The bodley head

After the fall of France in June 1940, only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination. By 1942, after the German invasion of Russia...

A revelatory portrait of life in a great museum and the moving story of one guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase into New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. Patrick Bringley never thought he'd be one of them. But when his brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer he quit his journalism...

What would a fair and equal society look like? The world-renowned economist and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis presents his radical and subversive answer. Imagine it is 2025 and that years earlier, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, a global uprising had birthed a post-Capitalist world in which democracy, equality and justice are truly...

The heart of racism is denial. It is refusing to self-reflect. In his global, game-changing bestseller How To Be An Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Centre for Antiracist Research at Boston University, showed that when it comes to racism, neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem....

From butcher's daughter in communist Hungary to winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, this is the story of one woman's extraordinary determination and her breakthrough discovery that saved millions of lives. Katalin Karikó began life as a butcher's daughter in communist Hungary. Raised in a one-room home of clay and straw with no running water, she...

A leading expert in adolescent psychology transforms our understanding of this most formative life-stage Adolescence is the most dramatic and formative period of our lives. It is when we become who we are, when the smallest things can have life-long effects. But it is also full of contradictions, making it bewildering to live through and widely misunderstood....

Jaron Lanier, ‘the father of Virtual Reality … a high-tech genius’ (Sunday Times), tells the extraordinary story of how in just over three decades Virtual Reality went from being a dream to a reality – and how its power to turn dreams into realities will transform us and our world. Virtual Reality has long been one of the dominant clichés of...

In a centuries-old tradition, farmers in northwestern Iceland scour remote coastal plains for the down of nesting eider ducks. High inside a vast cave in Borneo, men perched atop rickety ladders collect swiftlets' nests, a delicacy believed to be a cure for almost anything. Eiderdown and edible birds' nests: both are luxury products, ultimately destined...

In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. Over the next two decades, as several more of these ‘impossible monsters’ emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront a profoundly...

One big question. Two great answers. In Is Free Speech Under Threat? two leading thinkers tackle the issue at the very heart of the culture wars. Suzanne Nossel (CEO of PEN America) puts the case that even though there is an important rebalancing of power taking place in society today, rightly giving minority voices the space and prominence they have...

London in the eighteenth century was very much a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire. With thousands of homes and many landmark buildings destroyed, it had been brought to the brink. But the following century was a period of vigorous expansion, of scientific and artistic genius, of blossoming reason, civility, elegance and manners. It was...

Your happier, freer and more fulfilling life starts today! Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves. Designed as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind’, it offers daily wisdom, solace and...

Freedom is our great commitment, but we have lost sight of what it means - leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: we think we're free if we can do and say as we please. But true freedom isn't so much freedom from, as freedom to - the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together....

An adventurous, dazzling and original continent-sized history that brings South America’s untold past and fascinating present to life Stretching from the edge of Antarctica to the shores of the Caribbean, South America is a continent of stunning natural beauty and biodiversity, a cultural and culinary powerhouse that feeds, fuels and cools the planet....

A History of the World in 100 Objects meets Sapiens: the first archaeological history of humanity's musical heritage, in fifty detective stories. Here is the history of humankind's relationship with music in fifty detective stories. Sound Tracks is a transporting and extraordinary voyage of discovery, each chapter a time-machine focusing on musical...

The first book about the science of how, why and what happens when we talk, from the author of In Praise of Walking Talking Heads is a stunning survey of the science of human connection and communication - from neurons to nations We are social animals and talking is a defining part of what makes us human. Chatting with friends or debating the future,...

A neuropsychologist takes ten different drugs in this panoramic view of psychedelics today Once demonised and still largely illegal, psychedelic drugs are now officially a 'breakthrough therapy', used to treat depression, trauma and addiction and to enhance well-being. But as neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell shows in this deeply serious yet wildly entertaining...

A celebration of the printed book, told through the lives of 18 people who took it in radical new directions. This is an extraordinary story of skill, craft, mess, cunning, triumph, improvisation, and error. Of printers and binders, publishers and artists, paper-makers and library founders. Some we know. We meet jobbing printer (and United States Founding...

AI. SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY. QUANTUM COMPUTING. Everything is about to change. This is the only book you need to understand this new world. From the ultimate AI insider, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You...

The second volume of Clinton Heylin's magisterial biography takes us from Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident to the present day. We meet a man who is determined to confound expectations; yet whatever he does only seems to confirm his iconic status to fans and critics alike. There are peaks and troughs. Long periods of writer's block are followed by sudden...

Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction; handwriting is no longer prioritised in schools; and emotion is sooner expressed through likes and emojis than face-to-face conversations. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But, as Christine Rosen expertly shows, when we embrace...

Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start? For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnificent and his terrifying pirate captain...

A transporting exploration of the deep sea, and how our planet’s strangest, most ancient and astonishing creatures have urgent relevance to cutting-edge science today. Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms the size and shape of cities, and jellyfish that glow in the dark: ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on...

A dramatic and intensely moving reconstruction of the greatest border breach in Cold War history and its tumultuous aftermath. In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain - and held a picnic. Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands...