DECEMBER 2015 Scarpia Piers Paul Read
Based on one of the central figures from Tosca, Puccini's classic opera, Scarpia is a powerful story of love, lust and political intrigue set in Rome after the French Revolution
Description Man is a delicate mechanism. he can easily be set off course. It is the late 18th century and nobleman Vitellio Scarpia finds himself, penniless and in disgrace, on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home, on a quest for a successful military career, his fiery passion has seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose regency has been in question since the French Revolution. Intent on furthering his position in Rome, Scarpia supplements his income as a guard by accompanying a seductive countess, delighted at the prospect of having an ex-soldier on her arm. With her as his guide, Scarpia is able to attend the many decadent parties and festivals open to the upper echelons of the city. That is, provided he does his duty.
But, traversing a society swirling with questions of political and sexual morality, the provincial soldier feels himself harden. And, as his own path converges with that of the gifted, beautiful Floria Tosca, he discovers that the fate that led him to power will be the same one that tears him from it.
Steeped in factual detail and exploring the fictional figure whose actions define Puccini's famous opera, Tosca, novelist Piers Paul Read here tells the powerful tale of Vitellio Scarpia, a story that shines a light into the dusty corridors of history and the dark corners of the human soul.
About the Author Piers Paul Read is best known for his book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which documented the story of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and was adapted into a film in 1993. He has won a number of prizes for his fiction, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781408867501 Format: Paperback - C format Dimensions: 234x153mm Extent: 320 pages
Main Category: F Fiction
Sub Category: FV Historical Fiction Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Bloomsbury DECEMBER 2015 The Inflatable Woman Rachael Ball
An unconventional and magical debut graphic novel about unrequited love, illness, hope, comrades and delusion
Description Iris (or balletgirl42 as she's known on the internet dating circuit) is a zookeeper looking for love when she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Overnight, her life becomes populated with a carnival of daunting hospital characters. Despite the attempts of her friends - Maud, Granma Suggs, Larry the Monkey and a group of singing penguins - to comfort her, Iris's fears begin to encircle her until all she has to cling to is the attention of a lighthouse keeper called sailor_buoy_39.
The Inflatable Woman combines magic realism with the grit of everyday life to create a poignant and surreal journey inside the human psyche.
About the Author Rachael Ball is a cartoonist and a teacher. Her illustrations and cartoons have appeared in various publications including City Life, Deadline, Fanny, the Times Educational Supplement, the Radio Times, The Strumpet and Russ Kick's Graphic Canon of Childrens' Literature. The Inflatable Woman is her first graphic novel.
@rachaelcartoons
Price: $35.00 (NZ$39.99) ISBN: 9781408858073 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 227x175mm Extent: 544 pages
Main Category: F Fiction
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Bloomsbury DECEMBER 2015 The Holy Sail Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud
In the name of the Cross, Portuguese fleets head to the Gulf.
In the name of Allah, Arabian tribes must resist.
Description Oblivious to the invasions, massacres and religious fanaticism that characterise the 15th century, a young girl falls in love with a noble Arabian tribal leader. But all eyes are on the Portuguese fleets in the Arabian Gulf, intent on securing the profitable spice trade.
Abdulaziz Al Mahmoud weaves a tapestry of momentous historical events with stories of love, honour and nobility, while guiding us around the medieval world of Lisbon, Cairo, Jeddah and Istanbul.
The Holy Sail brings to life a neglected episode of history that impacted not only the region but the world for centuries to come.
About the Author Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud is a Qatari engineer and journalist. He has a BA in engineering from Clarkson University in New York and an aviation and engineering diploma from the UK. He worked as editor-in-chief of Alsharq and The Peninsula newspapers as well as www.aljazeera.net. This is his second novel.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9789927101670 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 400 pages
Main Category: F Fiction
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Bloomsbury Qatar DECEMBER 2015 The Same Old Story Ivan Goncharov
'Goncharov is ten heads above me in talent.' Anton Chekhov
Description Filled with dreams of pursuing a career as a poet, the young Alexander Aduev moves from the country to St Petersburg, where he takes up lodgings next to his uncle Pyotr, and a shrewd and world-weary businessman. As his ideals are challenged by disappointment in the fields of love, friendship and poetical ambition, Alexander must decide whether to return to the homely values he has left behind or adapt to the ruthless rules and morals of city life. Told in the author's trademark humorous style and presented in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, The Same Old Story - Goncharov's first novel, preceding his masterpiece Oblomov by twelve years - is a study of lost illusions and rude spiritual awakening in the modern world.
About the Author Ivan Goncharov (1812-91) was a Russian official, novelist, critic and travel writer, who is best remembered for his masterpiece Oblomov.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781847495624 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 384 pages Main Category: F Fiction Sub Category: Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Alma Books DECEMBER 2015 In Search of Mary: The Mother Of All Journeys Bee Rowlatt
A fascinating journey on the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft and an exploration of never-dying themes, such as babies versus careers.
Description Having been smitten by Mary Wollstonecraft's travel book Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in her student days, Bee Rowlatt decides to follow, with toddler in tow, in the footsteps of the world's first celebrity feminist in order to explore the vitality of her legacy and retrace the never-dying themes of babies versus careers, comparing her encounters with guilt, progress and inequality in the eighteenth century to those experienced by women today. On this eventful social and biographical treasure hunt they discover wild Norwegian coasts, get chased around a hostile museum in Paris and are rebirthed by naked healers in California. In her quest to chart the progress made by women across the world, Bee finds herself consulting a witch, a porn star, a very quiet Norwegian archivist and the tenants of a blighted council estate in Leeds - finding out more than what she bargained for.
About the Author Bee Rowlatt is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph and has reported for the World Service, Newsnight and BBC2. The co-author of the best-selling Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad (Penguin 2010) as well as one of the writers featured in Virago's 2013 anthology Fifty Shades of Feminism, Bee won the K Blundell Trust award for In Search of Mary. She has four children and lives in London.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781846883781 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 230x150mm Extent: 288 pages Main Category: B Biography/autobiography Sub Category: BG Biography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Alma Books DECEMBER 2015 The Kiss and Other Stories Anton Chekhov
Includes pictures and an extensive section on Chekhov's life and works
Description While at a party organized by the lieutenant of his regiment, the shy and awkward Ryabovitch is suddenly kissed by an unknown woman in a dark room. This unexpected and electrifying encounter marks a turning point in his life and a shift in his personality, arousing his passions and setting him on a desperate quest to discover the identity of the mysterious lady. One of Chekhov's most admired stories, 'The Kiss' is joined in this volume by five equally celebrated tales in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin: 'The Lady with the Little Dog', 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk', 'The House with the Mezzanine' and 'The Peasants' - making this an indispensable collection for those wanting to discover Chekhov at his creative best.
About the Author Anton Chekhov is one of the giants of modern literature, exerting a strong influence - both as a prose writer and as a playwright - on many present-day novelists and dramatists.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781847494191 Format: Paperback - B format Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 256 pages Main Category: F Fiction
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Alma Books DECEMBER 2015 Sketches of Young Ladies, Young Gentlemen and Young Couples Charles Dickens
'The power of [Dickens] is so amazing that the reader at once becomes his captive.' William Makepeace Thackeray
Description When the publishers of the Pickwick Papers, Chapman & Hall, brought out the anonymous 'Sketches of Young Ladies' in 1837, their resounding success prompted the twenty-six-year old Dickens to write, the following year, a companion piece, the 'Sketches of Young Gentlemen', followed two years later - to coincide with the engagement of Princess Victoria and Prince Albert - by the 'Sketches of Young Couples'.
About the Author A literary phenomenon in his lifetime and renowned as much for his journalism and public speaking as for his novels, Charles Dickens now ranks as the most important Victorian writer and one of the most influential and popular authors in the English language. His memorable and vividly rendered characters and his combination of humour, trenchant satire and compassion have left an indelible mark on our collective imagination.
Price: $11.99 (NZ$14.99) ISBN: 9781847494917 Format: Paperback - B format Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 160 pages
Main Category: F Fiction
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Alma Books DECEMBER 2015 A Calendar of Wisdom Leo Tolstoy
This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today's generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom.
Description Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life. Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy's last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime.
