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I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. ‘White Nights’ is the bittersweet story of a lonely young man’s love found and lost over four magical midsummer evenings in St. Petersburg. This collection brings together seven of Dostoyevsky’s beloved short stories, including 'Bobok', an eavesdrop on the conversations of the dead, 'An Unpleasant Predicament', which follows a brazen wedding-crasher, and 'The Crocodile', in which a man is gobbled up at the Arcade. This selection of tales bring to life the cunning wives, buffoonish officials, greedy men and political prisoners of imperial Russia, showcasing Dostoyevsky’s dry wit – both absurd and satirical – while revealing his deep compassion. Considered one of the most influential writers of all time, his empathy and idealism resonates today as a powerful antidote to the disillusionment of modern life. A selection of Dostoyevsky's short stories: • White Nights • The Crocodile • A Novel in Nine Letters • An Unpleasant Predicament • The Peasant Marey • Bobok • A Christmas Tree and a Wedding • A Gentle Spirit

HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The wise are free from perplexities; the virtuous from anxiety; and the bold from fear.' Born Kong Qiu (??) in what is now eastern China, Confucius began teaching a harmonious way of life based on humility, respect and the careful study of the ancients in the late sixth century BCE. Living conscientiously throughout the highs of his political career and struggles of self-imposed exile, his philosophy became so influential that, in the West, Confucianism became a byword for the tradition itself. A collection of his teachings compiled by his followers after his death, The Analects has for millennia attracted admirers all over the world and represented a cornerstone in East Asian thought, emphasising compassion, sincerity, and personal and social moral responsibility.

An enormous bestseller in Greece, this is a bold, witty retelling of the story of Ancient Greece by a rising star in archaeology Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn't. A simple question, 'What do you do?', becomes the springboard for a dialogue that weaves a fascinating tale. Archaeologist Theodore Papakostas takes the reader on a spectacularly iconoclastic and hugely engrossing journey through ancient Greece, from its beginnings in prehistory to its end. Marvelling at the exalted moments in history as well as the more mundane, Papakostas introduces the reader to countless fascinating stories about the cradle of western civilisation - many of which upend received wisdom about the empire as well as about archaeology itself. Along the way, he settles questions such as: What did a Minoan princess pack for a trip to Egypt? How did a raunchy dance lead to the birth of Democracy? Why did Heraclitus suggest that Homer should be slapped? A whistle-stop tour through three hundred years of Greek history, How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator is an unforgettable love letter to the treasures we've inherited from the ancient world, as well as to those who have helped us unearth them.

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations. A company of the newly-formed Airborne Forces was committed to the operation, which took place on the night of 27/28 February. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth. Max Hastings recounts this cliffhanging tale in a wealth of previously unchronicled detail. He portrays its remarkable personalities: the ‘boffin’ RV Jones; the peacock Mountbatten; the troubled husband of Daphne Du Maurier, Gen. ’Boy’ Browning, who commanded the Airborne Division; ‘Colonel Remy’, the French secret agent whose men reconnoitered Bruneval at mortal risk; Major John Frost, who led the paras into action; Charlie Cox, the little RAF technician who stripped the Würzburg and became an unexpected hero; Wing-Commander Charles Pickard, a legendary bomber pilot who led the drop squadron. Seldom have so many fascinating personalities been brought together to fulfil a mission that became a front-page triumph in a season of British defeats. Recounted in Hastings’ familiar best-selling blend of top-down and bottom-up action detail, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history.

An electric, searing memoir by the original riot grrrl and legendary frontwoman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hey girlfriend I got a proposition, goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want. Kathleen Hanna’s rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the 1980s, ’90s, and beyond. Her band, Bikini Kill, embodies this iconic time, and today their gutsy, radical lyrics of anthems like ‘Rebel Girl’ and ‘Double Dare Ya’ are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from? In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood home, to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes blindingly clear, being in a ‘girl band’, especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or a safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightening rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination. But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her – including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Billy Karren; her friendship with Kurt Cobain; and her introduction to Joan Jett – and they were a testament to how the true punk world nurtured and cared for its own.Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her later bands, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement and its decline, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity.In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the darkest, hardest times along with the most joyful – and how it all fuelled her revolutionary art, from the 1980s to today.

