Paperbacks

For intermediate players to grandmasters, Igor Platonov’s visionary insights are examined and explained here for the first time.  >> more

Using the newest research on human attachment and brain development, Terri Apter showcases five different types of difficult mother—the angry, the controlling, the narcissistic, the envious and the emotionally neglectful—and reveals the patterns of behaviour seen in each type.  >> more

Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), Turkey's best-loved poet and a commanding presence in its public life, lived through a turbulent era—the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rose of Communist Russia and the birth of the Turkish Republic.  >> more

With food scarcity driven by falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures, control of arable land and water resources is moving to centre stage in the global struggle for food security.  >> more

The human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build but it’s far from perfect.  >> more

In a new chapter Nicholas Carr revisits the dramatic new world being conjured from the circuits of the "World Wide Computer".  >> more

Frances, Jay, Lali and Vikram meet as students at UCLA.  >> more

This lucid explanation of the origins and long-term effects of the recent financial crisis draws on historical and comparative perspective by two leading political economists.  >> more

On 28 October 1962, Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba.  >> more

People have a great curiosity and many misunderstandings about how dogs think, act and perceive the world.  >> more

In this epic story of the invention of a global network of weights, scales and instruments for measurement, Robert P. Crease traces the evolution of the system, from the use of flutes to measure distance in the dynasties of ancient China and figurines to weigh gold in West Africa, to the creation of the French metric and British imperial systems.  >> more

Terrence W. Deacon offers radical new explanation of how life and consciousness emerge from physics and chemistry.  >> more

Marc Dolan traces the cultural, political and personal forces that shaped the music of Bruce Springsteen.  >> more

Eric Jay Dolin traces America’s fraught relationship with China back to the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire.  >> more

One of the founders of modern dance, Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) not only revolutionised the art in the twentieth century but blazed a path for other pioneers.  >> more

Americans have long been fascinated with the oddness of the British but we, says literary critic Terry Eagleton, find our transatlantic neighbours just as strange.  >> more

Richard Thompson Ford offers a lesson on how to reconcile lofty human rights ambitions with political and cultural realities.  >> more

There may be no denying China’s growing economic strength but its impact on the global balance of power remains hotly contested.  >> more

Memoirist of mediocre fame, Charles Homar has a problem: his bride-to-be, Gillian Lee, has nixed their nuptials and fled to the high seas in search of a legendary giant squid, unleashing an unholy heart wreck upon him.  >> more

A shark attacked Micki Glenn while she was snorkelling, tearing through her breast and shredding her arm.  >> more