Oneworld Publications strana 12 z 14

'A gripping reconstruction... utterly compelling reading.' Adam Zamoyski 'This is a grim story, thoroughly researched and brilliantly told.' Geoffrey Alderman, Times Higher Education The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses. Committed in utmost secrecy in April-May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake - the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators - whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.

The profound emotion felt around the world upon seeing images of Notre-Dame in flames opens up a series of questions: Why was everyone so deeply moved? Why does Notre-Dame so clearly crystallise what our civilisation is about? What makes 'Our Lady of Paris' the soul of a nation and a symbol of human achievement? What is it that speaks so directly to us today? In answer, Agnes Poirier turns to the defining moments in Notre-Dame's history. Beginning with the laying of the corner stone in 1163, she recounts the conversion of Henri IV to Catholicism, the coronation of Napoleon, Victor Hugo's nineteenth-century campaign to preserve the cathedral, Baron Haussmann's clearing of the streets in front of it, the Liberation in 1944, the 1950s film of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, starring Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Quinn, and the state funeral of Charles de Gaulle, before returning to the present. The conflict over Notre-Dame's reconstruction promises to be fierce. Nothing short of a cultural war is already brewing between the wise and the daring, the sincere and the opportunist, historians and militants, the devout and secularists. It is here that Poirier reveals the deep malaise - gilet jaunes and all - at the heart of the France.

In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected, a chance encounter that will shape both of their lives for over half a century. Meanwhile, in the north of Korea, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in the glamorous city of Pyongyang. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, they form a deep friendship. But before long, JungHo will be swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, while Jade becomes a celebrated performer pursued by a wealthy romantic prospect. From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, Juhea Kim's unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they shape the future of their nation. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviours, and beasts take many shapes.

'This is history as it ought to be - gripping, dynamic, vividly written' Marcus Rediker The War of 1812 - the last time Britain and America went to war with each other. British redcoats torch the White House and six thousand American sailors languish in the world's largest prisoner-of-war camp, Dartmoor. A myriad of races and backgrounds, with some prisoners as young as thirteen. Known as the 'hated cage', Dartmoor wasn't a place you'd expect to be full of life and invention. Yet prisoners taught each other foreign languages and science, put on plays and staged boxing matches. In daring efforts to escape they lived every prison-break cliche - how to hide the tunnel entrances, what to do with the earth... Drawing on meticulous research, The Hated Cage documents the extraordinary communities these men built within the prison - and the terrible massacre that destroyed these worlds.

Press the snooze button on your alarm once too often and you soon remember the importance of good timekeeping. That need to tell the time connects you to over five thousand years of human history, from the first solstice markers at Newgrange to quartz crystal oscillating in your watch today. Science underpins time: measuring the movement of Sun, Earth and Moon, and unlocking the mysteries of quantum mechanics and relativity theory - the key to ultra-precise atomic clocks. Yet time is also socially decided: the Gregorian calendar we use today came out of fraught politics, while the ancient Maya used sophisticated astronomical observations to produce a calendar system unlike any other. In his quirky and accessible style, Chad Orzel reveals the wondrous physics that makes time something we can set, measure and know.

Culture is something exclusive to human beings, isn't it? Not so, says intrepid researcher Carl Safina. Becoming Wild reveals the rich cultures that survive in some of Earth's remaining wild places. By showing how sperm whales, scarlet macaws and chimpanzees teach and learn, Safina offers a fresh understanding of what is constantly going on beyond humanity, and how we're all connected. 'Becoming Wild demands that we wake up' Telegraph

A killer virus...an all-powerful Empress...an encounter cloaked in secrecy...the astonishing true story. Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history it has killed untold millions. Back in the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept Europe, the first rumours emerged of an effective treatment: a mysterious method called inoculation. But a key problem remained: convincing people to accept the preventative remedy, the forerunner of vaccination. Arguments raged over risks and benefits, and public resistance ran high. As smallpox ravaged her empire and threatened her court, Catherine the Great took the momentous decision to summon the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale to St Petersburg to carry out a secret mission that would transform both their lives. Lucy Ward expertly unveils the extraordinary story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership and the fight to promote science over superstition.

From cells in our bodies to measuring the universe, big numbers are everywhere We all know that numbers go on forever, that you could spend your life counting and never reach the end of the line, so there can't be such a thing as a 'biggest number'. Or can there? To find out, David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee embark on an epic quest, revealing the answers to questions like: are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the universe? Is there enough paper on Earth to write out the digits of a googolplex? And what is a googolplex? Then things get serious. Enter the strange realm between the finite and the infinite, and float through a universe where the rules we cling to no longer apply. Encounter the highest number computable and infinite kinds of infinity. At every turn, a cast of wild and wonderful characters threatens the status quo with their ideas, and each time the numbers get larger.