Society and culture: general Books

Visit a place where your accent is an aphrodisiac, invites a Las Vegas tourist board ad on the London Underground. Just the right amount of wrong, offers another from The Cosmopolitan Hotel. Clearly, it works. Over forty million people a year travel to...

As a gay man living in London and working as a nutritionist, Daniel O'Shaughnessy knows that the LGBTQ+ community has specific dietary and health needs.He works with individuals on matters you might expect: weight loss and muscle gain, addiction,...

Why should we adopt animals?What's the problem with organic meat?What are the economics of plant-based foods?What about honey?What is the relationship between veganism and feminism?What is vegansexualism?Veganism is on the rise. Plant-based foods and...

The first comprehensive history of the Catholic Church's notorious Index, with resonance for ongoing debates over banned books, censorship, and free speech.For more than four hundred years, the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum...

A myth-busting journey through the twilight world of fringe ideas and alternative facts. Is a secret and corrupt Illuminati conspiring to control world affairs and bring about a New World Order? Was Donald Trump a victim of massive voter fraud? Is...

This book explores prejudice towards groups who are thought to have caused and spread the COVID-19 virus. The book examines four cases around the world: the residents of Wuhan, China; Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the USA, Britain and Israel;...

More than 80 years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking remarkably similar arguments that they do today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally or nutritionally good or bad? They have...

When we eat, we eat the world: taking something from outside and making it part of us. But what does it taste of? And can we develop our taste? In Taste, Sarah Worth argues that taste is a sense that needs educating, for the real pleasures of eating only...

This is a global history of hummus bi-tahina, the delicious combination of chickpeas, tahini, lemon and garlic that we know and love as hummus. The story begins in the medieval kitchens of the near and middle east and ends with its rise in popularity in...

From hand-knitted mittens to exquisitely embroidered confections and Bluetooth-enabled gloves that function like a mobile phone, the extraordinary variety of gloves is a tribute to human ingenuity. So, too, is the diversity of their often contradictory...

Spanning 65,000 years, this book provides a history of food in Australia from its beginnings, with the arrival of the first peoples and their stewardship of the land, to a present where the production and consumption of food is fraught with anxieties and...

Whether they make it themselves or just enjoy it with breakfast, people can be passionate about their favourite jam, jelly or marmalade. Award-winning jam-maker Sarah B. Hood looks at the history of these sweet treats from simple fruit preserves to...

An Inky Business is a book about the making and printing of news. It is a history of ink, paper, printing press and type, and of those who made and read newspapers in Britain, continental Europe and America from the British Civil Wars to the Battle of...

Sushi and sashimi are by now a global sensation and have become perhaps the best known of Japanese foods but they are also the most widely misunderstood. Oishii: The History of Sushi reveals that sushi began as a fermented food with a sour taste, used as...

Fermented Foods serves up the history and science behind some of the world's most enduring food and drink. It begins with wine, beer and other heady brews before going on to explore the often whimsical histories of fermented breads, dairy,...

This book traces the many ways humans have thought about and pictured squidsIn myths and legends, squids are portrayed as fearsome sea-monsters, lurking in the watery deeps waiting to devour humans. Even as modern science has tried to turn those monsters...

People have been fascinated by merpeople since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer's Odyssey to Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid to the 1984 film Splash, myths, stories and legends of half-human half-fish creatures...

Fear and fascination set wasps apart from other insects. Despite their iconic form and distinctive colours, they are surrounded by myth and misunderstanding. Often portrayed in cartoon-like stereotypes bordering on sad parody, wasps have an unwelcome and...

Kingfishers are a sight to behold. The dash and verve of this cosmopolitan bird has been admired for millennia, appearing in creation myths, imperial regalia and cultural iconography, and they were once valued as highly as gold. Artists used their...

All aboard for a delicious ride on nine legendary railway journeys! Meals associated with train travel have been an important aspect of railway history for more than a century - from dinners in dining cars to lunches at station buffets to foods purchased...

Mondo: The Art of Soundtracks highlights all the original art created exclusively for Mondo's vinyl releases by world-renowned artists for film, television, and video game soundtracks.Featuring stunning new takes on classic and modern material,...

For fans of sci-fi, cinematic art books and the Alien film franchise.40 artists, filmmakers, illustrators and fans produce original art for a tribute to the sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the film.Pieces range from...

What does it mean to be a Bad Jew?Many Jews use the term 'Bad Jew' as a weapon against other members of the community or even against themselves. You can be called a Bad Jew if you don't keep kosher; if you only go to temple on Yom Kippur; if you don't...

