SoundtrackStar Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (John Williams) (2LP)

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

The author of the celebrated The Dream of Reason vividly explains the rise of modern thought from Descartes to Rousseau • In a short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark on Western thought. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity - and what is government actually for? Their questions remain our questions, and it is tempting to think these philosophers speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes

Marathons are no longer enough • Pain is to be relished, not avoided • Hallucinations are normal • Ultra running defies conventional logic. Yet this most brutal and challenging sport is now one of the fastest-growing in the world. Why is this? Is it an antidote to modern life, or a symptom of a modern illness? • Adharanand Finn travelled to the heart of the sport to find out – and to see if he could become an ultra runner himself. His journey took him from the deserts of Oman to the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies, and on to his ultimate goal, the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc • The Rise of the Ultra Runners is the electrifying, inspirational account of what he learned along the way. Through encounters with the sport’s many colourful characters and his experiences of its soaring highs and crushing lows, Finn offers an unforgettable insight into what can be found at the boundaries of human endeavour

Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its throat • From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of central Europe and the scorched coasts of north Africa, The Lion House tells the true story of two civilisations in an existential duel and the rise of the most feared man of the sixteenth century. It is a tale of the timeless pull of power, dangerous to live with, deadly to live without

The world’s tech giants are at the centre of controversies over fake news, free speech and hate speech on platforms where influence is bought and sold. Yet, at the outset, almost everyone thought the internet would be a positive, democratic force, a space where knowledge could be freely shared to enable everyone to make better-informed decisions. How did it all go so wrong? Noam Cohen reports on the tech libertarians of Silicon Valley, from the self-proclaimed geniuses Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg to the early pioneers at Stanford University, who have not only made the internet what it is today but reshaped society in the process. It is the story of how the greed, bias and prejudice of one neighbourhood is fracturing the Western world

Until I met John Smith, Number Four, I'd been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive • Together, we were much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate to find the others • I went to Spain to find Seven, and I found even more, including a tenth member of the Garde who escaped from Lorien alive. Ella is younger than the rest of us, but just as brave. Now we're looking for the others - including John • But so are they • I am Number Six. To finish what they started, they'll have to fight us first