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>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.

<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.

Milena And Margarete [Bok / Inbunden]

Alkemins etymologiska rötter återfinns både i de arabiska och grekiska språken, och syftar på den process av transmutation som leder till en fullständig återförening med den gudomliga ursprungsformen. Dock sträcker sig det esoteriska utövandet av alkemi ända till Indien och Kina och har praktiserats åtminstone sedan 300-talet. <br/><br/>Under medeltiden lockade alkemi många av tidens mest framstående lärda. Starkt influerade av den klassiska elementläran drev alkemisterna sina hypoteser utifrån Aristoteles idé att allt går att skapa genom olika proportioner av de fyra elementen. Från 1800-talet och framåt har alkemin felaktigt reducerats till en primitiv pseudovetenskap med det enda målet att omvandla oädla metaller till guld. Denna snäva tolkning bortser dock från alkemins verkliga komplexitet och ignorerar dess djupa filosofiska och religiösa aspekter, samt dess avgörande bidrag till kemins framväxt. <br/><br/>I denna rikt illustrerade antologi presenteras en mångfald av perspektiv på hur ömsesidighet, metafysiska kopplingar och relationen mellan makrokosmos och mikrokosmos utgör kärnan i alkemins filosofi. Några av världens mest framstående forskare och akademiker samlas för att analysera den alkemistiska världsbilden och utforska hur esoteriska tankeströmningar har format kultur, samhälle och vetenskap. Boken finns även i svensk utgåva.

History is dominated by A-list deaths: queens beheaded; archdukes assassinated. But what about everyone else? How did ordinary people depart this life and grieve for loved ones - and which of the old ways might help us prepare for the end? Our ancestors, living closer to death than we do, had a more intimate and integrated relationship with death as a familiar presence in daily life. From the death-watchers of the Middle Ages to the pomp of Victorian funeral wear, by way of plague pits, grave-robberies and wakes, historian and bereavement counsellor Molly Conisbee explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped - and been shaped by - society. She examines, through the prism of past deaths, their interweaving with our beliefs and politics, our most fervent hopes and deepest fears and, ultimately, what it means to 'die well'. A groundbreaking new work of social history, No Ordinary Deaths paints a rich picture of the lives of our forebears, skilfully bringing the lost art of death to life today.