Walking in the dark
By Douglas Field
£16.99 | Hardback
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism and travel writing.
Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.
Other Everests
Edited by Paul Gilchrist, Peter Hansen and Jonathan Westaway
£19.99 | Paperback
A hundred years after the tragic 1924 British Everest expedition, this collection explores the wider social and cultural history of the mountain.
Other Everests brings together new voices and perspectives on the historical and cultural significance of Everest in the modern world. The book shines a light on the overlooked role of local people and high-altitude workers, while also revealing the significant contributions women have made to climbing the mountain and writing its history. It explores the depiction of Everest in a range of media and investigates how the forces of nationalism and commercialism have shaped many different 'Everests'.
Re-examining the past and present of the world's highest peak, this collection presents an exciting vision of what Everest might become in the future.
Out of the depths
By Joseph Toltz and Anna Boucher
£25.00 | Hardback
In June 1945, before the full devastation of the Holocaust had emerged, a team of researchers embarked on a remarkable project. While documenting the experiences of Jewish refugees, they began to collect songs composed and sung in the Nazi camps and ghettos. The resulting book, Mima'amakim (Out of the depths), was published in a short run of 500 copies. Today, only a handful survive.
Available for the first time in English translation, this collection of songs is a powerful memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
Described by the original editor, Yehuda Eismann, as a 'memorial stone for Polish Jewry', the songbook is a timeless document of a people's despair, hope and strength.
Serving the public
By Kevin Morgan
£14.99 | Paperback
Access to good food is the litmus test of a society's commitment to social justice and sustainable development. This book explores the 'good food revolution' in public institutions, asking what broader lessons can be learned.
Drawing on evidence from the UK, US and Sweden, Serving the public highlights how public institutions are harnessing the power of purchase to secure public health, social justice and ecological integrity. The quest for good food in these institutions is an important part of the struggle to redeem the public sphere and repair the damage wrought by forty years of neoliberalism.
Shakespeare's borrowed feathers
By Darren Freebury-Jones
£25.00 | Hardback
Shakespeare's plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him?
Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers a fresh look at William Shakespeare and reveals the influence of a community of playwrights that shaped his work. This compelling book argues that we need to see early modern drama as a communal enterprise, with playwrights borrowing from and adapting one another's work.
The Malleus Maleficarum
Edited by Peter Maxwell-Stuart
£9.99 | Paperback
In 1487, the zealous inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote a treatise that would have a remarkable influence on European history. Blaming women for his own lust, and frustrated by official complacency before what he saw as a monstrous spiritual menace, Kramer penned a practical guide to aid law officers in the identification and prosecution of witches.
The Malleus Maleficarum transports the reader into the dark heart of medieval belief. The book led to the burning of numerous heretics and 'witches' and had a lasting impact on the popular image of witchcraft.
This edition offers a clear, readable translation and an introduction that lays out the context of late-medieval Europe, a time of spiritual paranoia when powerful men suspected women's sexuality was a tool of the Devil.
The Island Book of Records Volume II: 1969-70
Edited by Neil Storey
£85.00 | Hardback
The second volume of this highly collectable series, covering the pivotal years of 1969–70, during which Island sought to build on its early successes. By the end of the period, Island was emerging as a major British label, one that could boast releases from Jethro Tull, Nick Drake, King Crimson, John and Beverley Martyn, Fairport Convention and Cat Stevens.
Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and including a comprehensive discography of 45s, The Island Book of Records Volume II is lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues that no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera collector’s dream.
Queer beyond London
By Matt Cook and Alison Oram
£12.99 | Paperback
With a foreword by Andrew McMillan
An alternative celebration of LGBTQ history in Britain, offering tales of queer life from four English cities - Manchester, Leeds, Brighton and Plymouth - from the sixties to the noughties.
Two leading LGBTQ historians take you on a journey, from the northern post-industrial heartlands to the salty air of the seaside cities of the south. Covering the bohemian, artsy world of Brighton, the semi-hidden queer life of military Plymouth, the lesbian activism of Leeds and the cutting-edge dance and drag scenes of Manchester, they show how local people, places and politics shaped LGBTQ life in each city, forging vibrant and distinctive queer cultures of their own.
