With its rich golden hue, art deco-inspired bottle, and timeless, musky scent, Chanel Number 5 is the world's bestselling perfume. Reverently known among industry insiders as "le monstre" - the monster - it is arguably the most coveted consumer luxury product of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet how did this pioneering celebrity fragrance, introduced in the early 1920s, eventually take on a life of its own, becoming a cultural monument celebrated by millions of devoted consumers? "The Secret of Chanel Number 5" is Tilar... read more

Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. This title tells the epic story of our complicated relationship with food, the fashions and fads of body shape, and how cultural beliefs and social norms have changed over time.

Prize-winning author Adam Nicolson tells the story he was born to write -- the real story of England. It is the gentry that has made England what it was and, to a degree, still is. In this vivid, lively book, history has never been more readable. We may well be 'a nation of shopkeepers', but for generations England was a country dominated by its middling families, rooted on their land, in their locality, with a healthy interest in turning a profit from their property and a deep distrust of the centralised state. The virtues we may... read more

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Blending history, science and eye-witness accounts, and arranged in chapters corresponding to the four elements (earth, air, fire and water), "Terra" explores the relationship between the planet and the humans who inhabit its surfaces. Through four case histories - the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; the weather-panics of the summer of 1783; the eruption of Krakatau in 1883; and, the Hilo tsunami of 1946 - Hamblyn reminds us of the earth's unimaginable force and describes what happens when that force is unleashed, both in terms of the i... read more

Shows how the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support. This title introduces us to the key players in this twisted game, to the aid-workers and the warlords themselves.

This is the story of three great famines. The first is an Gorta Mor, the great hunger of Ireland, which began in 1846 and whose end-date is a matter of debate. The second is the less well-known but more deadly famine that struck Bengal in 1943. The third is the Ethiopian famine, which first sprung up in lethal form in the 1970s under Emperor Haile Selassie and then again under the brutal dictator Mengistu in the 1980s. Keneally himself visited Eritrea in 1984 to see the effects of this grave event. In those who suffered these f... read more

From conkers to marbles, from British Bulldog to tag, not forgetting 'one potato, two potato' and 'eeny, meeny, miny, mo', "The Lore of the Playground" looks at the games children have enjoyed, the rhymes they have chanted and the rituals and traditions they have observed over the past hundred years and more. Each generation, it emerges, has had its own favourites - hoops and tops in the 1930s, clapping games more recently. Some pastimes, such as skipping, have proved remarkably resilient, their complicated rules carefully handed d... read more

'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 and entertainment became ubiquitous -- transformed into novels, into broadsides and ballads, into theatre and melodrama and opera -- even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. In this meticulously researched and compelling book, Judith Flanders -- author of 'The Victorian House' -- r... read more

Examining a number of expeditions from those of the 'Heroic Age' to the present time, the book considers why people are still drawn to this bleak and inhospitable blank on the map - it remains an international stage for ambition and adventure, dreams and desire. This volume brings together a range of rare materials - unpublished Herbert Ponting photographs, artworks, ephemera and manuscripts from public and private collections. There is also a section discussing the great polar voyages, debating the culture of explorers as 'heroes... read more

There is more information in the world than ever before - but who is in control? At the centre is the Establishment: governments, corporations andpowerful individuals who have more knowledge about us, and more power, than at any other time in history. Circling them is a new generation of hackers, pro-democracy campaigners and internet activists who no longer accept that the Establishment should run the show. In her gripping, revelatory new book, award-winning journalist and campaigner Heather Brooke takes us inside the Inform... read more

The United States is a country founded on the ideals of democracy and freedom, yet throughout the last century it has used secret and lawless methods to destroy its enemies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the most powerful of these forces. This title presents the history of the FBI as a secret intelligence service.

How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world - and how their invention could make or break the planet.
A fascinating exploration of how a simple system used to measure and record wealth spawned a cultural revolution. Prepare to have your idea of accounting changed forever.
'The rise and metamorphosis of double-entry bookkeeping is one of history's best-kept secrets and most important untold tales ... Through its logic we have let the planet go to ruin-and through its logic we now have a chance to avert that ... read more

They are a mythical people, almost an imagined people, writes Kurlansky. Signs of their civilization exist well before the arrival of the Romans in 218BC.

Incorporating myth, history and investigation, this book tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, the author's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind.

Can the adorable Ella Bella Ballerina help Cinderella get to the Royal Ball? Alone on the stage after class, Ella Bella opens Madame Rosa's magical musical box and is whisked off into the world of the Cinderella ballet. But will Ella Bella be able to help Cinderella meet her perfect Prince Charming?

Oil makes the world work, but it destroys many of those who produce it. "Crude World" offers a passionate look at the countries where oil is extracted, and follows the journey of oil, showing how it poisons the land and rivers, promotes political bloodshed, creates corruption on a staggering scale, and rarely offers the people either wealth or freedom. Instead, oil benefits only the companies and governments that will do anything to sustain the flow of money. From Nigerian fishermen to Moscow oligarchs, from American generals in Ir... read more

Virgil became a school author in his own lifetime and the centre of the Western canon for the next 1800 years, exerting a major influence on European literature, art, and politics. This Companion is designed as an indispensable guide for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of an author critical to so many disciplines. It consists of essays by seventeen scholars from Britain, the USA, Ireland and Italy which offer a range of different perspectives both traditional and innovative on Virgil's works, and a renewed sense of why Virgil... read more

We are, to use a technical economic term, screwed. The cowboy capitalists had a party with everyone's money and now we're all paying for it. What went wrong? And will we learn our lesson - or just carry on as before, like celebrating surviving a heart attack with a packet of Rothmans? If you want to know, but are the sort of person who finds it hard to tell the difference between a CDO, a CDS, an MBS, and a toasted cheese sandwich, John Lanchester has mastered the finer points of finance so you don't have to. In "Whoops!" he explai... read more

James Gleick, the author of the bestsellers Chaos and Genius, brings us his crowning work: a revelatory chronicle that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality--the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanished as soon as it was born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long misunderstood "talking drums" of Africa, James Gleick tells the story of information technologies that ... read more