October 2010 Just My Type: A Book About Fonts Simon Garfield What’s your type? Suddenly everyone’s obsessed with fonts. Whether you’re enraged by IKEA’s Verdanagate, want to know what the Beach Boys have in common with easyJet or why it’s okay to like Comic Sans, Just My Type will have the answer. LEARN WHY USING UPPER CASE GOT A NEW ZEALAND HEALTH WORKER SACKED. Refer to Prince in the TAFKAP years as a Dingbat (that works on many levels). Spot where movies get their time periods wrong and don’t be duped by fake posters on eBay. MORE
November 2010 Iran: the Looming Crisis: Can the West live with Iran’s nuclear threat? Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi In August 2002 the National Council of the Resistance in Iran (NCRI) revealed in Washington to a stunned world how advanced Iran’s nuclear programme was. And in September 2009 US President Barack Obama exposed yet another clandestine nuclear site there, bringing the possibility of a nuclear arsenal ever closer. MORE
November 2010 Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town Mary Beard ‘The world’s most controversial classicist debunks our movie-style myths about the Roman town with meticulous scholarship and propulsive energy … scrutinising and animated in equal measure’ Laura Silverman, Daily Mail MORE
November 2010 The Ancient Guide to Modern Life Natalie Haynes How modern are our lives? Or are we still living the lives our ancestors lived? Whether political, cultural, or social, there are endless parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. Whether it’s the murder of Caesar or the political assassination of Thatcher; the narrative arc of the hit HBO series, The Wire, or that of Oedipus; the popular enthusiasm for the Emperor Titus or President Obama – over and over again we can be seen to be living very much like people did 2,000 or more years ago. MORE
November 2010 Why The West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and what they reveal about the Future Ian Morris Why does the West rule? Eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing uniquely on 20,000 years of history and archaeology, and the methods of social science. Why did British boats shoot their way up the Yangzi in 1842, rather than Chinese ones up the Thames? Why do Easterners use English more than Europeans speak in Mandarin or Japanese? To put it bluntly, why does the West rule? MORE
