The Bodley Head

A must for die-hard fans of the series and an irresistible introduction to the dark and the dangerous for new recruits.

London in the eighteenth century was very much a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire. With thousands of homes and many landmark buildings destroyed, it had been brought to the brink. But the following century was a period of vigorous expansion, of scientific and artistic genius, of blossoming reason, civility, elegance and manners. It was also an age of extremes: of starving poverty and exquisite fashion, of joy and despair, of sentiment and cruelty. Society was fractured by geography, politics, religion and history. And everything was complicated by class. As Daniel Defoe put it, London really was a 'great and monstrous Thing'. Jerry White's tremendous portrait of this turbulent century explores how and to what extent Londoners negotiated and repaired these open wounds. We see them going about their business as bankers or beggars, revelling in an enlarging world of public pleasures, indulging in crimes both great and small - amidst the tightening sinews of power and regulation, and the hesitant beginnings of London democracy. In the long-awaited finale to his acclaimed history of London over 300 years, Jerry White introduces us to shopkeepers and prostitutes, men and women of fashion and genius, street-robbers and thief-takers, as they play out the astonishing drama of life in eighteenth-century London.

"Wonder" is the funny, sweet and incredibly moving story of Auggie Pullman. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, this shy, bright ten-year-old has been home-schooled by his parents for his whole life, in an attempt to protect him from the stares and cruelty of the outside world. Now, for the first time, Auggie is being sent to a real school - and he's dreading it. The thing is, Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all? Through the voices of Auggie, his big sister Via, and his new friends Jack and Summer, "Wonder" follows Auggie's journey through his first year at Beecher Prep. Frank, powerful, warm and often heart-breaking, "Wonder" is a book you'll read in one sitting, pass on to others, and remember long after the final page.

history of the Jews is possibly the greatest story that can be told. It is the story of mankind - at its most noble and at its most barbaric. Simon Schama believes that by the time of publication the Jewish epic will once again be the fulcrum on which the fate of the world turns - that a two-state solution brokered in the Middle East by the Obama administration will be under threat from militant fundamentalists, supported by two nuclear states, Iran and Pakistan, capable of inflicting catastrophic damage in the region and beyond. So that moment, loaded with peril for all humanity, will ultimately turn, as so often before, on the obstinacy and grandeur of Jewish history - on its will, against the odds, to endure. From the invention of a single deity and the killing of his embodied Son through to the production of urban modernity, so much of supreme importance for humanity bears the imprint of Jewish thinking and culture. As well as exploring that history, Simon Schama - as he did in The American Future - will report from the battlefronts of today. He will talk to Jews and non-Jews, to archaeologists, rabbis, soldiers, hedge fund managers, Israeli Arabs and Jews for Jesus, film-makers, cartoonists and comedians. This is in every sense a major book - in its chronological reach and its international scope, in its humour and its tragedy, in the depth of its drama, and in its ability to change the way in which we view the world.

Not so long ago the internet was a new and alien concept. Today, the world would collapse without it. Today, cryptocurrency is a new and little-used concept. Tomorrow, will the world collapse without it? We sit at the cusp of a revolution in global commerce, a shift that promises nothing less than to reshape the international economic and political order. At the heart of this revolution lies the groundbreaking technology of cryptocurrencies. With the advent of bitcoin in 2008 the term 'cryptocurrency' crept into our lives. But whether bitcoin triumphs or fails, the technology it unleashed is here to stay and will only get stronger. It's cheaper, faster, easier, more democratic and safer than paper money and credit cards, and people - and governments - are catching on fast. Age of Cryptocurrency is a vision of a radically different future. In examining the new and unstoppable revolution that is cryptocurrency it forces us to rethink our assumptions that underlie the world in its present form, to question what money is and how it functions in society, and to envisage how it could change our lives beyond recognition.

Jaron Lanier, ‘the father of Virtual Reality … a high-tech genius’ (Sunday Times), tells the extraordinary story of how in just over three decades Virtual Reality went from being a dream to a reality – and how its power to turn dreams into realities will transform us and our world. Virtual Reality has long been one of the dominant clichés of science fiction. Now Virtual Reality is a reality: those big headsets that make people look ridiculous, even while radiating startled delight; the place where war veterans overcome PTSD, surgeries are trialled, aircraft and cities are designed. But VR is far more interesting than any single technology, however spectacular. It is, in fact, the most effective device ever invented for researching what a human being actually is – and how we think and feel. More than thirty years ago, legendary computer scientist, visionary and artist Jaron Lanier pioneered its invention. Here, in what is likely to be one of the most unusual books you ever read, he blends scientific investigation, philosophical thought experiment and his memoir of a life lived at the centre of digital innovation to explain what VR really is: the science of comprehensive illusion; the extension of the intimate magic of earliest childhood into adulthood; a hint of what life would be like without any limits. As Lanier shows, we are standing on the threshold of an entirely new realm of human creativity, expression, communication and experience. While we can use VR to test our relationship with reality, it will test us in return, for how we choose to use it will reveal who we truly are. Welcome to a mind-expanding, life-enhancing, world-changing adventure.

