In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing ‘an art without a history’. ‘No-one’, it went on, ‘has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.’ Until now.Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity.The earliest tattoos yet identified belonged to Ötzi, the ‘iceman’, whose mummy allows us a brief glimpse into the prehistory of the practice. We know that over the m...

In 1881, a writer in the Saturday Review called tattooing ‘an art without a history’. ‘No-one’, it went on, ‘has made it the business of his life to study the development of tattooing.’ Until now.Painted People is a beguiling and intimate look at an untold history of humanity.The earliest tattoos yet identified belonged to Ötzi, the ‘iceman’, whose mummy allows us a brief glimpse into the prehistory of the practice. We know that over the m...

'Fierce, funny and long overdue - I read this book out loud to anyone who'd listen.' Adam Kay'Toksvig's Almanac is intended merely as a starting point for your own discoveries. Find a fabulous (or infamous) woman mentioned and, please, go looking for more of her story. The names mentioned are merely temptations. Amuse-bouches for the mind, if you like. How I would have loved to have written out in detail each tale there is to be told, but then this boo...

Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. A book that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art.With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in pr...

A compendium of 101 book recommendations from Booker Prize–winning author Yann Martel (Life of Pi) to Prime Minister Stephen Harper—each with an accompanying letter, together probing the question: what sort of mind, nourished by what, do we want our leaders to have?Politely and unfailingly, every two weeks for almost four years, Yann Martel sent Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper a book and accompanying letter. He completed the project in 2011 with 101...

From the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE LOST WORDS - an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a bookEvery book is a kind of gift to its reader, and the act of giving books is charged with a special emotional resonance. It is a meeting of three minds (the giver, the author, the recipient), an exchange of intellectual and psychological currency, that leaves each participant enriched. Here Robert Macfarlane...

What if history had a sound track? What would it tell us about ourselves? Based on a thirty-part BBC Radio series and podcast, Noise explores the human dramas that have revolved around sound at various points in the last 100,000 years, allowing us to think in fresh ways about the meaning of our collective past.Though we might see ourselves inhabiting a visual world, our lives have always been hugely influenced by our need to hear and be heard. To tell the ...

From Mata Hari and Pocahontas to Lucrezia Borgia and Hedy Lamarr—fascinating portraits of history's most unforgettable, and some unjustly forgotten, women.Cleopatra. Audrey Hepburn. Sappho. Calamity Jane. Marie Antoinette. Lilith. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dame Emma Hamilton. Mary Shelley. Mary Frith. Some are celebrated in folklore legend; some are remembered only as movie stars; many will be familiar in their native countries; while others are, for the most part, un...

From the author of The Bad Book Affair comes a witty, personal, and entertaining meditation on the history and significance of paper—an international cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of this essential product.Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear. Would anything be lost? Everything would be lost.Paper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business ca...

The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, r...

Tattooing has been practiced since time immemorial. Whether applied for cultural reasons or simple decoration, tattoos are one of the earliest art forms. They are not entered into lightly: they perform a lifetime statement and a serious commitment, particularly with regard to the physical pain that the wearer has to endure to have the design etched onto their skin. At times and in some locations tattoos have been fashionable and socially acceptable; during other periods they have been unac...

For anyone who loves great literature -- or aspires to write it -- this is an essential collection, full of insight, wisdom, humour, and candour from Canada's most important and beloved literary figures.For the past twenty-five years, the Writers' Trust of Canada's annual lecture series, the Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture, has invited some of Canada's most prominent authors to discuss the theme of "A Writer's Life" in front of their peers. Hugh MacLennan, Mavis Gallant, Timothy...