Essays & Culture

Self-taught and ambitious, Charles Darwin is most famous for his groundbreaking-and to some still controversial-theory of evolution and natural selection. In Autobiographies the great scientist weighs his career and his life. Darwin's memoir concentrates on his public career and towering scientific achievements but is also full of moments from his private life. There are lively anecdotes about his family and contemporaries, as well as haunting memories of a mother he never knew, a hot-tempered father he could never please, and lingering doubts about the fitness of the genes he was passing on to his heirs. Autobiographies comprises a fragment Darwin wrote at the age of twenty-nine and the longer "Recollections" of 1876, showing a man toward the end of his life who stands isolated, dogged by illness and self-doubt.

You’ve heard all about the ‘brilliant men’ of ancient myth, but what about the scheming and scandalous women who were so often lost in their shadow? Bad Girls of Ancient Greece contains profiles of wayward wives, mad mothers, scandalous sisters and damsels, that quite frankly, caused others A LOT of stress in the ancient world. With the ever-growing popularity of mythological retellings, Lizzy Tiffin has written THE guide to all of the baddies of ancient Greece. This book stands as a reminder that us women really have been bad – in the best way possible – from the start.

Written with humour and sass, Lizzy profiles the women in Greek myth and legend covering: mortals, goddesses, titans, nymphs (you name it, she’s done it). Here you’ll find the weird and wonderful escapades of the women we’re often lead to believe were minor characters. Bad Girls of Ancient Greece is an accessible, intelligent, hilarious (sometimes spicy) guide to the women we love and know – Athena, Medusa, Aphrodite – and also those we may not, like Polyphonte, who was cursed with burning hot lust for a wild bear … imagine! So dive into the stories you thought you knew with Bad Girls of Ancient Greece as your illuminating guide…

'Part memoir, part hugely entertaining self-help manual for these tough times' Roger Alton, Daily Mail'A bona fide badass' The Sunday TimesFormer Secret Service Special Agent Evy Poumpouras shares the insights and skills from one of the oldest elite security forces in the world - to help you prepare for stressful situations, instantly read people, influence how you're perceived, and live a more fearless life. From gruelling training to clandestine interrogation rooms, to protecting the President of the United States of America, Evy shares rare behind-the-scenes glimpses while also exploring the psychology of human behaviour and the strategies used by the best negotiators. Evy demonstrates how we can learn from these experiences to heighten our own natural instincts to detect BS, develop grit and become the most resilient and powerful version of ourselves. Becoming Bulletproof is a timely guide to empowerment, mental strength, and overcoming fear and abuse - a guide to becoming bulletproof.

For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do. Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness." --Soren Kierkegaard Duncan Minshull has always walked and in the last twenty years has made use of it by writing and publishing books on the subject. He has described the whys, hows, and wheres of traveling on foot for various magazines and newspapers, including The Times (London), the Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and Vogue. He has edited two other collections on walking: While Wandering: A Walking Companion (originally The Vintage Book of Walking) and The Burning Leg: Walking Scenes from Classic Fiction.

Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk out a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. But the best insights, the deepest and most joyous examinations of this simple activity are to be found in nonfiction--in essays, travelogues, and memoirs.

Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking rounds up the most memorable walker-writers from the 1700s to the modern day, from country hikers to urban strollers, from the rationalists to the truly outlandish. Follow in the footsteps of William Hazlitt, George Sand, Rebecca Solnit, Will Self, and dozens of others. Keep up with them--and be astonished.

Located in Athens, in the historic neighbourhood of Makrygianni, the New Acropolis Museum stands less than 1,000 feet southeast of the Parthenon, at the entrance of a network of pedestrian walkways that link the key archaeological sites and monuments of the Acropolis.This location was carefully selected to enable a dialogue between the Museum's exhibition spaces and the Acropolis buildings. Bernard Tschumi Architects won the commission in 2001 as the result of a design competition. The design was chosen for its simple, clear and beautiful solution, which is in accord with the beauty and classical simplicity of the Museum's unique exhibits. It ensures a museological and architectural experience that is relevant today and for the foreseeable future - so states Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum and author of this volume.

A delightful destination for lovers of cobbled lanes and old-fashioned bars, tiny cafés and gorgeous, ancient architecture, Prague boasts a cultural heritage in music and art that surrounds the visitor with wonder and calm. The city of Alphonse Mucha houses vaulting gothic buildings, collections of modern art and, of course, the music of Dvorák in a breathtaking setting that leaps from every page of this new book

"Best-Kept Secrets of Provence" offers to take you on an enchanting photographic journey through the rich history and heritage of the region, illuminated by inspiring and informative text. In this title, historic sites and architecture are covered, such as the legendary Pont D'Avignon, and the Chateau D'If of "The Count of Monte Christo" fame, while the natural beauty that characterizes Provence is also celebrated is spades, featuring landscapes well known as the inspiration behind works by Cezanne and Van Gogh.

The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges. The concluding part of the trilogy will be published in September 2013 as The Broken Road.