Bedsit land
By Patrick Clarke
£12.99 | Paperback
Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but their sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come.
In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. From the British seaside to the New York club scene, from transgressive student performance art to pre-gentrified Soho.
Global Marxism
By Simin Fadaee
£19.99 | Paperback
For much of the 20th century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism is contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle.
In Global Marxism, Simin Fadaee argues that Marxism remains the cornerstone of revolutionary theory and practice in the Global South. She explores the lives, ideas and legacies of a group of revolutionaries who played an exceptional role, figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali Shariati and Subcomandante Marcos.
Clyde Walcott
By Peter Mason
£9.99 | Paperback
This first biography of Sir Clyde Walcott explores the extraordinary life and achievements of a man who was both an important activist and one of the greatest cricketers of all time, shining a light on Walcott's largely ignored part in effecting change through the vehicle of cricket.
Part of our Global Icons series.
Pistols in St Paul's
By Fiona Smyth
£25.00 | Hardback
On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scientific demonstration of new techniques in acoustic measurement. It aimed to address a surprising question: could a building be a musical instrument?
Pistols in St Paul's tells the fascinating story of the scientists, architects and musicians who set out to answer this question. Deeply researched and richly illustrated, Pistols in St Paul's brings to light a scientific quest spanning half a century, one that demonstrates the power of international cooperation in the darkest of times.
Act now
By The Common Sense Policy Group
£9.99 | Paperback
We live in an age of crisis and decline. The right presents 'solutions' that only worsen the situation, but the left also have consistently failed to recognise both the urgency of people's need and their receptiveness to new solutions.
In Act now, a team of leading researchers and authors presents a compelling and achievable vision for a progressive future. They outline clear policies for welfare, health and social care, education, housing and more. Arguing for a rolling forwards of the state, from a Green New Deal to nationally owned and operated health and social care, this is a new Beveridge report for the next generation.
This book a map to a secure, democratic and prosperous Britain of tomorrow, and calls on politicians, pundits and the British people to act now.
Mancunians
By David Scott
£11.99 | Paperback
In the late 1990s, Manchester was a city in upheaval. The devastation of the IRA bomb and the closure of the notorious Haçienda nightclub were seismic events that rocked the city, stereotypes were everywhere, while the spirit of Manchester was silently suffocating.
This is the story of those who didn't fit the typecast: the musicians of colour, the football fans alienated by rampant commercialism, frustrated public figures, optimistic developers and ambitious artists.
Through a mixture of memoir and interviews with well-known Mancunians such as Guy Garvey, Tunde Babalola, Sylvia Tella, Badly Drawn Boy and Stan Chow, David Scott portrays the city at the turn of the century in a way never seen before.
As Good as a Marriage
By Jill Liddington
£11.99 | Paperback
The BBC and HBO series Gentleman Jack brought Anne Lister to international attention, awakening tremendous interest in her diaries, which are partly written in her secret code. They record in intimate detail the ways Anne challenged so many of society's expectations of women at the time.
Jill Liddington's edited transcriptions of the diaries show us Anne from 1836-38, and guide the reader through life at Shibden Hall after Anne's unconventional 'marriage' to wealthy local heiress Ann Walker. The book explores the daily lives of these two women, from convivial evenings together to their tensions and quarrels. Was their relationship really as fragile as Anne's coded writing suggests?
The rise of devils
By James Crossland
£11.99 | Paperback
In the dying light of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Simmering political rage and social inequalities drove nationalists, nihilists, anarchists and republicans to dynamite cities and gun down presidents, police chiefs and emperors. This wave of terror was seized upon by an outrage-hungry press that peddled hysteria, conspiracy theories and fake news in response, convincing many that they were living through the end of days.
The rise of devils chronicles the journeys of those who provoked this panic and created modern terrorism - revolutionary philosophers, cult leaders, criminals and charlatans, as well as the paranoid police chiefs and unscrupulous spies who tried to thwart them.
