PROFILE BOOKS

(P/B) THE PARTHENON
'A classic in every sense of the word'-- John Julius Norwich Revised and updated to include the story of the New Acropolis Museum, the controversies that have surrounded it, and whether it makes a difference to the'Elgin Marble debate'. As so often with the Parthenon, there are all kinds of surprises. The ruined silhouette of the Parthenon on its hill above Athens is one of the world's most famous images. Its'looted'Elgin Marbles are a global cause cel?bre. But what actually are they? In a revised and updated edition, Mary Beard, award win...
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(H/B) HOW DEMOCRACY ENDS
Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date. Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality. David Runcima...
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(H/B) HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES
In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Startling narratives map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited on their bodies, both in myth and in practice. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store's dresses. One wom...
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(H/B) THE LAST WOLF
In The Last Wolf, a philosophy professor is mistakenly hired to write the true tale of the last wolf of Extremadura, a barren stretch of Spain. His miserable experience is narrated in a single, rolling sentence to a patently bored bartender in a dreary Berlin bar. In Herman, a master trapper is asked to clear a forest's last 'noxious beasts.' Herman begins with great zeal, although in time he switches sides, deciding to track entirely new game... In Herman II, the same events are related from the perspective of strange visitors to the reg...
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(H/B) A SEPARATION
A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, alone, she gets word that her ex-husband has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged southern Peloponnese. Reluctantly she agrees to go and search for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. Adrift in the wild and barren landscape, she traces the failure of their relationship, and finds tha...
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(H/B) THE WORLD GOES ON
A Hungarian interpreter obsessed with waterfalls, at the edge of the abyss in his own mind, wanders the chaotic streets of Shanghai. A traveller, reeling from the sights and sounds of Varanasi, encounters a giant of a man on the banks of the Ganges ranting on the nature of a single drop of water. A child labourer in a Portuguese marble quarry wanders off from work one day into a surreal realm utterly alien from his daily toils. In The World Goes On, a narrator first speaks directly, tells twenty-one unforgettable stories, then bids farewel...
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(H/B) A SPOT OF FOLLY
New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness. Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are ten (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time. In these tales, a businessman boasts about cheating on his wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to...
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(P/B) INVISIBLE ROMANS
Robert Knapp seeks out the ordinary people who formed the fabric of everyday life in ancient Rome and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. They are the housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators who lived commonplace lives and left almost no trace in history - until now. But their words are preserved in literature, letters, inscriptions and graffiti and their traces can be found in the histories, treatises, plays and poetry created by the elite. A world lost from view for two millennia is recreated through th...
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(P/B) THE SIXTIES

(P/B) THE ART OF INNOVATION
There isn't a business that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products and processes. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, partner at the Silicon Valley-based firm IDEO, developer of hundreds of innovative products from the first commercial mouse to virtual reality headsets and the Palm hand-held, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit. Kelley shows how teams: -Research and immerse themselves in every possible aspect of a new...
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(P/B) TEN FACES OF INNOVATION
Innovation is the lifeblood of every company - the fuel that keeps an organisation going in a tough marketplace. But by its very nature it's hard to plan for, quantify and coach. In The Ten Faces of Innovation Tom Kelley explains how to do it. Kelley, author of bestselling The Art of Innovation, reveals the strategies that his world-famous design firm IDEO uses to foster original thinking and overcome naysayers who stifle creativity. For Kelley, innovation is all about individuals and teams. He identifies ten key roles developed by IDEO th...
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(P/B) THE NEW NORTH
The New North is a book that turns the world literally upside down. Analysing four key 'megatrends' - population growth and migration, natural resource demand, climate change and globalisation - UCLA professor Larry Smith projects a world that by mid-century will have shifted its political and economic axes radically to the north. The beneficiaries of this new order, based on a bonanza of oil, natural gas, minerals and plentiful water will be the Arctic regions of Russia, Alaska and Canada, and Scandinavia. Meanwhile countries closer to th...
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(P/B) WE-THINK
We-Think reports on an unparalleled wave of collaborative creativity as people from California to China devise ways to work together that are more democratic, productive and creative. This guide to the new culture of mass participation and innovation is a book like no other: it started first online through a unique experiment in collaborative creativity involving hundreds of people across the globe. (ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΣΤΟ ΟΠΙΣΘΟΦΥΛΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΥ)...
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(P/B) THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH
For the first time, the full story of the race to decipher the world's greatest puzzle. The decoding of Linear B is one of the world's greatest stories: from the discovery of a cache of ancient tablets recording a lost prehistoric language to the dramatic solution of the riddle nearly seventy years later, it exerts a mesmerizing pull on the imagination.But, captivating as it is, this story is missing a crucial piece. Two men have dominated Linear B in popular history: Arthur Evans, the intrepid Victorian archaeologist who unearthed Linear ...
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(P/B) THE SECRET ANARCHY OF SCIENCE
For more than a century, science has cultivated a sober public image for itself. But as bestselling author Michael Brooks explains, the truth is very different: many of our most successful scientists have more in common with libertines than librarians.This thrilling exploration of some of the greatest breakthroughs in science reveals the extreme lengths some scientists go to in order to make their theories public. Fraud, suppressing evidence and unethical or reckless PR games are sometimes necessary to bring the best and most brilliant dis...
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(P/B) DIRT
Dirt - obsessively avoided, often misunderstood, but paradoxically also an indicator of'civilisation' (through production of waste), and a near-magical source of renewable life and medical discovery. History is rich with progressive victories over dirt, from the aqueducts and sewers of the Roman Empire to Sir Joseph Bazalgette's triumphant 'Main Drainage of London' in the mid-nineteenth century, which still functions today. Yet our relationship with dirt is complex and ambivalent. Dirt is waste, excrement, rubbish - but what then is soil? ...
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(P/B) THE USES AND ABUSES OF HISTORY
History is useful when it is used responsibly, to understand why we think and react in certain ways. But it is also susceptible to manipulation and distortion. Nationalists tell false or one-sided stories about the past, whilst dictators suppress history because it undermines their claims to omniscience and authority. Taking lessons from the past is problematic - there are too many examples, enough to suit every need. Margaret MacMillan is concerned that the history profession appears to be turning inwards, retreating from the big issues a...
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(P/B) FROM HERE TO INFINITY
The BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures were given in 2010 by the Astronomer Royal, Professor Martin Rees. In this expanded version of the lectures (doubled in length with new material) Martin Rees shows how important science will be to the global economies of the 21st century, to solving some of our apparently intractable problems and to understanding the risks that the world faces. Science is often seen as difficult or obscure, but some great scientists (like the author) are so clear that we can all understand it and participate in the great deba...
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(P/B) ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Alexis de Tocqueville, French aristocrat, liberal politician and writer of genius was the greatest of all modern political writers. His writings are ever more influential and hugely valuable for the study of French and American society during the Age of the Democratic Revolution As the son of a noble family which was nearly wiped out in the Revolution and as an ambitious politician during the July Monarchy and the Second Republic, Alexis de Tocqueville had a front seat at the revolutionary drama of his time. In 1831 Tocqueville made the fa...
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(P/B) SHALL THE RELIGIOUS INHERIT THE EARTH?
Dawkins and Hitchens have convinced many western intellectuals that secularism is the way forward. But most people don't read their books before deciding whether to be religious. Instead, they inherit their faith from their parents, who often innoculate them against the elegant arguments of secularists. And what no one has noticed is that far from declining, the religious are expanding their share of the population: in fact, the more religious people are, the more children they have. The cumulative effect of immigration from religious coun...
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