About the Author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is regarded by some as the greatest novelist of all time. With such masterpieces as Anna Karenina and War and Peace, he influenced generations of writers and changed the course of world literature.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781847495631 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 384 pages Main Category: F Fiction Sub Category: FC Literary Fiction Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Alma Books DECEMBER 2015 Laurus Eugene Vodolazkin
Andrei Rublev meets The Name of the Rose in this award-winning novel - a doomed love affair, an enthralling chronicle of the Middle Ages, a piece of biblical analysis, and a remarkable journey all in one
Description It is the late fifteenth century in rural Russia, a time of plague and pestilence. A young orphan lives by the forest with his elderly grandfather, the local healer. From him he learns the secrets of herbs and remedies, and soon follows in the old man's footsteps. But this knowledge proves powerless to save his beloved, who dies in childbirth. Overcome with guilt and seeking redemption, he embarks on a journey through plague-ridden Europe, offering his healing powers wherever he goes. But this is no ordinary journey: it is one that spans ages and countries, and brings him face-to-face with a host of unforgettable characters and legendary creatures from the strangest medieval bestiaries. Now old, and having addressed his wrongs, he returns to his home village to live out his days as a hermit - not realizing that it is here that he will face his most difficult trial yet.
Winner of two of the biggest literary prizes in Russia, Laurus is a remarkably rich novel about the eternal themes of love, loss, self-sacrifice and faith, from one of the country's most exciting and critically acclaimed novelists.
About the Author Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kiev in 1964. An expert in Old Russian literature, Vodolazkin has worked in the department of Old Russian Literature at Pushkin House since1990. He has numerous academic books and articles to his name, and has been awarded research and lectureship fellowships in Germany from both the Toepfer and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations. Vodolazkin's debut novel, Solovyov and Larionov was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize and The Big Book Award. Laurus is Vodolazkin's second novel; he lives with his family in St Petersburg, Russia.
Price: $32.99 (NZ$36.99) ISBN: 9781780747552 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 234x186mm Extent: 464 pages Main Category: F Fiction Sub Category: FA Popular Fiction Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account Peter Carey
A decorated writer's witty, energetic exploration of his home city, told through a month-long visit-- now in a brand new hardcover package.
Description Peter Carey captures our imagination with a brilliant and unexpected portrait of Sydney. In the midst of the 2000 Olympic games, Australia native Peter Carey returns to Sydney after a seventeen-year absence. Examining the urban landscape as both a tourist and a prodigal son, Carey structures his account around the four elements-- Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-- insisting on the primacy of nature to this unique Australian cityscape. As his quixotic account unfolds, Carey looks both inward into his past (as well as Sydney's own violent history) and outward onto the city's familiar landmarks and surroundings-- the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Blue Mountains-- achieving just the right alchemy to tell Sydney's extraordinary story.
About the Author Peter Carey received the Man Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda and again for True History of the Kelly Gang. His other awards include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His most recent novel is Amnesia. Born in Australia in 1943, he now lives in New York, where he is the director of the Hunter College MFA program in creative writing.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781632863768 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 256 pages
Main Category: WTL Travel
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Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 Prague Pictures: Portraits of a City John Banville
From one of the foremost chroniclers of the modern European experience, a panoramic view of a city that has seduced and bewitched visitors for centuries.
Description Prague is the magic capital of Europe. Since the days of Emperor Rudolf II, "devotee of the stars and cultivator of the spagyric art", who in the late 1500s summoned alchemists and magicians from all over the world to his castle on Hradeany hill, it has been a place of mystery and intrigue. Wars, revolutions, floods, the imposition of Soviet communism, and even the depredations of the tourist boom after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 could not destroy the unique atmosphere of this beautiful, proud, and melancholy city on the Vltava.
John Banville traces Prague's often tragic history and portrays the people who made it: the emperors and princes, geniuses and charlatans, heroes and scoundrels. He also paints a portrait of the Prague of today, reveling in its newfound freedoms, eager to join the European Community and at the same time suspicious of what many Praguers see as yet another totalitarian takeover. He writes of his first visit to the city, in the depths of the Cold War, and of subsequent trips there, of the people he met, the friends he made, the places he came to know.
About the Author John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of twenty-five novels, some of them under the pen name Benjamin Black, and his acclaimed works include The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and The Sea, which won the prize in 2005. He has also been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, among others. Banville lives in Dublin.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781632863744 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 256 pages
Main Category: WTL Travel
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Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 The Flaneur Edmund White
The New York Times bestselling look at Paris: an erudite, eloquent guided sojourn through the city's streets, by acclaimed author Edmund White.
Description A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through city streets in search of adventure and fulfillment. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. In the hands of the learned White, a walk through Paris is both a tour of its lush, sometimes prurient history, and an evocation of the city's spirit.
The Flaneur leads us to bookshops and boutiques, monuments and palaces, giving us a glimpse the inner human drama. Along the way we learn everything from the latest debates among French lawmakers to the juicy details of Colette's life.
About the Author Edmund White is the author of three memoirs, My Lives, City Boy, and Inside a Pearl, about Paris. His many novels include the autobiographical A Boy's Own Story and, most recently, Jack Holmes & His Friend. He is also known as a literary biographer and essayist. White lives in New York and teaches at Princeton University.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781632863775 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 224 pages
Main Category: WTL Travel
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Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 Florence: A Delicate Case David Leavitt
David Leavitt brings the wonders and mysteries of Florence alive, illuminating why it is, and always has been, one of the most popular tourist destinations of the world.
Description Why has Florence always drawn so many English and American visitors? (At the turn of the century, the Anglo-American population numbered more than thirty thousand.) Why have men and women fleeing sex scandals traditionally settled here? What is it about Florence that has made it so fascinating--and so repellent--to artists and writers over the years?
Moving fleetly between present and past and exploring characters both real and fictional, Leavitt's narrative limns the history of the foreign colony from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century until its demise under Mussolini, and considers the appeal of Florence to figures as diverse as Tchaikovsky, E.M. Forster, Ronald Firbank, and Mary McCarthy. Lesser-known episodes in Florentine history--the moving of Michelangelo's David, and the construction of temporary bridges by black American soldiers in the wake of the Second World War--are contrasted with images of Florence today (its vast pizza parlors and tourist culture). Leavitt also examines the city's portrayal in such novels and films as A Room with a View, The Portrait of a Lady and Tea with Mussolini.
About the Author David Leavitt's books include the collection Family Dancing, and the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, The Body of Jonah Boyd, and The Indian Clerk (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). He is also the author of a biography of Alan Turing, The Man Who Knew Too Much. He is professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and edits the literary magazine Subtropics. www.davidleavittwriter.com
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781632863751 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 192 pages
Main Category: WTL Travel
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Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 Writer in the City 20 Copy Pack
Includes 5 copies each of 30 Days In Sydney, Prague Pictures, The Flaneur and Florence: A Delicate Case
Description
About the Author
Price: $599.80 (NZ$659.80) ISBN: 9324551048368 Format: Dimensions: 0x0mm Extent: 0 pages Main Category: WZ Sub Category: Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 Coventry: Wednesday, 14 November 1940 Frederick Taylor
The definitive account of the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940 - a companion volume to the same author's acclaimed Dresden
Description At a few minutes past seven on the evening of Thursday, 14 November 1940, the historic industrial city of Coventry was subjected to the longest, most devastating air raid Britain had yet experienced. Only after eleven hours of continual bombardment by the German Luftwaffe could its people emerge from their half-sunk Anderson shelters and their cellars, from under their stairs or kitchen tables, to venture up into their wounded city.
That long night of destruction marked a critical moment in the Second World War. It heralded a new kind of air warfare, one which abandoned the pursuit of immediate military goals and instead focused on obliterating all aspects of city life. It also provided the push America needed to join Britain in the war. But while the Coventry raid was furiously condemned publically, such effective enemy tactics provided Britain's politicians and military establishment with a 'blueprint for obliteration', to be adapted and turned against Germany. A merciless four-year war of attrition had begun.
In this important work of history Frederick Taylor draws upon numerous sources, including eye witness interviews from the archives of the BBC which are published here for the first time, to reveal the true repercussions of the bombing of Coventry in 1940. He teases out the truth behind the persistent rumours and conspiracy theories that Churchill knew the raid was coming, assesses this significant turning point in modern warfare, looks at how it affected Britain's status in the war, and considers finally whether this attack really could provide justification for the horror of Dresden, 1945.
