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Astonish Me! is an adrenaline-charged rollercoaster through history's seismic first nights, exploring how individual artists can change and shape the story of culture - and allow us to see ourselves in new ways. It tells of times when 'the air between people seems to alter' as art achieves profound change, across the globe and across history. Dominic Dromgoole has created a radical and fresh canon. He begins in New York in 1963, as Lorraine Hansberry remakes American theatre and a nation's perception of race. And then, as the lights go up, we find ourselves in Renaissance Florence, watching Michelangelo's David being hauled into the Piazza della Signoria. The dust settles and we are transported to the birth of theatre in fifth-century Athens - and then to Paris to meet with Diaghilev and Stravinsky for the Rite of Spring. We witness kabuki's creation, as a radical women's performance, in Kyoto; the Sex Pistols shattering Thatcherite Britain at Manchester's Free Trade Hall; and watch as Hitchcock directs Psycho.

To master anything, we must first master ourselves: our emotions, thoughts and actions. This ancient virtue of self-control is more essential than ever. In this bestselling book, Ryan Holiday makes the case for this essential virtue, and shows how to cultivate willpower, self-respect and focus. From Marcus Aurelius to Toni Morrison, Queen Elizabeth II to Martin Luther King Jr, history's greats have all understood the power of directing your habits and setting your limits. History's cautionary tales prove the same point, from catastrophic military overreaches to career-destroying habits: without self-discipline, we are lost before we can even begin. Self-discipline is the key to our greatest ambitions and simplest joys: this book will show you how to find it, apply it and reap the rewards.

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps the driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change. Beginning with the Black Death in the fourteenth century, Peckham traces a shadow history of fear. He takes us through the French Revolution and the social movements of the nineteenth century to modern market crashes, Cold War paranoia and the AIDS pandemic, into a digital culture increasingly marked by uniquely twenty-first-century fears. What did fear mean to us in the past, and how can a better understanding of it equip us to face the future? As Peckham demonstrates, fear can challenge as well as cement authority. Some crises have destroyed societies; others have been the making of them. Through the stories of the people and the moments that changed history, Fear: An Alternative History of the World reveals how fear and panic made us who we are.

THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE 48 LAWS OF POWER BRINGS YOU 365 MORE Over the last 25 years, Robert Greene has provided insights into every aspect of being human: whether that be getting what you want, understanding others' motivations, mastering your impulses, or recognising strengths and weaknesses. The Daily Laws distills that wisdom into easy-to-digest daily entries whose content spans power, seduction, war, strategy, politics, productivity, psychology, leadership, and adversity. Not only is this beautifully designed volume the perfect entry point for those new to Greene's penetrating insight, but it will also be a Rosetta stone for existing fans to understand and internalise the many lessons that fill his previous books. Read, re-read, and learn.

Discover the full potential of your ideas and make powerful, meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain. For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world's knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to create and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than being empowered by this information, we're often overwhelmed, paralysed by believing we'll never know or remember enough. This eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. A trusted and organised digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes and creative work, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals. From identifying good ideas, to organising your thoughts, to retrieving everything swiftly and easily, it puts you back in control of your life and information.

The Bookshop in Wigtown is a bookworm's idyll - with thousands of books across nearly a mile of shelves, a real log fire, and Captain, the bookshop cat. You'd think after twenty years, owner Shaun Bythell would be used to the customers by now. Don't get him wrong - there are some good ones among the antiquarian porn-hunters, die-hard Arthurians, people who confuse bookshops for libraries and the toddlers just looking for a nice cosy corner in which to wee. He's sure there are. There must be some good ones, right? Filled with the pernickety warmth and humour that has touched readers around the world, stuffed with literary treasures, hidden gems and incunabula, Remainders of the Day is Shaun Bythell's latest entry in his bestselling diary series.

Imagine you had a crystal that lit upon your command: magic must be at work, and you must surely be a wizard. But what if you discovered that you routinely cast such spells? Are the spells no longer magic ... or are you a wizard? The modern term for wizardry is condensed matter physics. It is the study of the world around us - the states of matter and how they emerge from the quantum realm. Thanks to its practical magic we can make lasers which cut through solid metal, trains which hover in mid-air, and crystals which light our homes. It is one of the best-kept secrets in science; a third of all physicists work on it, yet its story has never been told. Join Felix Flicker as he introduces the magic of condensed matter physics. It will be a journey that reveals the subtle spells that conjure crystals from chaos and create new particles that have never before existed. The Magick of Matter will revolutionise what you know about physics and reality; you'll never see the world in the same way again.

A Financial Times 'Book to Read in 2023' 1930s Europe - as the Roaring Twenties wind down and the world rumbles towards war, the great minds of the time have other concerns. Jean-Paul Sartre waits anxiously in a Parisian café for his first date with no-show Simone de Beauvoir. Marlene Dietrich slips from her loveless marriage into the dive bars of Berlin. Father and son Thomas and Klaus Mann clash over each other's homosexuality. And Vladimir Nabokov lovingly places a fresh-caught butterfly at the end of Verá's bed. Little do they all know, the book burning will soon begin. Love in a Time of Hate skilfully interweaves some of the greatest love stories of the 1930s with the darkening backdrop of fascism in Europe, in an irresistible journey into the past that brings history and its actors to vivid life.

