In this eloquent and provocative book, Paul Bloom takes us inside the paradoxes of pleasure, exploring everything from cannibalism to Picasso to IKEA furniture. The quirks of delight, it turns out, are a delightful way to learn about the human mind

Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide Paul Bloom is among the deepest thinkers and clearest writers in the science of mind today. He has a knack for coming up with genuinely new insights about mental life — ones that you haven't already read about or thought of — and making them seem second nature through vivid examples and lucid explanations
Steven Pinker How Pleasure Works has one of the best discussions I’ve read of why art is pleasurable, why it matters to us, and why it moves us so
Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music This book is not just a pleasure, but a revelation, by one of psychology’s deepest thinkers and best writers. Lucid and fascinating, you’ll want to read it slowly and savor the experience.
Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness 

An imaginative and archivally rich evocation of the Mayflower pilgrims and of the lands they invaded
Linda Colley In this beautifully written and imagined book, impeccably researched, and full of so many fresh insights and discoveries, Nick Bunker has given us the most grounded and convincing portrait yet achieved of what drove the Pilgrim Fathers to seek their faith and fortune in the New World
Michael Wood I have rarely read a book which combines such a breadth of canvas...with such penetrating and detailed research
Patrick Collinson, Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University A lively, indeed passionate, retelling of the ‘Pilgrim’ story, full of surprises as Nick Bunker delves into the byways of how the voyage of 1620 came to be and how the pilgrims managed to survive. A terrific read

David D. Hall, Harvard University 

This is an amazing book full of incredible people all of whom turn out to be real and unbelievable stories, all of which turn out be true. Against a backdrop of late nineteenth century Europe and America in which staggering industrial progress went hand-in-hand with mass poverty and class struggle, Butterworth brilliantly teases out the paths and plots of the dedicated revolutionaries, deadly dilettantes, spies, informants, agents provocateurs, false counts and femmes fatales who made up the international anarchist movement, and its enemies. A genuine tour de force
David Aaronovitch A narrative taut with intrigue and freighted with contemporarysignificance
Bryce Christensen (Booklist)

Historian Butterworth makes a first-rate addition to the growing list of books dealing with terrorism's origins and history... Delivering a virtuoso performance, Butterworth adds the hope that history will not repeat itself and that a successful new bloody ideology will not create the next scourge
 (Publisher's Weekly - starred review)

Intriguing, provocative and written with a novelist's eye for detail, this book is an engrossing journey into a murky, subterranean world.
Mike Rapport (BBC History Magazine)

This engrossing book will fascinate would-be explorers, foreign policy buffs and all those who care about our global environment. Charles Emmerson shows why the world’s ice cap is where much of our world’s future history will be written
Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University, Chairman of the International Crisis Group; Former European Union Commissioner for External Affairs Deeply insightful...His account is always clear-headed and elegant, weaving an extraordinary range of subjects into a compelling narrative
Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum A fascinating, personal and visionary book. Splendid
Lord Nicholas Stern 

Imbued with its author's deep sensitivity to shifting atmospheres, his overwhelming passion for England, Wales and Scotland as living bodies pulsing, breathing, twitching beneath our feet, and his contagiously personal view of his subject.
Jonathan Keates (Observer)

A very well written book about geology and geological history
 (Sir David Attenborough, The Times)

We have a new classic... this is popular science at its best; it's beautifully written, constantly witty and excellently illustrated.
 (Financial Times)

A truly fascinating and eye-opening account of a phenomenon so commonplace we barely think about it, yet one which is also mind-bogglingly complicated. Once you’ve read The Music Instinct, you’ll never listed to music the same way again
Doug Johnstone (Independent)

Remarkable capacity to use words to open our ears
Damian Thompson (Sunday Telegraph, Book of the Week)

If you try listening to music after reading this book, you’ll probably hear it differently – more knowingly, even
Tom Payne (Telegraph)

This book surveys current thinking and tells you why music rocks
rev’d Iain Finlayson (Times)

I defy anyone to read this book without coming away better informed about why music affects us in such a profound way... His passion for music is evident on every page, and his enthusiasms are infectious.
Bee Wilson (The Sunday Times)

He [Phillips] has a real gift for highlighting the picturesque and for bringing the past alive... with its crisp management, accessible style and deft characterisation, this book stakes a strong claim to be the most appealing narrative account of the Crusades for a general audience
 (BBC History Magazine)

