The C10th synthesis of Greek thought in Central Asi. Starr's magnificent book is a cultural and intellectual history of the Islamic Enlightenment and its two chief proponents - Ibn Sina and ... read more
Fabric - and our hunger for it - as the mother of invention, the driver behind technology, agriculture, trade, politics, culture... it funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal empire. H... read more
VM was the author of The Map of Knowledge, a compelling account of the survival of the ancient classics in the Muslim world, and their re-emergence in the West. Now she turns her attention t... read more
How the daughter of Babur, first Mughal Emperor, wrangled her way out of the harem (for a while) to travel around India, to Persia and beyond. Based on her own account.
From the home of the indigenous Formosans to a European trading post, from a Japanese colony to the last bastion of the Republic of China. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understan... read more
Like a detective novel of the time, the story of two booksellers who uncovered the forgeries of a pompous bastion of the literary scene in 1930s' London.
A characteristically particular and original look at social change from the author of the hugely successful Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools, 1939-1979 and others.
The daughter of Russian immigrants in Leeds, Simpson made it her life's mission to help academic refugees. During WW2 alone, she saved 16 future Nobel Prize winners, 74 future Fellows of the... read more
How Stalin isolated and pampered Western journalists in the gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel in order to control their output: their translators were often paid to share their beds, but oth... read more
Stone's troubling account shows how the genocide of Jews took place in many parts of Europe, the result of enthusiastic collaboration (at least in some sections of government or citizens) wi... read more
The highways and byways of the Good Friday Agreement - by a distinguished journalist who spent several decades covering the troubled state of Northern Ireland.
Any book from SB is always eagerly awaited, this one no less than its marvellous predecessors How to Live: A Life of Montaigne and At The Existentialist Caf?.
The author of 'Wittgenstein's Poker' traces the influential circle (Neurath, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Popper) whom the Austrian fascists and Nazis saw as such a threat.