Social History

Vanity Fair 100 Years showcases a century of personality and power, art and commerce, crisis and culture-both highbrow and low. In the sumptuous 384-page coffee table book, the editors of Vanity Fair have created the definitive history of the most...

'A must read' - Margaret Atwood'It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, ObserverExtraordinary stories from Soviet women who fought in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in...

I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but...

Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People's Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today.'A modern masterpiece' Andrew MarrOpening with a panorama of Russian society, from the...

'At least in The Handmaid's Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here' Margaret Atwood '[A] furious, necessary book' Sinead GleesonUntil alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church, acting in concert with the Irish state, operated a...

Jennifer Worth's tales of being a midwife in 1950s London, now a major BBC TV series.Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a...

Do you remember trying to solve the Rubik's cube whilst dressed in your He-Man picture pyjamas?Did you try to make 'cool' sound effects with your mouth like Jones from Police Academy?Or maybe you swooned over Scott and Charlene's (aka Jason and Kylie's)...

Full of pop, punk and personalities, The 1970s Scrapbook sways through this energetic era on platform shoes to the beat of glam rock and disco mania. Teenyboppers screamed for their idols, whether David Cassidy, David Essex, The Osmonds, Bay City Rollers...

Dominic Sandbrook's magnificent account of the late 1970s in Britain The late 1970s were Britain's years of strife and the good life. They saw inflation, riots, the peak of trade union power - and also the birth of home computers, the rise of the ready...

With an introduction by Colm Toibin.Ten years ago, I began to explore the country on which I was supposed to be an authority . . .France is a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers and writers, its fashion, food and wine. And yet the...

A fascinating slice of East End life, from the No.1 bestsellilng author of CALL THE MIDWIFE, soon to be a major BBC TV series.In this follow up to CALL THE MIDWIFE, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s tells...

In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most...

'Extraordinary. An intellectual feast as well as a visual one'Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber EyesThe world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book...

With an Introduction by Rosemary O'Day. London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait...

After 10 years of austerity, the 1950s saw rationing draw to an end. Gathered together in this colourful creation of over 1,000 products and images, The 1950s Scrapbook conjures up the life and times of the Coronation of Elizabeth II to the abundance of...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD 2023 'Exceptionally well-written and intelligent ... if you are interested in this remarkable microcosm of England, the book will grip you; if you aren't, it will make you realise that you jolly well should...

A fascinating slice of social history - Jennifer Worth's tales of being a midwife in 1950s London, now a major BBC TV series.Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which...

'A fresh and funny book that wears its learning lightly' IndependentDiscover the era of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I through the sharp, informative and hilarious eyes of Ian Mortimer. We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden...

‘A brilliant book about another side of working-class life, not a tower block in sight. Clever and honest, tackling slavery, loss and aspiration with humour and candour. I loved it’ KIT DE WAAL ‘A wonderful book, beautifully conceived’ ADAM NICOLSON...

More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters.These letters deliver the same mix of the heartfelt, the historically significant, the tragic, the comic...

State of Emergency : Britain 1970-74 is a brilliant history of the gaudy, schizophrenic atmosphere of the early Seventies. The early 1970s were the age of gloom and glam. Under Edward Heath, the optimism of the Sixties had become a distant memory. Now...

New updated edition of the seminal work by Catherine Dunne, which charted the multifarious lives of the London Irish, in all their variety and colour, now with a brand new foreword by Diarmaid Ferriter. Before the 'Ryanair Generation', leaving home...

A rich and vivid history of Britain's second city through the people who have made it ‘What Manchester thinks today, England thinks tomorrow.’ Long before Manchester gave the world titans of industry, comedy, music and sport, it was the cosmopolitan...

'One of the greatest codebreakers of the twentieth century' Suzannah Lipscomb An astounding story of codebreaking, personal sacrifice and a life lived in the shadows. The history of British codebreaking is often considered a men-only preserve, ignoring...

The diaries of the last British Governor of Hong Kong, published on the 25th anniversary of the handoverIn June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for...

'The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, 1850-1925' is a groundbreaking book that considers trade union emblems and banners as art objects in their own right. It studies their commissioning, their designers and the social conditions and gender...

The Bang-Bang Club was a group of four young war photographers, friends and colleagues: Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, war correspondants during the last years of apartheid, who took many of the photographs that...

For more than two thousand years the people of St Kilda remained remote from the world. Their society was viable, utopian even; but in the nineteenth century the islands were discovered by missionaries, do-gooders and tourists, who brought with them...

Tens of thousands of people were persecuted and put to death as witches between 1400 and 1700 - the great age of witch hunts. Why did the witch hunts arise, flourish and decline during this period? What purpose did the persecutions serve? Who was...

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, the fortnightly columns of Private Eye's Medical Correspondent 'MD', aka NHS doctor Phil Hammond, have been required reading. Astute, compassionate and scientifically literate, 'MD' has guided Eye readers through each...

Shortlisted for the EAA Book Prize and the Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award The Picts have fascinated for centuries. They emerged c. ad 300 to defy the might of the Roman empire only to disappear at the end of the first millennium ad, yet...

London and the Culture of Homosexuality explores the relationship between London and male homosexuality from the criminalization of all 'acts of gross indecency' between men in 1885 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 - years marked by an...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781788361118Author Neema ParviniFormat PaperbackImprint Imprint AcademicPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 250gDimensions(mm) 2100mm * 135mm * 13mm

David Ogilvy is 'The Father of Advertising' and in this new format of his seminal classic, he teaches you how to sell anything.'The most sought-after wizard in the advertising business.' Times MagazineFrom the most successful advertising executive of all...

**An Economist Book of the Year**** A Critic Book of the Year**A trail-blazing book about women's fights to access the great outdoors - and a very personal book about how running through the landscape helped the author in her journey from bereavement...

THE PERFECT READ FOR TROUBLED TIMESFrom the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places comes this inspiring and beautifully written meditation on the wisdom inherited from our ancestors.For all we have gained in the modern world,...

Bringing together multidisciplinary scholars from the growing discipline of food studies, Food Mobilities examines food provisioning and the food cultures of the world, historically and in contemporary times. The collection offers a range of fascinating...

'Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans - our willingness...

'Magnificent ... this book is unlikely to be surpassed' TelegraphThis is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains.SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 DUFF COOPER PRIZEAn epic...

The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society.'Engrossing.' Observer'Remarkable.' The Times'Magnificent.' Phillipe Sands'Gripping.' Literary Review'A history so outlandish and...