The seven veils of privacy
By Kieron O'Hara
£25.00 | Paperback
With the rise of big data and surveillance capitalism, our privacy is increasingly under threat. But discussions of how to protect privacy are often derailed by disagreements over what exactly it is. In this book, Kieron O'Hara sets out to demystify privacy. He reveals that much of the conflict around it results from taking different perspectives that veil key assumptions and disguise points of agreement. Focusing on the seven most important perspectives, he offers a framework for negotiating this important but complex topic. Expertly blending insights from philosophy, sociology, law and computing, and presenting plenty of real-world examples, O'Hara's The seven veils of privacy is both an ideal introduction to the field and a challenging critique of it.
Downward spiral
By John Bowers KC
£20.00 | Hardback
In this eye-opening book, veteran KC John Bowers presents a fearless examination of the decline in ethical standards before, during and after the Johnson government. He focuses on the institutions responsible for holding the government accountable, exposing how they have been bypassed by prime ministers determined to impose their agenda. Through interviews with political insiders, Bowers provides analysis of scandals such as partygate and the revolving door with the private sector. He shines a light on a culture of favouritism, where standards are upheld based on little more than the assumption those in power can be trusted to behave. Confronting the failings of the current system, Downward spiral presents concrete proposals for creating an alternative that is more transparent and accountable.
Disrupting White Mindfulness
By Cathy-Mae Karelse
£14.99 | Paperback
Disrupting White Mindfulness presents a thought-provoking critique of the prevailing narratives that shape the mindfulness industry, namely whiteness, postracialism and neoliberalism. The industry presents itself as 'apolitical', but this only serves to create institutions that fit comfortably into our increasingly divided societies. The White, middle-class profile of decision-makers, educators and staff is mirrored in its audiences, and the industry's whiteness is endlessly recycled through corporate pedagogies, edicts of authority, disengagement with difference and inappropriate uses of mindfulness that distance People of the Global Majority. As this book shows, there is room for White Mindfulness to change.
Divided Isles
By Edward Acton Cavanough
£20.00 | Hardback
In 2019, Solomon Islands made international headlines when the country severed its decades-old alliance with Taiwan in exchange for a partnership with Beijing. The decision prompted international condemnation and terrified Australian security experts, who feared Australia's historical Pacific advantage would come unstuck. In Divided Isles, Edward Cavanough explains how the switch played out on the ground and its extraordinary potential consequences. He speaks with the dissidents and politicians who shape Solomon Islands' politics, and to the ordinary people whose lives have been upended by a decision that has changed the country - and the region - forever.
Culture is not an industry
By Justin O'Connor
£14.99 | Paperback
Culture is at the heart to what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded art and culture as 'creative industries', valued for their economic contribution, and set out to launch the UK as the creative workshop of a globalised world. Facing exhausted workers and a lack of funding and vision, culture finds itself in the grip of accountancy firms, creativity gurus and Ted Talkers. This book is about what happens when an essential part of our democratic citizenship, fundamental to our human rights, is reduced to an industry.
Markets and power in digital capitalism
By Philipp Staab
£20.00 | Hardback
Markets and power in digital capitalism delves into the complex world of modern capitalism, where technology giants reign supreme. From Google and Apple to Amazon and Tencent, these internet behemoths have reshaped the economic landscape, transforming capitalism as we know it. With sharp insight and meticulous research, the book sheds light on the intricate workings of our digitised economy. Staab's compelling analysis challenges us to confront the realities of surveillance capitalism and the urgent need to address the inequities it perpetuates.
Barbara Comyns
By Avril Horner
£30.00 | Hardback
The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on to publish a sequence of novels that are unique in the English language. This biography not only excavates Comyns's life but also reclaims her fiction, providing a timely reassessment of her literary contribution. It sheds new light on a remarkable author who deftly captured the complexities of human life.