About the Author Frederick Taylor was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School, read History and Modern Languages at Oxford and did postgraduate work at Sussex University. He edited and translated The Goebbels Diaries 1939-41 and is the author of four acclaimed books of narrative history, Dresden, The Berlin Wall, Exorcising Hitler and most recently The Downfall of Money. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in Cornwall.
Price: $35.00 (NZ$39.99) ISBN: 9781408860267 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 234 x153mm Extent: 368 pages
Main Category: JW Military
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Bloomsbury DECEMBER 2015 Patternalia: An Unconventional History of Polka Dots, Stripes, Plaid, Camouflage, and Graphic Patterns Jude Stewart
From the author and designer of ROY G. BIV, a delightful, fully illustrated new volume on patterns, from polka dots to plaid: their histories, cultural resonances, and hidden meanings.
Description We wake up in the morning and put on our striped socks and our plaid shirts, sit down to breakfast at a gingham tablecloth, perhaps eyeing the wallpaper with its fleur-de-lis. Patterns are everywhere--yet they can go unnoticed. In fact, every pattern is a story, a surprisingly deep trove of historical information and cultural associations.
Jude Stewart, author of ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color, brings her same sprightly sense of humor, sparkling personality, and roving curiosity to this cultural history of patterns. From camouflage to keffiyeh, plaid to paisley, slipping out of the Carmelites' scandalously striped mantle and into an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini, Patternalia plumbs the backstories of individual patterns, the surprising kinks in how each developed, the parallels between patterns natural and invented, and the curious personalities these patterns accrue over time. Boldly designed by Oliver Munday and cleverly cross-referenced, Patternalia is pure pattern pleasure: a beautiful object and a dazzling read that will appeal to anyone interested in design, fashion, and the cultural history buzzing all around us.
About the Author Jude Stewart writes about design and culture for Slate, the Believer, Fast Company, Design Observer and other publications. She is also a contributing editor at PRINT magazine. Her first book, ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color was published in six languages. Stewart lives in Chicago. Read more at www.judestewart.com or @joodstew.
Price: $35.00 (NZ$39.99) ISBN: 9781632861085 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 184x178mm Extent: 192 pages
Main Category: A The Arts
Sub Category: AC History Of Art / Art & Design Styles Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 1916: The Year That Changed the War Keith Jeffery
A fascinating examination of the First World War beyond the Western Front, told through the significant global events of 1916, events that dramatically altered the fate of many nations
Description The mud-filled, blood-soaked trenches of the Low Countries and North-Eastern Europe were essential battlegrounds during the First World War, but the war reached many other corners of the globe, and events elsewhere significantly affected its course.
Covering the twelve months of 1916, eminent historian Keith Jeffery uses twelve moments from a range of locations and shows how they reverberated around the world. As well as discussing better-known battles such as Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme, Jeffery examines Dublin, for the Easter Rising, East Africa, the Italian front, Central Asia and Russia, where the killing of Rasputin exposed the internal political weakness of the country's empire. And, in charting a wide range of wartime experience, he studies the 'intelligence war', naval engagements at Jutland and elsewhere, as well as the political consequences that ensued from the momentous US presidential election.
Using an extraordinary range of military, social and cultural sources, and relating the individual experiences on the ground to wider developments, these are the stories lost to history, the conflicts that spread beyond the sphere of Europe and the moments that transformed the war.
About the Author Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen's University, Belfast, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1998, he was the Lees Knowles Lecturer in Military Science at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2003-4, Parnell Fellow in Irish Studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is the author of fourteen previous books, including MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949. Keith Jeffery lives in Northern Ireland.
Price: $35.00 (NZ$39.99) ISBN: 9781408834305 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 234 xmm Extent: 400 pages
Main Category: JW Military
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Bloomsbury DECEMBER 2015 Sex on Earth: A Celebration of Animal Reproduction Jules Howard
A journey of discovery through the ins and outs of reproduction in the animal kingdom
Description 1,000 million years ago, a sexual revolution occurred on Earth. Sex happened for the first time; from this moment the world became ever more colourful and bizarre, ringing with elaborate songs and dances, epic battles, and rallying cries as the desires of males and females collided, generation after generation. All of your ancestors took part and succeeded - an unbroken chain of sex right back to the dawn of complex life on Earth. Well done you. Well done everything.
The world in which we live rings, bleeds, and howls with sex. It's everywhere. Right now warring hordes are locking horns, preening feathers, rampaging lustfully across the savanna, questioning the fidelity of the ones they love. Birds are singing, flowers bloom. A million females choose; a billion penises ejaculate (or snap off); a trillion sperm battle, block and tackle.
Sex made planet Earth sexy.
Written in a brilliantly engaging style by biologist Jules Howard, this fascinating and highly readable work covers the how and why of sex on Earth, in all its diversity. From sperm wars to cuckoldry, hermaphrodites and virgin births, spent males, racy harems, clitoral births, hips, breasts and birdsong, penis-percussion, and those riskiest and most elusive of all traits, monogamy and true love, all this and more is discussed in Sex on Earth, as Jules takes us on a voyage of discovery of the ins and outs of animal reproduction.
About the Author Jules Howard is a zoologist, author, blogger and broadcaster. He writes on a host of topics relating to animal life, and appears regularly in BBC Wildlife Magazine and on TV and radio, including Channel 4's Sunday Brunch, BBC's The One Show, BBC Breakfast and on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Jules also runs a social enterprise that has brought almost 100,000 young people closer to the natural world. He lives in Northamptonshire with his wife and two children. Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781408193433 Format: Paperback @juleslhoward / www.juleshoward.co.uk Dimensions: 198 x129mm Extent: 272 pages
Main Category: PDZ Popular Science
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Sigma DECEMBER 2015 Mecca: The Sacred City Ziauddin Sardar
A groundbreaking, accessible and passionate journey to the spiritual home of Islam, from its religious roots and through the layers of its fascinating history to the place and symbol it is today
Description Mecca is the heart of Islam. It is the birthplace of Muhammad, the direction towards which Muslims turn when they pray and the site of pilgrimage which annually draws some three million Muslims from all corners of the world. Yet Mecca's importance goes beyond religion. What happens in Mecca and how Muslims think about the political and cultural history of Mecca has had and continues to have a profound influence on world events to this day.
In this captivating book, Ziauddin Sardar unravels the significance of Mecca. Tracing its history, from its origins as a 'barren valley' in the desert to its evolution as a trading town and sudden emergence as the religious centre of a world empire, Sardar examines the religious struggles and rebellions in Mecca that have powerfully shaped Muslim culture.
Interweaving stories of his own pilgrimages to Mecca with those of others, Sardar offers a unique insight into not just the spiritual aspects of Mecca - the passion, ecstasy and longing it evokes - but also the conflict between heritage and modernity that has characterised its history. He unpeels the physical, social and cultural dimensions that have helped transform the city and also, though accounts of such Orientalist travellers as Richard Burton and Charles Doughty, the strange fascination that Mecca has long inspired in the Western imagination. And, ultimately, he explores what this tension could mean for Mecca's future.
An illuminative, lyrical and witty blend of history, reportage and memoir, this outstanding book reflects all that is profound, enlightening and curious about one of the most important religious sites in the world.
About the Author Ziauddin Sardar was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hackney. A writer, broadcaster and cultural critic, he is one of the world's foremost Muslim intellectuals and author of more than fifty books on Islam, science and contemporary culture, including the highly acclaimed Desperately Seeking Paradise. He has been listed by Prospect magazine as one of Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781408835609 Britain's top 100 intellectuals. Currently he is the Director of Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies at East Format: Paperback - B format West University, Chicago, co-editor of the quarterly Critical Muslim, consulting editor of Futures, a monthly journal on Dimensions: 198 x129mm policy, planning and futures studies, and Chair of the Muslim Institute in London. Extent: 448 pages
Main Category: WTL Travel
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Bloomsbury Pb DECEMBER 2015 The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era Douglas R. Egerton
A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality--in the face of murderous violence--in the years after the Civil War.
