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The Sacrifice: How Bolivian miners extract their wealth
By Thomas Graham. 2019
2019 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE‘In the Andean cultural context, the mouth of the mine…
is a portal between worlds. Outside, the miners are Catholic. Inside, the human soul has escaped the jurisdiction of God.’In this searing investigation, Thomas Graham crosses the Bolivian altiplano and ventures into Siglo XX, once the world’s richest tin mine. Describing the historical and political landscape of this near post-apocalyptic world, he is invited into the local mining community where he uncovers the true costs it has exacted on their lives.Russian Thinkers
By Isaiah Berlin. 1956
Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is…
his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, 'the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.'Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate descriptions of the…
countryside, colourful accounts of his encounters with labourers, and indignant outbursts at the encroaching cities and the sufferings of the exploited poor. Ian Dyck's new edition places these lively accounts of rural life in the context of Cobbett's political and social beliefs and reveals the volume as his platform for rural radical reform.A Room of One's Own (Penguin Great Ideas)
By Virginia Woolf. 2004
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other.…
They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.A River Passes By Here
By Caroline Eaton Tracey. 2021
RUNNER-UP OF THE 2020 BODLEY HEAD / FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZE'Just before the COVID-19 quarantine, I moved into my girlfriend's…
apartment, a renovated garage in a forgotten triangle of blocks where three Mexico City neighbourhoods come together.'A River Passes By Here is a story about Mexico City, its climate, its history and the life and love that flourishes within it. It describes efforts over more than a century to tame a unique natural environment, and explores what nature means to us when we are forcibly separated from it. It is a deeply evocative and enchanting portrait of a very particular time in an exceptional place.Rinder's Rules: Make the Law Work For You!
By Rob Rinder. 2015
Too many lawyers spout jargon... I’m here to cut the bulls**t. Robert RinderHave you had a holiday from hell? Been…
left with a hole in your floor by a dodgy builder? Fed up with fighting over who gets the dog after your divorce? Don't worry, criminal barrister Rob Rinder, star of the ITV hit show Judge Rinder and columnist for the Sun, is here to help you take action. From common legal woes to problems you may have, this is a collection of real-life stories of things gone wrong, for which he provides sound legal advice. With sections on jargon-busting, consumer rights and common mistakes, Rinder’s Rules provides a thorough guide to everyday legal issues that you can carry with you anywhere.This book is both incredibly informative and unbearably funny.The Restless Earth: Rural China in Transition
By Miriam Driessen. 2019
2018 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZEThe Restless Earth explores the lives of communities who remain…
sceptical of China’s big city allure. As the traditions of the New Year bring urban dwellers back to rural Qinghe, Miriam Driessen interrogates the tensions between the proud stoicism of rural family members and the ambitions of their returning relatives. Thoughtful and immersive, it is a portrait of a community whose existence is much more than a hurdle on the way to urbanization.Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author
By Edward John Trelawny. 2013
In February 1822 the writer and adventurer Edward John Trelawny arrived in Pisa to make the acquaintance of his heroes…
Shelley and Byron, leaving a broken marriage and an exotic seafaring career behind him. He became a close companion to them and their circle, and this collection of his reminiscences is one of the most fresh and intriguing documents of the Romantic age. It records his initial meeting with a cynical and flippant Byron, his impressions of a youthful, otherworldly Shelley and, most memorably, the poet's death at sea and the subsequent burning of his body on the sand. Trelawny's Records combine vigorous prose, vivid description and mythmaking to create one of the most memorable portraits of an age.Rosemary Ashton's new introduction explores the mysterious life and quixotic character of Trelawny, and this edition includes all the author's later revisions.Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881) was one of the most curious figures of the English Romantic Movement, and spent his long life travelling extensively as a naval officer, biographer and adventurer. After a brief education, Trelawny was assigned as a volunteer in the Royal Navy by the age of thirteen, and led an unaccomplished naval career until his resignation at nineteen. He met Shelley and Byron in Italy in 1822, where he became fascinated, almost hypnotized, by the two poets. His Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, written after both their deaths, is the end-product of this strange obsession. An incorrigible romancer, Trelawny had three marriages - the second of which was to Tersitza, sister of the Greek warlord Odysseus Androutsos, whose cause he had joined and whose mountain fortress he looked after when Odysseus was arrested. He died