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The definitive portrait of one of the twentieth century's most towering figures: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her private face Susan Sontag was our last great literary star. Her brilliant mind, political activism and striking image made her an emblem of the seductions - and the dangers - of the twentieth-century world. Her writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, Fascism and Freudianism, Communism and Americanism, reflected the conflicted meanings of a most conflicted word: modernity. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began and the Berlin Wall came down, in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based, exploring the private woman hidden behind the formidable public face. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from Manhattan to Sarajevo - and featuring nearly one hundred images, many never seen before - Sontag is the first book based on the writer's restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about her, including Annie Leibovitz. It is an indelible portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers, who lived one of that century's most romantic - and most anguished - lives.

The highly anticipated new book from Malcolm Gladwell, No.1 international bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw and David and Goliath In July 2015, a young black woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over for a minor traffic violation in rural Texas. Minutes later she was arrested and jailed. Three days later, she committed suicide in her cell. What went wrong? Talking to Strangers is all about what happens when we encounter people we don't know, why it often goes awry, and what it says about us. How do we make sense of the unfamiliar? Why are we so bad at judging someone, reading a face, or detecting a lie? Why do we so often fail to 'get' other people? Through a series of puzzles, encounters and misunderstandings, from little-known stories to infamous legal cases, Gladwell takes us on a journey through the unexpected. You will read about the spy who spent years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the man who saw through the fraudster Bernie Madoff, the suicide of the poet Sylvia Plath and the false conviction of Amanda Knox. You will discover that strangers are never simple. No one shows us who we are like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he sets out to understand why we act the way we do, and how we all might know a little more about those we don't.

How ownership came to control us - and what we can do about it Our love affair with our possessions seems to be all-consuming, even as our planet reaches breaking point. Despite the constant warnings about our future, we are reluctant to change our ways when it comes to accumulating more and more things. Why is this? The answer is our need for ownership. Ownership is a uniquely human pre-occupation that has its origins deeply rooted in our biology. It can be seen in everything from children fighting over toys to the rise of political extremism. Award-winning psychologist Bruce Hood draws on research from his own lab and others around the world to explain why psychological ownership is an emotional state of mind that governs our behaviour from the cradle to the grave, even when it is often irrational and destructive. What motivates us to buy more than we need? How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it? Timely, engaging and persuasive, Possessed is the first book to explore how ownership has us enthralled in relentless pursuit of a false happiness, with damaging consequences for society and the planet - and how we can stop buying into it.

Islamic civilization was once the envy of the world. From a succession of glittering, cosmopolitan capitals, Islamic empires lorded it over the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and swathes of the Indian subcontinent, while Europe cowered feebly at the margins. For centuries the caliphate was both ascendant on the battlefield and triumphant in the battle of ideas, its cities unrivalled powerhouses of artistic grandeur, commercial power, spiritual sanctity and forward-looking thinking, in which nothing was off limits. Islamic Empires is a history of this rich and diverse civilization told through its greatest cities over the fifteen centuries of Islam, from its earliest beginnings in Mecca in the seventh century to the astonishing rise of Doha in the twenty-first. It dwells on the most remarkable dynasties ever to lead the Muslim world - the Abbasids of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Damascus and Cordoba, the Merinids of Fez, the Ottomans of Istanbul, the Mughals of India and the Safavids of Isfahan - and some of the most charismatic leaders in Muslim history, from Saladin in Cairo and mighty Tamerlane of Samarkand to the poet-prince Babur in his mountain kingdom of Kabul and the irrepressible Maktoum dynasty of Dubai. It focuses on these fifteen cities at some of the defining moments in Islamic history: from the Prophet Mohammed receiving his divine revelations in Mecca and the First Crusade of 1099 to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal creation of the merchant republic of Beirut in the nineteenth century.

Migrants have stood at the heart of modern Europe's experience, whether trying to escape danger, to find a better life or as a result of deliberate policy, whether moving from the countryside to the city, or between countries, or from outside the continent altogether. Peter Gatrell's powerful new book is the first to bring these stories together into one place. He creates a compelling narrative bracketed by two nightmarish periods: the great convulsions following the fall of the Third Reich and the mass attempts in the 2010s by migrants to cross the Mediterranean into Europe. The Unsettling of Europe is a new history of the continent, charting the ever-changing arguments about the desirability or otherwise of migrants and their central role in Europe's post-1945 prosperity. Gatrell is as fascinating on the giant movements of millions (such as the epic waves of German migration) to that of much smaller groups, such as the Karelians, Armenians, Moluccans or Ugandan Asians. Above all he has written a book that makes the reader deeply aware of the many extraordinary journeys taken by countless individuals in pursuit of work, safety and dignity, all the time. This is a landmark book on a subject that, decade by decade, will always haunt Europe.

In his landmark international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now in the third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis. Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past - from the forced opening up of Japan and the Soviet invasion of Finland to the Pinochet regime in Chile - through selective change, a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation more commonly associated with personal trauma. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages and are on a devastating path towards catastrophe. Is this fate inevitable? Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past? Exhibiting the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics and anthropology that marks all Diamond's work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet.