Description By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and thirteen years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively. In South Carolina, only twenty years after the death of arch-secessionist John C. Calhoun, a black man, Jasper J. Wright, took a seat on the state's Supreme Court. Not even the most optimistic abolitionists had thought such milestones would occur in their lifetimes. The brief years of Reconstruction marked the United States' most progressive moment prior to the civil rights movement.
Previous histories of Reconstruction have focused on Washington politics. But in this sweeping, prodigiously researched narrative, Douglas Egerton brings a much bigger, even more dramatic story into view, exploring state and local politics and tracing the struggles of some fifteen hundred African-American officeholders, in both the North and South, who fought entrenched white resistance. Tragically, their movement was met by ruthless violence--not just riotous mobs, but also targeted assassination. With stark evidence, Egerton shows that Reconstruction, often cast as a "failure" or a doomed experiment, was rolled back by murderous force. The Wars of Reconstruction is a major and provocative contribution to American history.
About the Author Douglas R. Egerton is a professor of history at LeMoyne College. He is the author of six books, including Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War, He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802, and Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America. He lives near Syracuse, New York. Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781608195732 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 234x155mm Extent: 448 pages
Main Category: HB History
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Bloomsbury USA DECEMBER 2015 Rescue Pilot: Cheating the Sea Jerry Grayson
Whether saving desperate survivors from a sinking ship or flying into the teeth of storms to search for drowning sailors, the work of a search and rescue pilot is vital, dangerous, thrilling and also on the edge. Jerry Grayson is the most decorated search and rescue pilot in history. This is his story.
Description Jerry Grayson is an ordinary man who chose an extraordinary career. At age 17 he became the youngest helicopter pilot to ever serve in the Royal Navy. By age 25 he was the most decorated peacetime naval pilot in history.
For the Navy's Search and Rescue pilots, getting to work is both an adventure and an ordeal. Whether rescuing a wounded fighter pilot who has ditched in the sea, saving desperate survivors from a sinking ship, or picking up a grievously ill crewman from the deck of a nuclear-armed submarine that is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet navy, Jerry Grayson has lived a life of unparalleled excitement and adventure.
His finest hour came during the infamous Fastnet Yacht Race of 1979 in which 25 yachts were lost. When a catastrophic storm enveloped the competitors he and his crew pushed their Wessex helicopter to its absolute limits and put their own lives at risk, flying into hurricane-force winds to winch shipwrecked sailors from heaving tempestuous seas. An investiture at Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty the Queen was the result.
Being a Rescue Pilot is a fast-paced career because there is no choice. Lives are at stake and pilots must move and think fast. Jerry Grayson's inside view of this heroic service is as inspirational as it is celebratory. Excitingly told, frequently funny but also very poignant, Jerry's story is not an account of just one man's deeds, it is a salute to all the men and women he worked with who were able to turn tragedies into triumphs.
Includes a Foreword by HRH The Duke of York, Prince Andrew, Commodore-in-Chief of the Fleet Air Arm.
About the Author
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) Jerry Grayson served in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm for 8 years, in the course of which he was presented with the Air ISBN: 9781472918840 Force Cross by the Queen for outstanding gallantry in search and rescue. Since leaving the Navy he has become one of Format: Paperback the film industry's leading helicopter pilots, designing and shooting aerial action sequences for James Bond films as well Dimensions: 234x153mm as hundreds of commercials and footage for documentaries. He now lives in Australia. Extent: 240 pages
Main Category: B Biography/autobiography
Sub Category: BGA Autobiography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Adlard Coles Nautica DECEMBER 2015 The Prison Book Club Ann Walmsley
A heart-warming story about the redemptive qualities of reading.
Description After Ann Walmsley was mugged near her house in Hampstead, she found she was unable to walk alone down the street and it shook her belief in the fundamental goodness of people. In Canada a few years later, when her friend Carol asked her to participate in a bold new venture in a men's medium security prison, Ann had to weigh her curiosity and desire to be of service with her anxiety and fear.
But she signed up and for eighteen months went to a remote building a few hours outside of Toronto, meeting a group of heavily tattooed book club members without the presence of guards or security cameras. There was no wine and cheese, plush furnishings, or superficial chat about jobs or recent vacations. But a book club on the inside proved to be a place to share ideas, learn about each other, and regain humanity.
For the men, the books were rare prized possessions, and the meetings were an oasis of safety and a respite from isolation in an otherwise hostile environment. Having been judged themselves, they were quick to make judgments about the books they read. As they discussed the obstacles the characters faced, they revealed glimpses of their own struggles that were devastating and comic. From The Grapes of Wrath to The Cellist of Sarajevo, and Outliers to Infidel, the book discussions became a springboard for frank conversations about loss, anger, redemption, heroism and loneliness.
About the Author Ann Walmsley is a magazine journalist whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail and Maclean's. She is the recipient of four National Magazine Awards, a Canadian Business Journalism Award and two International Regional Magazine Awards. She founded her first book club at age nine.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781780747835 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 225x146mm Extent: 304 pages Main Category: B Biography/autobiography Sub Category: BG Biography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 Prison Bookclub 8 Copy Pack
Description
About the Author
Price: $239.92 (NZ$263.92) ISBN: 9324551048665 Format: Dimensions: 0x0mm Extent: 0 pages Main Category: WZ Sub Category: Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Bloomsbury DECEMBER 2015 The Big Think Book: Discover Philosophy Through 99 Perplexing Problems Peter Cave
A thorough introduction to Philosophy. Without the boring bits.
Description Is it morally acceptable to kill one person to save five? How do we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Can a robot be human?
In philosophy, the questions range from the wonderful to the strange, and from the ridiculous to the very serious indeed. With the aid of tall stories, jokes, common sense and bizarre insights, Peter Cave addresses some of the biggest issues in the subjects of ethics, knowledge, logic, politics, emotions, metaphysics and more. Replete with amusing and mind- boggling examples, The Big Think Book is the perfect gift for anyone who likes to puzzle over the conundrums of life and is an ideal introduction for new students of philosophy.
About the Author Peter Cave is a lecturer in philosophy at The Open University and City University, London. He frequently contributes to philosophy magazines and journals, from the serious to the fun, lectures around the world, and has scripted and presented philosophy programmes for the BBC.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781780747422 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 512 pages Main Category: HP Philosophy Sub Category: HPX Popular Philosophy Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten African Army Barnaby Phillips
'A rich story, richly told. An inspiring instance of common human deceny, handled brilliantly by a writer whose research is as dogged as his touch is fine.' - Tim Butcher, author of Blood River and Chasing the Devil
Description In December 1941 the Japanese invaded Burma. For the British, the longest land campaign of the Second World War had begun. 100,000 African soldiers were taken from Britain's colonies to fight the Japanese in the Burmese jungles. They performed heroically in one of the most brutal theatres of war, yet their contribution has been largely ignored.
Isaac Fadoyebo was one of those 'Burma Boys'. At the age of sixteen he ran away from his Nigerian village to join the British Army. Sent to Burma, he was attacked and left for dead in the jungle by the Japanese. Sheltered by courageous local rice farmers, Isaac spent nine months in hiding before his eventual rescue. He returned to Nigeria a hero, but his story was soon forgotten. Barnaby Phillips travelled to Nigeria and Burma in search of Isaac, the family who saved his life, and the legacy of an Empire. Another Man's War is Isaac's story.
About the Author Barnaby Phillips is a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera English, which he joined at the time of its launch in 2006. His documentary Burma Boy won the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award. Previously, he was for fifteen years a correspondent for the BBC, reporting primarily from Africa. Phillips grew up in Kenya and now lives in Islington, North London. This is his first book.
Price: $22.99 (NZ$24.99) ISBN: 9781780747118 Format: Paperback - B format Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 336 pages
Main Category: JW Military
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Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 Shi'ism: A Beginner's Guide Moojan Momen
A valuable introduction to the Shi`i branch of Islam
Description Dr Moojan Momen provides readers with an accessible and insightful introduction to the Shi'i branch of Islam, taking us from its beginnings after the death of the Prophet Muhammad through to the present day. As well as providing a historical overview, the book also introduces readers to Shi'i doctrines and practices, explains the key differences between the Shi'i and Sunni branches of Islam, and addresses the role and position of women within Shi'i communities
About the Author Dr Moojan Momen has lectured at many universities on topics in Middle Eastern studies and religious studies. A graduate of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, his previous books include The Baha'i Faith: A Beginner's Guide which was also published by Oneworld.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781780747873 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 204 pages Main Category: HR Religion Sub Category: HR Religion Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy Deborah McDonald
A story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe and saw a woman born to indulgence and selfishness sacrifice everything for love - only to be betrayed.
