Non-fiction

A Life's Work is Rachel Cusk's funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.Paperback: 240 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571350933Published by Faber & Faber

Stephen Hawking described it as 'the discovery of the century, if not of all time', yet the scientists who first detected the cosmic radiation that was identified as the afterglow of the big bang had to admit that it was more by accident than intention. At first its discoverers mistook the readings for the disruption caused by the droppings of pigeons that had nested in their telescope, and yet they went on to win the Nobel prize. In the mid-1990s New Scientist writer Marcus Chown drove acros...

In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk’s marriage of ten years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters.Paperback: 160 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571351640Published by Faber & Faber

One hundred and fifty Americans are killed each day by the opioid epidemic, described by a former head of the Food and Drug Administration as 'one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine'. But as Chris McGreal reveals in American Overdose, it was an avoidable tragedy driven by bad science, corporate greed and a corrupted medical system. In a narrative brimming with the guilty, the victims and the unlikely heroes, Chris McGreal travels from West Virginia 'pill mills' to the corridors of Wa...

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment. They find themselves eager to move away from the all too familiar scenario of most families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory farmed foods transported long distances using...

Saturday, 23rd November 2013. It was just another day in America. And as befits an unremarkable day, ten children and teens were killed by gunfire. Far from being considered newsworthy, these everyday fatalities are simply a banal fact. The youngest was nine; the oldest nineteen. None made the news. There was no outrage at their passing. It was simply a day like any other day. Gary Younge picked it at random, searched for the families of these children and here, tells their stories. Another D...

Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay is a vivid portrait of the rural past of Blaxhall, a remote Suffolk village, in the time before mechanization changed the entire nature of farming, the landscape and rural life for good. In the 1950s, George Ewart Evans sought out those who could recall the nineteenth-century customs, crafts, dialects, tools, smugglers' tales and rural beliefs which had endured from the time of Chaucer, and created this fascinating picture of a now-vanished world.Paperback: 272...

Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam "AD-ROCK" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill...

From Stone Age to space age, people have looked up at the stars and been inspired by their beauty, their patterns, and their majesty. Beneath the Night is a history of humanity, told through our relationship with the night sky. From prehistoric cave art and Ancient Egyptian zodiacs to the modern era of satellites and space exploration, Stuart Clark explores a fascination shared across the world and throughout millennia. It is one that has shaped our scientific understanding; helped us navigat...

Being denied teaching jobs due to the colour bar. Working in an office amidst the East End's bombsites. Serving as a lady's maid to an Empire-loving aristocrat. Raising two children in suburbia. Becoming one of the first black headteachers in Britain. In 1952, Beryl Gilroy moved from British Guiana to London. Her new life wasn't what she had expected - but her belief in the power of education resulted in a revolutionary career. Black Teacher, her memoir, is a rediscovered classic: not only a ...

From Morrissey and Nick Cave to The Streets and Kanye West, this is the book that explores the links between hip-hop and rock. Reynolds has focused on two strands: white alternative rock and black street music. He's identified the strange dance of white bohemian rock and black culture, how they come together at various points and then go their own way. Through interviews he has carried out as a top music journalist for the last twenty years Reynolds is here able to tell a story of musical riv...

Why are gravy stains on your shirt at the dinner table to be admired? Does bacon improve everything? And is gin really the devil's work? In this rollicking collection of his hilarious columns, the award-winning writer and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner answers these vital questions and many, many more. They are glorious dispatches, seasoned in equal measure with both enthusiasm and bile, from decades at the very frontline of eating. Paperback: 160 PagesProduct Dimensions: 111 x 181 mmI...

In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar. A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music. A raw, thrilling story of life on the frontiers and a candid account of Viv's life post-punk - taking in a career in film,...

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as John Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane's life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable - he writes about the saxophonist's unique sound.Paperback: 272 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571359813Published by Faber & Faber

What is the secret of happy relationships? How do companies build collaborative cultures? What lies behind some of the greatest scientific and creative breakthroughs? The surprising answer is: conflict. Insight and empathy spring from the clash of different perspectives. In a world where it's easier than ever for people to share their opinions, we should be reaping the benefits of diverse views. Instead, we too often find ourselves mired in hostility or - worse - avoiding disagreement altoget...

Eschewing the usual criteria of chart success or acknowledged influence, the Copendium - a collection of album reviews and themed track samplers - takes energy, originality and heaviness as its bearings. The result is a feast of obscure and neglected masterworks that together form a surprising but entirely credible new tradition. Krautrock, motorik and post-punk, stoner and doom metal, occasionally even jazz, spoken word and hair metal: they are all represented in a wholly persuasive sequence...

After the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, bot...

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the grueling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is ...