Original, engaging, fast-paced, this is history at its best. Phillips lays bare the complex history of the period, both past and its long-term consequences. Poets, knights, politicians, schemers, queens, celebrated and forgotten, all are brought to life in this wonderful A - Z of the Crusades.
 (Kate Mosse)

Holy Warriors is not only very readable, its skilful and detailed use of source material serves as a showcase of what is being done in this, the most intensively studied area of medieval historiography
Robert Irwin (Literary Review)

A superb book, one written with an elegant blend of clarity and zest. Its author demonstrates his mastery of all the relevant scholarship, from the oldest to the most recent, but he may be most successful in his ability to capture the spirit of the various crusades through word portraits of some of their most memorable human characters. Readers will find it difficult to put this gripping book down.
William Chester Jordan, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University 

Why Women Have Sex is an endlessly well informed and irresistibly readable book...the most fascinating and illuminating look at female sexuality since Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female.
 (Mary Roach, author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex)

Why Women Have Sex is a fascinating tour of what psychology and biology can tell us about women’s sexual motivation. Meston and Buss are first-rate scientists and skilled writers who actually answer the question that everyone was afraid to ask.
 (Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness)

The most thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation ever compiled.
John Tierney (The New York Times)

Ian Mortimer's 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory is compelling, exuberant and erudite – combining the vivid drama of medieval character and battle with the vigour of revisionist history
 (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin)

Mortimer creates a new and convincing likeness of medievals England’s most iconic king
Nick Rennison (Sunday Times)

Ian Mortimer… has virtually single-handedly put medieval history back in the hands of ordinary readers, combining scrupulous research with a wonderfully iconoclastic approach to storytelling
Dominic Sandbrook (Daily Telegraph)

Mortimer writes biographical history with formidable energy and panache... His method is an enthralling experiment in time-travel: this book takes the year of Agincourt a day at a time, building an in-depth picture of how those who lived through it experienced events. At times it reads like a novel, at times it offers subtly nuanced back story. This is the most illuminating exploration of the reality of 15th-century life that I have ever read.

Christina Hardyment (Independent)

Mortimer is a good historian, and his account of Henry V and of Agincourt is well worth having
Richard Barber (Literary Review)

Bold…new and unexpected
Ann Wroe (The Economist)

An enthralling new book on the group
David Lister (Independent)

A breath-taking record of uncontrolled fame’s grotesque side-affects
Victoria Segal (Q Magazine)

Doggett's book... is a real page turner
Annie Lennox (Harper's Bazaar)

A page-turner, and for its genre and uncharacteristically literate one. The shelf of Beatles reads is short, but You Never Give Me Your Money belongs on it
Christopher Bray (Literary Review)

An admirably unstarry-eyed path through the breakup of the band and beyond
 (Metro)

Dropping like a howitzer shell amid a rare ceasefire between Capm Yoko and Macca HQ, there’s something mischievous in the timing of Peter Doggett’s latest decostructino of ‘60s mythoculture
Danny Eccleston (Mojo)

[a] balanced account of the band’s journey from reckless idealists to astute, weary businessmen
 (Record Collector)

Fruitful reading that will make it difficult to look at the world through quite the same eyes as in one’s virginal, pre–game theory days
 (Kirkus Reviews)

Organized thought applied to problems can illuminate and help solve them. This easy and enjoyable read is, in many ways, a how-to book for that very purpose
George P. Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has demonstrated the power of using game theory and related assumptions of rational and self-seeking behavior in predicting the outcome of important political and legal processes. No one will fail to appreciate and learn from this well-written and always interesting account of his procedures
Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Professor Emeritus, Stanford University Predictioneer teaches us that we can predict how a conflict may be resolved if we carefully consider the incentives for all parties in the conflict. In an extraordinary range of applications, from ancient history to tomorrow's headlines, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita demonstrates the power of the game-theoretic approach
Roger B. Myerson, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Professor, University of Chicago A fascinating new book
Daniel Finkelstein (Times)

Mesquita offers zingily provocative contemporary policy ideas
 (Guardian)

