Pulling back the covers on the fascinating, yet often forgotten, history of the bedLouis XIV ruled France from his bedchamber. Winston Churchill governed Britain from his during World War II. Travelers routinely used to bed down with complete strangers, and whole families shared beds in many preindustrial households. Beds were expensive items—and often for show. Tutankhamun was buried on a golden bed, wealthy Greeks were sent to the afterlife on dining beds, and de...

From USA Today bestselling author Scarlett Scott comes a deliciously wicked tale of a morally gray duke who always gets what he wants and the bold, independent lady he's determined to claim…Rhys Northwick, Duke of Whitby, has unabashedly devoted himself to a life of debauchery and hedonism. With his friends falling prey to the despicable institution of marriage, the responsibility of hosting the sinful Wicked Dukes Society...

From Jon Fosse, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature, comes an aching exploration of life, death, time, memory, and the artistic temperament.Initially published separately and brought together here in a single volume, Melancholy I & II are essential entries in the oeuvre of one of the world's most celebrated living writers. Fosse explores the life and work of Lars Hertervig (1830–1902), a troubled painter of dreamlike landscapes who was diagnosed ...

It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.For Scheidel, ancient hi...

Does eating more carbohydrates, or fats, cause one to put on more weight? Are ketone bodies toxins or vital products that keep us alive during starvation? Does the concept of 'fat-burning exercise' hold true? In this game-changing book, Keith Frayn, an international expert in human metabolism and nutrition, dispels common misconceptions about human metabolism, explaining in everyday language the important metabolic processes that underlie all aspects of our daily lives. Frayn describes the...

"Vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary" (Tom Holland), this on-the-ground, must-listen narrative weaves together the chance discovery of dinosaurs and the rise of the secular age.When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country's southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the "first" ichthyosaur, and over th...

For more than a century we’ve known that much of human evolution occurred in an Ice Age. Starting about fifteen thousand years ago, temperatures began to rise, the glaciers receded, and sea levels rose. The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene. Until very recently we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene.Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate var...

The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today’s global warming.Only in the last decade have climatologists developed an accurate picture of yearly climate conditions in historical times. This development confirmed a long-standing suspicion: that the world endured a 500-year cold snap, a little ice age...

In this compelling history, Peter Chapman shows how the United Fruit Company took bananas from the jungles of Costa Rica to the halls of power in Washington, D. C., with not just clever marketing, but covert CIA operations, bloody coups, and brutalized workforces. And how along the way they turned the banana into a blueprint for a new model of unfettered global capitalism: one that serves corporate power at any cost.

If you like Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmell, John Gwynne and Joe Abercrombie you will love this Viking adventure packed with battles, betrayal, axes and swords.883AD, Scandinavia. Harald Fairhair is King of Norway, and Bjorn Ironside King of Sweden. To the west, the Crippled King of Mann builds an army in thrall to Loki. He threatens to destroy the Viking world and set Midgard on the road to the Ragnarök, the end of days.

If you like Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmell, John Gwynne and Conn Iggulden you will love this Viking adventure packed with battles, betrayal, axes and swords.882 AD Norway. A new power rises amongst the Viking north, wild Danes under the sway of powerful Loki worship threaten the land with fire and blood.Hundr, The Man with the Dog’s Name*…* Einar the Brawler*… Viking warriors bent on destruction and carna...

If you like Bernard Cornwell, David Gemmell, John Gwynne and Conn Iggulden you will love this Viking adventure packed with battles, betrayal, axes and swords.880 AD, Norway. Rollo the Betrayer has risen to become a powerful Duke in Normandy and sails with his warriors and his spite to exact revenge upon Viking warriors Hundr and Einar the Brawler.Hundr*, a Northman with a dog's name… Viking warships flying the rave...