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From the Orwell Prize-winning author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned comes a powerful account of human resilience, capturing our capacity for love and connection against all odds.We live in an era defined by crisis - whether it be war and displacement, or climate collapse and rapidly widening inequality. Acclaimed international correspondent Sally Hayden has spent her career covering some of the darkest moments of our time, and yet even in the face of unimaginable adversity, she's witnessed the love and care of everyday people.Hayden introduces us to a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a mother in northeast Nigeria who risks everything to save her daughter from forced marriage to Boko Haram militants. We meet a group of Syrian women searching tirelessly for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice, and learn about letters from the bereaved to the dead, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan.In stories that crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Rwanda to Iraq, Hayden asks us: what if news was recounted through the actions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanise those who seem different to us? This is Also a Love Story dares us to recognise how love can be found in even the most difficult of times, and to question what might be needed to create a better world.'Moving ...
‘Truly eye-opening . . .  The most accessible and coherent introduction to Chomsky's ideas' Irish Times The land of the free. The home of the brave. But what has America achieved in the aim of ‘spreading democracy’ – except wreak havoc across the globe and establish a reckless foreign policy that serves the interest of few and has endangered all too many?  In this timely book, Noam Chomsky writing with Nathan J.  Robinson, vividly traces America’s pursuit of global domination – from Washington’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – offering an incisive critique of the self-serving myths that dominant elites in the United States continue to push. Thorough, urgent and provocative, The Myth of American Idealism offers a highly readable entry to the conclusions Noam Chomsky has come to after a lifetime of thought and activism. ‘An incredibly valuable teaching tool’ Los Angeles Review of Books
Few forces have shaped our world as powerfully - or as secretly - as mafias. Groups such as La Cosa Nostra, the Medellin Cartel, New York's Five Families, the Japanese yakuza and Russian vory are notorious, endlessly covered in news stories and popular media. Yet when official histories are written, their role in shaping nations, economies and societies is rarely acknowledged. In Mafia: A Global History, Ryan Gingeras draws on more than a decade of research to uncover this suppressed underworld history. Crossing centuries and continents, he introduces legendary figures - Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, Du Yuesheng - and explores the conditions, cultures and locales that gave birth to modern mafias: Sicily, Marseille, New York, Colombia, Tokyo. As he reconstructs the rise of a gang or the life of a gangster, he also charts the expanding power of states and the increasingly international reach of trade, crime and law enforcement. After all, governments define what is a crime and who is a criminal, and their agents create the strategies used to limit or defend against their threat. Beginning with bandits and ending with today's 'mafia states' - andthe alarming blurring of lines between gangsters, corporations and political leaders - this sweeping narrative traces the evolution of organised crime in response to industrialisation, globalisation and technological change. By charting the origins, consolidation and transformation of mafias,Gingeras reveals not only where contemporary gangsters come from, but how they became central to our imagination and why they are the uncredited architects of the modern world.
An original history of Russia's thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin's politics and rekindled the Cold War. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of Soviet communism, the West convinced itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the dominant, ultimately unique, system of governance - a hubris that shaped how the West would treat Russia for the next two decades. But history wasn’t over. Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency, he appeared to commit himself to friendship with the West, suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist, dedicated to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad. So, what happened? Was he lying when he proclaimed his support for freedom, democracy and friendship with the West? Or, was he sincere? Did he change his views at some stage between then and now? And if that is the case, what happened to change him?Putin and the Return of History examines these questions in the context of Russia’s thousand-year past, tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped Putin’s politics of aggression: the enduring terror of encirclement by outsiders, the subjugation of the individual to the cause of the state, the collectivist values that allow the sacrifice of human lives in battle, the willingness to lie and deceive, the co-opting of religion and the belief in Great Russia’s mission to change the world.
Philosopher Travis Rieder outlines a new ethics for the age of humanmade catastrophe. We are all asking, in a hyperglobalised world hurtling towards environmental destruction: how do we determine the right actions? Do our individual efforts to avoid plastic or air travel, or to drive electric, make any real difference? We urgently need to expand our ethical toolkit. The mental tools most of us rely on to ‘do the right thing’ just don’t work when it comes to reasoning about large collective problems. From the small stuff like single-use plastics to major decisions like whether to have children, Rieder defines exactly how we can change our thinking and lead a decent, meaningful life in a scary, complicated world.
The bestselling cult classicgod Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'. In god is Not Great Hitchens turned his formidable eloquence and rhetorical energy to the most controversial issue in the world: God and religion. The result is a devastating critique of religious faith
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A GUARDIAN, TIMES AND FT SUMMER READ In Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilisation – from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy – was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come.
3 MILLION COPIES SOLD The iconic bestseller Prisoners of Geography, now fully updated with brand new content to reflect the changing global geopolitical landscape since it was first published in 2015 Prisoners of Geography is the book people need to understand what’s happening in the news today, from China’s ambitions to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.  Bestselling author and geopolitics expert Tim Marshall looks at the past, present and future to offer crucial insights into one of the major factors that determines world history – because if you don’t know geography, you’ll never have the full picture.  This completely revised and updated edition brings the classic text up to date with the events and trends of the past decade, with new material including:the Russia–Ukraine war and Moscow's alliances with authoritarian statesthe conflicts in the Middle EastChina’s growing military and strategic power, and its stance on TaiwanAmerican global power and pivot to the PacificEurope’s leaning towards more extreme politics, increased defence spending, and the new ‘Iron Curtain’Japan's remilitarisation and increasing powergreat power play in Africathe growth of Indian economic and military strength Read Tim Marshall’s geopolitical primers (Prisoners of Geography, The Power of Geography and The Future of Geography) to understand what’s happening in our fast-changing world.
*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 'I can't imagine reading a better book this year' Daily Mirror Tim Marshall's global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation's choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn't changed. But the world has. In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores ten regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and Space. Find out why Europe's next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks as trouble brews in the Sahel; why the Middle East must look beyond oil and sand to secure its future; why the eastern Mediterranean is one of the most volatile flashpoints of the twenty-first century; and why the Earth's atmosphere is set to become the world's next battleground. Delivered with Marshall's trademark wit and insight, this is a lucid and gripping exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity's past, present - and future. 'Another outstanding guide to the modern world. Marshall is a master at explaining what you need to know and why.' Peter Frankopan
Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson. The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC), they anticipate Machiavelli's The Prince by nearly 2000 years. The Art of War is the best known of a considerable body of Chinese works on the subject. It analyses the nature of war, and reveals how victory may be ensured. The Book of Lord Shang is a political treatise for the instruction of rulers. These texts are anything but armchair strategy or ivory-tower speculation. They are serious, urgent and practical responses to the desperate situations in which they were written. They have been immensely influential both inside and outside China. Format: Paperback | 256 pages ISBN:  9781853267796
Translated by C.E.Detmold. With an Introduction by Lucille Margaret Kekewich. Written in 1513 for the Medici, following their return to power in Florence, The Prince is a handbook on ruling and the exercise of power. It remains as relevant today as it was in the sixteenth century. Widely quoted in the Press and in academic publications, The Prince has direct relevance to the issues of business and corporate governance confronting global corporations as they enter a new millennium. Much of what Machiavelli wrote has become the common currency of realpolitik, yet still his ideas retain the power to shock and annoy. In the words of Norman Stone, The Prince is 'a manual of man-management that would suit a great many parts of the modern world'. Format: Paperback | 176 pages ISBN: 9781853267758
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