In this groundbreaking survey of more than a century of music-making in the British Isles, Rob Young investigates how the idea of folk has been handed down and transformed by successive generations. A sweeping panorama of Albion's soundscape, from the pioneer spirit of Cecil Sharp to the visionary pop of Kate Bush, Julian Cope and Talk Talk, via the folk influences of Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Pink Floyd, Mr Fox, Trees and the early outdoor music festivals, Electric Eden presents a land...

Electric Shepherd is a likeness of James Hogg, Scottish Borderer and international literary star, who shared an epoch and an environment with Walter Scott. His novel, the Confessions of a Justified Sinner, is one of the great works of European Romanticism.Paperback: 416 PagesProduct Dimensions: 135 x 216 mmISBN: 9780571218172Published by Faber & Faber

With the same dazzling mix of emotion and idea that characterizes his novels he illuminates the art and artists who remain important to him and whose work helps us better understand the world. An astute and brilliant reader of fiction, Kundera applies these same gifts to the reading of Francis Bacon's paintings, Leos Janácek's music, the films of Federico Fellini, as well as to the novels of Philip Roth, Dostoyevsky, and García Márquez, among others. He also takes up the challenge of restorin...

Jon Savage's Ralph Gleason Award-winning England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and their time: the late 1970s. Full of anedcote, insight, and exclusive interviews, it tells the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid decline of the last great rock'n'roll band and the cultural moment they came to define.Paperback: 656 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571326280Published by Faber & Faber

Grunge, also known as the 'Seattle Sound', emerged from the Pacific north-west in the early part of the 1980s. With the unexpected success of Nirvana's single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in 1991, grunge became a household word overnight and launched an American music movement on a par with punk and hip-hop. In Everybody Loves Our Town, Mark Yarm draws from exclusive interviews to tell the whole story: the founding of originators like Soundgarden and the Melvins, the early successes of the Sub P...

The names of T. S. Eliot, William Golding, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney are synonymous with the publishing house Faber & Faber, founded in Bloomsbury in 1929. But behind these stellar literary talents was a tiny firm that had to battle the Great Depression, wartime paper shortages and dramatic financial crises to retain its independence. This intimate history of Faber & Faber weaves together the most entertaining, moving and surprising letters, diaries and materials from...

By turns essay, memoir and cultural study, Finding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri's singular account of his discovery of, and enduring passion for, North Indian music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practices will alter the reader's notion of what music might - and can - be. Tracing the music's development, Finding the Raga dwells on its most distinctive and mysterious characteristics: its extraordinary approach to time, language and silence; its embrace of confoundment, and ...

In Girl in a Band Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and role model for a generation of women, tells her story. She writes frankly about her route from girl to woman and pioneering icon within the music and art scene of New York City in the 1980s and 90s as well as marriage, motherhood, and independence. Filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a remarkable life, Girl in a Band is a moving, evocative chronicle of an extraordinary artist.Paperback: 288 PagesProduct Dim...

The bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with this collection of thoughts on time, the creative mind, and great lives and works. The irrealis mood knows no boundaries between what is and what isn't, between what happened and what won't. In more ways than one, the essay about the artists, writers, and great minds gathered in this volume have nothing to do with who I am, or who they were, and my reading of them may be entirely erroneous. But I misread...

In his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips explores mankind's on-going fascination with ideas of escape. Taking as his starting point the life and works of Harry Houdini - 'the greatest magician the world has ever seen' - he considers why some people might become compulsive escape artists, whereas others appear to find freedom in self-imposed confinement.Paperback: 176 pagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 9780571206650Published by Faber & Faber

Friedrich Nietzsche's work rocked the foundation of Western thinking and continues to permeate our culture, high and low - yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers. Sue Prideaux's myth-shattering book brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand Nietzsche, the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solu...

A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorised California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of ...

In early March 2020 Liverpool were two wins away from an extraordinary achievement, on course for their first league title win in 30 years - since the heads days of Kenny Dalglish - and likely to seal it in the Merseyside derby against their great rivals Everton. And all this an incredible two months before the season was due to end. Then, as we all know, the season was postponed. The architect of the club's great resurgence - including their 2019 UEFA Champions League win - has been Jurgen K...

Spanning Tom Waits' extraordinary 40-year career, from Closing Time to Orphans, Lowside of the Road is Barney Hoskyns' unique take on one of rock's great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who's achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous "jazzbo" years in '70s Los Angeles to the multiple-Grammy winner of recent years - by way of such shape-shifting '80s albums as Swordfishtrombones - this exhaustive...

Miss Dior is a story of freedom and fascism, beauty and betrayal, roses and repression, and how the polished surface of fashion conceals hidden depths. It paints a portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the designer Christian Dior: his beloved younger sister Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity. Justine Picardie's journey takes her to Occupied Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistan...

From worrying about the monsters under her bed as a child (Were they comfy enough?), to embracing womanhood (One way of knowing you have crossed from girlhood to womanhood is that men stop furtively masturbating at you from bushes and start shouting things at you from cars. It's a beautiful moment) to being offered free gifts after an award ceremony (It was an excruciating experience. Mortifying) worry has accompanied her at every turn. This memoir is a joyful reflection on just how to live -...