One of the government's former behavioural scientists reveals how you can do what you want, whilst everybody tries to influence you into doing what they want. Influence makes you think what you think and do as you do. You use it to change the thoughts and behaviours of others - just as others use it change yours. We have been perfecting our influence for millions of years, but in the last 20 years digital technologies have revolutionised how influence works. We are now connected to old school friends and niche interest groups - but unwittingly also to organised criminals, terrorists and hostile states who infiltrate our societies. The course of history is being shaped: elections have been hijacked, lies spread about pandemics and the rapidly heating climate, and information has become as important as bullets and bombs to winning wars. More than ever, influence has become the crucial currency for commercial and political gain: If you don't understand it, you will likely become its victim. Written by a former government behavioural scientist working at the cutting edge of this field, Influence is a groundbreaking guide to the chaotic and murky world we live in. Through examining five key factors we are taken on a tour from the past to our real-world present, to build a picture of the major role influence plays in everyday life. Influence provides a simple personal plan illustrating how you can use influence to achieve your goals - whether gaining that promotion, getting your friends to a music festival, or your children to eat their greens. But by understanding the nature of influence, you will also see how it is changing in the information age, enabling dangerous adversaries to gain power, leaving our societies in peril. Most importantly, by using the tools of influence you will be empowered to play your part in protecting us - it will be down to you and everyone you know. Influence is a fascinating guide to how you can help by understanding it, using it and resisting it.

It is generally accepted that Queen Victoria reigned but did not rule. This couldn’t be more wrong. In Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers, Anne Somerset masterfully traces Victoria’s political evolution, from headstrong teenager to seasoned octogenarian. This book demonstrates her passionate involvement in state affairs, and casts fresh light on her relationships with her ten prime ministers. Victoria herself acknowledged that when it came to ‘likes and dislikes’ of her prime ministers, ‘she had them very strongly’. She showed girlish adoration for her first Prime Minister, the worldly-wise Lord Melbourne, whose delightful conversation and kindly guidance enchanted her. Later in her reign, Benjamin Disraeli – who flattered her shamelessly, tirelessly praising her sagacity and judgement and filling her life with ‘poetry, romance and chivalry’ – became her favourite. While she developed a powerful bond with several of her Prime Ministers, in other cases the relationship fell little short of mutual detestation. Victoria’s keenest antipathy was reserved for Disraeli’s great rival, the Liberal William Gladstone. When he became prime minister for a fourth time at the age of 82, Victoria declared it ‘a bad joke’ that this ‘dangerous old fanatic’ should be ‘thrust down her throat’. Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers charts the bitter clashes and affectionate interactions Victoria had with her ten premiers in often hilarious detail. Drawing extensively on unpublished sources such as material from the Royal Archives and never-before-seen prime ministerial papers, it casts a fresh and highly illuminating perspective not just on Victoria, but on the exceptionally able politicians who served her in government.

An urgent examination of the great wave of change breaking over today’s world – from the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and New York Times bestselling author of The Death of Truth In the twenty-first century, a wave of political, cultural and technological change has capsized our old certainties and assumptions, creating both opportunity and danger. As people lose their faith in old institutions and elites, radical voices at the margins and the grassroots are disrupting the status quo. This is the time of the outsider – the protester, the populist, the hacker. Some of these outsiders have sown chaos, like Donald Trump, and others have provided inspirational leadership, like Volodymyr Zelensky. But all have grasped this precarious moment to make something new. Writing with a critic’s incisive understanding of cultural trends, Michiko Kakutani outlines the consequences of these new asymmetries of power, and looks back to similar hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the aftermath of the Second World War, to find a way forward. For there is, Kakutani argues, always the promise of transformation in times of turmoil. We can surrender to the waters, give in to the gathering chaos, or we can use the wave’s momentum to propel us into a more stable and sustainable future.

Walking along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul and talking to those he passes, Alexander Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country's history, a mirror of its present, and a shadow of its future. Caught between two seas and two continents, Istanbul lies at the centre of the most pressing challenges of our time. With environmental decay, rapacious development and tightening authoritarianism straining its social fabric to breaking point, it represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing. In and around its crumbling Byzantine-era fortifications, Alexander Christie-Miller meets people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds. To the City seamlessly blends two narratives: the story of Turkey's tumultuous recent past told through the lives of those who live around the walls, and the story of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II's siege and capture of the city in 1453. That event still looms large in Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdogan like a latter-day sultan invokes its memory as part of his effort to transform the country in an echo of its imperial past. This is a meditation on the soul of Istanbul, a paean to its resilience and fortitude. Walk with Christie-Miller and see the danger, beauty and hope.

