Historie og samfunn

San Pedro is Bolivia's most notorious prison. Small-time drug smuggler Thomas McFadden found himself on the inside. Marching Powder is the story of how he navigated this dark world of gangs, drugs and corruption to come out on top.Thomas found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners' wives and children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison.Thomas ended up making a living by giving backpackers tours of the prison - he became a fixture on the backpacking circuit and was named in the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backpackers who'd passed through who sent him the money. Written by lawyer Rusty Young, Marching Powder - sometimes shocking, sometimes funny - is a riveting story of survival.

A brilliant new history that dramatically reassesses how far the Viking world extended. Dr Cat Jarman exposes the unexpected routes that Viking travel and trade took - and how these kings of the river were frequent travellers of the Middle East and the Silk Road.

Join Max La Manna on his journey to living more sustainably, celebrating the incredible power of aplant-based diet creating as minimal waste as possible. Max will show us how it easy it can be to think outside the box when it comes to a more conscious, simple lifestyle.

Perhaps the most important global trend of the last few years has been the rise - and transformation - of information warfare.

Do you have a female brain or a male brain?Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains.

The Sunday Times bestseller on race and class in the UK, from the MOBO award-winning musician Akala

'Her highly personal and reflective memoir ... is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world' Barack Obama THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019

`A wonderful overview of tactical development in European football' Matthew Syed, The Times `A fascinating assessment of football in 2019' Observer

A magical and captivating coming of age novel set in medieval Russia - perfect for fans of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. One girl can make a difference... Moscow is in flames, leaving its people searching for answers - and someone to blame.

Discover this spellbinding debut from S.A. Chakraborty. `An extravagant feast of a book - spicy and bloody, dizzyingly magical, and still, somehow, utterly believable' Laini Taylor, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author

The fourth epic, captivating novel in the bestselling Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley.

Garry Kasparov gives his first public account of his landmark 1997 chess match with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, and explains why, twenty years later, he's become convinced that artificial intelligence is good for humans.

Theorizes the political agency of things and natural phenomena-such as trash, food, weather, and electricity-to examine how non-human elements exert force on human politics and social relations.

In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed.

Start Where You Are is an indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening a compassionate heart, from bestselling author Pema Choedroen. With insight and humour, she presents down-to-earth guidance on how to make friends with ourselves and develop genuine compassion towards others.

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in Trier into a middle-class Jewish family in 1818, by the time of his death in London in 1883, Marx claimed a growing international reputation. Of central importance then and later was his book Das Kapital, or, as it is known to English readers, simply Capital. Volume One of Capital was published in Paris in 1867 and is included in this edition. This was the only volume published during Marx's lifetime and the only to have come directly from his pen. Volume Two, available as a separate Wordsworth eBook, was published in 1884, and was based on notes Marx left, but written by his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Readers from the nineteenth century to the present have been captivated by the unmistakable power and urgency of this classic of world literature. Marx's critique of the capitalist system is rife with big themes: his theory of 'surplus value', his discussion of the exploitation of the working class, and his forecast of class conflict on a grand scale. Marx wrote with purpose. As he famously put it, 'Philosophers have previously tried to explain the world, our task is to change it.'

We can spend a lot of time looking for happiness when the world right around us is full of wonder. But our hearts and minds are so full of noise that we can t always hear the call of life and love. To hear that call and respond to it, we need silence. In his beautiful new book, Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh explains how mindfulness is the practice that stops the noise inside. With gentle anecdotes, simple Buddhist wisdom and practical exercises, he shows us how to live mindfully so that all the internal chatter ceases and we are left with the eloquent sound of silence. Now, at last, we can answer the call of the beauty around us. Through silence, Thich Nhat Hanh reveals, we are free to hear, to see - and just be.

'This is a very worthwhile book. It can change individual lives and the life of our society.' The Dalai LamaLucidly and beautifully written, Peace is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is - in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking in a park - and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace. Nhat Hanh also shows how to be aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty and also its pollution and injustices. The deceptively simple practices of Peace is Every Step encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the 'mindness' into the mindful.

'A must-read for anyone interested in food and the future' Yotam OttolenghiBased on ten years of surveying farming communities around the world, top New York chef Dan Barber's The Third Plate offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste incredible. The 'first plate' was a classic meal centred on a large cut of meat with few vegetables. On the 'second plate', championed by the farm-to-table movement, meat is free-range and vegetables are locally sourced. It's better-tasting, and better for the planet, but the second plate's architecture is identical to that of the first. It, too, disrupts ecological balances, causing soil depletion and nutrient loss - it just isn't a sustainable way to farm or eat. The 'third plate' offers a solution: an integrated system of vegetable, cereal and livestock production that is fully supported - in fact, dictated - by what we choose to cook for dinner. The Third Plate is where good farming and good food intersect.

'The Book that really held me, in fact, obsessed me, was Rubicon . . . This is narrative history at its best. Bloody and labyrinthine political intrigue and struggle, brilliant oratory, amazing feats of conquest and cruelty' Ian McEwan, Books of the Year, Guardian'Marvellously readable' Niall FergusonThe Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness - the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall. It is a story of incomparable drama. This was the century of Julius Caesar, the gambler whose addiction to glory led him to the banks of the Rubicon, and beyond; of Cicero, whose defence of freedom would make him a byword for eloquence; of Spartacus, the slave who dared to challenge a superpower; of Cleopatra, the queen who did the same.Tom Holland brings to life this strange and unsettling civilization, with its extremes of ambition and self-sacrifice, bloodshed and desire. Yet alien as it was, the Republic still holds up a mirror to us. Its citizens were obsessed by celebrity chefs, all-night dancing and exotic pets; they fought elections in law courts and were addicted to spin; they toppled foreign tyrants in the name of self-defence. Two thousand years may have passed, but we remain the Romans' heirs.