Description Spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century's greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed. When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain's envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart's plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin's secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her.
Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.
About the Author Deborah McDonald is the author of Clara Collet 1860-1948: An Educated Working Woman and The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper: The Evidence Linking James Kenneth Stephen to the Whitechapel Murders. She lives on the Isles Of White.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781780747972 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 416 pages Main Category: B Biography/autobiography Sub Category: BG Biography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 Sudan: Race, Religion, and Violence Jok Madut Jok
Delving deep into Sudan's history and culture, this fascinating book isolates the factors which cause its fractured national identity and the proliferation of violence.
Description Ravaged by civil war, and plagued by roaming gangs of rebel and government militia, Sudan and Darfur are rarely out of the news. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, over two million have fled their homes, and rape, humanitarian crises and state-sponsored genocide are all rife. In this ground-breaking investigation, Jok Madut Jok delves deep into Sudan's culture and history, isolating the factors that have caused its fractured national identity. With moving first-hand testimonies, Jok provides a decisive critique of a country in turmoil, and addresses what must be done to break the tragic cycle of racism, poverty, and brutality that grips Sudan and its people. Jok Madut Jok was born and raised in Sudan. He is Associate Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and author of War and Slavery in Sudan.
About the Author Jok Madut Jok is cofounder of the Sudd Institute. Born and raised in Sudan, he studied in Egypt and the United States. He is trained in the anthropology of health and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Jok recently joined the Government of South Sudan as undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. He is a Professor in the Department of History at Loyola Marymount University in California, and he has worked in aid and development, first as a humanitarian aid worker and as a consultant for a number of aid agencies
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781780742991 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 216x135mm Extent: 304 pages Main Category: HB History Sub Category: HBG World History Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Oneworld DECEMBER 2015 Bad Jews Joshua Harmon
In Bad Jews, one of the most-produced plays in the US in 2014/15, it's about what you choose to believe, when you're chosen.
Description Bad Jews tells the story of Daphna Feygenbaum, a 'Real Jew' with an Israeli boyfriend. When Daphna's cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather's Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.
About the Author Joshua Harmon's plays have been produced and developed by Hangar Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, The Lark, The O'Neill, and Actor's Express, where he was the 2010-2011 National New Play Network Playwright- in-Residence. Fellowships from MacDowell, Atlantic Center for the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and the Eudora Welty Foundation. Graduate of Northwestern (BA), Carnegie Mellon (MFA). Currently in the Playwrights Program at Juilliard and under commission from Roundabout and Lincoln Center Theater.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781468309508 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 204x134mm Extent: 112 pages Main Category: AN Performing Arts Sub Category: APFD Film Scripts & Screenplays Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
BLM Overlook DECEMBER 2015 The Christians Lucas Hnath
The hit of the 2014 Humana Festival, a big-little play about faith in America-and the trouble with changing your mind from 'one of the brightest new voices of his generation.' - The New York Times
Description Pastor Paul does not believe in Hell, and today, he's going to preach a sermon that finally says what he really believes. He thinks all the people in his church are going be happy to hear what he has to say. He's wrong.
About the Author Lucas Hnath is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and his plays have been produced or developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Culture Project, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, among others.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781468310832 Format: Paperback - B format Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 96 pages Main Category: AN Performing Arts Sub Category: APFD Film Scripts & Screenplays Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
BLM Overlook DECEMBER 2015 Smoke Kim Davies
A privileged college student and a cynical artist push the boundaries of BDSM in a new play by Kim Davies.
Description 'Kim Davies's Smoke gives us two self-possessed contemporary young New Yorkers in a kitchen at an uptown sex party. John, an old hand at these gatherings, is a would-be artist, still interning at 31; Julie is a 20-year-old college student with dropout plans. 'I think I'm going to try to do as little as possible with my life,' she announces. This may be her first party.' - nytimes.com
About the Author Kim Davies is a member of Youngblood and an affiliated artist with New Georges. Short works, including 'Untitled Play about Balls,' 'Miss Authenticity,' and 'The Love of Richard Nixon,' have been produced with the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Weasel Festival, and the 24 Hour Plays. Her plays have received readings and development with The Flea Theater, Partial Comfort Productions, and the Lark, among others. She is a recent graduate of Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney's MFA in playwriting at Brooklyn College.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$21.99) ISBN: 9781468312096 Format: Paperback - B format Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 96 pages
Main Category: DD Plays, Playscripts
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BLM Overlook DECEMBER 2015 There Must Be Evil: The Life and Murderous Career of Elizabeth Berry Bernard Taylor
'Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed there must be evil' Byron
Description In 1887, Elizabeth Berry, an attractive young nurse from the grim Oldham workhouse, found notoriety throughout the nation after the death of her daughter, perceived by many to be the cruellest of murders - performed with an ice-cold callousness that was almost beyond belief. There w ere many who protested her innocence in the affair, but there w ere also suspicions surrounding another death related to the nurse: that of her mother. Suddenly Elizabeth Berry's dark story began appearing darker still. Was she in fact a coldblooded serial killer? In his new book celebrated crime author Bernard Taylor, investigates the disturbing life of Elizabeth Berry endured during an era of grinding poverty when Victorian England was obsessed with the exploits of murderers and forensic science w as in its infancy. He takes a fresh look at the demise of Berry's husband and two other young children, deaths that for a long time were considered to be of natural causes. For the first time we discover the true story behind this infamous case of the first woman to be hanged at Liverpool's Walton Prison and one of the Victorian period's most harrowing set of homicides.
About the Author Bernard Taylor is a former w inner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for his collaboration with Stephen Knight on Perfect Murder. Apart from his non-fiction w ork he has written many suspense and supernatural novels including The Godsend, The Kindness of Strangers and Madeleine.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9780715650516 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 216x134mm Extent: 304 pages Main Category: B Biography/autobiography Sub Category: BG Biography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Duckworth Trade DECEMBER 2015 Wilde's Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew Eleanor Fitzsimons
A fresh, revealing and entertaining account of the most influential writer of his age and the women who inspired him.
Description Hailed as a gay icon and pioneer of individualism, Oscar Wilde's insistence that 'there should be no law for anybody' made him a staunch defender of gender equality. Throughout his life from his relationship to his extraordinary mother Jane and the tragedy of his sister Isola's early death to his accomplished wife Constance and a coterie of other free- thinking writers, actors and artists, women were a central aspect of his life and career. Wilde's Women is the first book to tell the story of his female friends and colleagues who traded witticisms with Wilde but also give him access to vital publicity and w hose ideas he gave expression through his social comedies. Author Eleanor Fitzsimons reframes Wilde's story and his legacy through the w omen in his life including such fascinating figures as Florence Balcombe who left him for Bram Stoker, actress Lillie Langtry (for a while an inseparable friend) and his tragic and w itty niece Dolly who bore a strong resemblance to the writer and loved fast cars, cocaine and foreign women. Full of fascinating detail and anecdotes Wilde's Women relates the untold story of how the writer played a vitally sympathetic role on behalf of many women and how they supported him in the midst of a Victorian society in the process of changing forever.
About the Author Eleanor Fitzsimons is a researcher, writer, journalist and occasional broadcaster specialising in historical and current feminist issues. Her work has been published in a range of new spapers and journals including the Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Irish Times and she is a regular radio and television contributor.
Price: $35.00 (NZ$39.99) ISBN: 9780715649367 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 234x156mm Extent: 320 pages Main Category: D Literature Sub Category: DSB Literary Studies: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Duckworth Trade DECEMBER 2015 Trans Juliet Jacques
Moving memoir and insightful examination of transgender politics.
Description Trans explores the physical, psychological and cultural impact of transitioning from male to female. In July 2010, aged thirty- one years old, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and for the first time her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Jacques' deeply moving story of growing up and finding an identity is also an examination of the politics of gender. In this account of her remarkable life story, Jacques shares a journey through her relationship to gender and pop culture from the Smiths to Derek Jarman, Pedro Almodovar to Dana International, and Germaine Greer to Ace Ventura Pet Detective.
