Reaktion Books strana 2 z 9

This book explores the life of Muammar al-Qaddafi, the enigmatic Libyan leader, from his birth to his assassination in a drainage ditch outside the city of Sirte in October 2011. The first authoritative biography of Qaddafi, it aims to make sense of his remarkable life and times. Known for his idiosyncratic ideas and flamboyant dress, his persona was also a cloak he used to obscure his personal and professional life. Qaddafi created a repressive political system, supported terrorist movements abroad and suppressed basic human rights at home, while abusing hundreds of women. Qaddafi: Beyond The Myth provides a comprehensive look at the forces that shaped Qaddafi and enabled him to become the world's longest-ruling head of state. It also provides essential information for anyone attempting to understand the division, confusion and chaos that has dominated post-Qaddafi Libya.

We often think of medieval medicine as strange, unhygienic and unscientific, but The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living reveals a far richer story. Long before modern wellness trends, people in the Middle Ages were actively thinking about how to live well. They followed detailed health regimens, balanced diet with exercise, considered the effects of emotions and sought to avoid illness through environmental awareness and routine care. This book sheds light on the practical and surprisingly relatable ways medieval individuals cared for body and mind. Drawing from historical sources that echo today’s wellness concerns, it offers a fresh, thoughtful view of a misunderstood era. In understanding their world, we might see our own in a new, more connected light.

From haunted barrows to ruined castles, Britain’s landscape is rich with tales of hidden treasure – stories not just of gold, but of ghosts, curses and forbidden knowledge. Treasures on Earth gathers hundreds of these traditions for the first time, showing how folklore, shaped by local memory and longing, has imagined wealth not merely as currency, but as power, danger and loss. These legends tell of dragons, demons and seekers armed with spells, but also of real hopes stirred by poverty, war and the mysteries of place. Through vivid storytelling and careful insight, this book reveals how treasure lore carries the emotional weight of history. In the end, these are stories not just about what is buried, but about why we still yearn to uncover it.

Tens of millions of people sew for necessity or pleasure every day, yet the craft is surprisingly under-appreciated. Now available in paperback, The Point of the Needle redresses the balance: this is a book that argues for sewing’s place in our lives. It celebrates not only sewing’s recent resurgence but sewists’ creativity, well-being and community. Barbara Burman chronicles new voices of people who sew today, by hand or machine, to explore what they sew, what motivates them, what they value and why they mend things, revealing insights into sewing’s more intimate stories. In our age of superfast fashion with its environmental and social injustices, this eloquent book makes a passionate case for identity, diversity, resilience and memory – what people create for themselves as they stitch and make.

Why do certain women become icons of evil? This book offers the first comparative, non-sensationalist account of five of the most reviled women in the modern Anglophone world: Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka and Karla Faye Tucker. It examines their lives, crimes and cultural reception in the UK, USA and Canada, asking how violence committed by women is understood, judged and remembered. Going beyond moral outrage or tabloid headlines, the book explores how concepts of 'evil' are shaped by history, belief systems and social context. Through historical and ethical reflections, it offers a deeper, more critical engagement with female violence, and considers how society should respond to those who commit acts of unimaginable harm.

Sons of Heaven is the first accessible, newly researched account in English of the imperial family who ruled Ming China (1368–1644), one of the country’s most dynamic and influential eras. Beginning with a fresh look at what a dynasty really was, the book follows the lives of emperors, empresses, relatives and those who came into the imperial orbit. Uniquely drawing from official and unofficial Chinese primary sources, including gossip-rich 'wild histories', it presents a more intimate, complex picture of court life – its politics, personalities and pleasures. Moving beyond stereotypes, the book highlights the power, intrigue and humanity of Ming rule. Richly illustrated with period art that brings the imperial world to life, this is a compelling portrait of dynasty as lived reality.

This witty yet thoughtful book examines stupidity and idiocy, and their most dangerous incarnation: stupid idiocy – the unthinking embrace of flawed thinking. While philosophers chase wisdom, this book takes a humbler route, asking instead how we might think just a little less badly. Drawing sharp distinctions between not thinking and thinking poorly, and doubling down on bad thought, it reveals how deeply these failings are tied to our mental habits. With clarity and humour, it considers how stupidity shapes everyday life and public discourse. Within its pages is a chapter on politics and a pointed critique of Donald Trump, ‘stupid idiot supreme’. This is an accessible philosophical guide for anyone who wants to better understand – and perhaps reduce – their own foolishness.

