During the first years of the pandemic, the political mainstream agreed that 'following the science' with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But social science reveals the true human cost of this policy. The Covid Consensus provides an internationalist-left perspective on the world's Covid-19 response, which has had devastating consequences for democratic rights and the poor worldwide. As the fortunes of the richest soared, nationwide shutdowns ...

This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary collection is one of the first scholarly books in the world to address the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions on the Global South.Bringing together health and social scientists from around the world--including many leading figures from Global-South countries such as Angola, Bolivia, Colombia, India, Kenya, and Nigeria--the book shows how, in low- and middle-income countries in particular, Covid responses often exacerbate problem...

4 CITIES, 4 LIVES, 1 CRIMEÖ In Madrid, an Argentinian bookseller gets caught up in the scheme of an American professor to prevent an appalling crime. Her sidekicks soon include a Gambian migrant in Paris and a Spanish waitress in London. Seeking some sort of companionship in their exiles, the four characters join forces in a quest that becomes a dangerous obsession. All four lives seem to be fatefully connected. But how to get people to take the crime seriously if it does not yet exist? In...

'A stunning global history of West Africa ... with this new tour de force, Green confirms himself as the most innovative historian, writer, and thinker of his generation' Ana Lucia Araujo, author of Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of SlaveryA unique, startling book that gives a rich and detailed sense of life in an African port some 360 years agoIn 1665 Crispina Peres, the most powerful trader in the West African slave traf...

Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award'Astonishing, staggering' Ben Okri, Daily TelegraphA groundbreaking new history that will transform our view of West AfricaBy the time of the 'Scramble for Africa' in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally conn...

The region between the river Senegal and Sierra Leone saw the first trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drawing on many new sources, Toby Green challenges current quantitative approaches to the history of the slave trade. New data on slave origins can show how and why Western African societies responded to Atlantic pressures. Green argues that answering these questions requires a cultural framework and uses the idea of creolization - the formation of mixed cultural communi...

From the acclaimed author of In the Shadow of the Empress comes the thrilling, “richly detailed, entertaining” chronicle of two of the most influential and glamorous women in nineteenth-century Europe—Elisabeth, empress of Austria, and Eugénie, empress of France—and their efforts to rule amid the scandal, intrigue, tragedy, and violence of their era (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respecti...

'[An] elegant and forensic double portrait setting Greene, that sociologist of sin, alongside the Kremlin's golden boy Philby, with the lengthening shadow of the cold war falling between them ... both his subjects make for terrific copy ... Part of the pleasure of Verkaik's book is the vicarious glide through their parallel rake's progresses.' - Pratinav Anil, Guardian'A wholly fascinating account of an extraordinary friendship. Robert Verkaik's nu...

**A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster“Vigorous and engaging.”—Fintan O’Toole, The New YorkerA New Yorker Best Book of the Year**In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a milli...

The incredible untold story of four women who spun the web of deception that helped win World War II**.**Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, e...

‘Richly-layered and packed with insight, this riveting account of terrible events tells us as much about the present as it does the past’ Patrick Bishop, author of Paris '44From Peter the Great to Putin, a biography of the city Hitler tried - and failed - to wipe off the mapThe siege of Saint Petersburg – then known as Leningrad – stands as a testament to human endurance. Intended by the Nazis as civilian extermination, the numbers...

A “masterful” (Foreign Policy), authoritative, and timely look at the unprecedented economic war the United States and its European allies are waging against Russia after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that “reads like a detective novel” (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)—written by a veteran journalist with unparalleled access to Western and Russian sources.Undeterred by eight years of timid US sanctions, Vladimir Putin ordered his full-scale assault on Ukrain...