An interesting, enjoyable book about a 19th-century astronomer's scheme to signal Mars by marking a vast fiery triangle in the Egyptian desert.
"Kalfus's comedy of ideas is as dry as the scorched desert winds, and as black as the pitch poured into the Equilateral's trenches. Kalfus keeps imaginative intellectual sympathy and devastating retrospective irony in miraculous equipoise. This is a short novel in which every word has been weighed. It is a beautifully judged, haunting, highly intelligent and rich work of fiction." - Guardian
The transformation of Paris from medieval muddle to modern capital during the seventeenth century changed the way people thought about cities. This lively, well-illustrated book shows how early urban planning shaped all that came after and established Paris’s unique feel.
Sharp essays and incisive journalism from the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.
Offers a firsthand account of daily life as a rookie forensic pathologist, and of the unexpected challenges of shuttling between the domains of the living and the dead.
This book examines the dark side of democracy, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to racism and exploitation. It is a ferocious attack on the mega-corporations that treat India's natural resources like robber barons, and how they have been able to influence every part of the nation from the government to the army in the rush for profit. But, as Arundhati Roy passionately argues, capitalism is in crisis. The cracks are starting to show in its facade.
Is it fiction's job to make the supernatural (whatever that is) natural (whatever that means)? Or to blur (or erase) the line between the two? Should (can?) 'genre' be hollowed out and filled with 'literature' (whatever that is)? How do the forces impacting on an author's (or a reader's) personal life alter the world view informing their writing (and reading)? What does loss leave you with? Can the omnipresent (whatever that is) be encountered in a taxi in a tunnel? What should (can) we make of all this? This unique insight into the tectonics of Knox's creative mind was delivered as the inaugural Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture in August.
"Witty, humane and unapologetically admiring, Roberts's book is not just another brilliant narrative biography of Napoleon – although it is certainly this. It is also an essay on statesmanship and a meditation on history itself: a defence of the whole idea of the 'great man' against what the author calls in his conclusion 'determinist analyses of history, which explain events in terms of vast impersonal forces and minimise the part played by individuals'." - The Telegraph
"Got something in your brain you'd really like to see with your eyes? Jim'll paint it."
In response to crazed requests through the internet, Jim has painted all sorts of things (from all sorts of brains). This book is as much a testament to the kinds of things people want painted as to Jim's artwork.
>> Here are examples.
'Tell the story to its end,' says Eren with a grin. His yellow eyes are glowing like embers in the night. 'When I reach the end,' I say, 'what happens? You'll have the whole story.' 'Hmm,' he says, looking at me and licking his lips with a dry, grey tongue. 'What happens then? Why don't we find out?'
Stories have both power and danger. Will Oli be trapped in his?
"Eren caught my attention from the very first page. I really enjoyed it. Sure-footed, distinctive, strange, poetic. Simon P. Clark is a truly interesting new voice." - David Almond, author of Skellig
Like most people, Sarah Lazarovic covets beautiful things. But rather than giving in to her impulse to spend and acquire, Sarah instead spent a year painting the objects she wanted. A witty, gracious, and charmingly illustrated anti-consumer manifesto.
Would make an excellent Christmas gift (or get into the spirit and give a picture of it!).
Full of energy and pertinence, graffiti and street art have broken out of the cultural ghetto and are bringing our cityscapes to life. This is art that is responsive to place and moment, and accessible to a wide public outside the confines of a gallery.
A new collection, shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize.
"Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our finest writers." - Hilary Mantel
Ladies and gentlemen...the Rolling Stones! This is the definitive, authorized illustrated history. Produced in collaboration with the band, this book charts the Stones' remarkable history and outrageously cool lifestyle in around 600 pages of photographs and illustrations, many previously unseen, gathered from archives all over the world. Large, lavish and highly collectible.
Two sequences that test the possibilities for poetic ventriloquism.
By giving Clodia - the 'Lesbia' of Catullus's famous love poetry - her own first-person narration, Anna Jackson upends and reinvigorates the beloved classical sequence with biting wit and tender attention.
Small animals introduce us to the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack and other seriously flawed reasoning. Very useful, and rather a lot of fun.
It might seem boring to have a book with no pictures, but here's the deal: the person reading the book has to read the words on the page, whatever they are....
>> Like this.
An evocative survey of the thoroughbred sailing ships.
Shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition was a feat of human endurance - one vividly captured in the dramatic pictures taken by Frank Hurley, the expedition's official photographer. An amazing body of photojournalism, these are also images of great artistry that capture the life-and-death drama that was played out against a frozen landscape of magnificent and terrible beauty.
Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family's past; they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit - a duppy - into their home. Grandpa hasn't spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets. Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree.
Mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time. Brilliant, outspoken, and brazenly handsome, Mütter was flamboyant in every aspect of his life. He wore pink silk suits to perform surgery, added an umlaut to his last name just because he could, and amassed an immense collection of medical oddities that would later form the basis of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.
Two women, a pediatrician considered a spinster at 35 and a spontaneous, pregnant teenager, forge a strong, unlikely emotional bond after a short time living together in a 17th-century house in a crumbling neighbourhood in contemporary Algiers.
"Sansal's richly drawn characters and the places where he embeds them will colour readers' moods long after we leave their passageways." - Kirkus Review
Even a short life can cast a very long shadow. Forty years after their Wellington student days, protesting against the Vietnam War, what remains of the characters' idealism and hope?
>> Trailer.
The Delhi-based Muslim Turkic kingdom ruled over large parts of India for 320 years (1206 – 1526), before falling to the Mughals.
Hines's spare poetry responds to the evocative 19th century photographs of William Williams, offering a meditation on how we capture the present and re-present the past, on the parallels between building a community and authoring a text, and on the possibilities that expansive fiction offers to documented truth.
It’s 1932. The Venus Island fetish, a ceremonial mask surrounded by thirty-two human skulls, resides in a museum. Young anthropologist Archie Meek, recently returned from an extended field trip to Venus Island, has noticed a strange discoloration of some of the skulls of the fetish. Has someone been tampering with the primitive artefact? Is there a link between the mysterious disappearance of Cecil Polkinghorne, curator of archaeology, and the fetish? And how did Eric Sopwith, retired mollusks expert, die in the museum’s storeroom?
The first monograph on Freyberg's revered division.
The deteriorating quality of our public debate and the dwindling of common sense in media, politics and culture can drive you to despair and rage. This is a book whose stupid time has come.
The third in the remarkable 'Fairyland' series, that began with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and continued with The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.
"One of the most extraordinary works of fantasy, for adults or children, published so far this century." - Time
"A glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian fairy-tale, done with heart and wisdom." - Neil Gaiman
Bennett introduces and discusses his favourite poets in such a personable and astute way - he is an ideal literary companion.
Architecture and interior design at their best can make us safer, healthier, more efficient, enlightened and productive - all contributing to a fundamental sense of wellbeing.
Key texts from key movements in a key period.
Meet the key figures, visit the key events and discover the key concepts that established the foundations of Western civilisation. There's actually probably a bit more than you ever wanted to know, but that's no reason not to read about it.
When a man loses one of his favourite pair of socks at the laundromat, he sets out on a quest to find out what happens to lost socks, and why every sock drawer contains a plethora of single socks. On his eventful journey he discovers why you always lose the sock you love, and eventually finds his perfect partner at a puppet show (he was obviously a bit of a lost sock himself).
Fully illustrated and wide-ranging survey of fifty years of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
>> How to find a golden ticket.
We had lots of fun trying to decide whether to start with the fox stole, the hanging pheasant mantelpiece decoration or the knitted tiger rug.