She played and sang
By Gillian Dooley
£20.00 | Hardback
Like her much-loved heroine Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen 'played and sang'. Music occupied a central role in her life, and she made brilliant use of it in her books to illuminate characters' personalities and highlight the contrasts between them. Until recently, our knowledge of Austen's musical inclinations was limited to the recollections of relatives who were still in their youth when she passed away. But with the digitisation of music books from her immediate family circle, a treasure trove of evidence has emerged. Delving into these books, alongside letters and other familial records, She played and sang unveils a previously unknown facet of Austen's world.
Mick Lynch
By Gregor Gall
£20.00 | Hardback
In the summer of 2022, the little-known leader of a small union became a 'working-class hero' at a time when the Labour Party was unable to articulate a credible alternative to the Tories. This book, the first biography of Lynch, explores his family and social background and his rise to the top of the RMT union, which culminated in election as General Secretary in 2021. Considering his persona and politics, this book asks what quality singles out Lynch compared to other union leaders and, more broadly, what leadership means for working people and for the left.
By James Patton Rogers
£20.00 | Paperback
We think of precision warfare as a modern invention, closely associated with the Gulf War, the Kosovo Campaign and drone technologies. But its origins go back much further in history. Patton Rogers takes readers on a journey through the twentieth century, highlighting the innovative thinkers of the First World War, the experimental technologies of the Second World War and the surprising Cold War nuclear strategies that made precision the dominant feature it is today. From Russia's offensive war in Ukraine to Libya, Ethiopia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflicts of the twenty-first-century are being fought with precision weapons.
Wild colonial boys
By Thomas Paul Burgess
£16.99 | Paperback
Ruefrex were one of Northern Ireland's most popular and uncompromising punk rock bands. Emerging from the Belfast street-gang culture of the late-1970s, the group, inspired by The Clash, enjoyed a turbulent, decade-long career. They played for millions on CNN and Channel 4, toured with The Pogues and recorded the controversial 'The Wild Colonial Boy', which attacked American donations to Northern Irish terrorist organisations. From strife-torn 1970s Belfast to bohemian London, Wild colonial boys tells the story of a punk band who refused to give up and stayed true to their punk roots.
Welcome to the club
By DJ Paulette
£20.00 | Hardback
In Welcome to the club, Manchester legend DJ Paulette shares the highs, lows and lessons of a thirty-year music career, with help from some famous friends.
One of the Haçienda's first female DJs, Paulette has scaled the heights of the music industry, playing to crowds of thousands all around the world, and descended to the lows of being unceremoniously benched by COVID-19, with no chance of furlough and little support from the government. Here she tells her story, offering a remarkable view of the music industry from a Black woman's perspective.
The art of darkness
By John Robb
£14.99 | Paperback
This is the first comprehensive history of goth music and culture. John Robb explores the origins and legacy of this enduring scene, which has its roots in the post-punk era. Drawing on his own experience as a musician and journalist, Robb covers the style, the music and the clubs that spawned goth culture, alongside political and social conditions. Reaching back further into history, he examines key events and movements that frame the ideas of goth, from the fall of Rome to Lord Byron and the Romantic poets, European folk tales, Gothic art and the occult. Finally, he considers the current mainstream goth of Instagram influencers, film, literature and music.
The Island Book of Records Volume I: 1959-68
Edited by Neil Storey
£85.00 | Hardback
The Island Book of Records brings the early years of this iconic record label to life. A fifteen-year labour of love, the volumes will fully document the analogue era of Island. Offering a comprehensive archive of album cover design and photography, together with the voices of the musicians, designers, photographers, producers, studio engineers and record company personnel that worked on each project, the volumes show in unique depth the workings of the label, covering every LP. These LP-sized editions are a collector's dream, offering a truly unparalleled resource for those interested in music history and a perfect gift for any music lover.
Manchester unspun
By Andy Spinoza
£12.99 | Paperback
At the end of the 1970s, Manchester seemed to be sliding into the dustbin of history. Today the city is an international destination for culture and sport, and one of the fastest-growing urban regions in Europe. This book offers a first-hand account of what happened in between. Arriving in Manchester in 1979, Andy Spinoza went on to establish the arts magazine City Life before working for the Manchester Evening News and creating his own PR firm. In a forty-year career he has encountered a who's who of Manchester personalities. His remarkable account traces Manchester's gradual emergence from its post-industrial malaise, centring on the Haçienda and the cultural renaissance it inspired.