A beautifully written, profoundly important book that is sure to shake up the psychiatric establishment and pharmaceutical industry. Many readers will be excited, and probably disturbed, by this brilliant and shocking expose of the lack of efficacy and dangers of the most popular antidepressant medications. The author also reveals the astonishing lack of evidence for the widely believed but poorly validated theory that depression and anxiety result from a chemical imbalance in the brain. This book is long overdue and I hope that people will pay attention. Kudos to Dr. Kirsch!
David D. Burns M.D., author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Irving Kirsch brilliantly documents a grim scandal of regulatory and clinical failures concerning antidepressants but also holds out hope in one of the most profound meditations for 50 years on the nature and role of the placebo effect in clinical care
David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression A terrific account of how optimism, greed and scientific incompetence have misled us about the nature of depression and the drugs we throw at it
Druin Burch, author of Taking the Medicine Wide scope, smooth delivery, and mastery of the data
 (www.popularscience.co.uk)

Kirsch's account of the background and assumptions of the 'chemical imbalance' theory of depression is helpfully clear, and his damning critique convincing. Similarly, his explanation of placebos and how they work allows the reader to get to grips with some fascinating possibilities.
David Smail (Times Higher Education Supplement)

A fascinating and disturbing book
 (Literary Review)

Her pages are packed with provocative observations and cunning insights. I’d highly recommend this fascinating book to any parent of a young child – and, indeed anyone who has ever been a baby
Josh Lacey (Guardian)

Professor Greiner, in this admirable translation by Anne Wyburd and Victoria Fern, scrupulously argued and carefully referenced, explains the failure of what is now known as the moral component of warfare, and therefore exactly how it was that the US lost
Allan Mallinson (The Times)

A well-documented essay…an astonishing final section
Richard Gott (New Statesman)

This comprehensive indictment of the Vietnam war was published first in Germany in 2007. One wonders how long it will be before a similar book can be written about the dehumanising effect on a new generation of American soldiers of the Iraq war, also fought against a guerrilla enemy in a foreign land.
Conor O’Clery (Irish Times)

O’Keeffe has done an exhilarating job
Emma Crichton-Miller (Evening Standard)

Haydon’s story is essentially tragic but it has many elements of comedy, even high farce, and Paul O’Keeffe’s biography brings the comedy to the fore with an enviable lightness of touch
Peter Burton (Daily Express)

Haydon’s story is one of the great cautionary tales in art history, and it still has the power to shock, even after 150 years: there is barely a page in Paul O’Keeffe’s new biography on which this reviewer has not written in the margin either “oh no” or “Oh God”…O’Keeffe’s book largely refrains from psychological speculation, and I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing. What is definitely a good thing, though, is the way Haydon’s tragedy is presented as a human story, with many down-to-earth facts
Lynne Truss (Sunday Times)

tactful and unobtrusive … Hayden steps forth, as full of colour and bluster as ever, but with dignity as well as absurdity, and a perspicacious, as well as biting, tongue
Gregory Dart (TLS)

O’Keeffe has produced a fascinating study of a forgotten life that is rich in detail for fans of period drama
Mark Williamson (The Herald)

Packed with noisy enthusiasm, punchy arguments and verbal agility... An excessively gifted communicator, [Schama] knows how to sweep facts and argument into a powerful, fluent narrative
 (The Independent)

Power of Art feels as if it has been written in one breathless burst of enthusiasm, in a prose style that crackles like electricity
 (Sydney Morning Herald)

A stunning work, resounding with profound insights which rivet the attention... A beautifully conceived and presented book from the professor of art history at Columbia University, New York. There must be few others in the world who could equal it
 (Western Daily Press)

Powerfully vivid story-telling... Schama is a powerful communicator, and it is a joy to witness him explore the extraordinary evolution of eight world-class works of art
 (Good Book Guide)

Politics, religion, war, sex and love are the inspirations behind the paintings chosen, and each takes on a new life under Schama's gaze
 (First magazine)

The author's powerful storytelling technique in this book... makes both the artist and his art spring to life
 (The Lady)

One of our best living writers on religion….prodigiously sourced, passionately written
John Cornwell (FT)

Karen Armstrong invites us on a journey through religion that helps us to rescue what remains wise from so much that to many in Britain today no longer seems true….Armstrong is one of the the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion
Alain de Botton (Observer)

Comprehensive and measured
Paul Vallely (The Independent)

This is a stunned appreciation of an ‘otherness’ beyond the reach of language, and for Armstrong, constitutes the heart of every religion
Sholto Byrnes (New Statesmen)

It isn’t an easy read – why should it be' – and at times her expertise in theology and its technical terms get in the way of layman’s understanding. But at her best, she is wonderfully clear and insightful – and not out to convert anyone
Peter Lewis (Daily Mail)