Brilliantly written, revealing and honest, TRANS also includes an epilogue with award-winning author Sheila Heti, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the issues facing transgender people.
About the Author Juliet Jacques is a freelance author, best known for writing A Transgender Journey for The Guardian, the first time the gender reassignment process has been serialized for a major British publication and was long listed for the Orwell Prize in 2011. She was included in the Independent's Pink List for 2012, is a regular blogger for New Statesman, and has written for Time Out, London Magazine, Cineaste, Vertigo, 3am, and Blizzard, among many others.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781784784171 Format: Paperback - C format Dimensions: 234x160mm Extent: 320 pages
Main Category: B Biography/autobiography
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Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Portraits: John Berger on Artists John Berger
A major history of art from one of the world's leading writers and art critics.
Description One of the world's most celebrated art writers, John Berger takes us through centuries of art in this distinctive history that will enlighten and inspire. In Portraits, Berger connects art and history in revolutionary ways, from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to Cy Twombly's radical work. In his penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about art history, and artists both canonized and obscure,from Rembrandt, to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. A beautifully illustrated walk through many centuries of visual culture from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.
About the Author Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, Here Is Where We Meet, the Booker Prize-winning novel G, Hold Everything Dear, the Man Booker-longlisted From A to X, and A Seventh Man.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784781767 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 450 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: AC Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 The Story Of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father And His Sister: Life And Death In Juarez Sandra Rodríguez Nieto
The intimate story of a teenager's murder of his family, from an award-winning Mexican journalist.
Description Sixteen-year-old Vicente and two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister in cold blood. Through a Capote-like reconstruction of this seemingly inexplicable triple murder, Sandra Rodriguez Nieto paints a haunting and unforgettable portrait of the most violent city on Earth, with an in-depth investigation into the thought process of the three boys, the city of Juarez and the drug cartels that wage war in its streets.
About the Author Sandra Rodriguez Nieto moved to Ciudad Juarez in 2003 to work at the daily newspaper El Diario.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781784784287 Format: Paperback - C format Dimensions: 234x156mm Extent: 208 pages
Main Category: B Biography/autobiography
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Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 The Reproach Of Hunger David Rieff
In a groundbreaking book, based on six years of on the ground reporting, expert David Rieff offers a masterly review about whether ending extreme poverty and widespread hunger is within our reach as increasingly promised.
Description Can we provide enough food for 9 billion (2 billion more than today) in 2050, especially the bottom poorest in the Global South? Some of the most brilliant scientists, world politicians, and aid and development persons forecast an end to the crisis of massive malnutrition in the next decades.
However, food rights campaigners (many associated with green parties in both the rich and poor world) and traditional farming advocates reject the intervention of technology, biotech solutions, and agribusiness. Many economists predict that with the right policies, poverty in Africa can end in twenty years. 'Philanthrocapitalists' Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spend billions on technology to 'solve' the problem, relying on technology.
Rieff, who has been studying and reporting on humanitarian aid and development for thirty years, puts the claims of both sides under a microscope and asks if any one of these efforts will solve the crisis. He cites climate change, unstable governments that receive aid, the cozy relationship between the philanthropic sector and agricultural giants like Monsanto and Syngenta, that are often glossed over.
The Reproach of Hunger is the only book to look at this debate refusing to take the cherished claims of either side at face value. Rieff answers a careful 'yes' to this crucial challenge to humanity's future. The answer to the central question is yes, if we don't confuse our hopes with realities and good intensions with capacities.
About the Author David Rieff is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of several books, including the acclaimed At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention; A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis; Slaughterhouse Bosnia and the Failure of the West; and a memoir of the last year of the life of his mother Susan Price: $29.99 (NZ$36.99) ISBN: 9781784784072 Sontag, Swimming in a Sea of Death. Format: Paperback - C format Dimensions: 234x153mm Extent: 416 pages
Main Category: JFF Current Affairs
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Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture Douglas Murphy
Whatever happened to the last utopian thinkers of the city?
Description In the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil, and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation that hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities, and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archaeology of the present-day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the '60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert, and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind- bending account of the last avant-garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.
About the Author Douglas Murphy is an architecture critic, journalist, academic and designer. He trained as an architect at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, and is currently architecture correspondent at Icon magazine, as well as writing for a wide range of publications on architecture, fine art and photography. His first book, was The Architecture of Failure (2012). He has taught and lectured at Oxford University, UCL, The Royal College of Art, The Architecture Association, ETH Zurich, and appeared on radio and TV.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781781689752 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 210x140mm Extent: 288 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: AM Architecture Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy Linsey McGoey
Putting the business into the charity business.
Description Nearly half of the 75,000 private foundations in the United States were created in the past 10 years. About 5,000 more US philanthropic foundations are set up each year. The amount of money placed in philanthropic trusts helps to make the charitable sector one of the fastest growing industries in the global economy.
Linsey McGoey looks at this new golden age of philanthropy, in particular, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and asks: is this money doing much good? Large charitable organizations are replacing government as the providers of social welfare while their businesses often support economic instability and compound global inequalities. The new generation of mega- donors see that there is good business in charity and ignore the division between good deeds and profits. Are we losing the idea of social justice in the face of market-based philanthropy?
About the Author Linsey McGoey is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. She has been a member of the World Health Organization's expert steering group on the impact of a human rights-based approach to health. She has published reviews and op-eds for the Guardian, Open Democracy, Spectator, and Globe and Mail. Prior to Essex, Linsey held research fellowships at the University of Oxford.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784780838 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 320 pages
Main Category: JHB Sociology
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Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Inventing the Future: Folk Politics and the Left Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams
A major new left manifesto for a technological future free from work.
Description Despite the profound crisis of capitalism and the mass mobilizations of people around the world in response, there has been no successful contestation of neoliberalism's hegemony. Inventing the Future is a major new manifesto that argues for a novel set of alternatives for the future - alternatives which seek to rekindle a popular modernity. Against the confused understanding of the hi-tech and neoliberal world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future the authors envisage a post-capitalist economy which is capable of advancing living standards, liberating humanity from work, and developing technologies which free us from biological and environmental constraints.
About the Author Nick Srnicek is a Teaching Fellow in Geopolitics and Globalisation at University College London, a PhD graduate in International Relations from LSE, and a co-editor of The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism.
Alex Williams is a PhD student at the University of East London working on a thesis entitled Complexity & Hegemony.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781784780968 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 176 pages Main Category: JP Politics Sub Category: JFF Current Affairs Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Crowds and Party Jodi Dean
How do we move from the inert mass to organized activists?
Description Crowds and Party extends the energies of the riotous crowds of the last five years into an argument for the political party. Rejecting emphases on individuals and multitudes, Jodi Dean argues that we rethink the collective subject of politics.
When crowds appear in spaces unauthorized by capital and the state, such as in the Occupy movement in New York, London and across the world, they create a gap of possibility. But too many on the left remain stuck in this beautiful moment of possibility- they argue for more of the same fragmentation into issues and identities as if this had not been the form of the last thirty years of left defeat.
In Crowds and Party, Dean argues that previous discussions of the party have missed its affective dimensions, the way it operates as a knot of unconscious processes, and binds people together. Now, Dean shows how we can see the party as an organization that holds a space for communist political subjectivity and can reinvigorate political practice.
About the Author Jodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited eleven books, including The Communist Horizon and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781781686942 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 210x140mm Extent: 160 pages Main Category: JP Politics Sub Category: JFF Current Affairs Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power and the Roots of Global Warming Andreas Malm
How capitalism became caught up in the carbon-burning trap.
Description The more we debate about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we continue to burn. How did we get caught up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Malm claims that it all began in Britain with the rise of steam- power. So why did manufacturers turn from traditional fuels, notably water, to steam?
Overturning established theories of the transition and offering a radically new view of our warming world, this study shows how steam was adopted as a superior source of power. Two centuries later, the inheritors of that power continue to profit from 'business as usual' as the world heads towards irreversible catastrophe. Malm examines the history of resistance to fossil fuels and offers suggestions for transitioning to alternative sources of power, such as a return to waterpower.
