Engelska

<b>Blending the allure of the supernatural with keen historical insights and more than 500 photos, this enchanting chronicle of magic around the world will bewitch skeptics and true believers alike.</b><br/><br/>Magic and the occult have held humanity in their thrall for thousands of years. This sweeping history traces its origins across time and culture-from the protective amulets of ancient Egypt to ceremonial magic in India, Celtic paganism to modern magic tricks.<br/><br/><i>National Geographic Book of Magic and the Occult</i> illuminates this enthralling world across more than 90,000 years of history. You'll meet witches and wizards, healers and alchemists, discovering the legends behind them and how they have enriched modern culture. You'll also encounter a host of spellbinding subjects, including:<br/><br/><ul><li>Mystical moments, including spooky gatherings, strange happenings, and ghost stories</li><li>Magic in pop culture, from Harry Houdini to Harry Potter</li><li>Places of power, from Mount Fuji to "phantom" islands like Hy-Brasil</li><li>Magical creatures like dragons and the Loch Ness Monster</li><li>The art of divination, including the Chinese Zodiac, numerology, and tarot</li><li>Modern magic, from neopaganism to astrology and herbalism</li></ul><br/>Filled with more than 500 vivid illustrations and dynamic maps, this bewitching book is the true story of magical beliefs around the world.

<b>For fans of <i>Hidden Figures </i>and <i>The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks</i></b><br/><br/><b>'The kind of history I wish I learned as a child dreaming of the stage!' MISTY COPELAND</b><br/><br/><b>'Vibrant, propulsive and inspiring' TIA WILLIAMS</b><br/><br/>Harlem 1969; it's the height of the Civil Rights era and the community is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King. Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, takes his protest to the stage and establishes the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Here begins the story of the five extraordinary women at the heart of this book.<br/><br/>Both a group biography and a story of a particular time, this is a book about ballet, the enduring allure of ballet for young girls, and about how these pioneers broke into a world that was closed to them and changed ideas of what a classical dancer could be. It is about the heart-breaking impact of the AIDS epidemic which claimed the lives of so many of the male dancers. It's about racism and activism through art. And it's about the eternal glamour of ballet; these swans appeared at the grandest opera houses and theatres, dancing at the White House, and even for the Queen. Their fans included Mick Jagger and they performed alongside the likes of Michael Jackson and Josephine Baker.<br/><br/>But most importantly it tells the universal story of female friendship, and in particular how these five young women formed a bond - while experimenting with different ways of dying ballet shoes and tights to match their skin tones - which still endures many decades later.

<b>A radical retelling of human history through collapse - from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twentieth-first century and beyond - based on the latest research and a database of more than 440 societal lifespans over the last 5,000 years.</b><br/><br/><b>Why do civilisations collapse? </b><br/><br/>For the first 200,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering <i>Homo sapiens</i> lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.<br/><br/>Slowly, reluctantly we congregated in the first farms and cities, and people began to rely on lootable resources like grain and fish for their daily sustenance. When more powerful weapons became available, small groups began to seize control of these valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more primal, hierarchical forms of organisation. Power was concentrated in masters, kings, pharaohs and emperors (and ideologies were born to justify their rule). Goliath-like states and empires - with vast bureaucracies and militaries - carved up and dominated the globe.<br/><br/>What brought them down? From Rome and the Aztec empire and the early cities of Cahokia and Teotihuacan, it was increasing inequality and concentrations of power which hollowed these Goliaths out before an external shock brought them crashing down. These collapses were written up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most of the population.<br/><br/>Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth-obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech, and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now faces a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.<br/><br/><b>'A deeply sobering and strangely inspiring history of how societies collapse - and how we can still save ours. Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins' JOHANN HARI</b><br/><br/><b>'Absolutely essential reading for understanding why past civilisations collapsed, and how to protect our own from the same fate' LEWIS DARTNELL</b>

New York City entered 1986 as a city reborn, with record profits on Wall Street sending waves of money splashing across Manhattan and bringing a once-bankrupt and reeling city back to life. But it also entered 1986 as a city divided. Nearly one-third of the city's Black and Hispanic residents were living below the poverty line. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets - and in many cases addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illness. The manufacturing jobs that had once sustained a thriving middle class had vanished. Long-simmering racial tensions were boiling over.<br/><br/>Over the next four years, a singular confluence of events - involving a cast of outsized, unforgettable characters - would widen those divisions into chasms. Ed Koch. Donald Trump. Al Sharpton. The Central Park Five. Larry Kramer. Spike Lee. Rudy Giuliani. Howard Beach. Tawana Brawley. The Preppy Murder. The Tompkins Square Riots. Jimmy Breslin. Ivan Boesky. <i>Do the Right Thing</i>, Wall Street, crack, the AIDS epidemic, Black Monday and, of course, ready to pour gasoline on every fire - the tabloids.<br/><br/>In <i>The Gods of New York</i>, bestselling author Jonathan Mahler tells the story of these outsized characters and of these convulsive, defining years. It's an exuberant, kaleidoscopic, and deeply immersive portrait of a city in transformation, one whose long-held identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city, drawing in and lifting up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture - a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker - when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems that were intended to protect them? New York was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This book is the story of how that happened.

Before the revolution, the Shah of Iran seemed invincible. The world watched in awe as he commanded a huge army and oversaw an economy awash with billions of dollars of oil revenues. The regime's secret police had crushed communist opposition and the Shah appeared to have bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. On the international stage, Iran had become an invaluable ally to the West during the Cold War.<br/><br/>But village streets spoke of a different country - people derided the Shah as an American lackey and blamed him for economic inequality, for spending recklessly on lavish parties and for ignoring the Muslim majority. When a volcanic religious revolution erupted, led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shah was forced off the throne and into exile. How did it all go so wrong?<br/><br/>Brilliantly brought to life by the <i>Sunday Times</i> bestselling author Scott Anderson, this gripping behind-the-scenes narrative reveals how the Iranian Revolution was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions, and how its repercussions are still felt around the world today. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, and now in Europe and the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval - and Iran was the template.

<b>Antibiotics: one of humanity's greatest achievements - but invented by microbes.</b><br/><br/><b>An epic narrative of discovery and innovation - but also of extraction and exploitation.</b><br/><br/><b>This is the spellbinding story of how we have burned through the fossil fuels of medicine.</b><br/><br/>Since their advent, antibiotics have saved millions of lives, marking one of the greatest medical advances in our history. <i>Dangerous Miracle </i>weaves together the grand arc of the evolution of antibiotics over millions of years with a history of the past century: first as we mined the earth for naturally occurring antibiotic molecules, then as we learned to synthesise our own.<br/><br/>But like fossil fuels, antibiotics are a finite resource which we've regarded as a cheap, everlasting fuel. They are unlike other drugs: every time we use them we increase the possibility of antibiotic resistance emerging, risking their future effectiveness. If we want antibiotics to have a future, we need to prepare to adapt. And fast.<br/><br/>Rich with pioneering characters, great breakthroughs and grave risks, <i>Dangerous Miracle</i> is a grand drama of science, history and politics. It is a revelatory account of the miraculous history and uncertain future of antibiotics from a gifted writer.

Queens At War [Bok / Häftad]