after a fall at the age of eighty-eight, in England, and his ashes were buried in Rome in a plot adjacent to Shelley's grave.Rosemary Ashton was educated at the universities of Aberdeen, Heidelberg and Cambridge. She taught English literature at University College London from 1974 to 2012, and is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature and an Honorary Fellow of UCL. She has published critical biographies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, two books on Anglo-German literary and cultural relations in the nineteenth century, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800-1860 (1980) and Little Germany: Exile and Asylum in Victorian England (1986), and two books about Victorian radicalism, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006) and Victorian Bloomsbury (2012).David Wright (1920-1994) was born in Johannesburg and came to England aged fourteen to attend the Northampton School for the Deaf. His first poem was published shortly after graduating from Oriel College, Oxford, and he published poetry throughout his life, including Moral Stories (1954), Monologue of a Deaf Man (1958), Metrical Observations (1980) and Elegies (1990). He was both a remarkable poet and a remarkable editor, responsible for, among others, the Penguin Classics edition of Edward Thomas's Selected Poems and Prose, The Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse and, with John Heath-Stubbs, The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Verse. He was also the author of a number of books on Portugal, a biography of Roy Campbell and a memoir, Deafness: A Personal Account.The Prosecutor
By Nazir Afzal. 2020
The outsider who transformed our justice systemNazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it…
was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court, and that their perpetrators were convicted. From the Rochdale sex ring to the earliest prosecutions for honour killing and modern slavery, Nazir was at the forefront of the British legal system for decades.But his story begins in Birmingham, in the sixties, as a young boy facing racist violence and the tragic death of a young family member - and it's this that sets him on the path to his groundbreaking career, and which enables him to help communities that the conventional justice system ignores, giving a voice to the voiceless.A memoir of struggle and survival as well as crime and punishment, The Prosecutor is both a searing insight into the justice system and a powerful story of one man's pursuit of the truth.Praise of Folly
By Desiderius Erasmus. 1971
Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466-1536) is one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement, which abandoned medieval pieties…
in favour of a rich new vision of the individual's potential. Praise of Folly, written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, is Erasmus's best-known work. Its dazzling mixture of fantasy and satire is narrated by a personification of Folly, dressed as a jester, who celebrates youth, pleasure, drunkenness and sexual desire, and goes on to lambast human pretensions, foibles and frailties, to mock theologians and monks and to praise the 'folly' of simple Christian piety. Erasmus's wit, wordplay and wisdom made the book an instant success, but it also attracted what may have been sales-boosting criticism. The Letter to Maarten van Dorp, which is a defence of his ideas and methods, is also included.Poetics
By Aristotle. 1996
One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of…
classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals. The Poetics has informed thinking about drama ever since.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Malcolm HeathThe Pleader: An Autobiography
By Len Murray. 2002
Len Murray, described by a High Court judge as the most respected pleader of his generation, practised as a solicitor…
in Glasgow for over 40 years. As part of a triumvirate of top lawyers based in the city during its period of renaissance, he built up one of the most respected law practices in the country. Among the benchmark cases with which Murray was involved was that of Tony Miller, one of the last people to be hanged in Scotland. Despite a desperate appeal by Murray, the 19-year-old was sent to his death on 22 December 1960. In his candid account Murray describes both the legal arguments and the personal effect the case had on him.Murray was also involved in bringing the Nazi war criminal Antanas Gecas to justice after his discovery in Edinburgh, he was the only solicitor ever to be retained by both Rangers and Celtic footballers who were accused of assaulting each other during a match at Ibrox, and he made a cheeky defence of famous Beatle Paul McCartney who was arrested on drugs charges. The Pleader recounts these and many more tales of the courts and the characters who inhabited them, whether they sat on the bench or stood in the dock. Reluctant to go public until now, Murray has always upheld the simple tenet that client confidentiality is paramount. His decision to publish his memoirs at this time reflects a feeling that he has a responsibility to new students of law and to old friends to put the record straight on many of the fascinating stories to come before the Scottish courts. From the simplest of violations to the most serious of capital crimes, he opens his amazing and hitherto secret files to the world.One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the…