About the Author Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His work has appeared in journals such as Environmental History, Historical Materialism, Antipode and Organization & Environment. He is the author, with Shora Esmailian, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War, and of half a dozen books in Swedish on political economy, the Middle East and climate change.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781784781293 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 352 pages
Main Category: WN Natural History
Sub Category: WN Natural History Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century Kenneth Goldsmith
From acclaimed artist Kenneth Goldsmith, an expansive homage to New York City, told through a colossal collection of quotations from hundreds of likely and unlikely sources.
Description Renowned poet and conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith collects a massive assortment of quotations about New York City in the 20th century. This kaleidoscopic montage from hundreds of sources is a literary adoration of New York as the capital of the world, and was inspired by Walter Benjamin's unfinished masterpiece, the Arcades Project, a compendium of quotations about 19th century Paris. Goldsmith brings together an immense archive of quotations about modern New York from novels, histories, newspapers, memoirs, letters, advertisements, and more unlikely sources, all organized into lyrical and philosophical categories. The result is a magisterial and poetic history of New York in the 20th century, and an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind book of experimental literature.
About the Author Kenneth Goldsmith is the founding editor of UbuWeb, teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and is Senior Editor of PennSound. He hosted a weekly radio show at WFMU from 1995 until June 2010. He was an artist and sculptor for many years before taking up conceptual poetry. He has since published ten books of poetry, notably Fidget (2000), Soliloquy (2001) and Day (2003) and Goldsmith's American trilogy, The Weather (2005), Traffic (2007), and Sports (2008). He is the author of a book of essays, Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in a Digital Age (2011). As editor he published I'll be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (2004) and is the co- editor of Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (2011). He was the first Poet Laureate of the Museum of Modern Art. He resides in New York City with his wife, artist Cheryl Donegan and his two sons.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784781569 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 1008 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Strike Art!: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition Yates McKee
How activism is changing contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond.
Description Activist art experienced a new beginning in the Seattle anti-globalization protests of 1999, but it didn't reach a zenith until Occupy Wall Street, a movement initiated by artist-activists and structured around performative gestures and iconic imagery for the media age. In this moment, activist art and radical ideas briefly invaded the mainstream imagination, and the art world proper opened its doors--momentarily--to activist art, having been forced to acknowledge its presence. Art critic and historian Yates McKee recounts this turn of events, and argues that it has fundamentally changed contemporary art, whether or not the art world knows it yet.
About the Author Yates Mckee is a historian and critic of contemporary art, and a political organizer with various post-Occupy projects including Strike Debt. His work has appeared in The Nation, October, South Atlantic Quarterly and Artforum, and he is the co-editor of Sensible Politics: The Visual Cultures of Nongovernmental Activism. He lives in New York City.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784781880 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 210x140mm Extent: 208 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: AC Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture Justin McGuirk
The Motorcycle Diaries for architects: how slums designers, maverick mayors and squatters are changing the future of Latin America
Description In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of activist architects, politicians and radical communities who have begun rebuilding and redesigning their environments in radically new ways. After decades of political and architectural failure, a new generation has returned to the problems of the city to address the poverty and inequality, testing new ideas that the rest of the world can learn from. An architect in Chile has designed a new form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; squatters in Caracas have taken over a 45-story skyscraper, Torre David; and architect Jorge Mario Jáuregui has upgraded Rio's favelas in exciting new ways.
About the Author Justin McGuirk is a writer and curator, and is the Guardian's design columnist and the editor of Icon magazine. He is also the director of Strelka Press and the design consultant to Domus, and his writing has appeared in The Observer, The Times, Disegno, Art Review, Condé Nast Traveller, Form, The Architects Journal, Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban-Think Tank.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781781688687 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 288 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: AM Architecture Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography Ariella Azoulay
The 'Copernican Revolution' in studying photography brings to light how images can both reinforce and resist power regimes.
Description Understanding photography is more than a matter of assessing photographs, writes Ariella Azoulay. The photograph is merely one event in a sequence that constitutes photography and which always involves an actual or potential spectator in the relationship between the photographer and the individual portrayed. The shift in focus from product to practice, outlined in Civil Imagination, brings to light the way images can both reinforce and resist the oppressive reality foisted upon the people depicted.
Through photography, Civil Imagination seeks out relations of partnership, solidarity, and sharing that come into being at the expense of sovereign powers that threaten to destroy them. Azoulay argues that the 'civil' must be distinguished from the 'political' as the interest that citizens have in themselves, in others, in their shared forms of coexistence, as well as in the world they create and transform.
Azoulay's book sketches out a new horizon of civil living for citizens as well as subjects denied citizenship-inevitable partners in a reality they are invited to imagine anew and to reconstruct. Beautifully produced with many illustrations, Civil Imagination is a provocative argument for photography as a civic practice capable of reclaiming civil power.
About the Author Ariela Azoulay teaches political thought and visual culture at Brown University. She is a curator and documentary film maker.
Price: $29.99 (NZ$32.99) ISBN: 9781784783037 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 288 pages Main Category: A The Arts Sub Category: AM Architecture Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Capitalism: A Ghost Story Arundhati Roy
An impassioned manifesto from the author of Booker-winner God of Small Things, one of the most vocal campaigners in the world.
Description In Capitalism: A Ghost Story, best-selling writer Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of Indian democracy-a nation of 1.2 billion, where the country's 100 richest people own assets worth one quarter of India's gross domestic product. Ferocious and clear-sighted, this is a searing portrait of a nation haunted by ghosts: the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt; the hundreds of millions who live on less than two dollars a day. It is the story of how the largest democracy in the world, with over 800 million voting in the last election, answers to the demands of globalized capitalism, subjecting millions of people to inequality and exploitation. Roy shows how the mega- corporations, modern robber barons plundering India's natural resources, use brute force, as well as a wide range of NGOs and foundations, to sway government and policy making in India.
About the Author Arundhati Roy is the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. Her political writings include The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Listening to Grasshoppers and Broken Republic. She lives in New Delhi.
Price: $19.99 (NZ$22.99) ISBN: 9781784780944 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 210x140mm Extent: 144 pages Main Category: JP Politics Sub Category: JFF Current Affairs Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka's Civil War Rohini Mohan
An unforgettable account of the scars of a long war, and the prolonged mayhem of the postwar peace
Description For three decades, Sri Lanka's civil war tore communities apart. In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers guerrillas in a fierce battle that swept up about 300,000 civilians and killed more than 40,000. More than a million had been displaced by the conflict, and the resilient among them still dared to hope. But the next five years changed everything. Rohini Mohan's searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. When city-bred Sarva is dragged off the streets by state forces, his middle-aged mother, Indra, searches for him through the labyrinthine Sri Lankan bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Mugil, a former child soldier, deserts the Tigers in the thick of war to protect her family. Having survived, they struggle to live as the Sri Lankan state continues to attack minority Tamils and Muslims, frittering away the era of peace. Sarva flees the country, losing his way - and almost his life - in a bid for asylum. Mugil stays, breaking out of the refugee camp to rebuild her family and an ordinary life in the village she left as a girl. But in her tumultuous world, desires, plans, and people can be snatched away in a moment.
The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beautifully written debut from a prize-winning journalist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examination of the corrosive effect of conflict on a people.
About the Author Rohini Mohan is a prize-winning political journalist based in Bangalore, India. She has an MA in Political Journalism from Columbia University, New York, where she was a 2009-2010 Presidential Fellow. She has won prestigious awards for her work, including the Charles Wallace Fellowship 2013, London; the ICRC Humanitarian Reporting Award 2012, New Delhi; the Sanskriti-Prabha Dutt Fellowship 2012, New Delhi; and the South Asian Journalists' Association award 2011, New York. She has written for the New York Times, Tehelka, The Caravan, Outlook, and The Hindu.
Price: $22.99 (NZ$24.99) ISBN: 9781781688830 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 198x129mm Extent: 368 pages Main Category: JP Politics Sub Category: JP Politics Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism Slavoj Zizek
Zizek's philosophical masterwork, now out in paperback
Description At the outset of the twentieth century, Lenin argued that materialism has to change its form with each new scientific discovery. Today, argues Slavoj Zizek in this major new work, we should apply this stricture to Lenin himself. Philosophical materialism has not yet risen to the challenge of relativity theory and quantum physics, or breakthroughs like Freudian psychoanalysis-and we need hardly mention the failure of actually existing Communism. In Absolute Recoil, Zizek proposes a new foundation for dialectical materialism that answers these fundamental challenges.
