The postwar years in the UK saw the development of numerous artificial playgrounds intended to compensate children for increasing urbanization and a lack of wild places to play. Many of these sites employed playleaders, whose job was to use play to instill social behavioral norms on children, using games with rules and organized activities. From the early 1970s, that approach began to be replaced by playwork, a nondirective way of working. Playwork marked a rejection of the adult-focused p...

Brought to you by Penguin.A fascinating journey into the life of H.G. Wells, from one of Britain's best biographers.How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells' life shape the father of science fiction?From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family, to his determination to educate himself at any cost, to the serious ill health that dominated his twenties and thirties, his complicated marriages, and love affair wi...