Impressive new book…great eloquence
Richard Holloway (The Scotsman)

The Case for God is a tour de force of learning. A hefty history of theology, philosophy and science, and how they converge, it knocks Dawkins and Hitchens into an intellectual cocked hat.
Chris Dolan (The Sunday Herald)

Dense and brilliant, chastening and consoling. Whether or not it sells as well as the latest Hitchens or Dawkins will be a measure of us, not the book
Christopher Hart (Sunday Times)

There are few more important subjects in the West today than the corporaticization of public and personal space and few writers as well-suited to the subject as the always insightful and provocative Doug Rushkoff. A terrific contribution to an urgent debate.
Naomi Wolf This is an urgent book, essential reading about an important topic you've probably never considered before. Like all great books, it will open your eyes to a whole new way of thinking. I hope that everyone gets a chance to read it, before it's too late.
Seth Godin, author of Tribes Read this book if you want to understand how the current economic meltdown started 400 years ago, how so much of what you consider to be a natural evolution of daily life was carefully designed to profit a few, and how corporatism has so colonised every part of life that most of us don't even recognise how our lives and fortunes are channeled and manipulated by it. Rushkoff is going to be attacked as a communist, but that gets his point wrong. Look at his references - he has meticulously documented his argument. I love that Rushkoff isn't afraid to think big - very big. He took on the media more than a decade ago. Then he took on Judaism. But now he's chosen a larger target - the corporation.
Howard Rheingold author of Smart Mobs Douglas Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers, and writers, of our time.
Dr. Timothy Leary Douglas Rushkoff is damn smart. He understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone.
Walter Isaacson The brilliant heir to Marshall McLuhan.
 (New Perspectives Quarterly)

Forget the Man Booker long list. Susan Neiman's superb new book should be at the top of beach reads this summer. For what Neiman beautifully chronicles is how in all sorts of policy areas the left has let slip its Enlightenment bearings and is no longer able to act on moral impulses…. Now is the time to turn to Neiman and re-inject some morality into progressive politics – for the good of everyone.
Tristram Hunt (Guardian online)

A lucid new tome on why politics is a moral pursuit, and why we need a second Enlightenment. Where was the voice of academia in our political and financial crisis' This firebrand turned head of the Einstein Forum brings a refreshing conviction of the possibility of a deliberative public life.
Hugh Roberts (Guardian online)

Astonishing and essential...It is truly a guide to save us from our times, elegantly destroying the host of intellectual errors that have beset progressive as well as reactionary thought and led us to where we are
Alain de Botton A tour de force: a witty, profound, and powerful successor to her breakthrough book, Evil in Modern Thought.
Tom Gitlin With passion, wit, and high intelligence, Susan Neiman invites us to be moral grown-ups. Morally and politically compelling - and a delight to read.
Michael Walzer Susan Neiman's profound wisdom and courage give us a public conception of goodness and a reinvigorated progressive vision....She is a beacon of light and hope in our morally debased times.
Cornel West The Enlightenment project of constructing a rational morality--pronounced dead by commentators on the left and right--has found a champion determined to resurrect it for the twenty-first century.
 (Booklist)

Susan Neiman is a masterly storyteller; her new book Moral Clarity offers retellings of the Odyssey and the Book of Job that are themselves worth the price of admission. But she also has stories about the origins of her own position that place her in both larger intellectual narratives and more local political ones...Her project can be seen as a progressive alternative to (Allan Bloom's) The Closing of the American Mind.
Anthony Appiah In Moral Clarity Susan Neilman criticises the philosophical ideas that dominate contemporary culture and politics on a grand scale. She is well equipped to do this.
Onora O’Neill (FT)

Not only is Gummer’s book a treasure chest of detail...it is also full of shrewd observations. The Scourging Angel is an elegant and self-assured debut.
Dominic Sandbrook (Telegraph)

[A] glorious picture of 14th-century England...a work of self-evident scholarship...this truly impressive work of narrative and interpretative history. In Mr Gummer’s elegant prose, with its ultra-precise vocabulary, Britain in the mid 14th century comes alive: you see it, hear it, smell it
 (Country Life)

A terrific debut, brimming with life and detail. Read it, and then check your armpits for swellings, just to be sure...
Dominic Sandbrook (Prospect)

Benedict Gummer’s highly impressive book charts the subsequent spread of the disease in meticulous and terrible detail
Noel Malcolm (Sunday Telegraph Seven)