A TOP BOOK FOR 2024 IN: THE OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, SUNDAY TIMES AND BOOKSELLER 'He understands only the women he invents - the others not at all' Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that the novelist who created some of the most memorable and modern female characters in literature had such troubled relationships with real women? In this highly innovative book, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne re-examines Hardy's life through the eyes of the women who made him - mother, sisters, girlfriends, wives, muses. The story veers from shocking scenes such as his obsession with the sight of a woman hanged, to poignant vignettes of unfulfilled passion, to fascinating details of working women's lives in the nineteenth century. Hardy Women is the story of how the magnificent fictional women he invented would not have been possible without the hardship and hardiness of the real ones who shaped his passions and his imagination. It is only through understanding and witnessing these hardy women that we can truly enter the heart of this great novelist and poet.

What is paranoia? What makes us mistrustful? How can this be overcome? Daniel Freeman, Professor of Psychology at Oxford, has spent thirty years at the vanguard of paranoia research and treatment. This remarkable and moving book tells the story of that journey. For decades, conventional wisdom held that paranoia was only experienced by people with severe mental health problems and little could be done to rectify its disastrous effects. Paranoia gives us a front row seat as Freeman turns the traditional view on its head. He develops life-changing treatments for clinical paranoia - often using state-of-the-art technology like virtual reality. He reveals that suspicion is rife in society, with paranoia widespread, conspiracy theories rampant and emotion all too often trumping evidence. He discovers the causes of mistrust, including the role of genes, trauma, lack of sleep, worry, low self-confidence, cannabis use and hearing voices, and delves into the murky world of Covid-19 conspiracy theories. Lighting up the narrative throughout are the rarely heard voices of people whose lives have been almost wrecked by paranoia - and then in many cases transformed by Freeman's groundbreaking treatments. This is also a practical book. Freeman shows how we can measure our own levels of mistrust. He explains how we can remedy things if those levels are higher than we'd like, because although mistrust can seem engrained, things can change for the better. Ultimately, it can be overcome. Compelling and compassionate, this is a gripping tale from the front line of suspicion - an impassioned plea for the urgent rebuilding of trust between us all.

FROM THE MULTI-MILLION BESTSELLING HISTORICAL NOVELIST COMES THE CULMINATION OF HER LIFE'S WORK.Normal Women is a radical reframing of our nation's story, told not with the rise and fall of kings and the occasional queen, but through social and cultural transition, showing the agency, persistence, and effectiveness of women in society - from 1066 to modern times.Did women do nothing to shape England's culture and traditions during nine centuries of political turmoil, plague, famine, prosperity, religious reform? Philippa Gregory answers this question by telling stories of the soldiers, guild widows, highwaywomen, pirates, miners and ship owners, international traders, theatre impresarios, social campaigners and 'female husbands' who did much to build the fabric of our society and in ways as diverse and varied as the women themselves.This is not another book about heroines. Instead, it is a book about millions of women, not just three or four. The 'normal women' you meet in these pages rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency and built ships, corn mills and houses as part of their daily lives. They went to war, tilled the fields, campaigned, wrote and loved. They committed crimes, or treason, worshipped many types of gods, cooked and nursed, invented things and rioted. A lot.A landmark work of scholarship and storytelling, this is a history not a call to action. It looks back at facts and the past lives of some 50% of the population without the judgmental eyes of the present. It cannot be a celebratory account about women's 'rise' because women are not equal yet. But by highlighting the drive, ingenuity and vast contribution made, it puts women back where they belong in our history - centre stage.

A Brief History of Intelligence bridges the gap between AI and neuroscience by telling the evolutionary story of how the brain came to be. The entirety of the human brain’s 4-billion-year story can be summarised as the culmination of five evolutionary breakthroughs, starting from the very first brains, all the way to the modern human brains. Each breakthrough emerged from new sets of brain modifications, and equipped animals with a new suite of intellectual faculties. These five breakthroughs are the organising map to this book, and they make up our itinerary for our adventure back in time. Each breakthrough also has fascinating corollaries to breakthroughs in AI. Indeed, there will be plenty of such surprises along the way. For instance: the innovation that enabled AI to beat humans in the game of Go – temporal difference reinforcement learning – was an innovation discovered by our fish ancestors over 500 million years ago. The solutions to many of the current mysteries in AI – such as ‘common sense’ – can be found in the tiny brain of a mouse. Where do emotions come from? Research suggests that they may have arisen simply as a solution to navigation in ancient worm brains. Unravelling this evolutionary story will reveal the hidden features of human intelligence and with them, just how your mind came to be.