Showing titles in Anthropology

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY** What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? One of the world's preeminent historians and thinkers, Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a...

Brought to you by Penguin. **THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** Sapiens showed us where we came from. In our increasingly uncertain times, Homo Deus shows us where we're going. The world-renowned historian and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of...

The mind-blowing story of humans, technology and power from the international and Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens. Stories brought us together. Books spread our ideas – and our mythologies. The internet promised infinite knowledge. The algorithm learned our secrets – and then...

Tom Phillips (Humans; Truth) and Jonn Elledge (The Compendium of Not Quite Everything) team up to debunk the greatest conspiracy theories humans have ever espoused - to teach us how not to fall for them. From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, it's always been human nature to believe...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history. Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped...

Fifty thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements.

PARIS: A MILLION MEANINGS IN A SINGLE NAME Heiress. Party girl. Problem child. Selfie taker. Model. Reality star. Self-created. The labels attached to Paris Hilton. Founder. Entrepreneur. Pop Culture Maker. Innovator. Survivor. Activist. Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. The roles Paris embraces...

Brought to you by Penguin. The fascinating new history of the British Aristocracy since the Second World War There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses...

With intelligence and wit, author Jonathan Clements blends documentary and storytelling styles to connect the past, present, and future of Japan, and in broad yet detailed strokes reveals a country of paradoxes: a modern nation steeped in ancient traditions; a democracy with an emperor as head of state; a famously safe society built on 108 volcanoes resting on the world's most active earthquake zone; a fast-paced urban and technologically advanced country whose land consists predominantly of mountains and forests. 

In Wisdom of the Ancients, Neil Oliver takes us back in time to grab hold of the ideas buried in forgotten cultures and early civilisations. From Laetoli footprints in Tanzania to Keralan rituals, stone circles and cave paintings, Oliver takes us on a global journey through antiquity. A master storyteller, drawing on immense knowledge of our ancient past, he distils this wisdom into 12 messages that have endured the test of time and invites us to consider how these might apply to our lives today. The result is powerful and inspirational, moving and profound.

In Kindred, Neanderthal expert Becky Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland and reveals the Neanderthal you don’t know, who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change. Using a thematic rather than chronological approach, this book will shed new light on where they lived, what they ate and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that is being discovered.

Brought to you by Penguin. A beguiling cultural history of colour by the BAFTA nominated broadcaster and art historian James Fox The subject of this book is humankind's extraordinary relationship with colour. It is composed of a series of voyages, ranging across the world and throughout history...

**WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD** The British far right is working to dismantle our democracy. This shocking, eye-opening undercover journey reveals who they are, how they operate and how they are normalising extreme ideologies including eugenics. In summer 2024...

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past. 

Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history. The witch came to prominence - and often a painful death - in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early modern state.

Ritual is perhaps the oldest, and certainly the most enigmatic, thread in human culture. Seemingly pointless ceremonies pervade every known society: from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades, birthdays to graduations. And yet, though rituals exist in every culture and can persist nearly unchanged for centuries, their logic has remained a mystery until now. Today, a fearless new generation of anthropologists is venturing into this shadowy realm.

Brought to you by Penguin. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts...

This book is a guide for leaders seeking to build a community, to strengthen the community they already have, or who may not think of themselves as community leaders but who are envisioning a group they hope to create. These communities can be formal, with official memberships and administrations, or informal, tied by shared values and commitments.

It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.

Brought to you by Penguin. *WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION* *THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, AND PROSPECT* When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different...