Allen Lane A Duty of Care. Britain Before and After Covid Hennessy Peter

The third volume of Peter Hennessy's landmark postwar history of Britain • Harold Macmillan - the presiding figure in Peter Hennessy's magnificent new history - famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to wipe away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a third world war. As with his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy

A mind-bending exploration of non-human intelligence, and how it holds the keys to our continuing life on earth • What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans - or do we share it with other beings? • Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognized. These other beings are the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours • In Ways of Being, writer and artist James Bridle considers the fascinating, uncanny and multiple ways of existing on earth

The astonishing story of the Sassoons, one of the nineteenth century's preeminent commercial families and 'the Rothschilds of the East' • The Sassoons were one of the great business dynasties of the nineteenth century, as eminent as traders as the Rothschilds were bankers. This book reveals the secrets behind the family's phenomenal success: how a handful of Jewish exiles from Ottoman Baghdad forged a mercantile juggernaut from their new home in colonial Bombay, the vast network of agents, informants and politicians they built, and the way they came to bridge East and West, culturally as well as commercially. As one competitor remarked, 'silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton, wool and wheat - whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon & Co

The story of the universe in thirty cosmological conundrums • In the constellation of Eridanus there lurks a cosmic mystery. It's as if something has taken a huge bite out of the universe, leaving a super-void. What could be the culprit? A super massive black hole? Another, bigger universe? Or an expanding vacuum bubble, destined to envelop and annihilate everything in existence? • Scientists now understand the history of our universe better than the history of our own planet, but they continue to uncover startling new riddles-the hole in the universe being just one. In this electrifying book, award-winning physicist Paul Davies walks us through the puzzles and paradoxes that have preoccupied cosmologists from ancient Greece to the present day. Laying bare the audacious research that has led us to mind-bending solutions, Davies reveals how we might begin to approach the greatest outstanding enigmas of all

An inspiring and practical guide to achieving bold ambitions • Michael Barber has spent many years advising governments, businesses and major sporting teams around the world on how to achieve ambitious goals on time. In this book he applies the wisdom he has gained from dealing with large, complex organizations and elite athletes to help anyone tackle their most challenging goals • Drawing on the stories of historic visionaries and modern heroes - from Galileo to Rosa Parks, Harold Macmillan to Paula Radcliffe - Barber uses personal anecdote and proven strategy to map the route to success and navigate the difficulties that arise along the way • Whatever it is that you aspire to do - run a marathon, transform a school or provide a business of public service to millions - this book will inspire you to get going and to bridge the gap between hope and reality

Islands represent adventure, mystery, wilderness and escapism. Surrounded by water, they're somewhere to run away to, to be marooned on, to find a paradise… The British Isles includes some 194 inhabited islands (out of a total of over 6,000), ranging from remote lost worlds to famous and popular holiday spots. And Treasured Islands includes them all, in one enticing package • This wonderfully comprehensive and inspiring guide starts off with a Best of… section, highlighting the ten best islands for foodies, wildlife, adrenaline-junkies and pure escapism. Then, region by region, the author explores the UK's most wonderful islands, including • Shetlands, Fair Isle, Orkneys, Outer Hebrides, Inner Hebrides, Isle of Arran • Lindisfarne, Isle of Man, Walney Island • Anglesey, Pembrokeshire Island • Foulness and Canvey Islands • Isle of Sheppey, Lundy • Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly, Channel Islands, Islands of Ireland • Tidal Islands (to include Burgh Island, Holy Island and St Michael's Mount) • Inland Islands (to include Eel Pie, Derwent Isle and Peel Island in the Lake District) • Remote Islands • Illustrated with beautiful colour photography, the text ensures you won't miss out on must-see attractions, wildlife and natural features, local food specialties, sporting activities, best places to stay and eat, and all-important transport links to and from the mainland, and other nearby islands

In August 1914 the two greatest navies in the world confronted each other across the North Sea. At first there were skirmishes, then battles off the coasts of England and Germany and in the far corners of the world, including the Falklands. The British attempted to force the Dardanelles with battleships - which led to the Gallipoli catastrophe. As the stalemate on the ground on the Western Front continued, the German Navy released a last strike against the British 'ring of steel'. The result was Jutland, a titanic and brutal battle between dreadnoughts. The knowledge, understanding and literary power Robert K. Massie brings to this story is unparalleled. There will never again be a war like this in which seagoing monsters hurl shells at each other until one side is destroyed

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics • In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country. Beginning with the bitter experience of German Marxists exiled by Hitler, she traces the arc of the state they would go on to create, first under the watchful eye of Stalin, and then in an increasingly distinctive German fashion

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a shocking investigation into the cycles of racial violence in America • Barack Obama's election in 2008 was a moment of true, unabashed hope. But after two terms shadowed by a growing white supremacist movement, Obama was replaced by an openly nativist administration. So what the hell happened? • In Whitelash, Wesley Lowery places a decade of American carnage in historical context, uncovering the horror that racial violence has wrought in our era. As he looks to America's past to understand the rise of Donald Trump and the 'whitelash' following the election of Barack Obama, a frightening pattern emerges. Every period of perceived black advancement has triggered a violent reaction by white Americans, the old system's beneficiaries

A major new celebration of the French short story • The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. Here are decadent tales, 'bloody tales', fairy tales, detective stories and war stories. They are stories about the self and the other, husbands, wives and lovers, country and city, rich and poor • The first volume spans four hundred years, taking the reader from the sixteenth century to the 'golden age' of the fin de siecle. Its pages are populated by lovers, phantoms, cardinals, labourers, enchanted statues, gentleman burglars, retired bureaucrats, panthers and parrots, in a cacophony of styles and voices. From the affairs of Madame de Lafayette to the polemic realism of Victor Hugo, the supernatural mystery of Guy de Maupassant to the dark sensuality of Rachilde, this is the place to start for lovers of French literature, new and old

One of the most inspiring thinkers of our age, the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics transforms the way we think about the world with his reflections on science, history and humanity • In this collection of writings, the logbook of an intelligence always on the move, Carlo Rovelli follows his curiosity and invites us on a voyage through science, history, philosophy and politics • Written with his usual clarity and wit, these pieces range widely across time and space: from Newton's alchemy to Einstein's mistakes, from Nabokov's butterflies to Dante's cosmology, from travels in Africa to the consciousness of an octopus, from mind-altering psychedelic substances to the meaning of atheism • Charming, pithy and elegant, this book is the perfect gateway to the universe of one of the most influential scientists of our age

What are the mysterious numbers that unlock the secrets of the universe? • In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Tony Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, using them to build a picture of how the universe works. These include Graham's number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3) and the mathematical games that could carry on until the universe reset itself; and 10^{-120}, which measures the desperately unlikely balance of energy the universe, and you, need to exist • Leading us down the rabbit hole to the inner workings of reality, Padilla demonstrates how these unusual numbers-big, small and worryingly infinite-are the key to unlocking such mind-bending phenomena as black holes, the holographic truth and the problem of the cosmological constant, where our two best theories of the universe come together with embarrassing consequences