Today, the human race faces a new problem. Thanks to information technology, vast asymmetries of knowledge and power have opened up. Through the screens of our smart devices, corporations and governments know what we're doing, what we're thinking, can predict our next moves and influence our behaviour. We, meanwhile, don't even have the right to know that any of this is going on. As Paul Mason argues in this pyrotechnic new book, all this is intimately connected to the urgent economic, political and moral crises we are living through now. Clear Bright Futureexplores how, during the preceding decades, the free-market system reduced us to two-dimensional consumers. Underlying the dominance of these forces, Mason contends, is the idea that human values no longer have foundation - an idea that, as we allow the all-pervasive presence of machines in our lives, we are tacitly coming to accept. And, if these forces are not stopped, we will relive something even worse than the 1930s. But there is another way. We have the power to imagine and design a better system, at the heart of which is a radical reassertion of our common humanity. All this, Mason asserts, starts with a simple, fundamental choice. Will we accept the machine control of human beings, or will we resist it?

The past is forgotten, and the future is without hope. Dystopia has become a reality. This is the new normal in our apocalyptic politics - but if we accept it, our helplessness is guaranteed. To bring about real change, argues activist and political philosopher Srecko Horvat, we must first transform our mindset. Ranging through time and space, from the partisan liberation movements of Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia to the contemporary culture, refugee camps and political frontlines of 21st century Europe, Horvat shows that the problems we face today are of an unprecedented nature. To solve them, he argues in this passionate call for a new radical internationalism, we must move beyond existing ways of thinking: beyond borders, national identities and the redundant narratives of the past. Only in this way can we create new models for living and, together, shape a more open and optimistic future.

OVER TEN MILLION COPIES SOLD #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER What are the most valuable things that everyone should know? Acclaimed clinical psychologist Jordan B Peterson has influenced the modern understanding of personality, and now he has become one of the world's most popular public thinkers, with his lectures on topics from the Bible to romantic relationships to mythology drawing tens of millions of viewers. In an era of unprecedented change and polarizing politics, his frank and refreshing message about the value of individual responsibility and ancient wisdom has resonated around the world. In this book, he provides twelve profound and practical principles for how to live a meaningful life, from setting your house in order before criticising others to comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not someone else today. Happiness is a pointless goal, he shows us. Instead we must search for meaning, not for its own sake, but as a defence against the suffering that is intrinsic to our existence. Drawing on vivid examples from the author's clinical practice and personal life, cutting-edge psychology and philosophy, and lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories, 12 Rules for Life offers a deeply rewarding antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to our modern problems.

From Nobel Prize-winning economist and bestselling author Joseph Stiglitz, this account of the dangers of free market fundamentalism reveals what has gone so wrong, but also shows us a way out. We all have the sense that our economy tilts toward big business, but as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in People, Power and Profits, a few corporations have come to dominate entire sectors, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. This is how the financial industry has managed to write its own regulations, tech companies have accumulated reams of personal data with little oversight, and government has negotiated trade deals that fail to represent the best interests of workers. Too many have made their wealth through exploitation of others rather than through wealth creation. If something isn't done, new technologies may make matters worse, increasing inequality and unemployment. Stiglitz identifies the true sources of wealth and increases in standards of living, based on learning, advances in science and technology, and the rule of law. He shows that the assault on the judiciary, universities, and the media undermines the very institutions that have long been the foundation of economic prosperity and democracy. Helpless though we may feel today, we are far from powerless. In fact, the economic solutions are often quite clear. We need to exploit the benefits of markets while taming their excesses, making sure that markets work for people and not the other way around. If enough rally behind this agenda for change, we can create a progressive capitalism that will recreate a shared prosperity. Stiglitz shows how a decent middle-class life can once again be attainable by all.

The final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observerIn 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a professional musician and then as a foreign correspondent. The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe. Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.

We think we know ancient Greece, the civilisation that shares the same name and gave us just about everything that defines 'western' culture today, in the arts, sciences, social sciences and politics. Yet, as Greece has been brought under repeated scrutiny during the financial crises that have convulsed the country since 2010, worldwide coverage has revealed just how poorly we grasp the modern nation. This book sets out to understand the modern Greeks on their own terms. How did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place, and then define an identity for themselves that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last 300 years, of building a modern nation on, sometimes literally, the ruins of a vanished civilisation. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics, it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people and of ideas.

It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. Over the past decades, the term "Anthropocene" has climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live-the planet no longer nurturing a dream of abundance, but a living nightmare.

Most of the time, the maths in our everyday lives works quietly behind the scenes. Until someone forgets to carry a '1' and a bridge collapses, a plane drops out of the sky or a building rocks when its resonant frequency matches a gym class leaping to Snap's 1990 hit I've Got The Power. This book is all about what happens when maths goes wrong in the real world. Exploring and explaining a litany of near-misses and mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries and the Roman empire, Matt Parker shows us the bizarre ways maths trips us all up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills', but we would all be better off, he argues, if we saw it as a practical ally. By making maths our friend, we can use it to our advantage and learn from its pitfalls.

From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of Britain and other Western societies: thriving cities versus the provinces, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit and the return of the far right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts - economic, social and cultural - with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervour of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world's most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself - and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the 20th century.

A spectacular treasury of the best British short stories published in the last twenty yearsWe are living in a particularly rich period for British short stories. Despite the relative lack of places in which they can be published, the challenge the medium represents has attracted a host of remarkable, subversive, entertaining and innovative writers. Philip Hensher, following the success of his definitive Penguin Book of British Short Stories, has scoured a vast trove of material and chosen thirty great stories for this new volume of works written between 1997 and the present day.