(Paperback)

A humane, thoughtful and yet clear-eyed history of people with learning disabilities.

(Hardback)

(Paperback)

A rich and original history of Edo, the shoguns city that became modern Tokyo.

(Paperback)

Covers tortoises worldwide in evolution, myth and reality, ranging across palaeontology, natural history, veterinary medicine, folklore, myth, art forms, literature, and trade regulations.

(Paperback)

Media philosopher Vilm Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of understanding both the cultural crises of the past and the new social forms nascent within them.

(Paperback)

The emergence, evolution and global spread of nightclubs and electronic dance music.

(Paperback)

The first history of the misunderstood festival Halloween, and its current global popularity.

(Hardback)

In Tulip, Celia Fisher traces the story of this important and highly popular plant, from its mountain beginnings to its cultivation in the gardens of Mughul, Persian and Ottoman potentates, and its migration from East to West along the silk trading routes.

(Hardback)

A beautifully illustrated exploration of the mysterious, inhospitable planet Venus.

(Hardback)

Drawing on insights, images and unpublished diaries, Julia Frey explores Edouard Vuillard's private world.

(Hardback)

Vodka: A Global History describes vodka's complete history, from its emergence in Eastern Europe to its future as a global beverage. Attractively illustrated with photographs, paintings and graphic art, this title provides an engaging account of the rise of vodka.

(Paperback)

In Vulture, Thom van Dooren counters the common association of the vulture with death and putrefaction, offering a concise and enlightening new history of this previously much-misunderstood bird.

(Paperback)

An enlightening and entertaining guide to the natural and cultural history of the wasp.

(Hardback)

A scientific and cultural history of weeds, which shows that regarding certain plants as weeds and not others is purely a matter of context. Weeds reveals just how interesting and useful these seemingly annoying plants can be.

(Paperback)

A scientific and botanical history of weeds, from unwanted intruder to beautiful ornament.

(Paperback)

Whales are the largest animals ever to have lived on the earth; a large Blue Whale's tongue alone can weigh more than an elephant. This title recounts the evolutionary and ecological background, as well as the cultural history, of these extraordinary mammals, long persecuted and now celebrated throughout the world.

(Paperback)

Explores the science behind wind, as well as how it has been imagined and portrayed in myth, religion, art and literature since ancient times.

(Hardback)

A beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England.

(Paperback)

Highly regarded woodpecker expert Gerard Gorman presents a unique natural, social and cultural history of woodpeckers.

(Paperback)

An insight into the mysterious world of the remarkable, but often underrated worm.

(Paperback)

In his radically new analysis of an extraordinary life, Damian Flanagan moves away from the stereotypical depiction of Mishima as a right-wing nationalist and aesthete and presents him as a man utterly obsessed with time - time-keeping devices and symbols - arguing that this compulsion was at the heart of the author's literature and life.

(Hardback)

A bold reimagining of the life and work of Archimedes of Syracuse.

(Paperback)

Cairo is a 1,400-year-old metropolis whose streets are inscribed with sagas, a place where the pressures of life test people's equanimity to the very limit. Packed with incident and anecdote, this book explores Cairo's relationship with its 'others', from the French and British occupations to modern influences like tourism and consumerism.

(Paperback)

Examines the meaning of celebrity. Drawing on a wide gallery of celebrities, from O.J. Simpson, Marilyn Munroe, David Bowie and Kurt Cobain to such notorious figures as Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy and the Soho bomber, David Copeland, he explores the friction between the public face of the celebrity and the celebrity's actual self.