Hanif Kureishi
by Ruvani Ranasinha
£30.00 | Hardback
From the global successes of My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia, through to late masterpieces such as The Nothing, Hanif Kureishi is one of Britain's most popular and versatile writers. Drawing on Kureishi's unexplored personal archive, recently acquired by the British Library, each chapter in Ruvani Ranasinha's jaw-droppingly honest biography recounts a decade of the author's life, illuminating the work he produced in the period. This structure reflects the novelist and screenwriter's own preoccupation with self-reinvention and the fluidity of identity: 'Every decade you become someone else.'
The 1922 Committee
By Philip Norton
£20.00 | Hardback
The Conservative Private Members (1922) Committee is an important but elusive force in British politics. Despite becoming almost a household name during the leadership crises of 2022, it remains little understood beyond the corridors of Westminster. How did the Committee come together? How is it structured and how much power does it really wield? These are among the questions the book considers. Providing unprecedented insights into this long-standing institution, it is essential reading for anyone who cares about the integrity of our political system.
Crafting crime fiction
By Henry Sutton
£14.99 | Paperback
John le Carré said the best place to start a crime novel is as near to the end of the story as possible. But how do you know what the story is? Everyone's story, resources and experience are different. This book will help you identify the right beginning, middle and end for your crime novel. It will enable you to recognise your talent and realise your ambition in practical and realistic ways. Good crime fiction is about being different in a highly competitive and crowded market. Whether you are writing a police procedural or a psychological thriller, there are practical aspects and approaches that need to be considered. No one wants to read a dull book.
David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine
By Nicholas Royle
£15.99 | Paperback
In this one-of-a-kind book, novelist and academic Nicholas Royle brings together two remarkably different creative figures: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. His exploration of their lives and work delves deeply into questions about the value of art, music and literature, as well as the role of universities in society. David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine offers a singular perspective on the cultural significance of two iconic figures. In doing so, it makes a compelling case for the power of storytelling and music to shape our lives.
The new politics of Poland
By Jaroslaw Kuisz
£25.00 | Hardback
For many observers, the electoral success of Poland's populist right-wing party Law and Justice in 2015 came as an unpleasant surprise. Even more shocking was what happened next: Jaroslaw Kaczynski's party started taking over all state institutions. It suppressed the media and launched a controversial 'reform' of the judiciary. How was this illiberal turn possible after decades of democratic development? Has Poland cut itself off from the pro-European path, or is the Law and Justice government a passing episode in the country's history? Written by a leading Polish political commentator, this book traces the country's transformation over the past thirty years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the government response to the refugee crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
When nothing works
By Luca Calafati, Julie Froud, Colin Haslam, Sukhdev Johal and Karel Williams
£14.99 | Paperback
It's hard to shake the feeling that in Britain today nothing works. In the face of mounting inflation and widespread industrial action, this book offers an incisive analysis of the UK's problems and a new approach to tackling them. Presenting a new model for the three pillars of liveability - disposable and residual income, essential services and social infrastructure - When nothing works challenges the assumptions of left and right in the UK political classes and offers a fresh approach to the economically visible and politically actionable.
The sea in Russian strategy
Edited by Andrew Monaghan and Richard Connolly
£14.99 | Paperback
For the first two decades after the Cold War, Russian naval power hardly featured in the Euro-Atlantic community's strategic thinking. This began to change in the mid-2010s, as the idea that the Russian navy poses a threat to NATO began to gain ground. That threat took shockingly real form in February 2022, when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine. The sea in Russian strategy is the first sustained examination of Russian maritime power in the period since the fall of the Soviet Union. It brings together leading specialists from public policy and academia to reflect on historical and contemporary aspects of Russia's naval strategy and capacities.
Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s
By Lucy Robinson
£14.99 | Paperback
Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s tells the story of eighties Britain through its popular culture. Charting era-defining moments from Lady Diana's legs and the miners' strike to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage and Adam and the Ants, Lucy Robinson weaves together an alternative history to the one we think we know. Packed with archival and cultural research but written with verve and spark, the book offers as much to general readers as to scholars of this period, presenting a distinctive and definitive contemporary history of 1980s Britain, from pop to politics, to cold war cultures, censorship and sexuality.
Sugar rush
By Karen Throsby
£19.99 | Paperback
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the crusade against sugar rose to prominence as an urgent societal problem about which something needed to be done. Sugar was transformed into the common enemy in a revived 'war on obesity' levelled at 'unhealthy' foods and the people who enjoy them. Are the evils of sugar based on purely scientific fact, or are other forces at play? Inviting readers to resist the comforting certainties of the attack on sugar, Sugar rush shows how this actually represents a politics of despair, entrenching rather than disrupting the inequality-riddled status quo.
Carbon colonialism
By Laurie Parsons
£16.99 | Hardback
Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. This book opens our eyes. Carbon colonialism explores the murky practices of outsourcing a country's environmental impact, where emissions and waste are exported from rich countries to poorer ones; a world in which corporations and countries are allowed to maintain a clean, green image while landfills in the world's poorest countries continue to expand, and droughts and floods intensify under the auspices of globalisation, deregulation and economic growth.
Cold, hard steel
By Agnes Arnold-Foster
£25.00 | Hardback
Brilliant, volatile and invariably male, the surgeon stereotype is a widespread and instantly recognisable. Cold, hard steel offers an exciting new history of modern and contemporary British surgery. The book draws on archival materials and original interviews with surgeons, analysing them alongside a range of fictional depictions, from the Doctor in the House novels to Mills & Boon romances and the pioneering soap opera Emergency Ward 10. Presenting a unique social, cultural and emotional history, it sheds light on the development and maintenance of the surgical stereotype and explains why it has proved so enduring.
Red closet
By Rustam Alexander
£17.99 | Hardback
In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, from a naïve Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, to a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin's harsh repressions and mass arrests.
Dirty books
By Barry Reay
£20.00 | Hardback
Between the 1930s and the 50s, in New York and in Paris, daring publishers such as Obelisk Press, Olympia Press and Grove Press were producing banned pornographic literature, written by young, impecunious writers, poets, and artists, many anonymously. This book tells their stories, and the stories of publishers, who distributed pornography to satisfy the rising demands of a society starved of erotic fantasy. It offers a fascinating moment in pornographic history, where artistic expression broke free, crisscrossing boundaries of acceptability, and the profits made from erotica helped launch the careers of literary cult figures.
Mancunians
By David Scott
£16.99 | Hardback
Forget everything you've heard about Manchester - Madchester, Gunchester - and read what it was like to live there at the turn of the century from those who know it best. This is the story of those who didn't fit the typecast: the musicians of colour, the football fans alienated by rampant commercialism, the northerners who didn't wear parkas, the frustrated police figures, the optimistic developers, the ambitious artists, the drinkers, dealers, street sweepers and a young author trying to negotiate his way among the chaos.
B. R. Ambedkar
By Shashi Tharoor
£16.99 | Hardback
A household name throughout India, B. R. Ambedkar is one of its most important figures, second only to Gandhi. A political leader with a major hand in drafting the constitution for a newly independent India, and a pioneer in the fight against caste-based discrimination. This book is also a reminder of how far the practice of politics has strayed from the high standards Ambedkar set - of intellect, policy positions animated by serious scholarship, the infusion of moral values and the upholding of democracy for the many, not just the privileged few.
Presence
By Ben Alderson-Day
£19.99 | Hardback
In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, from a naïve Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, to a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin's harsh repressions and mass arrests.
