'Without question the most important book of the year' MARINA HYDE'Superb' TOM HOLLANDReading built the modern world. It helped create democracy, science and reason.Now, books are dying, and people everywhere are losing the ability to read deeply or think rationally.The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through history is breaking.The screen has replaced the page. Ou...

'Dripping with delicious detail' - Aditya ChakraborttyTaking the reader on a journey through North East Scotland, Merseyside, South Wales, the Thames Estuary and London, this is the story of Britain’s oil-soaked past, present and future. Travelling the country, the authors discover how the financial power and political muscle of an industry built the culture of a nation from pop music to kitchen appliances, and how companies constructed an empire, extracting the wealth of the world...

In a unique journey from the oil fields of the Caspian Sea to the refineries and financial centres of Northern Europe, James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello track the concealed routes along which flows the lifeblood of our economy. The stupendous resource of Azerbaijani crude has long inspired dreams of a world remade. From the revolutionary Futurism of the capital city, Baku, in the 1920s to the unblinking Capitalism of modern London, the drive to control the region's oil reserves-and he...

Pull back the curtain on more than a century of terrifying horror movies... if you dare.Packed with stills from the most terrifying scenes in cinema history, The Definitive Guide to Horror Movies is a comprehensive companion to the genre, tracing the story of horror film, decade-by-decade. Providing a witty and informative critique of more than 350 films and several TV series, this extensive handbook offers a superb introduction for newcomers to the genre ...

From the Slick horror of Alien, Scream and The Ring and the cult classics Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy to the slasher icons Jason, Freddy and Leatherface, horror just won’t stay dead. The genre has earned its place in the moviegoing psyche, with many of the key films spawning numerous copycats. But what are the 20 most influential horror films of all time? And what made them so important?James Marriott give an incisive ac...

The world we knew is passing away and nothing will ever be the same again.Welcome to the post-literate society.Books are dying. Across the world the number of people reading is in free fall. Literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries. At universities, students are unable to read the books assigned to them. Addictive digital entertainment technologies have colonised our free time with infantilising ‘slop’. For the first t...

sit back, get comfortable and get ready to enjoy seven spooky short stories. From a haunted mansion to a celestial garden, and from a crimean battleground to the trenches of world war one.