An expertly curated compilation of officially published step-by-step guides on how to deal with every kind of disaster imaginable, drawn from government archives all around the world from the 1910s to today.

Organized into four broad disaster-themed scenarios - Pandemics, Natural Disasters, Nuclear War and Alien Invasion - this visual guide displays the plethora of public survival advice and scare tactics proposed from all around the globe to deal with every disaster scenario that has occurred or been imagined since the early 20th century. From leaflets showing how to build an earthquake shelter to booklets providing step-by-step advice on how to protect yourself and your family during a nuclear war, and from posters showing how to minimize your chances of catching Spanish flu to documents indicating how to identify aliens, this carefully curated selection of disaster-planning documents reveals differences in public attitudes towards impending catastrophe since the 1910s and showcases the variety of approaches taken by governments in advising their citizens. Informative commentary provides historical context for the official advice, exploring how our universal preoccupation with apocalypse has manifested around the globe, and explanatory captions clarify the messages contained in the survival documents.
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Pacey and potentially revolutionary'' Sunday Timesbr>br> ''Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read'' The Guardianbr>br> ''This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast'' Nassim Nicholas Talebbr>br> For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.br>br> Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what''s really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.br>br> The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.br>br> ''Fascinating, thought-provoking, groundbreaking. A book that will generate debate for years to come'' Rutger Bregmanbr>br> ''Graeber and Wengrow have effectively overturned everything I ever thought about the history of the world. The most profound and exciting book I''ve read in thirty years'' Robin D. G. Kelley> Lire la suite Fermer

Presents a brief, narrative history of the world for young readers, from the Stone Age up to the end of World War II.

The past is another country, the old saying goes. The same might be said of the future. But which country? For Europeans and Americans today, the answer is Russia.

Today's Russia is an oligarchy propped up by illusions and falsities. But it also represents the fulfilment of tendencies already present in the West. And if Moscow's drive to dissolve Western states and values succeeds, this could become our reality too.

In this visionary work of contemporary history, Timothy Snyder shows how Russia works within the West to destroy the West; by supporting the far right in Europe, invading Ukraine in 2014, and waging a cyberwar during the 2016 presidential campaign and the EU referendum. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the creation of Donald Trump, an American failure deployed as a Russian weapon.

But this threat presents an opportunity to better understand the pillars of our freedoms, confront our own complacency and seek renewal. History never ends, and this new challenge forces us to face the choices that will determine the future: equality or oligarchy, individualism or totalitarianism, truth or lies.

The Road to Unfreedom helps us to see our world as if for the first time. It is necessary reading for any citizen of a democracy.
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THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India . A book of beauty ' - Gerard DeGroot, The Times In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish in his richest provinces a new administration run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army - what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation.

The East India Company's founding charter authorised it to 'wage war' and it had always used violence to gain its ends. But the creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional international trading corporation dealing in silks and spices and became something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. In less than four decades it had trained up a security force of around 200,000 men - twice the size of the British army - and had subdued an entire subcontinent, conquering first Bengal and finally, in 1803, the Mughal capital of Delhi itself. The Company's reach stretched until almost all of India south of the Himalayas was effectively ruled from a boardroom in London.

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world's most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting book to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
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The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east

The truth is, warfare shouldn''t happen - and most of the time it doesn''t. Around the world there are millions of hostile rivalries at any given moment and yet only a tiny fraction erupt into prolonged fighting. Most books on conflict forget this.br>br>Contrary to what many people believe, war is the result of a simple risk-return calculation: Is it better to find a peaceful split of an undamaged pie, or to take a risky shot at seizing a shrunken and ravaged one? The simplest arithmetic shows that rivals are better off making concessions. So in those rare instances of war, what broke down and kept the sides from compromise?br>br>From unchecked leaders and violent tastes, through irrational behaviour, uncertainty and irresistible incentives, this peerlessly authoritative and thought-provoking book shows that there are only so many logical possibilities for why we fight and how by knowing them we can act to prevent war altogether.br>br>Drawing on the latest research in behavioural economics; gripping, counterintuitive examples from the long history of warfare around the world; and distinguished professor Christopher Blattman''s own experience in warzones, along the way we meet Latin American gangs, raging European monarchs, West African rebels, riotous Indian mobs, British football hooligans, and fanatical American colonists. We see, for example, how queens have waged war more than kings; that the homicide rate in the ganglands of Medellín, Columbia is lower than you think; and that even monkeys have an innate righteousness.br>br>In an accessible, intuitive structure framed around causes and solutions, Why We Fight is a hopeful book, with answers to some of history''s most important - and enduring - questions: Why do wars start and how do we stop them? In an age of growing isolationism and the weakening of global institutions, this book couldn''t be timelier.>
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Few modern voices have had as profound an impact as Frantz Fanon. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, it established Fanon as a revolutionary thinker and remains just as relevant and powerful today.

From the internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled seismic transformations these three women left an indelible mark on history.

Red Sister rose to be Mao's vice-chair.
Little Sister became first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China.
Big Sister made herself one of country's richest women.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister takes us on a sweeping journey from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. By turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.
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Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. The JOURNALS tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters.

Originally published 25 years ago 'Orientalism' is an influential book of ideas. Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East. For generations now this book has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire.