Featured in New Statesman’s Culture Preview 2026: The best non-fiction to read this yearOf all the English poets born in the twentieth century, Wystan Hugh Auden is by far the most significant. This forthright biography explores the evolution of his poetic voice in tandem with his shifting beliefs – Existentialism, Marxism, Freudianism and Anglo-Catholicism – reflecting the intellectual climate of the century. Rooted in English traditions, Auden’s work reveals both public and personal histories, from the Great Depression and Spanish Civil War to his experiences as a gay man navigating repression and later liberation. The book traces his journeys from Oxford to Berlin, China and America, bringing to life his turbulent era and the inner conflicts of his long relationship with Chester Kallman. This insightful and compelling account by acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd captures Auden’s genius as both a historical witness and an enduring poetic voice.

Featured in New Statesman’s Culture Preview 2026: The best non-fiction to read this yearEnver Hoxha, one of the most fanatical communist leaders of the twentieth century, ruled Albania for forty years. He was a Stalinist modernizer who sought to pull his country out of its peripheral status through rapid industrialization and diplomatic cunning. Albania transitioned from one ideological alliance to another, breaking first with Tito’s Yugoslavia, then Khrushchev’s USSR and lastly post-Maoist China. Masterfully exploiting rivalries within the communist bloc, Hoxha was able to ensure his regime’s survival and play an outsized role in the ideological clashes that riddled the communist world during the second half of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, at home he built a cult of personality and maintained his grip over power by ruthless coercion. Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant paints a nuanced picture of Hoxha’s psychological, ideological and political worlds, illuminating a lesser-known story of the Cold War, and enriching our understanding of the nature of authoritarianism and dictatorship.

Hypochondria proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures, philosophical thought and medical discourse, the book challenges the containment of suffering within narratives of professional authority. In doing so, it seeks to dispel shame and stigma, opening space for new forms of connection and understanding through a deeper attentiveness to the experience of illness.

This concise biography offers a fresh portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson: frail Edinburgh child turned globe-trotting author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It charts his remarkable literary range – from fiction and poetry to essays and letters – crafted across three continents, often in poor health. Stevenson’s adventurous life and memorable characters captured both popular imagination and critical praise. Drawing on new scholarship, the book explores his role as a literary innovator and cultural commentator, revealing how his work engaged with the anxieties of a rapidly changing world. At once celebrity, critic and colonial observer, Stevenson emerges as a truly modern writer, whose influence remains potent today. This is essential reading for lovers of literature, history and global storytelling.

Fascism was a distinct movement in European history that left deep scars across the continent, but the term 'fascist' is now more broadly applied to those on the political right, especially the new populists who have seized power across much of the globe in recent years. Although most far-right populists vocally disavow historic fascism, many critics see worrying parallels with the earlier movement. Could we be witnessing a return to the fascist politics of Mussolini, Franco and Hitle? aximiliano Fuentes Codera and Javier Rodrigo have written both an assessment of the current crisis of democracy and a brief history of fascism and far-right populism around the world. By illuminating the historical record, this book will help readers better understand the distinctive, twenty-first-century challenges faced by our democracies.

How did Richard the Lionheart, who once said he would sell London if he found a buyer, become celebrated as the ideal of English chivalry? This book examines the life of Richard I (1157–1199) through the captivating stories told about him, from accounts of his deeds in medieval sources to his portrayals in modern literature and media. Tales of Richard’s exploits were as colourful as they were varied, ranging from him wielding King Arthur’s sword to being a son of the Devil or even a cannibal. Instead of separating fact from fiction, this book explores how these tales shaped his legacy in both his time and ours.

Francis I of France led one of the most colourful and influential courts of the sixteenth century. Known as the ‘knight–king’, he was a chivalric warrior, a strong ruler and a passionate patron of the arts and of the French nobility. While he faced setbacks and took significant risks, Francis left his successor a kingdom that was larger, better governed and more stable than before. This concise biography paints a vivid portrait of Francis, exploring his achievements, challenges and enduring legacy. It captures his role in shaping the French Renaissance, blending engaging storytelling with insights drawn from extensive primary research. Cogent and lively, this book provides a clear narrative of Francis’s reign and explains why he is celebrated as France’s great Renaissance monarch.

A radical history of England, Contested Commons is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country. Navickas reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites. She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times. Contested Commons offers positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest.

One of The Guardian’s Best Biographies of 2025. This biography explores the life and work of Katherine Mansfield, one of literary modernism’s most significant writers. On the fringes of Bloomsbury, and friends with D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot and many others, Mansfield was at the heart of literary London at its most experimental. By the time of her death in 1923, aged just 34, she had broken boundaries and created new ways of writing that led her literary sparring partner Virginia Woolf to later admit that Mansfield’s ‘was the only writing I was ever jealous of’. Based on compelling new research, Gerri Kimber challenges previous conceptions surrounding the author’s life, uncovers friendships and relationships formerly barely acknowledged and offers innovative readings of Mansfield’s most celebrated stories.