The immune system holds the key to human health. In The Beautiful Cure, leading immunologist Daniel Davis describes the scientific quest to understand how it works - and how it is affected by stress, sleep, age and our state of mind - and explains how this knowledge is now unlocking a revolutionary new approach to medicine and well-being. The body's ability to fight disease and heal itself is one of the great mysteries and marvels of nature, but within the last few years painstaking research has resulted in major advances in our understanding of the immune system, revealing an inner world of breath-taking sophistication, complexity and beauty. Far more powerful than any medicine ever invented, it also plays a crucial role in our daily lives. Already we have found ways to harness these natural defences to create break-through drugs and therapies that help us fight cancer, diabetes, arthritis and many age-related diseases, and we are starting to understand whether or not activities such as mindfulness might play a role in enhancing our physical resilience. Written by an expert at the forefront of this adventure, The Beautiful Cure tells a dramatic story of detective work and discovery, of puzzles solved and of the mysteries that remain, of lives sacrificed and saved, introducing the reader to this revelatory new understanding of the human body and what it takes to be healthy.

The past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, the answer is Russia. Today's Russia is an oligarchy propped up by illusions and repression. But it also represents the fulfilment of tendencies already present in the West. And if Moscow's drive to dissolve Western states and values succeeds, this could become our reality too. In this visionary work of contemporary history, Timothy Snyder shows how Russia works within the West to destroy the West; by supporting the far right in Europe, invading Ukraine in 2014, and waging a cyberwar during the 2016 presidential campaign and the EU referendum. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the creation of Donald Trump, an American failure deployed as a Russian weapon. But this threat presents an opportunity to better understand the pillars of our freedoms, confront our own complacency and seek renewal. History never ends, and this new challenge forces us to face the choices that will determine the future: equality or oligarchy, individualism or totalitarianism, truth or lies. The Road to Unfreedom helps us to see our world as if for the first time. It is necessary reading for any citizen of a democracy.

Did you know that trees can influence the rotation of the earth? Or that wolves can alter the course of a river? Or that earthworms control wild boar populations? The natural world is a web of intricate connections, many of which go unnoticed by humans. But it is these connections that maintain nature's finely balanced equilibrium. Drawing on the latest scientific discoveries and decades of experience as a forester and bestselling author, Peter Wohlleben shows us how different animals, plants, rivers, rocks and weather systems cooperate, and what's at stake when these delicate systems are unbalanced. The earth's ecosystems are too complex for us to compartmentalise and draw up simple rules of cause and effect; but The Secret Network of Naturegives us a chance to marvel at the inner workings and unlikely partnerships of the natural world, where every entity has its own distinct purpose. And the more light that is shed on relationships between species, the more fascinating nature's web becomes.

In a centuries-old tradition, farmers in northwestern Iceland scour remote coastal plains for the down of nesting eider ducks. High inside a vast cave in Borneo, men perched atop rickety ladders collect swiftlets' nests, a delicacy believed to be a cure for almost anything. Eiderdown and edible birds' nests: both are luxury products, ultimately destined for the super-rich. To the rest of the world these materials are mere commodities but to the harvesters they are all imbued with myth, tradition, folklore and ritual, and form part of a shared identity and history. These objects are two of the seven natural wonders whose stories Harvest tells: eiderdown, vicuna wool, sea silk, vegetable ivory, civet coffee, guano and edible birds' nests. Harvest follows their journey from the wildest parts of the planet, traversing Iceland, Indonesia, and Peru, to its urban centres, drawing on the voices of the gatherers, shearers and entrepreneurs who harvest, process and trade them. Blending interviews, history and travel writing, Harvest sets these human stories against our changing economic and ecological landscape. What do they tell us about capitalism, global market forces and overharvesting? How does a local micro-economy survive in a hyper-connected world? Harvest makes us see the world with wonder, curiosity and new concern. It is an original and magical new map of our world and its riches.

The heart of racism is denial. It is refusing to self-reflect. In his global, game-changing bestseller How To Be An Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Centre for Antiracist Research at Boston University, showed that when it comes to racism, neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem. Crucially, it requires 'persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism and regular self-examination'. In this workbook he uses his extraordinary gifts as a teacher to provide the reader with a series of activities, exercises and reflections to help them do this vital work, to cultivate an instinctive awareness of racism in all its forms and to take the action necessary to promote racial equity in the world around them. He asks us to reflect on our thinking around race through prompts including 'Describe the most racist moment of your life,', 'Have you ever been hesitant to use the R-word? Why?' and 'What does resistance mean to you?' helping us understand that the heartbeat of anti-racism is confession. It is self-reflection. Being antiracist is not something you are. It's something we do.

