** Longlisted for the 2024 Cundill History Prize**‘A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book’ Annie ProulxA way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people...

A historian's personal journey into the complex questions of immigration, home and nationFrom Ireland to London in the 1950s, Derry in the Troubles to contemporary, de-industrialised Manchester, Joyce finds the ties of place, family and the past are difficult to break. Why do certain places continue to haunt us? What does it mean to be British after the suffering of Empire and of war? How do we make our home in a hypermobile world without remembering our pasts?Patrick Joyce...

What is the state? The State of Freedom offers an important new take on this classic question by exploring what exactly the state did and how it worked. Patrick Joyce asks us to re-examine the ordinary things of the British state from dusty government files and post offices to well-thumbed primers in ancient Greek and Latin and the classrooms and dormitories of public schools and Oxbridge colleges. This is also a history of the 'who' and the 'where' of the state, of the people who ran the ...

The liberal governance of the nineteenth-century state and city depended on the "rule of freedom." As a form of rule it relied on the production of certain kinds of citizens and patterns of social life, which in turn depended on transforming both the material form of the city (its layout, architecture, infrastructure) and the ways it was inhabited and imagined by its leaders, citizens and custodians.Focusing mainly on London and Manchester, but with reference also to Glasgow, Dubli...

A groundbreaking study of the connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in American literature and US slave culture.Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveho...

An e book that will soften the hearts of even the most stubborn non-believers and atheists, written by a former devout atheist. If this book opens the eyes of only one person, it will have been worth the effort.

Brought to you by Penguin.A way of life that once encompassed most of humanity is vanishing in one of the greatest transformations of our time: the eclipse of the rural world by the urban.In this new history of peasantry, Patrick Joyce tells the story of this lost world and its people. In contrast to the usual insulting stereotypes, we discover a rich and complex culture: traditions, songs, celebrations, and revolts, across Europe from the plains of Poland ...

Patrick Holford is the UK's best-known nutrition guru. In The Holford 9-Day Liver Detox he will change the way you eat forever and leave you looking and feeling fantastic. Patrick Holford explains why detox works, the role of the liver in detoxing and how to detox your body. His 9-day plan is easy to follow, spread effortlessly over two weekends and the 5 days between. He gives you simple information on how to get started and how to get the most out of your detox, so that you will feel the...

'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins with one of the most arresting opening sentences in literature' Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface.A Portrait first appeared in instalments in the modernist magazine The Egoist in 1914, before it came out as a book in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. An autobiographical 'coming of age' story, A Portrait is Joyce's first novel. Many elements of J...

Ambitious young reporters Josie and Laurent arrive in Prague in 1968 to cover a revolution unfolding behind the Iron Curtain. It’s the story of a lifetime. A dream come true.A dream that’s about to become a nightmare.Soviet tanks thunder into the city, changing everything. Josie receives a cryptic message from a shrouded stranger on a mist-covered bridge, and soon she and Laurent are propelled onto a collision course with nefarious villains...

Sibert Medalist, National Book Award Honoree, and New York Times bestselling author Sy Montgomery dives below the surface to study giant manta rays in Ecuador in this final installment in the award-winning Scientists in the Field series.On the vast Pacific, the ocean heaves and sighs like a beating heart. But dive beneath the surface, and angels appear. Giant manta rays—wider than a car is long, with wingspans stretching up to twenty feet—glide past with b...

Enter a world of coded messages, secret gatherings, maps made by spies, walls that have ears, cellars dripping with menace, skyscrapers that trap you in the clouds, and elevator rides that could be your last.When Harrison, the 14-year-old son of American diplomats, lands in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, all he wants is to be left alone with his daydreams and his music.But his father has vanished. His mother is keeping secrets. And his friend Prudenc...