Benedict Gummer’s study…establishes the facts more thoroughly than any of his predecessors, and uses a wider range of sources than most of them…Benedict Gummer is a Parliamentary candidate for Ipswich. Some reviewers have suggested that it would be a loss to literature if he were to be elected. But I should prefer to say that it would be a gain to the House of Commons.
Jonathan Sumption (TLS)

An engaging if somewhat eccentric book… rarely fails to hold the reader’s attention
Richard Barber (Literary Review)

Magisterial
Chris Patten A clear and expert account of the rise and fall of communism
Marcus Earl (Weekend Review)

Archie Brown tells the history of these 70-odd years…with poise, a sense of balance and a judicious understanding of the differences between the varieties of communisms
Donald Sassoon (Guardian)

Archie Brown has become possibly Britain’s leading expert on communism… superb book, which in just over 700 pages gives not only the history of communism, but also the background to it and the reasons for its decline
Simon Heffer (Daily Telegraph)

Shows how excel is the inevitably consequence of the structure of the City.
Anthony Hilton (Evening Standard)

A compelling and readable history that will enable the reader to make sense of the collapse of confidence that started in 2007 and became the Credit Crunch
N/A (www.suite101.com)

The Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next December will be one of the most important international gatherings since the Second World War. Nicholas Stern gives a compelling account of why the meeting matters so much to the world, and outlines a global deal that would provide the ground rules for a safer planet. His book reinforces the arguments of the original Stern Review, and provides a forceful response to its critics
Richard Lambert, head of CBI and Chancellor of Warwick University The Stern Review led the way in explaining the economic theory of climate change. His Blueprint sets out in practical terms why the world needs to act, what we need to do, and how, if we take action, we can build a new era of prosperity and growth.
Adair Turner, Chairman of the FSA and Chairman of the Climate Change Committee The book is written for a wider audience than the official report and incorporates some more recent (and worrying) findings from climate science.
Economist (Economist)

Despite his gloomy predictions Lord Stern’s overall argument is one of optimism
Louise Gray (Telegraph)

If this year’s climate crucial climate change negotiations are successful, this book will be required reading … Lord Stern, like Al Gore, could be seen as one of the rock stars of global warming.
Fiona Harvey (Financial Times)

The planet owes Nicholas Stern a big thank you…valuable and combative stuff.
Fred Pearce (Guardian)

An eloquent, comprehensive and even-handed book
Jonathan Mirsky (Spectator)

The most complete and detailed account of the British and Zionists during the era of the mandate... All in all, a masterpiece
 (Wm Roger Louis, Editor in Chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire)

Norman Rose’s excellent new history of the Mandate of Palestine offers a detailed account of the final years of British rule... Rose’s history should be read by anyone interested in the history of Palestine
 (Times Literary Supplement)

Norman Rose's A Senseless Squalid War is the best account yet of the end of the British Mandate
Simon Sebag Montefiore (Evening Standard)

A fascinating book
Stephen Halliday (Daily Telegraph)

His recent Book Wars, Guns and Votes, is all the more remarkable in that it is based on impeccable scholarship and statistical analysis but remains highly readable and accessible.
Bruno Tertrais (Survival)

It is always a pleasure to discover Paul Collier’s latest thoughts…always illuminating and grounded in rigorous social science...it’s gripping stuff
Allister Heath (Literary Review)

Collier knows Africa intimately… It is hard to be unmoved by his anger about the world’s blindness to realities, and his passion to do things better
Max Hastings (Sunday Times)

Elegantly written, meticulously researched, fascinating
Ian Kershaw Lively and entertaining survey of the dictator’s reading … a wealth of fascinating detail
Rev. Richard Overy (Sunday Telegraph)

One finishes the book ready to strap on mask and tanks to dive for the buried remains of the shops that still hold more Mongol secrets
rev’d Carol Gluck (TLS)

This is history at its best - the world's greatest naval disaster brought to vivid life by a rare combination of personal experience and rigorous scholarship.
John Man Terrific ... a fascinating adventure tale packed with insights into a maritime empire about which most Westerners know almost nothing.
Nathaniel Philbrick Through brilliant and painstaking research Delgado has brought Khubilai Khan's lost fleet to the surface, showing for the first time the true nature of the doomed adventure.
Stephen Turnbull James Delgado does a splendid job as a cultural historian in showing how the legend of a brave but doomed defence, supported by the intervention of the gods, shaped national identity over seven centuries.
Adrian Brewer (Tablet)

