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"To girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you." Chanel Miller's story changed our world forever. In 2016 Brock Turner was sentenced to just six months in jail after he was caught sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. His light sentencing, and Chanel's victim impact statement, which was read by eleven million people in four days, sparked international outrage and action. Know My Name is an intimate, profoundly moving memoir that exposes a patriarchal culture biased to protect perpetrators, a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and ultimately shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life. Entwining pain, resilience, and humour, this breath-taking memoir will stand as a modern classic. 'Know My Name marks the debut of a gifted young writer. Miller's words are purpose. They are maps. And she is a treasure who has prevailed' New York Times. ISBN 9780241428290 -
An indispensable guide to the craft of writing from Random House's long-time copy chief and one of Twitter's leading language gurus. We all write, all the time: books, blogs, tweets, emails, emails, emails - and we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help. As Random House's copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike - not to mention his followers on social media - for playfully, brilliantly deconstructing the English language. Dreyer's English is the distillation of everything he has learned from copyediting thousands of books, the perfect guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward. Both authoritative and amusing, Dreyer's English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en-dash; the rules and non-rules of grammar, including why it's OK to begin a sentence with 'And' or 'But' and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it's best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including 'very', 'rather', 'of course', and the dreaded 'actually'. And yes: 'Only godless savages eschew the Oxford comma.' Stuffed with advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and - perhaps best of all - an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language. ISBN 9781787464131 -
In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world's health, economic security and social fabric. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald. A first-hand witness, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humour to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald's place in the family spotlight and Ivana's penchant for regifting to her grandmother's frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favourite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's. Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have sought to explain Donald Trump's lethal flaws. Mary Trump has the education, insight and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider's perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world's most powerful and dysfunctional families. ISBN 9781471190162 -
Roger Robinson's range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; the ubiquitous presence of racism; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents encountered in daily life; and reflections on the purposes and costs of making art. Not least, in the sequence of poems that reflect on the meanings of the Grenfell Tower fire, Roger Robinson finds ways to move beyond a just indignation to uncover the undertones of experience that bring us nearer to the human reality of that event. The collection's title points to the underlying philosophy expressed in these poems: that earthly joy is, or ought to be, just within, but is often just beyond our reach, denied by racism, misogyny, physical cruelty, and those with the class power to deny others their share of worldly goods and pleasures. A Portable Paradise is not the emptiness of material accumulation, but joy in an openness to people, places, the sensual pleasures of food, and the rewards to be had from the arts of word, sound, and visual enticement--in short an "insatiable hunger" for life. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity, and generosity of spirit. These finely crafted poems reveal Roger Robinson's capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and to engage our thoughts. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go. ISBN9781845234331 -
Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe. In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others. ISBN 9780008293864 -
*WINNER OF PULITZER PRIZE 2020* Jericho Brown's daring poetry collection The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex - a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues - testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction. ISBN 9781529020472 -
From those perilous first steps as a toddler, to great expeditions, from walking to work to trekking to the North Pole, Erling Kagge explains that he who walks goes further and lives better. Walking is a book about the love of exploration, the delight of discovery and the equilibrium that can be found in this most simple of activities. A thought-proving and enjoyable book that revels in seeing the global in the local. ISBN 9780241357705 -
A glimpse of life inside the world's most secretive country, as told by Britain's best-loved travel writer. In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or phone signal, where the countryside has barely moved beyond a centuries-old peasant economy but where the cities have gleaming skyscrapers and luxurious underground train stations. His resulting documentary for Channel 5 was widely acclaimed. Now he shares his day-by-day diary of his visit, in which he describes not only what he saw - and his fleeting views of what the authorities didn't want him to see - but recounts the conversations he had with the country's inhabitants, talks candidly about his encounters with officialdom, and records his musings about a land wholly unlike any other he has ever visited - one that inspires fascination and fear in equal measure. Written with Palin's trademark warmth and wit, and illustrated with beautiful colour photographs throughout, the journal offers a rare insight into the North Korea behind the headlines. ISBN 9781786331908 -