About the Author Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Less Than Nothing, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, six volumes of the Essential Zizek, and many more.
Price: $24.99 (NZ$27.99) ISBN: 9781784781996 Format: Paperback Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 448 pages Main Category: HP Philosophy Sub Category: HPD Non-western Philosophy Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 Japanese Art and Design Greg Irvine
Published to accompany the reopening of the V&A’s refurbished Toshiba Gallery of Art and Design in November 2015
Description The V&A has the UK’s largest permanent display of Japanese art, housing objects made over 1500 years. Collecting Japanese objects from its founding in 1852, the Museum has played a significant role in bringing the art of Japan to the attention of designers, manufacturers and the British public. This tradition continues to the present day, and in this new book some of the world’s leading researchers in the field bring their attention to the V&A’s unparalleled collection.
Ten chapters focus on subjects including religion and ritual; samurai military and aristocratic culture; the highly aestheticized tea ceremony, which has been a notable feature of Japanese culture from the Medieval period to the present day; Edo-period urban fashions including lacquer and fashionable dress; Ukiyo-e and the graphic arts (prints, illustrated books, paintings, screens and contemporary photography); exchanges with the West and participation in world exhibitions, right up to modern and contemporary crafts and product design, including high-tech design.
About the Author Gregory Irvine is Senior Curator in the V&A’s Asian Department, where he specializes in Japanese metalwork. He is the author of The Japanese Sword (V&A 2000) and Japanese Cloisonné (V&A 2006)
Price: $60.00 (NZ$69.99) ISBN: 9781851778553 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 245x220mm Extent: 240 pages
Main Category: A The Arts
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V&A Publications DECEMBER 2015 Bejewelled: Treasures of the Al-Thani Collection Susan Stronge
Published to accompany the V&A exhibition, Bejewelled Treasures: The Al-Thani Collection, 21 November 2015 to 28 March 2016
Description This opulent book invites the reader to examine in exquisite detail spectacular jewelled and enamel objects drawn from a single private collection, and to explore the broader themes of tradition and modernity in Indian jewellery.
Highlights include a rare jewelled finial from the throne of Tipu Sultan, Mughal jades and a stunning carved dagger owned by Shah Jahan. Featuring 100 objects, the book examines the origins of these precious artefacts from the treasury of the Mughal emperors and the courts of Hindustan.
The author also looks at the influence that India had on avantgarde European jewellery made by Cartier and other leading houses and concludes with contemporary pieces made by JAR (hailed as the Fabergé of our times) and Viren Bhagat, which are inspired by a creative fusion of Mughal motifs and Art Deco ‘Indian’ designs.
About the Author Susan Stronge is Senior Curator in the department of Asian Art at the V&A
Price: $70.00 (NZ$79.99) ISBN: 9781851778577 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 287x247mm Extent: 144 pages
Main Category: A The Arts
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V&A Publications DECEMBER 2015 The First Book of Fashion: The Book of Clothes of Matthaeus and Veit Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg edited by Ulinka Rublack, edited by Dr Maria Hayward edited by Jenny Tiramani and Clare Turner
The first English translation of one of the most important historical sources in fashion history, the First Book of Fashion is a fascinating window on the renaissance and the power of dress.
Description An obsession with fashion is nothing new. Throughout history, dress has mesmerised with its power to charm and communicate identity and status. In this first English translation of an extraordinary historical document - the earliest known book of fashion - fashion-conscious Renaissance man Matth.us Schwarz and his son Veit Konrad chronicle their lives through the clothes they wore. Lavishly illustrated, The First Book of Fashion recaptures the experience of sixteenth-century life through the rich intricacies of dress and its cultural meaning. The book unpicks the fabrics, cuts, colours and detail of these remarkable illustrations and their brilliant captions handwritten by Schwarz, arguably making him the first fashion blogger. Historians Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward bring the original manuscript to life with new, insightful commentaries alongside the original text, providing an unparalleled portrait of sixteenth-century dress and culture in context. Including a specially-designed pattern by Olivier award-winning costume designer Jenny Tiramani, from which readers can recreate one of Schwarz's original garments, this is a valuable resource for everyone from scholars to designers to fashion enthusiasts.
About the Author Ulinka Rublack is a Fellow of St John's College and a Reader in early modern European history at Cambridge University, UK
Maria Hayward is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Professor in Early Modern European History at the University of Southampton, UK.
Price: $59.99 (NZ$69.99) Jenny Tiramani is visiting professor at the University of Nottingham, UK and was the Director of Theatre Design at ISBN: 9780857857682 Shakespeare's Globe in London, UK until 2005. Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 276x219mm Extent: 320 pages
Main Category: A The Arts
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Bloomsbury Visual Arts DECEMBER 2015 The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father, and His Sister: Life and Death in Juárez Sandra Rodríguez Nieto
The intimate story of a teenager's murder of his family, from award-winning Mexican journalist.
Description Sixteen-year-old Vicente and two of his high school friends murder his mother, his father, and his little sister in cold blood. Through a Capote-like reconstruction of this seemingly inexplicable triple murder, Sandra Rodríguez Nieto paints a haunting and unforgettable portrait of the most violent city on earth, with an in-depth investigation into the thought process of the three boys, the city of Juárez, and the drug-cartels that war in its streets. This book explores how poverty, political corruption, incapacitated government institutions, and US meddling combined to create the explosion of violence in Juarez. The product of years of tenacious reporting that have brought Sandra Rodríguez international acclaim, this book traces the rise of a national culture of extreme violence, and is a testament to the extraordinary bravery of a reporter.
About the Author Sandra Rodriguez Nieto moved to Ciudad Juarez in 2003 to work at the daily newspaper El Diario. Her reporting has been recognized with a number of international prizes, including the 2013 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. In 2010, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo presented her with the Reporteros Del Mundo award for her outstanding work covering a conflict zone. That same year, she made the Los Angeles Times' Media Hero list for reporting in one of the most dangerous cities on earth, and in 2012, she was awarded the John Peter and Catherine Zenger Award. She is currently a Niemann Fellow at Harvard University. She has also written for Reforma and La Jornada newspapers, Proceso magazine, New Internationalist Magazine and The Investigative Reporters and Editors Journal. She is currently collaborating with SinEmbargo.mx, a news reporting and opinion website in Mexico City.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784781040 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 210x140mm Extent: 208 pages Main Category: B Biography/autobiography Sub Category: BG Biography: General Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
Verso Trade DECEMBER 2015 The Reproach of Hunger: Food, Justice and Money in the 21st Century David Rieff
Why have we failed so badly to address the crisis of hunger in the 21st century?
Description In 2000 the world's leaders and experts agreed that the eradication of hunger was the essential task for the new millennium. Yet in the last decade the price of wheat, soya and rice have spiralled, seen by many as the cause of widening poverty gap and political unrest from the Arab Spring to Latin America. This food crisis has condemned the bottom billion of the world's population who live on less than $1 a day to a state of constant hunger.
In The Reproach of Hunger leading expert on humanitarian aid and development, David Rieff, goes in search of the causes of this food security crisis, as well as the failures to respond to the disaster. In addition to the failures to address climate change, poor governance and misguided optimism, Rieff cautions against the increased privatization of aid, with such organization as the Gates Foundation spending more that the WHO on food relief. The invention of the celebrity campaigner - from Bono to Jeffrey Sachs - whose business-led solutions have robbed development of its political urgency. The hope that the crisis of food scarcity of food production can be solved by a technological innovation. In response Rieff demands that we rethink the fundamental causes of the world's grotesque inequalities and see the issue as a political challenge we are all failing to confront.
About the Author David Rieff is the son of Susan Sontag and Philip Rieff. He is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. He is the author of several books, including the acclaimed At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention; A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis; and Slaughterhouse Bosnia and the Failure of the West. He lives in New York City.
Price: $39.99 (NZ$45.00) ISBN: 9781784783389 Format: Hard Cover Dimensions: 235x156mm Extent: 416 pages Main Category: JP Politics Sub Category: JFF Current Affairs Illustrations: Previous Titles: Author now living:
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