A surprising story of obsession, necessity, invention and adventure. One could really turn the title around for ice has preserved human history as few other mediums have.
Many readers will remember Daniel Yergin's brilliant history of oil Prize, but that was 30 years ago and things look pretty different now. Here is the backdrop to Marriott & Macalister's sup... read more
Bazaars in Tabriz, laxatives in Venice, sheep growing on trees and other marvels: an intrepid journey into the medieval mind and its furnishings, based on travellers accounts from Iceland to... read more
A deeply personal social history. From ancient Greece to 70s' New York, from Diogenes to her father, Eberstadt explores how people have used their bodies to challenge the world around them.
We're very keen on this illustrated book on a few of the world's most interesting bookshops because it features Sandoe's, with some attempt by JdeF to describe what is distinctive about us.
Forty of these remarkable horticultural institutions throughout the world, including Norway, Morocco, Kyoto, Kew, Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Malaysia...
The director of the Bodleian includes some of the US president's deleted tweets in an historical survey that ranges from the Library of Alexandria to the Windrush papers. The surprise is tha... read more
Great cities around the world as they once were, and now - C9th BC Thebes in Egypt compared with modern Luxor, Constantinople and Istanbul, London at the time of the Great Fire and since, et... read more
A large-format, lavishly illustrated book on 16 voyages of discovery that took place between 1714 and 1854 by the famous (Lap?rouse, Bougainville et Dumont d'Urville) and the less so (La Ba... read more
An ambitious book that traces the collapse of empires and their ramifications in contemporary Eurasian geopolitics - in particular Iran, China, Turkey and Russia.
Contacts and connections as the drivers of cultural change: the West was built on far more than the values of ancient Greece and Rome, as per the Victorian paradigm. Erudite and compelling.
By looking at the work and methods of thirteen C20th anthropologists, LM shows how they ended by changing how we see ourselves as much as the 'primitive' societies they were studying.
After comparing the great emperors of antiquity, Lieven turns to the Habsburg, Russian, Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese emperors. Imperial in ambition and achievement.
Cauliflower in almond and saffron masala, paneer and apricot koftas; small plates, large plates, breads, relishes...The first of a a new series from Bloomsbury, catching the wave of vegetari... read more
Compiled from Dervla's books and journalism: fifty years of travelling in Spain, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, the Andes, Africa, Palestine, the Balkans, Jamaica... She never went by car and w... read more
How, whether made on tally sticks or via electronic portal, systems of debt and credit have been a driving force in the development of states from Pisa in the C12th to the Bolshevik Revoluti... read more
If Mrs T is what she eats, who is Mrs T? A long journey to understand how food is connected to place and national identity, how tradition and innovation create culture. Warm, knowledgeable a... read more
Over 40 years and many travels, the distinguished photographer has taken many pictures of children. A selection of them is gathered here for the first time.
How we might stabilise climate change and repair habitats and the environment, in consultation with geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists, engineers, economists, mathematicians, h... read more
Encompasses natural events and their consequences on a vast scale, showing how these have shaped human responses, trade, empires... Particularly trenchant as we try to understand climate cha... read more
Biotechnology is becoming big business, the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. Cobb is an eminently reasonable guide to this strange new world: gene-editing, cloning, GMOs, ethics, etc.