Item category 1: Society & Culture

What are the origins of the war in Ukraine? Contrary to popular opinion, the conflict is ultimately not between Russia and Ukraine but between Russia and the West. Neither did it begin with Russia's invasion in 2022, nor the Maidan revolution in 2014. Providing a wealth of documented evidence, Te...

Drawing on his experiences as a child of Burmese migrants, and his evolution from a naive law clerk to a lawyer whose willingness to speak truth to power riled many within the legal establishment, Boe delves into cases that he found unable to leave behind. He takes us from a suicide in the Gibson...

URBAN COMMUNITIES. AUSTRALIAN. The Swan River has been flowing the same course for some sixty million years. This book traces the relationship of European-Australian culture to this ancient river system. This historical narrative is viewed through the lens of schemes proposed for Perth's foreshor...

Sex. Drugs. Danger. Death. This is the adrenaline-pumping story of the world's most audacious drug runners and the police hunt, 'Operation Playboy', to track them down. These drug-running playboys travel the globe: they ski in Europe, surf in Bali, hook up with celebrity models and live in five-s...

Over six years of imprisonment on Australia's offshore migrant detention centre, the Kurdish Iranian journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani bore personal witness to the suffering and degradation inflicted on him and his fellow refugees, culminating eventually in his prize-winning book, "No Friend...

Meet the most demented figures of all time, like Richard Chase, the necrophile who delighted in drinking his victim's blood; Gilles Garnier, the self-proclaimed werewolf who hunted children; and Ed Gein, who used his victims' bodies like craft supplies. You'll be double-checking your deadbolt eve...

People with autism often find themselves excluded from working life. This practical handbook lays out reasonable, achievable ways in which working environments can be adapted and people with autism included as valuable members of the workforce.

An essential guide to religion that explores and explains the history and key teachings of the world's main religions - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism - alongside ancient and little-known beliefs Learn everything you need to know about the central practices, important figu...

This Masterclass will reveal to both beginners and experienced writers the distinctive features that mark out comedy from other forms of creative writing. Having identified these, it will help you then to unlock your inner anarchist, and explore the different elements of comedy, using a combinati...

The founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest and most successful gang-intervention program in the world, through a series of moving stories that bear witness to the transformative power of tenderness, challenges ideas about God and about people.

James Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans--including FDR's grandfather, Warren Delano--who in the 1800s made their fortunes in the China opium trade. Meanwhile, American missionaries sought a myth: noble Chinese peasants eager to Westernize. The media propagated this mirage, and FDR ...

Marshall Brain takes a deep dive into a wide range of doomsday narratives, including manmade events such as an electromagnetic pulse attack, a deadly pandemic, and nuclear warfare; devastating natural phenomena, such as an eruption from a super-volcano, the collapse of the Gulf Stream, or lethal ...

WRITING & EDITING GUIDES. One has to look no further than the audiences hungry for the narratives served up by "Downton Abbey" or "Wolf Hall "to know that the lure of the past is as seductive as ever. But incorporating historical events and figures into a shapely narrative is no simple task. The ...

A thoroughly researched and deeply personal examination of how women unintentionally condone workplace abuse in a post-#MeToo world—and a guide to changing things for the better. When Reah Bravo began working at the Charlie Rose show, the open secret of Rose’s conduct toward women didn’t deter he...

As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In actual fact, we are lost in a ...

BIBLICAL STUDIES, CRITICISM & EXEGESIS. Winner of the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award, the "Holman Bible Atlas" is the leading Bible atlas in the English language. Through the use of 132 full-color maps, more than 100 color photographs, timelines, chart summaries, and helpful sidebars, it places r...

This is a madman's library of eccentric and extraordinary volumes from around the world, many of which have been completely forgotten. Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could des...

Perfect for those interested in learning more about what the Bible actually says but who have neither the time nor the interest to read the actual thing. Ever thought you should know more about what's in the Bible, not because you believe in any religion, but because it's the most read book in hi...

When the body of a missing man is discovered in the Belvedere, an apparent suicide, resident Mikita Brottman becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances of his death. The Belvedere used to be a hotel dating back to Baltimore's golden age but is now converted into flats, and as Brottman inv...

Few things provoke controversy in the modern world like the religion brought by Muhammad. There is alarm over jihad, underage marriage and the threat of amputation or stoning under Shariah law. Sometimes rumor, sometimes based in fact and often misunderstood, the tenets of Islamic law and dogma w...

Abstract: Icelanders believe in elves. Why? Looking for answers in history, science, religion, and art - from ancient times to today - Nancy Marie Brown finds that each discipline defines what is real and unreal, natural and supernatural, demonstrated and theoretical, alive and inert. Each has it...

Starting with Simone de Beauvoir's world-famous observation that one is not born a woman but instead becomes a woman, Browning goes on to show equally that no one is born a man but learns how to perform as a man, and that there is no fixed way of being masculine or feminine. Increasingly, the cat...

A knock on the door of the Dalai Lama's residence in Dharamsala, India. His Holiness interrupts his morning meditation to greet a Giant Panda who has travelled many miles to see him. He welcomes him as his friend and together they walk through the forests, discussing things great and small... Wit...

The threat of cyberwar can feel like something out of a movie: nuclear codes hacked, powerplants melting down, immediate crisis. In reality, state-sponsored hacking looks nothing like this. It's covert, insidious, and constant. Ben Buchanan reveals the cyberwar that's already here, reshaping the ...

"While travel was once a marker of sophistication, tourists now face tough questions: When does economic opportunity become exploitation? How do we justify the use of climate-changing jet fuel? And can we be sure our vacations aren't propping up corrupt and brutal regimes? In Reservations, avid t...

From the bestselling author of Kleptopia comes a true story about Cuckooland - a world where the rich can buy everything - including the truth. Everywhere, the powerful are making a renewed claim to the greatest prize of all: to own the truth. The power to choose what you want reality to be and i...

Today's students are hammered with high expectations for their academic studies. Basic life skills are mostly not taught in classrooms, so graduates are on their own to figure out how to live successfully in the everyday world. Without any guidance, where do you start? Adulting 101 is a clever, c...

Leadership, Burns's pioneering study, introduces the highly influential theory of "transformational leadership," stating that the best leaders are those who inspire others to come together toward the achievement of higher aims. Featuring fascinating case studies drawn from history, this is the cl...

An in-depth account of one of New York City's most notorious crimes. On April 20, 1989, the body of a woman is discovered in Central Park, her skull badly smashed. Within days, five black and Latino teenagers confess to her rape and beating. The ensuing media frenzy and hysterical public reaction...