Engelska

<p>The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it&apos;s born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies. And yet . . . There is still so much we don&apos;t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel&apos;s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don&apos;t know exactly why. What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us. This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson&apos;s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature. Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle&apos;s and Sigmund Freud&apos;s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best. As Patrik Svensson concludes: &apos;by writing about eels, I have in some ways found my way home again.&apos;</p>

<p><b>A <i>NEW YORKER</i> BEST BOOK OF 2022</b><br/><b><br/>'Well-researched and readable' - <i>Financial Times</i></b><br/><b>'An absorbing, pacy read' -</b><i><b> New Statesman</b></i><br/><b>'The story of lycra-clad feminism'<i> Stylist</i><br/>'Canny and informative' <i>- The New Yorker</i></b><br/><br/><b>The untold history of women's exercise culture, from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda.</b><br/><br/>Author of The Cut's viral article shared thousands of times unearthing the little-known origins of barre workouts, Danielle Friedman explores the history of women's exercise, and how physical strength has been converted into other forms of power.<br/><br/>Only in the 60s, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, did women begin to move en masse. In doing so, they were pursuing not only physical strength, but personal autonomy.<br/><br/>Exploring barre, jogging, aerobics, weight training and yoga, Danielle Friedman tells the story of how, with the rise of late-20th century feminism, women discovered the joy of physical competence - and how, going forward, we can work to transform fitness from a privilege into a right.</p>

<p>The extraordinary true story of the Stasi's poetry club: Stasiland and The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society. 'Engrossing.' Observer 'Remarkable.' The Times 'Magnificent.' Phillipe Sands 'Gripping.' Literary Review 'A history so outlandish and unlikely that you feel it must be true . . . </p><p>[A] grippingly well-written book.' Anthony Quinn, Observer Book of the Week</p><p>In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Once a month, a group of soldiers and border guards gathered in a heavily guarded military compound in East Berlin for meetings to learn how to write lyrical verse. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging out lost volumes of poetry and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet's society, to illustrate the little known story in which spies turned poets and poets spies.</p>

<p><b><i>THE TIMES </i>BOOK OF THE YEAR<br/></b><b>*Shortlisted for the </b><b>2021 Financial Times and McKinsey &amp; Company Business Book of the Year Award*</b><br/><br/><b>'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes' </b>Steven Pinker<br/><br/>Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?<br/><br/>Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocractic system.<br/><br/>Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.</p>

The history America never wanted you to read. 'The narrative took my breath away' <b>Philippe Sands</b> 'An extraordinarily and shockingly powerful read' <b>Peter Frankopan</b> 'One of the must-reads of the year' <b>Suzannah Lipscomb</b> 'Brilliant and provocative' <b>Gavin Esler</b> Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, <i>Gone with the Wind</i>, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism. <i>Gone with the Wind</i> was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936; its film version became the most successful Hollywood film of all time. Today the story's racism is again a subject of controversy, but it was just as controversial in the 1930s, foreshadowing today's debates over race and American fascism. In <i>The Wrath to Come</i>, Sarah Churchwell charts an extraordinary journey through 160 years of American denialism. From the Lost Cause to the romances behind the Ku Klux Klan, from the invention of the 'ideal' slave plantation to the erasure of interwar fascism, Churchwell shows what happens when we do violence to history, as collective denial turns fictions into lies, and lies into a vicious reality.

<p><b>Book of the Year in the <i>Daily Mail</i>, <i>Daily Telegraph</i> and <i>New Statesman</i><br/><br/>'</b><b>A powerful illumination of a lost world that is nevertheless part of living memory.' Simon Heffer, 'Books of the Year' </b><b>,</b><b><i> Daily Telegraph</i></b><br/><br/><b>'A</b> <b>joyous new book on post-war Britain.' <i>Daily Mail</i></b><br/><br/>When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, Britain had a far-flung empire, Winston Churchill was prime minister, sweets were rationed, mums stayed at home and kids played on bombsites. In the years that followed everything changed utterly. Through original research, interviews with people who were there and his own memories of the time, Matthew Engel traces this transformation of British society as never before.<br/><br/>Beginning with the death of King George VI and ending on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's election, Engel not only covers all the major historical events but also explores everyday life - from the food we ate and where we shopped, to what we watched on television and the newspapers we read. In doing so, he brings these three decades to life with his own light touch and a wealth of fascinating, forgotten, often funny detail.<br/><br/><b>Previously published as <i>The Reign </i><i>- Life in Elizabeth's Britain</i>.</b></p>

The day is 8 August 1963. It is the early hours of the morning, and a group of men are waiting at a railway bridge in Buckinghamshire. They are about to rob a mail train, on its way to London from Glasgow, and they have no idea that on board they will find approximately GBP2.5 million (over GBP50 million in today's money) in cash - the largest of its time. Among their number is Ronnie Biggs. He will be remembered long after most of the other names are forgotten, and the money spent or lost. What is it about Ronnie Biggs that fascinates people sixty years on from the crime that made his name? Is it the man or the myth that makes Ron a latter-day Robin Hood - the odd man in the confederation of criminals who held up a train on that fateful day? This is Ronnie Biggs' official autobiography. It tells of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. From Ron's daring escape from HMP Wandsworth, to how he managed to outwit and outrun a posse of law enforcement officers as one of the world's most wanted men; from plastic surgery in Paris, and his years on the run in Brazil - complete with two kidnappings and an attempted suicide - to his return to the UK after 13,087 extraordinary days on the run. Published for the sixtieth anniversary of Britain's most famous crime, this is a daring, exciting and often misunderstood life of a man who has seen and done it all, told in his own words.