Charles Dickens and Georgina Hogarth
By Lucy Robinson
£20.00 | Hardback
Charles Dickens called his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth his 'best and truest friend'. Georgina saw Dickens as much more than a friend. They lived together for twenty-eight years, during which time their relationship constantly changed. The sister of his wife Catherine, the sharp and witty Georgina moved into the Dickens home aged fifteen. What began as a father-daughter relationship blossomed into a genuine rapport, but their easy relations were fractured when Dickens had a mid-life crisis and determined to rid himself of Catherine.
Lifestyle revolution
By Ben Highmore
£25.00 | Hardback
In postwar Britain, journalists and politicians predicted that the class system would not survive a consumer culture where everyone had TVs and washing machines, and where more and more people owned their own homes. They were to be proved hopelessly wrong. Lifestyle revolution charts how class culture, rather than being destroyed by mass consumption, was remade from flat-pack furniture, Mediterranean cuisine and lifestyle magazines.
Britain in fragments
By Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever
£19.99 | Paperback
Britain today is falling apart. One of the most dominant states in world history finds itself confronted with growing demands for nationalist secessionism, looming Scottish independence and deepening race, class, gender, regional and generational inequalities. How has it come to this? This book traces how successive Labour and Conservative governments have incrementally dismantled the democratic settlement.
As good as marriage
By Jill Liddington
£25.00 | Hardback
In this sequel to Female Fortune, Jill Liddington's edited transcriptions of the diaries show us Anne Lister's life from 1836-38. She guides the reader through life at Shibden Hall after Anne's unconventional 'marriage' to wealthy local heiress Ann Walker. The book explores the daily lives of these two women, from convivial evenings together to her ruthless pursuit of her own business and landowning ambitions. Was their relationship really as fragile as Anne's coded writing suggests? This question is at the heart of As Good as a Marriage.
Doggy people
By Michael Worboys
£20.00 | Hardback
We know that there were dogs in Victorian Britain, but who were the 'Doggy People' who kept them, bred them, showed them, worked with them and cared for them? This book reveals the varied and often eccentric lives of the Victorians who helped define dogs as we know them today. Looking at the invention and meaning of new breeds such as poodles, collies, Jack Russells, and borzois amongst others, we see how the Victorians thought about pets, sports, dog shows and animal rights.
Manchester unspun
By Andy Spinoza
£20.00 | Hardback
At the end of the 1970s, Manchester seemed to be sliding into the dustbin of history. Today the city is an international destination for culture and sport, and one of the fastest-growing urban regions in Europe. This book offers a first-hand account of what happened in between. Beginning in the gloom of a city still bearing the scars of the Second World War and ending among the shiny towers of an aspiring twenty-first-century metropolis, it is an insider's tale of deals done, government and corporate decision-making, nightclubs, music and entrepreneurs.
Lifestyle revolution
By Ben Highmore
£25.00 | Hardback
In the dying light of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Political rage and social inequalities, which drove nationalists, nihilists, anarchists and republicans to dynamite cities and discharge pistols into the bodies of presidents, police chiefs and emperors. This book chronicles the journeys of the men and women who evoked this panic and created modern terrorism, and explains how radicals once thought just in their causes became known as 'devils risen up from Hell'.
Stories from small museums
By Fiona Candlin, Toby Butler and Jake Watts
£16.99 | Paperback
During the late-twentieth century, the number of museums in the UK dramatically increased. Typically small and independent, the new museums concentrated on local history, war and transport. This book asks who founded them, how and why. This book is a new account of recent museum history - one that weaves together personal experience and social change while putting ordinary people at the heart of cultural production.
Trade winds
By Christiaan De Beukelaer
£20.00 | Hardback
Shipping is the engine of the world economy, transporting 11 billion tonnes of goods each year. Despite an environmental crisis, shipping emissions have doubled since 1990, producing over one billion tonnes of CO2, more than aviation. This book engagingly recounts both the author's personal odyssey across the Atlantic on a sailing boat, and the journey the shipping industry is embarking on to cut its carbon emissions.
