The Gilded Age

The British monarchy is at a turning point. Concise and engaging, this book charts the very beginnings of British reign through to the longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II - and looks forward to the reign of King Charles III • Much more than a linear history, this is the intertwined story of royalty and state, of divisions, invasions, rivalries, death and glory; the story of nation fates deeply tied with the personal endeavours of monarchs through the ages. Black expertly weaves together thematic chapters from the origins of monarchy, medieval times and sixteenth-century developments, to the crises of the seventeenth-century, settlement and imperialism, and the challenges of the modern age. Exploring the House of Wessex, the Norman Conquest, Henry VIII and the Tudors, Victorianism and key events such as abdication of Edward VIII, this book is a necessary and comprehensive guide to the British Monarchy and how it has shaped history - and our lives today

The story of young Nanda Brookenham's struggle to preserve her honesty in the brilliant but corrupt world of her parents is a drama of innocence betrayed yet preserved. Written when James was recovering from the shock od failure as a playwright, The Awkward Age is one of his greatest masterpieces. Conceived like a play terms of scenes and conducted largely through witty dialogue, the novel bears the triumphant signs of his painful apprenticeship in the theatre

How your business can get ahead in the age of big tech • From the million-copy-bestselling author of Execution • 'Ingenious . . . An insightful and practical guide for leaders and practitioners at every level.' Forbes • Welcome to the age of big tech. The old rules no longer apply • How do companies build a competitive advantage in the digital age? In this lively, accessible guide, Ram Charan - million-copy-bestselling author and advisor to some of the world's top CEOs - reveals that the tech giants have radically rewritten the rules of business. If you want to win, you need to learn to play a new game • Delving into the inner workings of the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Alibaba, Charan uncovers the six rules that the digital giants use to stay ahead: from their emphasis on creating corporate 'ecosystems', to the way they approach team organisation and moneymaking

In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of British and Irish prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one million years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen profiles of ancient landscapes. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk c.900,000 BC, the craftsmen who built a wooden trackway in the Somerset Levels early in the fourth millennium BC, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain's first towns, Pryor uses excavations and surveys to uncover the daily routines of our ancient ancestors. By revealing how our prehistoric forebears coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges, Francis Pryor offers remarkable insights into the long and unrecorded centuries of our early history, and a convincing, well-attested and movingly human portrait of prehistoric life as it was really lived

Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer proposes a new way of thinking about ancient Greeks, showing how real-life journeys shaped their mythical tales • The tales of the ancient Greeks have inspired us for thousands of years. But where did they originate? Esteemed classicist Robin Lane Fox draws on a lifetime's knowledge of the ancient world, and on his own travels, to open up the age of Homer • His acclaimed history explores how the intrepid seafarers of eighth-century Greece sailed around the Mediterranean, encountering strange new sights - volcanic mountains, vaporous springs, huge prehistoric bones - and weaving them into the myths of gods, monsters and heroes that would become the cornerstone of Western civilization: the Odyssey and the Iliad

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure • Tales of the Jazz Age features some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-loved short stories and 'novelettes' including 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' and 'The Diamond as Big as the Ritz'. Set in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald's own term for the Roaring Twenties of newly confident, post-war America, this collection shows a comic genius at work, fashioning every genre from low farce to shrewd social insight, along with fantasy of extraordinary invention

F.S. Fitzgerald was an American writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. Tales of Jazz Age V is a wonderful short-story collection showcases many of the celebrated novel's themes, as well as its unique writing style. Two of the most famous tales, the beautifully elegiac The Rich Boy and Winter Dreams, deal with wealthy protagonists - the old- money Anson Hunter and the self-made man Dexter Green - as they come to terms with lost love

Join curious Ug on his quest for a pair of soft trousers in this funny and touching stone-age story from creator of The Snowman, Raymond Briggs • Ug and his parents live in the Stone Age. And that means stone blankets, stone cold food, an even colder cave and, worst of all, hard stone trousers! • Being an inquisitive and intelligent child, Ug suggests a series of modifications to improve the quality of family life. His ideas about heating, cooking, boats, and balls that actually bounce are initially met with a hostile reaction. But with the help of his father, who slowly comes round to his son's way of thinking, Ug comes tantalisingly close to his ultimate soft-trousered goal • This heartwarming and hilarious tale, told in comic strip format, is the perfect gift for a curious child learning to understand the world around them

F.S. Fitzgerald was an American writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. Tales of Jazz Age VI is a wonderful short-story collection showcases many of the celebrated novel's themes, as well as its unique writing style. The collection contains six stories, including Absolution in which a boy confesses to a priest and The Sensible Thing, where George O'Kelly, an aspiring engineer turned insurance salesman, fights to recapture the love of Jonquil Cary

When our ancestors came down from the trees, they brought the trees with them and remade the world • How did the descendants of small arboreal primates manage to stand on our own two feet, become top predators and take over the world? • In The Wood Age, Roland Ennos shows that the key to humanity’s success has been our relationship with wood. He takes us on a sweeping ten-million-year journey from great apes who built their nests among the trees to early humans who depended on wood for fire, shelter, tools and weapons; from the structural design of wheels and woodwinds, to the invention of paper and the printing press • Drawing together recent research and reinterpreting existing evidence from fields as far-ranging as primatology, anthropology, archaeology, history, architecture, engineering and carpentry, Ennos charts for the first time how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has shaped our bodies and minds, societies and lives