What would happen if you fell into a Black Hole? Black Holes are the most extraordinary phenomenon in the universe, but they are a riddle that confounds our intuitions. Anything that enters them can never escape, and yet they contain nothing at all. They are bigger on the inside than the outside suggests. They are dark on the outside but not on the inside. They invert time into space and space into time. Black Holes are found throughout the universe. They can be microscopic. They can be billions of times larger than our sun. Our solar system is currently orbiting a Black Hole 26,000 light years away at a speed of 200 km per second. In Black Hole Survival Guide physicist and novelist Janna Levin takes you on a journey into a black hole, explaining what would happen to you in there and why. In the process you'll come to see how their mysteries contain answers to some of the most profound questions ever asked about the nature of our universe.

What is time? Why is the past so different from the present and the future? This simple question is in fact one of the deepest, most long-standing problems in physics. None of the known laws of the universe can fully explain it. In The Janus Point, Julian Barbour presents a bold new thesis and a possible solution, with radical implications for our understanding of the Big Bang and the nature of time itself. His argument rests on two vital insights. The first is that the most common explanation for time - entropy - is flawed: firstly, because we have no way of explaining how the concentration of energy that would allow the Big Bang to take place came about, and secondly because none of our understanding of entropy takes into account the fact that the universe is infinitely expanding. In addition, our universe is actually becoming ever more complex and ordered as it expands, not less so. The second is a phenomenon which Barbour labels 'The Janus Point': any system of particles in motion will pass through a single moment of smallest size, never to be repeated. Combining these two observations, Barbour argues that the universe, and therefore time itself, may not have begun at the Big Bang, but rather at The Janus Point, thus solving the conundrum of entropy. Monumental in vision and scope, The Janus Point offers a ground-breaking challenge to our understanding of the universe and a brilliant solution of breath-taking elegance and import to this most fundamental of problems.

What happens when the President of the United States engages in criminal activity? He runs for re-election. Donald Trump's campaign chairman went to jail. So did his personal lawyer. His long-time political consigliere was convicted of serious federal crimes, and his National Security Advisor pleaded guilty to several more. Multiple Russian spies were indicted in absentia. Career intelligence agents and military officers were alarmed enough by his actions as President that they alerted senior government officials and ignited the impeachment process. Yet despite all this, a years-long inquiry led by Robert Mueller, and the third Presidential impeachment trial in American history, Donald Trump survived to run for presidency again. Why? Jeffrey Toobin's highly entertaining, definitive account of the Mueller investigation and the impeachment of the President takes readers behind the scenes of the epic legal and political struggle to call Trump to account for his misdeeds. Toobin recounts the mind-boggling twists and turns in the case - Trump's son met with a Russian operative promising Kremlin support; Trump paid a porn star $130,000 to hush up an affair; Rudy Giuliani and a pair of shady Ukrainian-American businessmen got the Justice Department to look at Russian-created conspiracy theories. Toobin shows how Trump's canny lawyers used Mueller's famous integrity against him, and how Trump's bullying and bluster cowed Republican legislators into ignoring the clear evidence of the impeachment hearings. Based on dozens of interviews with prosecutors in Mueller's office, Trump's legal team, Congressional investigators, White House staffers, and several of the key players, including some who are now in prison, True Crimes and Misdemeanours is a revelatory narrative that makes sense of the seemingly endless chaos of the Trump years. Filled with never-before-reported details of the high-stakes legal battles and political machinations, the book weaves a tale of a rogue President guilty of historic misconduct, and how he got away with it.

This is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains. Spanning millennia, from its earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya is a soaring account of resilience and conquest, discovery and plunder, oppression and enlightenment at the 'roof of the world'. From all around the globe, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world's most spectacular and challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has throughout the ages been home to an astonishing diversity of indigenous and local cultures, as well as a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for the world's superpowers. Here Jesuit missionaries exchanged technologies with Tibetan Lamas, Mongol Khans employed Nepali craftsmen, Armenian merchants exchanged musk and gold with Mughals. Here too the East India Company grappled for dominance with China's emperors, independent India has been locked in conflict with Mao's Communists and their successors, and the ideological confrontation of the Cold War is now being buried beneath mass tourism and ecological transformation. Featuring scholars and tyrants, bandits and CIA agents, go-betweens and revolutionaries, Himalaya is a panoramic, character-driven history on the grandest but also the most human scale, by far the most comprehensive yet written, encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.