Delgado’s knowledge of water and his archaeological passion for retrieving what history has scattered across sea beds from San Francisco to Vietnam.
Timothy Brook (Literary Review)

Wolff does one of those things that journalists can still do. He speaks truth to power.
Kim Fletcher (Prospect Magazine)

Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism.
Edward Said Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities—and is the only writer among them still alive.
 (Guardian)

Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.
 (New York Times)

Not to have read [Chomsky] is to court genuine ignorance.
 (Nation)

A rebel without a pause.
Bono 

Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities—and is the only writer among them still alive.
 (Guardian)

Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.
 (New York Times)

Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism.
Edward Said Not to have read [Chomsky] is to court genuine ignorance.
 (Nation)

A rebel without a pause.
Bono 

tautly written, gripping and suspenseful.
 (Guardian)

Filled with fascinating information and piquant details
 (Literary Review)

Stefan Aust is well placed to write the history of the most notorious of several terrorist groups
Michael Burleigh (Sunday Telegraph)

Stephen Aust’s meticulously researched chronicle of German left-wing terrorism.
Philip Oltermann (Guardian)

Meticulous history of the most famous German terrorist group.
Dominic Sandbrook (Daily Telegraph)

Stefan Aust is well placed to write the history of the most notorious of several terrorist groups.
Michael Burleigh (Sunday Telegraph)

Need a Christmas present for someone who likes interesting facts, with a mathematical flavour' Then this is the book.’… a pot pourri of intriguing things
 (Standpoint)

it would be hard to imagine an easier, friendlier, more entertaining introduction (to maths) than John Barrow's 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know… There are even belly laughs
 (Daily Telegraph)

Fascinating
 (Scotsman)

Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict.
Ben Rogers (Financial Times)

He remains a master storyteller, admirably and sceptically well read in current revisionist histories.
 (The Times)

Simon Schama is many things: widely ranging historian, art critic, public intellectual, television don… This ragged, brilliant, hopscotching volume of vaguely connected essays is largely about America’s myth of its own exceptionalism
 (The Guardian)

The master storyteller takes on the greatest story of our time, America … Britain’s foremost historian comes to a greater understanding of its present and future. Essential reading
Sebastian Shakespeare (Tatler)

Schama remains the subtlest of story-tellers… fans of Schama will wish the book were twice as long… What makes this book so bracing is the way Schama shows how unlike itself America has become
Tom Payne (Daily Telegraph)

A superb achievement…Schama has a gift for fluid prose that allows one to breeze through the book at a remarkable clip…engaging and informative
Civilian Reader (Civilian Reader)

Subtle and richly textured.
Peter Wilby (New Statesman)

The history book that gave me the most pleasure this year…this extraordinary essay also set the scene better than anything else published for Barack Obama’s election as president.
Christian Tyler (FT)

A unique and astonishing social history book which is revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining
Ian Mortimer (History Magazine)

Social history is popular enough but I have read nothing quite like this. It is written in the manner of an extremely well-informed but chatty guidebook…This is not only an unusual book, but a thoroughly engaging one
Allan Massie (Literary Review)

Mortimer advocates a new way of conceiving history where the past is alive, supplanting the postmodern of pedantically empirical preoccupations of academic historians.
Paul Freedman (TLS)

As lively as it is informative. His (Mortimer’s) work of speculative social history is eminently entertaining but this doesn’t detract from the seriousness and the thorough research involved.
Angel Gurria-Quintana (Financial Times)

[Mortimer] sets out to re-enchant the 14th Century, taking us by the hand through a landscape furnished with jousting nights, revolting peasants and beautiful ladies in wimples. It is Monty Python and the Holy Grail with footnotes, and, my goodness it is fun... the result of this careful blend of scholarship and fancy is a jaunty journey through the 14th Century, one that wriggles with the stuff of everyday life.
Kathryn Hughes (Guardian)

Perhaps the most enjoyable history book I’ve read all year.
Stephen Howe (Independent)

Another device for capturing the past. Mortimer’s witty idea is to write, literally, a guide book........It works amusingly well.
Christian Tyler (FT)

His tale has often be retold, but rarely as well as by Christopher Kelly here. Full of intrigue and local colour
Michael Kulikowski (London Review of Books)

Kelly’s well-told and reliable account is the best to have come along in years, showing a judicious approach to archaeological evidence that one could wish more widely imitated
London Review of Books (London Review of Books)

