Oneworld Publications strana 9 z 14

Apocalypse, now? Death by fire, ice, poison gas, suffocation, asteroid. At five moments through history life on Earth was dragged to the very edge of extinction. Now, armed with revolutionary technology, scientists are uncovering clues about what caused these catastrophes. Deep-diving into past worlds of dragonflies the size of seagulls and fishes with guillotines for mouths, they explore how - against all the odds - life survived and what these ominous chapters can tell us about our future.

To be an astronomer is to journey to some of the most inaccessible parts of the globe, braving mountain passes, sub-zero temperatures, and hostile flora and fauna. Not to mention the stress of handling equipment worth millions. It is a life of unique delights and absurdities ... and one that may be drawing to a close. Since Galileo first pointed his telescope at the heavens, astronomy has stood as a fount of human creativity and discovery, but soon it will be the robots gazing at the sky while we are left to sift through the data. In The Last Stargazers, Emily Levesque reveals the hidden world of the professional astronomer. She celebrates an era of ingenuity and curiosity, and asks us to think twice before we cast aside our sense of wonder at the universe.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was hailed as the beginning of a new era of peace and co-operation between East and West. But in the years since, Russia has made incursions into Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, leaving the Western powers at a loss. What went wrong? Drawing on exclusive interviews with key players, Peter Conradi examines the pivotal moments of the past quarter of a century and outlines how we might get relations back on track before it's too late. Who Lost Russia? provides the essential background to understanding the bizarre and shifting relationship between Trump's America and Putin's Russia. This updated edition includes a new chapter on the year following the 2016 US presidential election.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BY Buzzfeed * Esquire * Bustle * The Millions * The Wall Street Journal * Entertainment Weekly * Nylon * Elle * Dazed * The Irish Times 'Cassaras's propulsive and profound first novel, finding one's home in the world - particularly in a subculture plagued by fear and intolerance from society - comes with tragedy as well as extraordinary personal freedom.' Esquire A gritty and gorgeous debut inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning It's 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city's glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ballroom scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, and has a yearning to help create a family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the ballroom circuit. Into the house come Venus, a whip-smart trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus' life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. Told in a voice that brims with wit, rage, tenderness, and fierce yearning, The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love, family, and the dynamism of the human spirit.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Millicent Fawcett, Emmeline Pankhurst, Constance Markievicz, Nancy Astor They terrorised the establishment. They fought for the vote. They pushed back boundaries and revolutionised our world. For the hundredth anniversary of the historic moment the franchise was finally extended to women, here is a selection of suffragette and suffragist activists and pioneering MPs from the pages of Jenni Murray's bestselling A History of Britain in 21 Women. Set against the backdrop of a world where equality is still to be achieved, it is a vital reminder of the great women who fought for change.

The breathtaking debut from the winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018 'A soaring and sublime epic. One of those great stories that was just waiting to be told.' (Marlon James, Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings) The year is 1750. As he makes his way to the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. As the centuries pass, the tale moves down the bloodline, exploring the lives of four of Kintu Kidda's descendants. Although the family members all have their own stories and live in very different circumstances, they are united by one thing - the struggle to break free from the curse and escape the burden of their family's past. Blending Ganda oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has brought to life an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters to produce a powerful epic - a modern classic.

How two unlikely heroes inspired a whole town Sometimes, in the blink of an eye, you do something that changes your life forever. ike climbing a tree with a girl you don't know. Marnus is tired of feeling invisible, living in the shadow of his two brothers. His older brother is good at breaking swimming records and girls’ hearts. His younger brother is already a crafty entrepreneur who has tricked him into doing the dishes all summer. But when a girl called Leila turns up on their doorstep one morning with a petition, it’s the start of an unexpected adventure. And finally, Marnus gets the chance to be noticed...

A New Statesman Book of the YearLondon. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.

What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team did something unique - they persuaded dogs to lie in an MRI scanner while completely awake. This gave them an unparalleled insight into what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems and a complex understanding of human speech. And that was just the beginning. From sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger, Berns provides fascinating glimpses into the inner lives of animals. His discoveries have profound implications for how we communicate with and treat our furry, and not-so-furry, friends. Revolutionary and deeply humane, What It's Like to Be a Dog is essential reading for animal lovers of all stripes.

The author of the bestselling Your Inner Fish gives us a brilliant, up-to-date account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth. Over billions of years, fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and ape-like primates changed into humans who walk on two legs, talk and write. This is a story full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help them walk on land, you'd be in good company. You'd also be entirely wrong. Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, the ongoing revolutions in our understanding of how we got here, and brings us closer to answering one of the great questions - was life on earth inevitable...or was it all an accident?

A Most Anticipated Book for 2020 according to The Sunday Times, the FT and the GuardianA breathtaking tale of family secrets, from the international bestselling author of An American Marriage 'My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.'This is the breathtaking story of a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle. James Witherspoon has two families, one public, the other a closely guarded secret. But when his daughters meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows the truth. Theirs is a relationship destined to explode. Silver Sparrow is the stunning new novel from the critically acclaimed winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction, an author deemed one of the most important writers of her generation.

The incendiary new book about toxic masculinity and misogyny from Clementine Ford, author of the bestselling feminist manifesto, Fight Like A Girl. Boys Will Be Boys answers the question Clementine Ford is most often asked: 'How do I raise my son to respect women?' With equal parts passion and humour, Ford reveals how patriarchal society is as destructive for men as it is for women, creating a dangerously limited idea of what it is to be a man. She traces the way gender norms creep into the home from early childhood, through popular culture or the division of housework and shines a light on what needs to change for equality to become a reality.

Who are we? What do we value? How do we live here? Guided by parents, carers, teachers and siblings, we learn to answer these questions as we grow up. But it's not just us. Many animals must learn to answer them too. In Becoming Wild, Carl Safina reveals that culture, long thought exclusive to humankind, is abundant in the animal kingdom. Sperm whales in the Caribbean communicate through a system of clicks akin to Morse code, announcing which clan they belong to, which family and who they are individually. Among chimpanzees the obsession with male status may guarantee violence, even war, but they also have many ways to quell tensions. As Safina shows, the better we understand the animals with whom we share this planet, the less different from us they seem.

How do you predict something that has never happened before? There's a useful calculation being employed by Wall Street, Silicon Valley and maths professors all over the world, and it predicts that the human species will become extinct in 760 years. Unfortunately, there is disagreement over how to apply the formula, and some argue that we might only have twenty years left. Originally devised by British clergyman Thomas Bayes, the theorem languished in obscurity for two hundred years before being resurrected as the lynchpin of the digital economy. With brief detours into archaeology, philology, and overdue library books, William Poundstone explains how we can use it to predict pretty much anything. What is the chance that there are multiple universes? How long will Hamilton run? Will the US stock market continue to perform as well this century as it has for the last hundred years? And are we really all doomed?

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.

New York Times Notable Books of 2018 Financial Times Book of the Year Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid presents reportage of unprecedented scope in this engaging, character-driven investigation that exposes the secret dealings that armed and betrayed an uprising. Taking readers deep into Assad's prisons, to clandestine meetings and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy, Abouzeid dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict, and lays bare the tragedy of the Syrian War through the stories of those seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Based on more than five years of frontline reporting, No Turning Back is an utterly engrossing human drama that shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century's greatest humanitarian disasters.