Two strangers, both reading the same novel, share a fleeting glance between passing subway cars. A bookstore owner locks eyes with a neighbor as she receives an Amazon package. Strangers are united by circumstance as they wait on the subway stairs for a summer storm to pass. Instantly recognizable, Adrian Tomine's illustrations and comics have been appearing for over a decade in the pages (and on the cover) of The New Yorker. New York Drawings is a loving homage to the city that Tomine, a Wes...

Five teenage friends leave Brighton to wage jihad in Syria. All except one are killed. This is their untold story. No Return is a unique insight into a hidden Britain, based on true events that so shocked intelligence experts they are now the Home Office's lead case study into youth radicalisation. Drawing on a cache of leaked classified documents and unprecedented access to all the main players, award-winning investigative journalist Mark Townsend reveals the shocking truth behind what drew ...

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched ...

Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of the political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the eighteenth-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the twentieth-century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events w...

Why has violence, and especially violence against women, become so much more prominent and visible across the world? To explore this question, Rose tracks the multiple forms of today's violence - historic and intimate, public and private - as they spread throughout our social fabric, offering a new account of violence in our time. In this provocative and incisive book, Rose casts her net wide: trans rights and #MeToo; the sexual harassment of migrant women; the trial of Oscar Pistorius; domes...

'[A] mesmerizing portrait of a now vanished world. Aciman's story of Alexandria is the story of his own family, a Jewish family with Italian and Turkish roots that tied its future to Egypt and made its home there for three generations, only to find itself peremptorily expelled by the Government in the early 1960's. It is the story of a fractious clan of dreamers and con men and the emotional price they would pay for exile, the story of a young boy's coming of age and his memories of the city ...

Never before have prostitution, strip clubs and pornography been as profitable, widely used or embedded in mainstream culture as they are today. How society should respond to the rise of the sex trade is shaping up to be one of the Twenty-First Century's big questions. Should it be legal to pay for sex? Isn't it a woman's choice whether she strips for money? Could online porn warping the attitudes of a generation of boys? An increasingly popular set of answers maintains that prostitution is j...

Legendarily reticent, perverse and misleading, Prince is one of the few remaining 80s superstars who still, perhaps, remains unexplained. Now a firm fixture in the pop canon, where such classics as 'Purple Rain', 'Sign o' the Times' and 'Parade' regularly feature in Best Ever Album polls, Prince is still, as he ever was, an enigma. His live performances are legendary (21 Nights at the O2 in 2007) and while recent releases have been modestly successful at best, his influence on urban music, an...

Has psychoanalysis failed to keep its promise? What are psychoanalysis and literature good for? And what, if anything, have they got to do with each other? Promises, Promises is a delightful new collection of essays which sets out to make and break the links between psychoanalysis and literature. It confirms Adam Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse into art, drama, poetry and history. This collection gives us insights into anorexia...

The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world we live in. But, almost a century after their advent, most people haven't the slightest clue what either is about. Did you know that there's so much empty space inside matter that the entire human race could be squeezed into the volume of a sugar cube? Or that you grow old more quickly on the top floor of a building than on...

Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Do I really have to floss? Are office meetings actually worth the time they take up? Am I spending enough time with my children? Should I worry about binge-watching TV? What time should I go to bed? We make, and worry about, a thousand big and little decisions during our waking hours. Too often these decisions are dictated by concerns or beliefs about our world that simply aren't true. With precision and wit, award-winning public health expert ...

In this, the first book to take a big-picture view of the entire post punk period, acclaimed author and music journalist Simon Reynolds recreates a time of tremendous urgency and idealism in pop music. Full of anecdote and insight, and featuring the likes of Joy Division, The Fall, Pere Ubu, PiL and Talking Heads, Rip It Up And Start Again stands as one of the most inspired and inspiring books on popular music ever written. Paperback: 608 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mmISBN: 97805713496...

Sidelined. Betrayed. Killed off. Elizabeth Hardwick dissects the history of women and literature. In her most virtuoso work of criticism, she explores the lives of the Brontes, Woolf, Eliot and Plath; the fate of literary wives such as Zelda Fitzgerald and Jane Carlyle; and the destinies of fictional heroines from Richardson's Clarissa to Ibsen's Nora. With fierce empathy and biting wit, Hardwick mines their childhoods, families, and personalities to probe the costs of sex, love, and marriage...

In these essays, Leïla Slimani gives voice to young Moroccan women who are grappling with a conservative Arab culture that at once condemns and commodifies sex. In a country where the law punishes and outlaws all forms of sex outside marriage, as well as homosexuality and prostitution, women have only two options for their sexual identities: virgin or wife. Sex and Lies is an essential confrontation with Morocco's intimate demons and a vibrant appeal for the universal freedom to be, to love a...