Showing results by narrator "Liam Gerrard" in All Categories

 Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.

How did "the West" come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. "The West" was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders.

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma.

There are many stories of the legendary Irish hero Finn MacCool, or Fionn mac Cumhaill. Liam Gerrard brings together some of the most well-known in this treasure-trove of Irish folk tales and short stories. Chief among them is the well-loved "Finn & The Scottish Giant", telling the tale of how the Giant's Causeway came into being. Gerrard has adapted and edited over 40 short stories of Irish and Celtic folklore. So sit back, relax, and enjoy hearing the stories of the legends that have been passed down through generations over thousands of years.

The very idea of empire was created in ancient Rome, and even today, traces of its monuments, literature, and institutions can be found across Europe, the Near East, and North Africa - and sometimes even further afield. Historian Greg Woolf expertly recounts how this mammoth empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects - a story spanning a millennium and a half of history. 

Mrs. Mary Alder, in discharging her last duty to her mistress, the Dowager Countess of Moran, goes to deliver a list of the aging countess’s engagements for the following day to her son, the earl, in his study, only to discover that the earl has been bludgeoned to death. When Mary is accused of the crime, her son, Julian, rushes to his employer, Curtis, of the Curtis Inquiry Agency, for help, and Curtis promptly enlists the aid of Barnaby and Penelope Adair and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Stokes. 

British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron...

During the early 1960s, just as Beatlemania was exploding throughout the United Kingdom, a pair of psychopathic British killers began preying on the very young, innocent, and helpless of Greater Manchester. Between 1963 and 1965, Ian Brady and his lover and partner, Myra Hindley, were responsible for the abduction, rape, torture, and murder of five young victims, ranging in age from ten to seventeen years old. The English press dubbed the grisly series of homicides "the Moors Murders," named for the desolate landscape where three of the corpses were eventually discovered.

This is a new edition of the classic Colin Wilson collection The Essential Colin Wilson (first published in 1985), updated and introduced by Wilson's bibliographer Colin Stanley. It is the only book to contain extracts from Colin Wilson's most important work in one volume, including The Outsider, A Criminal History of Mankind, The New Existentialism, The Occult, New Pathways in Psychology, and Mysteries, as well as three of his novels and many other texts.  

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of "basic stories" in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it reveals that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. 

Adam Fletcher's life hates him.... That's how it feels since he lost his girlfriend of nine years, his confidence, hair, and home. But then he receives an email from a mysterious stranger offering him a free holiday of a lifetime. It's too good to be true. But then what does he have to lose? So he says yes. And then things gets strange....

Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.

With incomparable wisdom, skill, and wit, world-renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith traces the history of the major speculative episodes in our economy over the last three centuries. Exposing the ways in which normally sane people display reckless behavior in pursuit of profit, Galbraith asserts that our "notoriously short" financial memory is what creates the conditions for market collapse. By recognizing these signs and understanding what causes them we can guard against future recessions and have a better hold on our country's (and our own) financial destiny. 

Timothy Venning's series of alternative histories explores the pathways of British events from the Anglo-Saxon Age to the English Civil War. In this volume, he presents an in-depth analysis of the Tudor period. Venning discusses the fateful moments at which history could easily have taken a different turn. In a fascinating series of "what if" scenarios, Venning presents a detailed look at the possible and likely results. While speculative, the scenarios are all plausible and rooted in a firm understanding of actually events and their context.

An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel. 

Celehar's life as the Witness for the Dead of Amalo grows less isolated as his circle of friends grows larger. He has been given an apprentice to teach, and he has stumbled over a scandal of the city—the foundling girls. Orphans with no family to claim them and no funds to buy an apprenticeship. Foundling boys go to the Prelacies; foundling girls are sold into service, or worse. At once touching and shattering, Celehar's witnessing for one of these girls will lead him into the depths of his own losses. The love of his friends will lead him out again.

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

Brought to you by Penguin. Murder, Politics and Intrigue. When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the...

The First and Second World Wars were separated by a mere two decades, making the period 1914-1945 an unprecedentedly intense and violent era of history. But how did Britain develop its complex military strategy during these wars, and how were decisions made by those at the top? Robin Prior examines the influence politicians had on military operations, in the first history to assess both world wars together. Drawing uniquely on both military and political archives and previously unexamined sources Prior explores the fraught relationships between civilian and military leaders.

A century before Britain became involved in this terrible business, whole villages and towns in European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women, and children to Africa, where they were sold. This is the forgotten slave trade, one which saw over a million Christians forced into captivity in the Muslim world. Starting in the ancient world, Simon Webb traces the history of slavery in Europe, showing that the numbers involved were vast and that the victims were often treated far more cruelly than black slaves in America and the Caribbean.