WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARDSelected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator & Observer Angela Carter`s life was as unconventional as anything in her fiction. Through her fearlessly original & inventive books, including The Bloody Chamber & Nights at the Circus, she became an icon to a generation & one of the most acclaimed English writers of the last hundred years. This is her first full & authorised biography. Edmund Gordon uncovers Carter`s life story
- from a young woman trying to write in a tiny bedsit in Tokyo, to one of the most important & daring writers of her day. From a life full of adventure sprang work so fantastic, dazzling & seductive that it permanently changed & reinvigorated British literature. This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself.` An exemplary piece of work... Everyone should read it` Spectator
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This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant`s still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him & how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant`s view of his own historicity, & of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, & in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious & political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant`s ethics. ...

An extraordinary yet little-known scientific advance occurred in the opening years of the nineteenth century when a young amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, gave the clouds the names by which they are known to this day. By creating a language to define structures that had, up to then, been considered random & unknowable, Howard revolutionized the science of meteorology & earned the admiration of his leading contemporaries in art, literature & science. Richard Hamblyn charts Howard`s life from obscurity to international fame, & back to obscurity once more. He recreates the period`s intoxicating atmosphere of scientific discovery, & shows how this provided inspiration for figures such as Goethe, Shelley & Constable. Offering rich insights into the nature of celebrity, the close relationship between the sciences & the arts, & the excitement generated by new ideas, ” The Invention of Clouds” is an enthralling work of social & scientific history. ...

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, & THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets & anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl & her grandfather, Hugo`s undercover life, & his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, & a hidden message from Hugo`s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, & spellbinding mystery. ...

` We are a trading community, a commercial people. Murder is doubtless a very shocking offence, nevertheless as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.` Punch Murder in the 19th century was rare. But murder as sensation & entertainment became ubiquitous
- transformed into novels, into broadsides & ballads, into theatre & melodrama & opera
- even into puppet shows & performing dog-acts. In this meticulously researched & compelling book, Judith Flanders
- author of ` The Victorian House`
- retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder
- both famous & obscure. From the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd & Jack the Ripper, to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London`s East End, Burke & Hare & their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh, & Greenacre who transported his dismembered fiancee around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, & poisoners, the mad, the bad & the dangerous to know, ` The Invention of Murder` is both a gripping tale of crime & punishment, & history at its most readable.




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The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets & history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author & publisher Eric Hazan. Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions & revolutions of the nineteenth & twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur`s ear for a story with a historian`s command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers & the artists-Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, & Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval & Rousseau. It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted & vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. The Invention of Paris opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital`s vibrant & bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors. ...

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016 How did a country that liberated itself from seventy years of Soviet rule end up as one of the biggest threats to the West &, above all, to its own future? Why did the people who rejected Communist ideology come to accept state propaganda? In this bold & important book, Arkady Ostrovsky takes the reader on an enthralling journey through Russia`s tumultuous post-Soviet transformation & illuminates the key turning points that often took the world by surprise. As a foreign correspondent in his own country, Ostrovsky has experienced Russia`s modern history first-h&, & through original research & interviews he reveals the ideological conflicts, compromises & temptations that have left Russia on a knife-edge. ...

We live in a world made by science. How & when did this happen? This book tells the story of the extraordinary intellectual & cultural revolution that gave birth to modern science, & mounts a major challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of its history. Before 1492 it was assumed that all significant knowledge was already available; there was no concept of progress; people looked for understanding to the past not the future. This book argues that the discovery of America demonstrated that new knowledge was possible: indeed it introduced the very concept of `discovery`, & opened the way to the invention of science. The first crucial discovery was Tycho Brahe`s nova of 1572: proof that there could be change in the heavens. The telescope (1610) rendered the old astronomy obsolete. Torricelli`s experiment with the vacuum (1643) led directly to the triumph of the experimental method in the Royal Society of Boyle & Newton. By 1750 Newtonianism was being celebrated throughout Europe. The new science did not consist simply of new discoveries, or new methods. It relied on a new understanding of what knowledge might be, & with this came a new language: discovery, progress, facts, experiments, hypotheses, theories, laws of nature
- almost all these terms existed before 1492, but their meanings were radically transformed so they became tools with which to think scientifically. We all now speak this language of science, which was invented during the Scientific Revolution. The new culture had its martyrs (Bruno, Galileo), its heroes (Kepler, Boyle), its propagandists (Voltaire, Diderot), & its patient labourers (Gilbert, Hooke). It led to a new rationalism, killing off alchemy, astrology, & belief in witchcraft. It led to the invention of the steam engine & to the first Industrial Revolution. David Wootton`s landmark book changes our understanding of how this great transformation came about, & of what science is.
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This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the 'ancient constitution' of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian & ancient poetry; & the sartorial myth of tartan & the kilt, invented
- ironically by Englishmen
- in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualisation & domestication of Scotland's myths as local colour diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling script was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 & is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity & wit, & containing defiant & challenging opinions, it will absorb & provoke Scottish readers & intrigue many others.

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' All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official & popular culture, & yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive & influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century AD, & the assertion of both cultural & racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine & the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. In this bold & ambitious new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times
- when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. Sand forensically dissects the official story
- & demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth & the collective mystification that this requires. A bestseller in Israel & France, Shlomo Sand's book has sparked a widespread & lively debate. Should the Jewish people regard themselves as genetically distinct & identifiable across the millennia
- or should that doctrine now be left behind & if the myth of the Jewish state is dismantled, could this open a path toward a more inclusive Israeli state, content within its borders?'


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