Czech-born professor and Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba, a world-leading expert on energy and an astonishing polymath, in a thought provoking book “How the World Works”, encounters the influential thinking, crushes complex data, with fundamental importance of energy in human affairs. We never had so much information or disinformation at our…
Christopher Leonard, the New York Times business journalist, infiltrates the Federal Reserve to show how its policies steered by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income equality and put America’s economic stability at risk. The press credited the Fed when the economy grew and also when the economy imploded in 2008,…
The ancient Greek city of Athens the birthplace of Western civilization, and dominated by the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of Wisdom, from Runciman Award winner Bruce Clark. Bruce’s tale of a city that occupies a unique place in the cultural memory of the West. Reforms of…
London’s Zenith was the era of Georgian town squares, during 1700-1800, an imperial city which finds itself at the centre of world’s trade, empire, finance and manufacture. Andrew Saint, an architectural historian, conveys the excitement, diversity and richness of London at a time when the city was at the height of its power, uniqueness and…
Maxine Bedat tracks the path of a pair of jeans from manufacture to market and uncovers the alarming human cost of the pursuit of mass-produced fashion, exposes the fractures in our global supply chains, an our relationships to each other, ourselves, and the planet.Fashion has never been bigger, cheaper and more dangerous for the planet.…
The British Empire remains a subject of both shame and glorification, subject of public controversy Sathnam Sanghera, addresses many of the issues that are now urgent subjects of debate- such as Britain’s role in the slave trade and the links between empire and multiculturalism. Sanghera shows how our imperial past is everywhere including how we…
In The Long Game, Rush Doshi, advisor on China in the Biden White House, draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, and memoirs by party leaders, to demonstrate that China is in fact playing a long, methodical game to replace America as a regional and…
UK inflation rate rises at highest in a decade at 4.2 per cent in October, amid fears over Covid recovery. Th jump, driven largely by rising fuel and energy costs, which puts further pressure on households across the UK. Demand for gas is pushing up energy prices worldwide, recovering from Covid pandemic. The shortages of…
Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. The Nutmeg’s Curse, traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. He argues that the dynamics of climate change today…
The rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule and the outlook for freedom under the communist regime are told with complete insight in this new history by Michael Sheridan, drawing on eyewitness reporting over three decades, interviews with key figures and documents from archives in China and the West. Sheridan’s…