Penguin Rivers of Power. How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World Smith Laurence C

The first part of his trilogy on the Spanish Empire, Hugh Thomas's Rivers of Gold brings the rise of Spain's global empire vividly to life, capturing the spirit of an ebullient age • Inspired by hopes of both riches and of converting native people to Christianity, the Spanish adventurers of the fifteenth century convinced themselves that an Earthly Paradise existed in the Caribbean. This is the story of the hundreds of conquistadors who set sail on the precarious journey across the Atlantic - taking with them wheat, the horse, the guitar and the wheel as well as guns, malaria and slaves - to create an empire that made Spain the envy of the world

Oceans are the most mysterious places on earth. Their depths remain largely unexplored, yet ninety-five percent of the planet's habitable space lies within them. And now the life they support is in the balance • Callum Roberts uses his lifetime's experience working with the oceans to take us on a panoramic tour beneath the seas, exploring the richness of life in the deep and how it has altered over the centuries. He shows the catastrophic impact of humanity on the oceans, but also how we can restore them to life

What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers, and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British empire to the present. Astonishingly wide-ranging and richly detailed, Empire of Things explores how we have come to live with so much more, how this changed the course of history, and the global challenges we face as a result

The extraordinary story of how China became the powerful country it is today • Even at the high noon of Europe's empire-building China nonetheless kept its sovereignty. Robert Bickers' major new book is the first to describe fully what has proved to be one of the modern era's most important stories: the long, often agonizing process by which the Chinese had by the end of the 20th century regained control of their own country. Out of China uses a brilliant array of unusual, strange and vivid sources to recreate a now fantastically remote world. Today Chinese nationalism stays firmly rooted in memories of its degraded past - the quest for self-sufficiency, the determination to assert China's standing in the world, to stake its outstanding territorial claims, and never to be vulnerable to renewed attack

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes’s dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement • The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook’s first Endeavour voyage, who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise. Back in Britain, the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery – astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical – that together made up the ‘age of wonder’ • In this breathtaking group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period’s celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight to the miner’s lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration

В Лондоне расположено двенадцать крупных железнодорожных вокзалов, больше, чем в любом другом городе мира. Они варьируются от величественных и дворцовых, таких как Кингс-Кросс и Паддингтон, до скромных и менее известных, таких как Фенчерч-стрит и Кэннон-стрит. Эти памятники эпохи поездов являются центром транспортной системы Лондона, и их развитие, упадок и недавнее обновление во многом определили историю столицы • В увлекательном и драматичном повествовании "Паровые соборы. Как были построены Великие вокзалы Лондона – и как они преобразили город" Кристиан Вольмар прослеживает развитие этих великолепных паровых соборов, дает уникальное представление об их истории, приводит множество занимательных анекдотов и отмечает недавнее превращение нескольких из этих станций в замечательное сочетание старого и нового

With a new chapter on Covid and the Brain, this is the definitive guide to keeping your brain healthy for a long and lucid life, by one of the world's leading scientists in the field of brain health and ageing • The brain is our most vital and complex organ. It controls and coordinates our actions, thoughts and interactions with the world around us. It is the source of personality, of our sense of self, and it shapes every aspect of our human experience • Yet most of us know precious little about how our brains actually work, or what we can do to optimise their performance. Whilst cognitive decline is the biggest long-term health worry for many of us, practical knowledge of how to look after our brain is thin on the ground • In this ground-breaking new book, leading expert Professor James Goodwin explains how simple strategies concerning exercise, diet, social life and sleep can transform your brain health paradigm, and shows how you can keep your brain youthful and stay sharp across your life

A haunting Modernist masterpiece and the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning film Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness explores the limits of human experience and the nightmarish realities of imperialism • Conrad's narrator Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz: dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Travelling upriver to the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery of how Kurtz has gained his position of power over the local people involves him in a radical questioning, not only of his own nature and values, but also those of western civilisation • Part of a major series of new editions of Conrad's most famous works in Penguin Classics, this volume contains Conrad's Congo Diary, a chronology, further reading, notes, a map of the Congo, a glossary and an introduction discussing the author's experiences in Africa, the narrative and symbolic complexities of Heart of Darkness and critical responses to the novel

Acclaimed professor reveals how working couples can successfully combine love and work • Finding fulfilment in both love and work isn't easy--but it is possible • Most advice for working couples fails because it treats the challenge of balancing two careers as a zero-sum game in which one partner's gain is the other's loss. This book is different • In Couples That Work, professor Jennifer Petriglieri shifts away from the language of sacrifice and trade-offs, and focuses on how couples can tackle the challenges they will face throughout their lives--together • Petriglieri identifies three key phases of exploration and growth in every couple's work-life journey and provides tools to help couples navigate three pivotal questions together • · How can we make this work? • · What do we really want? • · Who are we now? • Based on five-years research interviewing over a hundred couples from thirty countries, Couples That Work is filled with vivid, real-life stories

In the years just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people from across the political spectrum in Europe and America celebrated a great achievement, felt a common purpose and, very often, forged personal friendships. Yet over the following decades the euphoria evaporated, the common purpose and centre ground gradually disappeared, extremism rose once more and eventually - as this book compellingly relates - the relationships soured too • Anne Applebaum traces this history in an unfamiliar way, looking at the trajectories of individuals caught up in the public events of the last three decades. When politics becomes polarized, which side do you back? If you are a journalist, an intellectual, a civic leader, how do you deal with the re-emergence of authoritarian or nationalist ideas in your country? When your leaders appropriate history, or pedal conspiracies, or eviscerate the media and the judiciary, do you go along with it? • Twilight of Democracy is an essay that combines the personal and the political in an original way and brings a fresh understanding to the dynamics of public life in Europe and America, both now and in the recent past

The incredible memoir of Elaine Brown - the first woman leader of the Black Panthers • 'Here I was, a woman, proclaiming supreme power over the most militant organization in America' • In 1974 Elaine Brown became the first woman leader of the Black Panther Party. This is her unforgettable memoir, charting her rise from an impoverished neighbourhood in Philadelphia, through her political awakening during a bohemian adolescence, and on to her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers and ascent into its male-dominated upper ranks. It is a seminal exploration of power, racism and one woman's revolutionary struggle

Haunting, terrifying and hilarious, The Day of the Oprichnik is a dazzling novel and a fierce critique of life in the New Russia • Moscow 2028: Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, oprichnik, member of the czar's inner circle of trusted courtiers, rouses himself from a drunken stupor and prepares for another day of debauchery, violence, terror and beauty. In this New Russia, futuristic technology combine with the draconian world of Ivan the Terrible to create a dystopia chillingly akin to reality. Over the twenty-four-hour span of the novel, Komiaga will rape, pillage and torture, in the name of the czar he fears and adores. Shimmering with invention, fierce social commentary and razor-sharp wit, Day of the Oprichnik imagines a near future too disturbing to contemplate and too close to reality to ignore