A cracking portrait of the “Scourge of God”
Dominic Sandbrook (Daily Telegraph)

The Forever War has rightly been compared to Michael Herr’s Dispatches, the definining front line account of the Vietnam War. It should become a classic of the 'war on terror'’
Rupert Edis (The Sunday Telegraph)

‘Riveting narrative.’
Dominic Sandbrook (Daily Telegraph)

Brilliantly reconstructs the climactic conflict …
Stephen Howe (Independent)

Will still be valued in a hundred years' time...the book as a whole is an event
Peter Phillips (Spectator)

Full of extremely penetrating, well-judged observations on both man and music.
Nicholas Kenyon (The Times)

His creative engagement sympathetically draws out Handel's motivation as a composer.
Tom Sutcliffe (Guardian)

Pugh is one of the most well-respected, diligent and honest scholars working in British history today.This book deserves to be read.
Gerard DeGroot (Scotland on Sunday)

The link between a distinct wing of Conservatism and the Italian form of fascism is substantiated in this outstandingly revelatory book.
Edward Pearce (Glasgow Herald)

This book demonstrates for the first time the true spread and depth of fascist beliefs- and the extent to which they were distinctly British.
David Graham (Manchester Evening News)

buoyant and brilliant
Bettaby Hughes (The Times)

A fascinating detailed look at how we lived during the interwar years.
The Daily Mail Christmas Books (The Daily Mail Christmas Books)

Timothy Snyder is one of the most remarkable and original historians of Eastern Europe in his generation. His work commands our attention.
Timothy Garton Ash He is one of this country's most talented and innovative historians of Central and Eastern Europe... I hugely admired The Reconstruction of Nations and eagerly look forward to The Red Prince.
Niall Ferguson Timothy Snyder is not only one of the leading authorities on Central European history writing today, he is also an elegant stylist, with a talent for storytelling - a wonderful combination.
Anne Applebaum 

A rollicking, acerbic account of the bubble and its collapse.
Edmund Conway (Daily Telegraph)

.....…The content of this book is unimpeachable: superb timing, trenchant analysis and richly deserved criticism of an Anglo-American political culture that has turned the sober profession of banking into a supercasino where the house always wins.
Misha Glenny (Irish Times)

Chávez's rise has a made-for-Hollywood quality ... Jones provides a superb description of the economic inequities that helped create the conditions for a populist such as Chávez to come to power … Where [he] truly excels is in his observations of Venezuelan society and the outsized role oil has played in molding the national character.
 (Washington Post)

Jones's book is thoughtful, comprehensive . . . the best in the bunch.
 (Boston Globe)

In this well-researched and riveting account, Glenny does for crime what he did for the Balkans. He dissects the international criminal organizations that run much of the world’s economy and explains ho the criminal underworld has both benefitted from and contributed to globalization.
Joseph Stiglitz For anyone who wants to understand the 21st century, this illuminating and page-turning book is essential reading.
 (Emma Thompson)

‘Behind every great fortune,', said Balzac, 'there lies a great crime'. Misha Glenny has updated this apercu for our own time.’
 (Christopher Hitchens)

One of the essential non-fiction works of our time... terrific.
 (GQ)

Thrilling
 (Esquire)

Required reading.
 (The Times)

Compelling
 (Observer)

Organised crime's version of Fast Food Nation
 (Mail on Sunday)

McMafia sets a debate in which we all need to join
 (Daily Mail)

The most important non-fiction book of the year.
 (Mail on Sunday)

Barrow has found a vivid way to focus our attention on cutting-edge science, and there is an awful lot to learn already from this lusciously produced and captivating book.
 (The Times)

Barrow highlights the power of pictures in discovering and understanding our universe… [and] true to his reputation for excellence in communicating science… this book is sure to provide enjoyable summer-time reading
Carlos Lourenço (CERN Courier)

A captivating pictorial and literary journey through the history of science… a must for every home. It is a book that will repay constant visits, and Bodley Head is to be congratulated on its lavish, robust production.
 (Sunday Times)

Fantastic brain-food.
Andrew Graham Dixon 

Fascinating and fast-moving… an extraordinary book
 (Observer)

Fascinating... No-one else could provide such an insider’s account, for he was the only one to be involved in the detail of every tortuous step.’
 (Sunday Telegraph)

Highly informative account
Nicholas Bagnall (The Sunday Telegraph)