Non-fiction

As the late great Samuel Johnson sagely observed, 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' When author Tom Jones found himself doing the same things week in, week out while living in England's treasured capital, he decided to heed Johnson's words and seek out a thing to do each day in London to make him fall back in love with the city. Here, in Tired of London, Tired of Life, Tom shares the fun, diverting and imaginative things that you can do to keep yourself amused in London. With seasonally appropriate suggestions for each day of the year, you can explore East London by canoe, search for Fagin's lair in Clerkenwell, play petanque in Southwark, seek out Aphrodite in the British Museum on Valentine's Day and enjoy a host of unusual ways to enjoy the capital. So grab your

In "The Black Swan", Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. What's more, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad fo

Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.) It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the

This is chosen 16 times as a 'Book of the Year' - the top non-fiction pick of 2012. "The best work of modern history I have ever read". (A. N. Wilson, Financial Times). At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism. Anne Applebaum's landmark history of this brutal time shows how societies were ruthlessly eviscerated by Communist regimes, how opposition was destroyed and what life was like for ordinary people who had to choose whether to fight, to flee or to collaborate. A haunting reminder of how fragile freedom can be, Iron Curtain is an exceptional wo

"1,000 Unforgettable Senior Moments in History", of which we could remember only 249, is filled with excruciatingly embarrassing and totally true stories of major mental lapses and famous acts of forgetfulness. How about President Jimmy Carter leaving the codes needed to launch a nuclear missile strike in a suit sent to the dry-cleaners? Or Ralph Waldo Emerson forgetting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's name at Longfellow's funeral? Did you know that Rod Stewart's "Maggie Mae" was inspired by Stewart's first love, a woman whose full name he can longer recall. Sir Isaac Newton, Harpo Marx, Toscanini, Pope John XXIII - they've all had it worse than you.

Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been read by tens of millions of people all over the world. It remains a beloved and deeply admired testament to the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Restored in this "Definitive Edition" are diary entries that were omitted from the original edition. These passages, which constitute 30 percent more material, reinforce the fact that Anne was first and foremost a teenage girl, not a remote and flawless symbol. She fretted about and tried to cope with her own sexuality. Like many young girls, she often found herself in disagreements with her mother. And like any teenager, she veered between the carefree nature of

This fascinating autobiography of the country music legend recounts the highs and lows, the struggles and hard-won triumphs of his remarkable life. The story takes us from Johnny Cash's childhood on an Arkansas cotton farm to his early years at Sun Records. We read of his life on the road and meetings with, and performances for, world leaders. There is also the darker side of his life: the years of addiction to amphetamines and pain killers, a suicide attempt and the spiritual awakening that pulled him through. He looks unsparingly at his turbulent past, but remains a man of honesty, humility and humour. His memoir reveals his friendships with Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Billy Graham.

Can we bring more meaning to our lives and help change the world at the same time? Richard Branson, at his brilliant and motivating best, reveals how with his exciting new vision for the future. It is time to turn capitalism upside down - to shift our values, to switch from a profit focus to caring for people, communities and the planet. With inspiration for everyone, "Screw Business As Usual" shows how easy it is for both businesses and individuals to embark on a whole new way of doing things, solving major problems and turning our work into something we both love and are proud of.

Penguin Books Ltd (Uk), 2009. Softcover. Book Condition: Neu. Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question. In this stunning new book, Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an overachiever. He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a gen.

Go anywhere in the world today and you'll see or hear English in some form. It may not necessarily be the Queen's English that you're hearing, but it is, nevertheless, a form of universally recognised English - it is Globish. In his wonderfully witty and informative new book, Robert McCrum explores the curious history, vivacity and endurance of English and ponders why, while British and American empires have waxed and waned, the English language, freer from its moorings like never before, has quietly taken over the world.

This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jon

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict?

Michael J. Sandel's "Justice" course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Up to a thousand students pack the campus theater to hear Sandel relate the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and this fall, public television will air a series based on the course. Justice offers