time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.The Painters of Belfast’s No Man’s Land: How Northern Ireland is Grappling with a Hollow Peace
By Stephen Groves. 2019
2018 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZEA timely exploration of art on the boundary of Northern…
Ireland’s fragile peace. Stephen Groves follows a famed Protestant artist and his Catholic accomplice as they paint the walls of Belfast’s no man’s land. Through their lives, we see a glimpse of the deep social issues which plague Northern Ireland today. Epidemics of drugs and suicide – the symptoms of internalised trauma. Is peace simply the absence of violence?The Painter of Modern Life (Penguin Great Ideas)
By Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. 1972
Poet, aesthete and hedonist, Baudelaire was also one of the most groundbreaking art critics of his time. Here he explores…
beauty, fashion, dandyism, the purpose of art and the role of the artist, and describes the painter who, for him, expresses most fully the drama of modern life.GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.Openhearted: Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go
By Ann Ingle. 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR TWO IRISH BOOK AWARDS'Something they don't tell you about getting older is that you fall. Oh, you hear…
about it in passing, of course, "She had a fall, poor thing". Falling is not something you ever think about as a younger woman. You think about falling in love . . .'At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name.Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back on that first glorious fall and in a series of essays considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'.Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Open-Hearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others._________________________________'By some distance the most courageous, most poignant, most life-affirming memoir I've read in the last twenty years and more' Paul Howard'Genuinely inspirational. I LOVE ANN INGLE' Marian Keyes'What a beautiful openhearted, at times broken-hearted memoir ... honest, funny, searingly direct, a wonderful voice ... remarkable' Joe Duffy'Really beautiful. Searingly honest, astonishingly frank and very, very funny' Maia DunphyOne Last Goodbye: Sometimes only a mother's love can help end the pain
By Kay Gilderdale. 2011
Watching her child die is the hardest thing a mother can ever do. But for Kay Gilderdale, saying a final…
goodbye to her only daughter Lynn was exceptionally painful: she'd played a part in her death.Lynn was just 14 when she was struck down by the crippling disease ME, leaving her paralysed and in constant agony. Over the next 17 years, she became desperate to escape her miserable existence, even begging her mum to help her die. So, one night, when Kay found Lynn attempting suicide, she was forced to make an impossible decision. Continue watching her child suffer or help her end the pain?Eventually, fighting her every instinct, Kay helped her precious daughter take a fatal overdose. But while Lynn was finally free, her mother faced a fresh agony - a possible lifetime behind bars. The highly controversial trial that followed opened a fierce public debate on assisted suicide. Is it murder or mercy?Here, in her heartbreaking story, Kay reveals the harrowing truth behind the headlines and the desperate lengths a mother will go to for the love of a child.On the Good Life
By Cicero. 2005
For the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero, 'the good life' was at once a life of contentment and one…
of moral virtue - and the two were inescapably intertwined. This volume brings together a wide range of his reflections upon the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness. In essays that are articulate, meditative and inspirational, Cicero presents his views upon the significance of friendship and duty to state and family, and outlines a clear system of practical ethics that is at once simple and universal. These works offer a timeless reflection upon the human condition, and a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of Ancient Rome.On Solitude (Penguin Great Ideas)
By Michel De Montaigne. 1991
Blending intellectual speculation with anecdote and personal reflection, the Renaissance thinker and writer Montaigne pioneered the modern essay. This selection…
contains his idiosyncratic and timeless writings on subjects as varied as the virtues of solitude, the power of the imagination, the pleasures of reading, the importance of sleep and why we sometimes laugh and cry at the same things. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Sigmund Freud. 2005
These works were written against a background of war and racism. Freud sought the sources of conflict in the deepest…
memories of humankind, finding clear continuities between our 'primitive' past and 'civilized' modernity. In Totem and Taboo he explores institutions of tribal life, tracing analogies between the rites of hunter-gatherers and the obsessions of urban-dwellers, while Mourning and Melancholia sees a similarly self-destructive savagery underlying individual life in the modern age, which issues at times in self-harm and suicide. And Freud's extraordinary letter to Einstein, Why War? - rejecting what he saw as the physicist's naïve pacifism - sums up his unsparing view of history in a few profoundly pessimistic, yet grimly persuasive pages.