Nothing stays the same. The only constant we now face is change, and the demand for those who can grasp its opportunities has never been greater. Organisations today must learn to continuously adapt - and adapt faster than their competition. It is this that will drive them forward and it is this that is the modern leader's greatest challenge. Despite what we're told, leading change is not a secret knowledge available only to a chosen few. This book cuts through the bullsh*t to enable everybody to do it and do it well. Drawing on over a decade of experience leading successful change programmes around the world, Chris Hirst cuts through the unworkable guff to reveal his uncomplicated, proven strategies for team, organisational and cultural transformation. For everybody, from leaders of small teams to global enterprises, this book will transform how you lead, your results and the careers of those who work with you.

'What makes Art is Magic so rewarding is that Deller can write. Strikingly, he finds the literary process "mortifying . . . as though I am slowly dying". Perhaps it is that painful intensity that electrifies his prose, which comes across as crystalline, athletic, earnest yet frequently funny.' - Financial Times 'His work is hilarious and touching' - David Byrne 'Making good political art is almost impossible. Deller makes it fun. What sets him apart is his utopian optimism and belief in people.' - Jonathan Jones, The Guardian Art is Magic is artist Jeremy Deller's attempt to tie up the key works of his career alongside the art, pop music, film, politics and history that have inspired his work. Much has been written about Deller over the decades but this is the first time he has pulled together all of his cultural touchstones. The book features work from across Deller's life and art and includes Sacrilege, the inflatable Stonehenge, the Iggy Pop Life Class, The Battle of Orgreave, a recreation of a confrontation from the Miners' Strike, bats (a subject in at least three of Deller's works), Andy Warhol (whom he met in 1986), rave culture, hen harriers pecking out the eyes of a Tory MP, and a giant Chameleon slide. Art is Magic gives us the most rigorous account of Deller and his work to date. Something for everybody.

For decades, biology has been dominated by information - the power of genes. Yet there is no difference in information content between a living cell and one that died a moment ago. A better question goes back to the formative years of biology: what processes animate cells and set them apart from lifeless matter? In Transformer, Nick Lane turns the standard view upside down, capturing an extraordinary scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight. At its core is an amazing cycle of reactions that uses energy to transform inorganic molecules into the building blocks of life - and the reverse. To understand this cycle is to fathom the deep coherence of the living world. It connects the origin of life with the devastation of cancer, the first photosynthetic bacteria with our own mitochondria, sulphurous sludges with the emergence of consciousness, and the trivial differences between ourselves with the large-scale history of our planet.

Once upon a time, a writer had an idea. They wrote it down. But what happened next? Join Rebecca Lee, professional text-improver, as she embarks on a fascinating journey to find out how words get from an author's brain to finished, printed books. She'll reveal the dark arts of ghostwriters, explore the secret world of literary agents and uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting. Along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known (but often controversial) considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric points of grammar and juicy post-publication corrections. After all, the best stories happen when it all goes wrong. From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.* * Or, at least, better

You may not be aware of this - not consciously, at least - but you do not control what you eat. Every mouthful you take is informed by the subtle tweaking and nudging of a vast, complex, global system: one so intimately woven into everyday life that you hardly even know it's there. The food system is no longer simply a means of sustenance. It is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth. It sustains us, but it is also killing us. Diet-related disease is now the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world - far worse than smoking. The environmental damage done by the food system is also changing climate patterns and degrading the earth, risking our food security. Few people know the workings of the food system better than Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain, government adviser and author of the radical National Food Strategy. In Ravenous, he takes us behind the scenes to reveal the mechanisms that act together to shape the modern diet - and therefore the world. He explains not just why the food system is leading us into disaster, but what can be done about it.

A short history of one of Ancient Britain's most enigmatic civilisations A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2022 Who were the Celts? Were they a people, a civilisation, an empire, or a fiction of historical imagination? They flit as ghosts through Europe's ancient past, purported ancestors of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Bretons. Yet they have never been identified with any one land, or with any one history or language. Simon Jenkins argues compellingly that the 'Celts' is a misleading concept, bundling together quite distinct peoples. The word keltoi first appears in Greek, applied generally to aliens or 'barbarians' - and theories of Celticism continue to fuel many of the prejudices and misconceptions that divide the British Isles to this day. Fascinating and increasingly relevant, who the Celts were - or weren't - goes to the heart of the ongoing argument over the future of a dis-United Kingdom.

A defence of liberalism by the renowned political philosopher Liberalism - the comparatively mild-mannered sibling to the more ardent camps of nationalism and socialism - has never been so divisive as today. From Putin's populism, the Trump administration and autocratic rulers in democracies the world over, it has both thrived and failed under identity politics, authoritarianism, social media and a weakened free press the world over. Since its inception following the post-Reformation wars, liberalism has come under attack from conservatives and progressives alike, and today is dismissed by many as an 'obsolete doctrine'. In this brilliant and concise exposition, Francis Fukuyama sets out the cases for and against its classical premises: observing the rule of law, independence of judges, means over ends, and most of all, tolerance. Pithy, to the point, and ever pertinent, this is political dissection at its very best.

SELECTED AS A NEW SCIENTIST 'BOOKS TO EXPAND YOUR MIND' Throughout human history, every single one of us has been born from a person. So far. But that is about to change. Scientific research is on the cusp of being able to grow babies outside human bodies, from machines, for the very first time. Claire Horn takes us on a truly radical and urgent deep dive into the most challenging and pertinent questions of our age. Could artificial wombs allow women to redistribute the work of gestating? How do we protect reproductive and abortion rights? And who exactly gets access to this technology, in our vastly unequal world? In this interrogative and fascinating story of modern birth, Eve imagines with eye-opening clarity what all this might mean for the future of humanity.