When did globalization begin? Most observers have settled on 1492, the year Columbus discovered America. But as celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen shows, it was the year 1000, when for the first time new trade routes linked the entire globe, so an object could in theory circumnavigate the world. This was the 'big bang' of globalization, which ushered in a new era of exploration and trade, and which paved the way for Europeans to dominate after Columbus reached America. Drawing on a wide range of new historical sources and cutting-edge archaeology, Hansen shows, for example, that the Maya began to trade with the native peoples of modern New Mexico from traces of theobromine - the chemical signature of chocolate - and that frozen textiles found in Greenland contain hairs from animals that could only have come from North America. Moreover, Hansen turns accepted wisdom on its head, revealing not only that globalization began much earlier than previously thought, but also that the world's first anti-globalization riots did too, in cities such as Cairo, Constantinople, and Guangzhou. Introducing players from Europe, the Islamic world, Asia, the Indian Ocean maritime world, the Pacific and the Mayan world who were connecting the major landmasses for the first time, this compelling revisionist argument shows how these encounters set the stage for the globalization that would dominate the world for centuries to come.
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Une nouvelle édition de cet ouvrage qui étudie les grands empires de 1600 avant J.C à 500 ans après. Allant de la méditerranée antique jusqu'à la Chine en dix chapitres didactiques, cet ouvrage revient sur le récit principal des évènements, sur leur impact sur les sociétés anciennes et sur les grandes figures de l'histoire qui ont façonné ces empires.

Dipo Faloyin is a Senior Editor (Global) at Vice . He spent the last three years building the magazine'' coverage across Europe, Middle East and Africa. His writing has also appeared in Dazed , Prospect , The Huffington Post , Refinery 29 and others.>

THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER When he receives an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, international lawyer Philippe Sands begins a journey on the trail of his family's secret history. In doing so, he uncovers an astonishing series of coincidences that lead him halfway across the world, to the origins of international law at the Nuremberg trial. Interweaving the stories of the two Nuremberg prosecutors (Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin) who invented the crimes or genocide and crimes against humanity, the Nazi governor responsible for the murder of thousands in and around Lviv (Hans Frank), and incredible acts of wartime bravery, EAST WEST STREET is an unforgettable blend of memoir and historical detective story, and a powerful meditation on the way memory, crime and guilt leave scars across generations. * * * * * 'A monumental achievement: profoundly personal, told with love, anger and great precision' John le Carre 'One of the most gripping and powerful books imaginable' SUNDAY TIMES Winner: Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction JQ-Wingate Literary Prize Hay Festival Medal for Prose
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A major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875 - a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: "capitalism"; the triumph of a society which believed in competitive private enterprise.

''A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, ''The Lost'' is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written'' Michael Chabon In this updated edition of Daniel Mendelsohn''s classic, riveting narrative, a writer''s search for the truth behind his family''s tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic - part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work - that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.
''The Lost'' begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalised by the fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relative''s fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents, and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family''s story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.
Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews, and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, ''The Lost'' transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time. Lire la suite Fermer

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, MAIL ON SUNDAY AND OBSERVER Belonging is a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. From the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492 it tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleon's ruined army.


The Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews' search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever.
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HMS Erebus was one of the great exploring ships, a veteran of groundbreaking expeditions to the ends of the Earth.

In 1848, it disappeared in the Arctic, its fate a mystery. In 2014, it was found.

This is its story.
____________________________________ 'Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end.' - Bill Bryson ____________________________________ Michael Palin - Monty Python star and television globetrotter - brings the remarkable Erebus back to life, following it from its launch in 1826 to the epic voyages of discovery that led to glory in the Antarctic and to ultimate catastrophe in the Arctic.

The ship was filled with fascinating people: the dashing and popular James Clark Ross, who charted much of the 'Great Southern Barrier'; the troubled John Franklin, whose chequered career culminated in the Erebus's final, disastrous expedition; and the eager Joseph Dalton Hooker, a brilliant naturalist - when he wasn't shooting the local wildlife dead.

Vividly recounting the experiences of the men who first set foot on Antarctica's Victoria Land, and those who, just a few years later, froze to death one by one in the Arctic ice, beyond the reach of desperate rescue missions, Erebus is a wonderfully evocative account of a truly extraordinary adventure, brought to life by a master explorer and storyteller.
____________________________________ 'This is an incredible book. I couldn't put it down. The Erebus story is the Arctic epic we've all been waiting for.' - Nicholas Crane 'One robust little tub of a boat, two death-defying voyages to the ends of the earth. Palin has given us a fascinating account of extraordinary courage' - Charlotte Gray, author of The Promise of Canada: People and Ideas that Shaped Our Country 'What more could a reader ask for? Fascinating mystery, chilling adventure, compelling characters ... simply terrific writing by Michael Palin.' - Roy MacGregor, author of Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada 'Michael Palin is a cracking good companion on this journey of ambition, longing, triumph and tragedy... the age of adventure lives on' - Alanna Mitchell, author of The Spinning Magnet: The Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It
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"Just the thing to remind us that human history, though lamentably a work in progress, is always something we can understand better."--Sarah Ruden, translator of The Gospels and author of The Face of Water The historians of ancient Greece were pioneers of a new literary craft; their work stands among the world's most enduring and important legacies and forms the foundation of a major modern discipline. This highly readable edition includes new and newly revised translations of selections from Herodotus--often called the "father of history"--Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch, the four greatest Greek innovators of historical narrative. Here the reader will find their most important, and most widely taught, passages collected in a single volume. The excerpts chart the landmark events of ancient Greece and provide a comprehensive account of the entire classical Greek age.

From the start the Greek historians demonstrated how broad and varied historical writing could be and brought their craft beyond a mere chronicle of past events. This volume explores each author's interest in religion, leadership, character, and the lessons of war. How, for instance, should readers interpret Herodotus' inclusion of speeches and dialogues, dreams, and oracles as part of the "factual" record? What did Thucydides understand about human nature that (as he said) stays constant throughout time? How did Plutarch frame historical biography as a means of depicting the moral qualities of great men?

Complete with introductions to the works of each historian, footnotes providing context and explaining obscurities, maps, and an appendix on the Greek conduct of war, this volume is an invaluable resource for students and passionate readers of history alike
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