Governments' decisions usually impact most on the lives of women and people of marginalised genders - yet their stories often go unheard. Wander Women unites tales of different journeys around the world and shines light on the boundaries and constraints...

'We had hoped that we lived in a world that would rally in the face of a common threat. Instead, we found that the collective good is abandoned for the economic and political benefit of a handful of people, and nationalist myths of exceptionalism rob...

Winner of The High Plains Book Award for Non-FictionA vivid biography of an African Edwardian chronicler of London, in a time of social upheaval.In a world dominated by the British Empire, and at a time when many Europeans considered black people...

Why does Western pandemic policy have support across the political spectrum, when its social impacts conflict with ideology on both right and left?During the pandemic, the Left has agreed that 'following the science' with hard lockdowns...

Here's a perverse truth: from New Orleans to Bangladesh, women--especially poor women of colour--are suffering most from a crisis they have done nothing to cause. Yet where, in environmental policy, are the voices of elderly European women dying in...

What does it feel like to move through a world designed to limit and exclude you? What are the joys and pains of holidays for people of colour, when guidebooks are never written with them in mind? How are black lives today impacted by the othering legacy...

When Stephen Ellis died in July 2015, African Studies lost one of its most prolific, provocative and celebrated scholars. Given the scale and uniqueness of his contribution, it is perhaps surprising that a collection of his writings did not appear during...

Medina Tenour Whiteman stands at the margins of whiteness and Islam. An Anglo-American born to Sufi converts, she feels perennially out of place-not fully at home in Western or Muslim cultures.In this searingly honest memoir, Whiteman contemplates what...

How is the future changing? Is there a single determinant future or a plethora of alternative futures? How do we actually study futures and can we trust anything anyone says about 'the future'? Are Muslim societies prepared for the coming tsunami of...

Don't just see the sights? get to know the people.Peru's distinctive Spanish and indigenous cultures that first encountered each other five hundred years ago have progressively integrated. However, the ongoing process of mixing raises questions...

Elisabeth Spencer's daughter Milly came out as trans at the age of twenty-one. Just a few days later, in one of life's perfect storms, Spencer's husband was diagnosed with an advanced terminal illness and so she was set on course to confront rebirth in...

In September 2019, Mavis Eccleston was acquitted of murdering her 81-year-old husband Dennis. Dennis had terminal cancer and had taken an overdose of pain medication to end his own life. The turmoil that followed for Mavis and her family sheds light on...

The best jobs in Britain today are overwhelmingly done by the offspring of privileged parents. Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor children to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the poor. It...

Beginning classical social theory introduces students and educated general readers to thirteen key social theorists by way of examining a single, exemplary text by each author, ranging from Comte to Adorno. It answers the need for a book that helps...

Few things in life are moredelightful than sharing in the laughter of a baby. Untilnow, however, psychologists and parenting experts have largely focused onmoments of stress and confusion. Developmental psychologist Caspar Addymandecided to change that...

Japan has produced thousands of intriguing video games. For any number of reasons, not all of them were ever released outside of the country, especially in the '80s and '90s. While many of these titles have since been documented by the English-speaking...

This book discusses what it means to "perform the State," what this action means in relation to the country of Iran and how these various performances are represented. The concept of the "State" as a modern phenomenon has had a powerful impact on the...

Dark Waters, Kristine Potter's second monograph, continues her engagement with the American landscape as a palimpsest for cultural ideologies.Her seductive, richly detailed black-and-white images channel the setting and characters of these songs,...

The story of the women, financiers, and other unsung figures who helped to shape the post-Napoleonic global orderIn 1814, after decades of continental conflict, an alliance of European empires captured Paris and exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, defeating...

'Krivda' is an ancient Russian word that means 'deceit' with a twist - the subtler, more pernicious connotation of 'reality made crooked'. This word, and its meaning, underpins the discovery of how machineries of 'religion' operate over a long historical...

Japanese Legends and Folklore invites English speakers into the intriguing world of Japanese folktales, ghost stories and historical eyewitness accounts. With a fascinating selection of stories about Japanese culture and people, A.B. Mitford - who lived...

In Cool Japan Guide comic book artist and food blogger Abby Denson-along with her husband Matt, friend Yuuko, and their sidekick, Kitty SweetTooth-takes you on a graphic tour everywhere from high-energy urbanstreets to peaceful Zen gardens and Shinto...

From the author of Threading My Prayer Rug, an eye-opening view of life in Saudi Arabia.It's Not What You Think is a wry, incisive account of working in Saudi Arabia that offers insight into that insular patriarchal society, what is so attractive to...