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October 2010
Why Can’t Elephants Jump?: And 101 other questions
New Scientist
Well, why not? Is it because elephants are too large or heavy (after all, they say hippos and rhinos can play hopscotch)? Or is it because their knees face the wrong way? Or do they just wait until no one’s looking? Read this brilliant new compilation to find out.
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 | October 2010
Nella Last in the 1950s: Further diaries of Housewife, 49
Robert Malcolmson and Patricia Malcolmson
‘I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.’ So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. Sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed the first two volumes of her uniquely detailed and moving diaries, written during World War II and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project, and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood (with a follow-up under discussion).
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October 2010
Weeds: How vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature
Richard Mabey
Weeds survive, entombed in the soil, for centuries. They are as persistent and pervasive as myths. They ride out ice ages, agricultural revolutions, global wars. They mark the tracks of human movements across continents as indelibly as languages. Yet to humans they are the scourge of our gardens, saboteurs of our best-laid plans. They rob crops of nourishment, ruin the exquisite visions of garden designers, and make unpleasant and impenetrable hiding places for urban ne’er-do-wells.
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 | 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.
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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
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 | 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.
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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?
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 | November 2010
The Interrogative Mood
Padgett Powell
‘If Duchamp or maybe Magritte wrote a novel (and maybe they did. Did they?) it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powell’s: immensely readable, ingenious, witty, and ultimately important-feeling in a way you can’t quite describe but don’t need to’ Richard Ford
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November 2010
Tolstoy: A Russian Life
Rosamund Bartlett
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina are considered two of the greatest novels ever written. Here at the 100th anniversary of his death is a fresh perspective on his extraordinary life and times.
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November 2010
Europe’s Decline and Fall: The Struggle Against Global Irrelevance
Richard Youngs
The European Union is in inexorable decline. The outlook is gloomy for the economy and nobody listens to European politicians. Any authority or power that it once had on the world stage is being lost, and its claims to the moral high ground in international affairs are increasingly shaky. But this lamentable state of affairs is neither inevitable nor irreversible. The emerging new world order offers opportunities for the EU, if it can only act systematically and develop a new cosmopolitan strategy based on principled and consistent support for universal values. Here is a bold analysis of the problem and a brilliant proposal for a remedy.
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December 2010
Fish Rots from the Head: The Crisis in our Boardrooms: Developing the Crucial Skills of the Competent Director
Bob Garratt
As a Chinese proverb says ‘The fish rots from the head’ and so it is with businesses and other organisations – the buck starts and stops in the boardroom. This third edition of Bob Garratt’sbestselling book that highlights the importance of effectivecorporate governance has been extensively updated following the corporate scandals of the early 2000s – Enron, WorldCom, Tyco – and the abysmal boardroom standards that the recent credit crunch and ensuing global financial crisis brought to light.
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