ALLEN LANE

(H/B) BREAKOUT NATIONS
'The old rule of forecasting was to make as many forecasts as possible and publicise the ones you got right. The new rule is to forecast so far in the future, no one will know you got it wrong.' Ruchir Sharma does neither. In Breakout Nations he shows why the economic 'mania' of the twenty-first century, with its unshakeable faith in the power of emerging markets - especially China - to continue growing at the astoundingly rapid and uniform pace of the last decade, is wrong. The next economic success stories will not be where we think they...
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(H/B) MUSIC IN THE CASTLE OF HEAVEN
Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most famously unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate? John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents' house, where it hung for safety during the Second World War. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one...
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(H/B) A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN TWELVE MAPS
Jerry Brotton is the presenter of the acclaimed BBC4 series 'Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession'. Here he tells the story of our world through maps. Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, world maps are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In thi...
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(H/B) PAKISTAN ON THE BRINK
With Bin Laden dead, Pakistan threatened by internal power struggles, relationships between the United States and Pakistan at an all-time low, and as the US and Britain begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan, what are the possibilities - and hazards - facing the world's most unstable region? Where is the Taliban now, and how do they figure in the future of Pakistan as well as Afghanistan? What does the immediate future hold, and what are the choices that Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West can make? These are some of the crucial questions ...
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(H/B) THE PRICE OF INEQUALITY
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn - too late. In this timely book, Joseph Stiglitz uncovers the sources of our dissatisfaction and identifies three major themes: how markets don't work the way they are supposed to (being neither efficient nor stable)...
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(H/B) ENGINEERS OF VICTORY
From Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, one of the most acclaimed history books of recent decades, Engineers of Victory is a new account of how the tide was turned against the Nazis by the Allies in the Second World War. In January 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met in Casablanca to review the western Allies' war aims and strategy. They realised that to attain their ultimate aim of 'unconditional surrender' they would have to achieve some formidable objectives - win control of the...
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(P/B) YOU ARE NOT A GADGET
Something went wrong around the start of the twenty-first century. Individual creativity began to go out of fashion. The crowd was wise. Machines, specifically computers, were no longer tools to be used by human minds - they were better than humans. Yet what if, despite web 2.0, despite OpenSource, despite the wisdom of crowds, and the creation of Wikipedia, only people are meaningful? After all, when the printing press was invented, the mechanism was ultimately less impressive than the authors. What if, by devaluing individuals, we are de...
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(P/B) 23 THINGS THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT CAPITALISM
In 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism one of today's most iconoclastic thinkers destroys the biggest myths about the world we live in. There's no such thing as a 'free' market. Globalization isn't making the world richer. We don't live in a digital world - the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet. Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones. Higher paid managers don't produce better results. This galvanizing, fact-packed book about money, equality, freedom and greed proves that the free market isn...
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(H/B) THE GREAT SEA
For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centers of world civilisation. From the time of historical Troy until the middle of the nineteenth century, human activity here decisively shaped much of the course of world history. David Abulafia's "The Great Sea" is the first complete history of the Mediterranean from the erection of the mysterious temples on Malta around 3500 BC to the recent reinvention of the Mediterranean's shores as a tourist destination. Part of the argument of Abulafia's book is that t...
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(P/B) REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN EUROPE
Why has Europe's half-century of mass immigration failed to produce anything resembling the American melting pot? Deadly terrorist attacks and rioting in Muslim neighbourhoods have now forced Europeans, caught up in a demographic revolution they never expected, to question its success and to confront the limits of their long-held liberal values. By overestimating its need for immigrant labour and underestimating the culture-shaping potential of religion, has Europe trapped itself in a problem to which it has no obvious solution? Christophe...
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(H/B) THE PARTY
China's secret rulers are the elephant in the room. They are the largest political organisation in the world. They control every aspect of Chinese life. And no one discusses them. Until now. Who are they? And how do they operate? It is impossible to understand China without really knowing who is in charge. And THE PARTY tackles the subject head on. Richard McGregor has spent twenty years reporting on this region of the world and he has used all of his experience to uncover the true story of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the most re...
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(H/B) THE RULE OF LAW
The Rule of Law is a phrase much used but little examined. The idea of the rule of law as the foundation of modern states and civilisations has recently become even more talismanic than that of democracy, but what does it actually consist of? In this brilliant short book, Britain's former senior law lord, and one of the world's most acute legal minds, examines what the idea actually means. He makes clear that the rule of law is not an arid legal doctrine but is the foundation of a fair and just society, is a guarantee of responsible gover...
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(H/B) THE EERIE SILENCE

THE IDEA OF JUSTICE (H/B)

ILL FARES THE LAND

(H/B) HITLER'S EMPIRE

(H/B) A HISTORY OF HISTORIES - EPICS, CHRONICLES, ROMANCES AND

(H/B) NAPOLEON'S WARS: AN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY 1803-1815

(H/B) GANG LEADER FOR A DAY