This landmark book uncovers for the first time in detail one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century: the vast system of Soviet camps that were responsible for the deaths of countless millions.Gulag is the only major history in any language to draw together the mass of memoirs and writings on the Soviet camps that have been published in Russia and the West. Using these, as well as her own original research in NKVD archives and interviews with survivors, Anne Applebaum has written a fully documented history of the camp system: from its origins under the tsars, to its colossal expansion under Stalin's reign of terror, its zenith in the late 1940s and eventual collapse in the era of glasnost. It is a gigantic feat of investigation, synthesis and moral reckoning.

Travellers have always been thrilled by the sight of citrus in Italy, where dark leaves and bright fruit seem to charge the landscape, making the trees symbols of a sun-soaked, poetic vision of the country. Citrus also holds a special place in the Italian imagination, and in The Land Where Lemons Grow, Helena Attlee sets out to explore its curious past and its enduring resonance in Italian culture.Building on a life of travel and work in Italy, she undertakes a journey encompassing the sticky streets of Ivrea during the Battle of Oranges, the comfortable gardens of Tuscany's villas and a magic triangle of land in Sicily, where the best blood oranges in the world grow in the shadow of a volcano.She maps the citron's long migration from the foothills of the Himalayas to the shores of southern Italy, traces the bitter juice of Seville oranges through ancient Roman and Renaissance cookery books, exposes early manifestations of the Mafia during the nineteenth-century citrus boom, and laments the loss of landscapes shaped by citrus cultivation.The book is a celebration of the unique qualities of Italy's citrus fruit, from bergamot that will thrive only on a short stretch of coastline, to Calabria's Diamante citrons, vital to Jews all over the world during the celebration of Sukkoth.The Land Where Lemons Grow is a heady mixture of travel writing, history, horticulture and art; a unique journey through Italy's cultural, culinary and political past.Helena Attlee is the author of four books about Italian gardens, and others on the cultural history of gardens around the world. Helena is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and has worked in Italy for nearly 30 years.

In this monumental multiple biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin studies Abraham Lincoln's mastery of men. She shows how he saved Civil War-torn America by appointing his fiercest rivals to key cabinet positions, making them help achieve his vision for peace. As well as a thrilling piece of narrative history, it's an inspiring study of one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen. A book to bury yourself in.

'Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace if applied, would build a monument of ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.' Martin Luther King, Jr.Budda and Jesus Christ, perhaps the two most pivotal figures in the history of humankind, each left behind a legacy of teachings and practices that have shaped the lives of billions of people over the course of two millennia. If they were to meet on the road today, what would each think of the other's spiritual views and practices? Thich Nhat Hanh has been part of a decades-long dialogue between the two greatest living contemplative traditions, and brings to Christianity an appreciation of its beauty that could be conveyed only by an outsider. In a lucid, meditative prose, he explores the crossroads of compassion and holiness at which Buddhism and Christianity meet, and reawakens our understanding of both.

Lars Muhl has had a lifelong burning interest in Jesus, not only as an archetype, savior, boddhisatava and elder brother, but also in relation to the Essenes from the Dead Sea. The Law of Light is the result of his many years spent studying Aramaic and the techniques of Yeshua (Jesus). Yeshua spoke Aramaic. Through the Aramaic language, his teachings offer not just another interpretation of the New Testament, but the unveiling of a secret message that attempts, once and for all, to settle centuries-old conceptions of sin, and to once again connect man with the heavenly spiritual source. The core of Yeshua's Aramaic message is intimacy, freedom, selfless awareness, unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness. In all he says, there exists a hidden invitation to us to be present in, and dedicated to, everything with which we engage. Five minutes of total devotion is worth more than hours of hectic exertion. The aim is to set mankind free and to dismiss everything that is bound up in false notions.

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever."e;It's unlikely that Trump has ever readAmusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.' -CNNOriginally published in 1985, Neil Postman's groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic mediafrom the Internet to cell phones to DVDsit has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.';A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.' Jonathan Yardley,The Washington Post Book World

A genre-bending memoir that offers fierce and fresh reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism. At the centre is a love-story, between Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is undergoing gender reassignment, while Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy. Personal, honest and wide-ranging, Nelson explores the challenges and complexities that make up a modern family.

It's obvious from the bookshelves and the big screen that heaven is on everyone's mind. All of us long to know what life after death will be like. Bestselling author John Burke is no exception. For decades, he has been studying accounts of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). While not every detail of individual NDEs correlate with Scripture, Burke shows how the common experiences shared by thousands of survivors clearly point to the God of the Bible and the exhilarating picture of heaven he promises.Imagine Heaven is an inspirational journey through the Bible's picture of heaven, colored in with the real-life stories of heaven's wonders. Burke compares gripping stories of NDEs to what Scripture says about our biggest questions of heaven: Will I be myself? Will I see friends and loved ones? What will it look like? What is God like? What will we do forever? What about children and pets? This book will propel readers into an experience that will forever change their view of the life to come and the way they live life today. It also tackles the tough questions of heavenly reward and hellish NDEs. Anyone interested in NDEs or longing to imagine heaven more clearly will enjoy this fascinating and hope-filled book.