I want to break free
By Matt Qvortrup
£12.99 | Paperback
In this refreshing new book, Matt Qvortrup provides a step-by-step guide to forming an independent country. From organising a referendum and winning it, to receiving official international recognition, establishing a currency and even entering the Eurovision song contest, this book delves into the legal, economic and political problems of creating new states.
The violence of colonial photography
By Daniel Foliard
£16.99 | Paperback
Drawing on a wealth of visual materials, from soldiers' personal albums to the collections of press agencies and government archives, this book offers a new account of how conflict photography developed in the decades leading up to the First World War. At the same time, it reveals how photographs could escape the intentions of their creators, offering a means for colonial subjects to push back against oppression.
Chinese dreams in romantic England
By Edward Weech
£25.00 | Hardback
Part of the 'first wave' of British Romanticism, Thomas Manning was one of the first Englishmen to study Chinese language and culture. Manning's extraordinary story, here told in full for the first time using recently discovered archival sources, sheds a new light on English Romanticism and the course of cultural exchange between Britain and Asia at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
Gee Vaucher
By Rebecca Binns
£20.00 | Hardback
As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 80s, Gee Vaucher deserves to be much better-known. She produced a confrontational album cover for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, and more recently, her work ran on the front page of the Daily Mirror the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory. This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's work.
Odd men out
By John-Pierre Joyce
£13.99 | Paperback
Examining the transformation of homosexual men from ‘odd’ to ‘normal’ during the tumultuous decades of the 1950s and 1960s, this book preserves the voices of a disappearing generation who revolutionised what it meant to be a gay man in twentieth-century Britain.
Derailed
By Tom Haines- Dorran
£16.99 | Paperback
What if the railways were seen as an indispensable feature of the national economy, a social good that needs to be supported? This insightful new book calls for a radical rethink of how we view the railways and explains the problems we face and how to fix them.
Bankruptcy, bullets and bailouts
By Aeron Davis
£16.99 | Hardback
The Treasury is one of Britain's oldest, most powerful and secretive institutions, one that has played a central role in shaping the country's economic system, but all too often it has escaped public scrutiny. Davis's book goes behind the scenes to offer an inside history of the Treasury, in the words of the chancellors, advisors and civil servants themselves.
The art of observer
By David MacDougall
£24.99 | Paperback
The art of the observer is a personal guide to documentary filmmaking, based on the author's years of pioneering work in the fields of ethnographic and documentary cinema. The book makes clear that documentary cinema is not simply a matter of recording reality, but of artfully organising the filmmaker's observations in ways that reveal the complex patterns of social life.
Queer beyond London
By Matt Cook & Alison Oram
£20.00 | Hardback
In Queer beyond London, two leading LGBTQ+ historians take you on a journey through four English cites from the sixties to the noughties, exploring the northern post-industrial heartlands and taking in the salty air of the seaside cities of the South. Covering Brighton, Plymouth, Leeds, and Manchester, they show how local people, places and politics shaped LGBTQ+ life in each city, forging vibrant and distinctive queer cultures of their own.
The Value of a Whale
By Adrienne Buller
£12.99 | Paperback
In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks: are the 'solutions' being proposed really solutions? Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, economic injustice and ecological crisis, the book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance. Both honest and optimistic, The Value of a Whale asks us - in the face of crisis - what we really value.
Africa 2.0
By Russell Southwood
£24.99 | Paperback
Africa 2.0 provides an important history of how two technologies - mobile calling and internet - were made available to millions of sub-Saharan Africans, and the impact they have had on their lives. The book deals with the political challenges of liberalisation and privatisation that needed to be in place in order for these technologies to be built. It analyses how the mobile phone fundamentally changed communications in sub-Saharan Africa and the ways Africans have made these technologies part of their lives, opening up a very different future.
Sean Connery
By Andrew Spicer
£20.00 | Hardback
This book offers a new perspective on Connery's career. It pays special attention to his star status, while arguing that he was a risk-taking actor who fashioned an impressive body of work. Beginning with Connery's early appearances on stage and television, including well-received performances in Shakespeare and Tolstoy, the book goes on to explore the Bond phenomenon and Connery's long struggle to reinvent himself.