FEATURING UPDATED INTRODUCTION AND NEW CHAPTERS The giant characters of history - from Mozart to Michelangelo, Shakespeare to Einstein, Henry VIII to Hitler, Catherine the Great to Margaret Thatcher, Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan - lived...

NEW EDITION - FEATURING UPDATED INTRODUCTION AND NEW CHAPTERS The giant characters of history - from Mozart to Michelangelo, Shakespeare to Einstein, Henry VIII to Hitler, Catherine the Great to Margaret Thatcher, Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan - lived...

Through a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780807056431Author Karl PolanyiFormat PaperbackPage Count 360Imprint Beacon PressPublisher Beacon PressWeight(grams) 465gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 25mm

“Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today.”—John Vaillant, author of Fire WeatherA timely and eclectic collection...

'History as you've never seen it before.' Dan SnowDid you know that the history of the beard is connected to the Crimean War; that the history of paperclips is all about the Stasi; and that the history of bubbles is all about the French Revolution? And...

The Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the...

A brilliantly wide-ranging essay collection from the author of My Struggle, spanning literature, philosophy, art and how our daily and creative lives intertwine.In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781914198823Author Simon LoftusFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

The Art of War is almost certainly the most famous study of strategy ever written and has had an extraordinary influence on the history of warfare. The principles Sun-tzu expounded were utilized brilliantly by such great Asian war leaders as Mao...

In 1940, Daily Telegraph correspondent Henry Buckley published his eyewitness account of his experiences reporting form the Spanish Civil War. The copies of the book, stored in a warehouse in London, were destroyed during the Blitz and only a handful of...

***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 JHALAK PRIZE***A leading new exploration of the Windrush generation featuring David Lammy, Lenny Henry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Hannah Lowe, Jamz Supernova, Natasha Gordon and Rikki Beadle-Blair.For the...

This is the first English translation of this controversial essay that challenged fundamental ideas about political power. Egypt, 1925: the Muslim world is in turmoil over Mustapha Kamal Ataturk's proposal to abolish the caliphate in Turkey. The debate...

The instant New York Times bestseller from the author of Furiously Happy and Let's Pretend This Never Happened. Now with a new bonus chapter.'Broken is the party of the year . . . I loved it' - Sarah Knight, bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic...

Colonial Countryside is a book of commissioned poems and short stories produced by ten global majority writers featuring National Trust houses with significant colonial histories. This includes properties whose owners engaged in the slavery business, in...

'A splendid book . . . anyone who eats food and/or likes words will gain hours of innocent pleasure from this veritable feast of fun.' - Daily MailPerfect for readers of Susie Dent and Mark Forsyth, and fans of QI. All food has a story, reaching as far...

Author of the first gothic novel and son of the first prime minister of Great Britain, Horace Walpole had wide-ranging interests that included literature, politics, world affairs, collecting, antiquities, and architecture, and to his numerous...

*THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*Four Hundred Souls is an epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, told by ninety leading Black voices -- co-curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the million-copy bestseller How To...

The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman's Park, London, is a Victorian monument containing fifty-four ceramic plaques commemorating sixty-two individuals, each of whom lost their own life while attempting to save another. Every plaque...

A group of notable writers-including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow-celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past What can a...

This volume completes the three-volume collection of Fergus Millar's essays, which, together with his books, transformed the study of the Roman Empire by shifting the focus of inquiry onto the broader Mediterranean world and beyond. The eighteen essays...

In this volume distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explore the work of Tacitus in its historical and literary context and also show how his text was interpreted in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Discussed here, for...

In this collection of 20 essays, scholars in a broad range of disciplines confront the claims made by Martin Bernal in ""Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization"". In that work, Bernal proposed a radical reinterpretation of the...

"[An] incredibly moving collection of oral histories . . . important enough to be added to the history curriculum" Telegraph"A moving evocation of the 'everyday terror' systematically perpetrated over 41 years of Albanian communism . . . An illuminating...

In Imaging Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary, Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void) and leading broadcaster/historian Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) offer an expanded, revised edition of their...

'I will do as the Senate decrees.' These words from one of Rome's opponents encapsulate the authority Rome achieved by its subjugation of the Mediterranean. The Third Macedonian War, recounted in this volume, ended the kingdom created by Philip II and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781990263187Author Themrise KhanFormat PaperbackPage Count 268Imprint Daraja PressPublisher Daraja PressWeight(grams) 940g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781611800388Author Georg Feuerstein, PhDFormat PaperbackPage Count 528Imprint Shambhala Publications IncPublisher Shambhala Publications IncWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781629637129Author Gabriel KuhnFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint PM PressPublisher PM Press

*THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*Four Hundred Souls is an epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, told by ninety leading Black voices -- co-curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the million-copy bestseller How To...

Where do ideas fit into historical accounts that take an expansive, global view of human movements and events? Teaching scholars of intellectual history to incorporate transnational perspectives into their work, while also recommending how to confront...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780618127382Author J H PlumbFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Houghton MifflinPublisher Houghton MifflinDimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 19mm

Roberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire's Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later...

Francois Hartog explores crucial moments of change in society's "regimes of historicity," or its ways of relating to the past, present, and future. Inspired by Hannah Arendt, Reinhart Koselleck, and Paul Ricoeur, Hartog analyzes a broad range of texts,...