When Stephen Sexton was young, video games were a way to slip through the looking glass; to be in two places at once; to be two people at once. In these poems about the death of his mother, this moving, otherworldly narrative takes us through the levels of Super Mario World, whose flowered landscapes bleed into our world, and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it. His remarkable debut is a daring exploration of memory, grief and the necessity of the unreal. Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First CollectionA New Statesman and Telegraph Book of the Year 2019 -'Every poem in this book is a marvel. Taken all together they make up a work of almost miraculous depth and beauty' Sally Rooney. ISBN 9780141990026 -
Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle over that foundational power. Women, people of colour and non-straight people are telling other versions, and white men in particular are fighting to preserve their own centrality. In this outstanding collection of essays by one of the most prescient and insightful commentators today, Solnit appraises the voices that are emerging, why they matter and the obstacles they face in making themselves heard. ISBN 9781783785438 -
Inside the rise of the political party, once subordinate to the IRA, that is on the brink of taking power in IrelandSinn Fein is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Fein has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque. Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government? Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year in 2021, explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game. Drawing on exclusive interviews with current and former members of Sinn Fein, she builds up a picture of a party undergoing a profound, and still incomplete , transformation. She looks at the key individuals and moments that put the party on its present course, and she explores tensions within the party and the wider republican movement. Packed with revelatory details, The Long Game is a groundbreaking telling of contemporary Ireland's biggest and most elusive political story. -
Beyond the Story: 10 Year Record of BTS is a forthcoming biography about South Korean pop group BTS. The book is written by Kang Myeong-seok and BTS, and translated into English by Anton Hur in collaboration with Clare Richards and Slin Jung. ISBN 9781035031542 -
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics. In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer offers a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country. Beginning with the bitter experience of German Marxists exiled by Hitler, she traces the arc of the state they would go on to create, first under the watchful eye of Stalin, and then in an increasingly distinctive German fashion. From the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, to the relative prosperity of the 1970s, and on to the creaking foundations of socialism in the mid-1980s, Hoyer argues that amid oppression and frequent hardship, East Germany was yet home to a rich political, social and cultural landscape, a place far more dynamic than the Cold War caricature often painted in the West. Powerfully told, and drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews, letters and records, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, the one beyond the Wall. 'One of the best young historians writing in English today... Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, Beyond the Wall explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany' Andrew Roberts. -
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In The Golden Mole, Katherine Rundell, the award-winning author of Super-Infinite and Impossible Creatures, takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's strangest and most awe-inspiring animals, including pangolins, wombats, lemurs and seahorses. But each of these animals is endangered. And so, this most passionately persuasive and sharply funny book is also an urgent, inspiring clarion call: to treasure and act - to save nature's vanishing wonders, before it is too late. 'A wondrous ode to nature's astonishing beauty - and an elegy for all the life we are in the midst of destroying.' Amia Srinivasan 'A rare and magical book.' Bill Bryson Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing -
We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, one of the world's leading climate activists, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope - but only if we listen to the science before it's too late. In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts - geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders - to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now. ISBN 9780241547472 -
In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, she attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married man where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, Ernaux seeks the truth behind an existence lived, for a time, entirely for someone else. ISBN 9781913097554 -
Ionbha or empathy is a core element of wisdom and a universal language of the soul. It brings joy to the everyday, making the unbearable bearable. "We need empathy in schools just as we need empathy in the world right now" - Cillian Murphy, Actor and Patron of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre. The wide range of contributions to the publication Ionbha act like a compass, guiding us on things that really matter in life. Reflections on empathy illuminate its healing properties, vividly opening our eyes to the countless ways in which its power can shape us all. This collection shows that no matter how big or small, empathetic actions have a massive impact. Although we rarely appreciate how these actions affect people and their communities, they often reverberate long after we act. 89 contributors include Michael D. Higgins, Hozier, Tolu Makay, The Edge, Rachael Blackmore, Blindboy Boatclub, Mary Coughlan, Clodagh Finn, Katy Hyland, Imelda May, Brendan O'Connor, Louise O'Neill, Valery Biden Owens and citizens from all walks of life. All royalties from the sale of this book will go directly to delivering the Activating Social Empathy education programme in Irish schools and youth work organisations. ISBN 9781781178195 -
For almost fifty years, Michael Harding has been crafting words in a bid to express himself and to explore truths about the human condition. But even still he found himself unable to say certain things he really wanted to. Then, while in recovery from surgery, he travelled to a cottage on the Atlantic coast and thought again about life and the people who had profoundly affected him over the years: mentors, loves and old friends. There, at the ocean, he wrote letters with an intimacy not previously risked. Letters that would never be posted but that appear now in 'All the Things Left Unsaid' - a vulnerable and beautifully wrought collection of insights into life, death, friendship and love. ISBN 9781529379204
