Engelska

The Greatest Nobodies Of History [Bok / Häftad]

<p><i>The Chaos Machine</i> is an essential book for our times - <i>Ezra Klein</i><br/><i><br/>The Chaos Machine</i> is the story of how the world was driven mad by social media. The election of populists like Trump and Bolsonaro; strife and genocide in countries like Myanmar; the rampant spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as deadly as the pandemic itself; all of these are products of a breakdown in our social and political lives, a breakdown driven by the apps, companies and algorithms that compete constantly for our attention.<br/><br/>Max Fisher is a leading New York Times technology reporter whose work has covered the way that social media sites - driven increasingly by artificial intelligence rather than human ingenuity - push users towards more and more extreme positions, deepening the divisions in society in pursuit of greater engagement and profit. With extraordinary access to the most powerful players in Silicon Valley, and with testimonies from around the world of the havoc being wreaked by our online selves, <i>The Chaos Machine</i> shows us how we got to this uniquely perilous moment - and how we might get out of it.</p>

SOMETHING TO FIGHT FOR, SOMEONE TO LIVE FOR Gods should never meddle in the affairs of mortals, but Xie Lian is not one to follow the rules when lives are at risk. He spits in the face of heaven and its laws and descends in a fury to save his country from drought and civil war. Yet this golden child gets a harsh dose of reality when he discovers just how little one individual-even a god-can do to save a crumbling nation. As the people reject and betray him, one young soldier stands by Xie Lian-a boy with a face wrapped in bandages and a fierce loyalty in his heart. In this chaotic past, can an unshakable bond grow from the ashes of unimaginable destruction?

<p>A GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret. The secret to superhuman strength.</p><p>She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weight lifting - you name it, she's tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!" </p><p>But as she gets older, her body isn't getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . .</p><p>In this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation. This is an extraordinary, laugh-out-loud chronicle of the conundrums we all grapple with as we seek our true place in the world.</p>

<p><b>THE NEW BOOK FROM THE MUCH-LOVED AUTHOR OF <i>THE GRAN TOUR</i>, <i>A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN</i> AND<i> THE MARMALADE DIARIES</i><br/><br/>Food fights, fishing and French cooking - bestselling author Ben Aitken's year of actively pursuing fun</b><br/><br/>Ben Aitken wasn't getting enough. He knew it and so did everyone else. He was grumpy, increasingly boring, mostly joyless. So, he joined a lawn bowls club. A week later, he doubled down on the doldrums by learning to dance like they do in Bollywood. Then - with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly just around the corner - he started swimming in cold water and was back to square one.<br/><br/>Despite the setbacks (and hyperventilation), it was becoming clear to him that the very pursuit of fun was a great way of not feeling naff. And so he made a vow to have as much of the f-stuff as he possibly could.<br/><br/>Taking a liberal approach to the subject, he sought out things that he used to find fun a long time ago (i.e. food fights and wrestling); things that he'd never done before but reckoned could be fun (boozy French cooking classes, tantric sex); things whose fun-factor was less obvious and more down to earth (nostalgia, volunteering, edible gardening, watching chickens); and things that he wasn't at all sure about but were fun according to other people (gym classes, caving, TikTok). Unsurprisingly, the results were mixed, but he was undoubtedly left feeling ... better. Which left him asking, if fun is the finest medicine, why do we stop doing it?</p>

<p>Caitlin Moran is known for her brave and brilliant writing about the intimate truths of women's lives. But in recent years, as conversations about male violence and toxic masculinity have raged, she has found herself asking another question: what about the men?<br/><br/>In this funny, fascinating and moving book, Caitlin explores the challenges and dangers of modern manhood, but also looks hopefully at the possibilities for a future of compassion and allyship in her frank and inimitable style.</p>

<p><b>A hilarious look at how the line between 'genius' and 'extremely lucky idiot' is finer than we'd like to admit.</b><br/><br/>The more you delve into the stories behind history's greatest names, the more you realise they have something in common: a mystifying lack of common sense. Take Marie Curie, famous for both discovering radioactivity and having absolutely zero lab safety protocols. Or Lord Byron, who literally took a <i>bear</i> with him to university. Or James Glaisher, a hot-air balloon pioneer who nearly ended up as the world's first human satellite...<br/><br/>From Nikola Tesla falling in love with a pigeon to non-swimmer Albert Einstein's near-fatal love of sailing holidays, <i>The Limits of Genius</i> is filled with examples of the so-called brightest and best of humanity doing, to put it bluntly, some really dumb shit. These are the stories that deserve to be told but never are: the hilarious, regrettable and downright baffling lesser-known achievements of the men and women who somehow managed to bungle their way into our history books.</p>