Vintage books Revolution In The Head. The Beatles Records and the Sixties Macdonald Ian

A ground-breaking investigation into the oil and gas industry, international corruption and world politics • Award-winning American news presenter Rachel Maddow investigates remarkable stories from around the globe, all leading back to the same crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry • From Oklahoma, Texas and Washington, to Kyiv, Siberia and Moscow, to Equatorial Guinea and Alaska; from a mansion in Malibu with the world's largest collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia to luxury hotels in central London; from deep within the earth's crust to the icy surface of the Arctic seas, Blowout uncovers a web of international corruption • With her trademark black humour, Maddow takes us through the purposeful detonation of a fifty-kiloton nuclear bomb underground near Colarado, man-made earthquakes, murdered cows and the international financial crisis, to the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas, and a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U

A superbly illustrated chronology of the Soviet Union’s extraordinary achievements in space exploration • In this deeply researched chronology, Colin Burgess describes the Soviet Union’s extraordinary success in the pioneering years of space exploration. Within a decade the Soviets not only launched the world’s first satellite, but were the first to send an animal and a human being into Earth orbit. More than that, their ground-breaking missions sent a woman into space, launched a three-man spacecraft and included the first person to walk in space • Six decades on from the historic spaceflight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, Burgess guides us through the amazing achievements of Russia’s spaceflight programme through to the present day, introducing the men and women who have flown the missions as we seek to delve ever deeper into the wonders and complexities of the cosmos

Alexandra Heminsley thought she could swim. She really did • It may have been because she could run. It may have been because she wanted to swim; or perhaps because she only ever did ten minutes of breaststroke at a time. But, as she learned one day while flailing around in the sea, she really couldn't • Believing that a life lived fully isn't one with the most money earned, the most stuff bought or the most races won, but one with the most experiences, experienced the most fully, she decided to conquer her fear of the water • From the ignominy of getting into a wetsuit to the triumph of swimming from Kefalonia to Ithaca, in becoming a swimmer, Alexandra learns to appreciate her body and still her mind. As it turns out, the water is never as frightening once you're in, and really, everything is better when you remember to exhale

The meeting of Voltaire, successful financier, famous poet and troublemaker, and the enchanting amateur physicist and countess Emilie du Chatelet, was a meeting of both hearts and minds. In the Chateau de Cirey, the two brilliant intellects scandalised the French aristocracy with their passionate love affair and provoked revolutions both political and scientific with their groundbreaking work in literature, philosophy and physics • Nancy Mitford's account of the love affair of the Enlightenment is, in the author's own words, 'a shriek from beginning to end'

A collection of essays on writers and writing by the Booker-shortlisted novelist and critic • Writing about real lives takes various forms, which overlap and may be combined with each other: biography, autobiography, biographical criticism, biographical fiction, memoir, confession, diary • In these thoughtful and enlightening essays David Lodge considers some particularly interesting examples of life-writing, and contributes several of his own. The subjects include celebrated modern British writers such as Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Muriel Spark and Alan Bennett, and two major figures from the past, Anthony Trollope and H.G.Wells. Lodge examines connections between the style and the man in the diaries of the playwright Simon Gray and the cultural criticism of Terry Eagleton, and recalls how his own literary career was entwined with that of his friend Malcolm Bradbury

In a village far away, deep in a valley, all the animals and birds disappeared some years ago. Only the rebellious young teacher and an old man talk about animals to the children, who have never seen such (mythical) creatures. Otherwise there's a strange silence round the whole subject. One wretched, little boy has dreams of animals, begins to whoop like an owl, is regarded as an outcast, and eventually disappears • A stubborn, brave girl called Maya and her friend Matti, are drawn to explore in the woods round the village. They know there are dangers beyond and that at night, Nehi the Mountain Demon comes down to the village. In a far-off cave, they come upon the vanished boy, content and self-sufficient. Eventually they find themselves in a beautiful garden paradise full of every kind of animal, bird and fish - the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Seven wintry days to track the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, and the group is forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit. Sweeping, satirical, Dickensian in scope, A Week in December is a thrilling state of the nation novel from a master of literary fiction

The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a village in Japan's snow country and was expected to lead a life much like her mother's. Instead - after three divorces and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval - she ran away to follow her own path in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo • Stranger in the Shogun's City is a rare, captivating portrait of one woman as she endeavours to recreate herself and her life, and provides a window into the drama and excitement of Japan at a pivotal moment in history

The stories in Liars in Love are concerned with troubled relations and the elusive nature of truth. Whether it be in the depiction of the complications of divorced families, grown-up daughters, estranged sisters, office friendships or fleeting love affairs, the pieces in this collection showcase Richard Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and his understanding of human frailty

Is my experience real? • Or just a movie in my head? • Am I no more than a super computer? • You are your brain, neuroscientists tell us. Everything happens in there. Yet even the most sophisticated brain scan cannot tell us who we are. Nothing in our neurons remotely suggests the rich nature of our experience, the colours, sounds and smells that make up our lives • When Tim Parks came across a radical new theory of consciousness, he set on a quest that moves through one sparkling encounter after another to arrive at the deepest of questions: what stuff exactly is consciousness made of? And where is it? Inside or out?

What happens when you take on the European establishment? • Read as world-famous, provocative economist, and former Greece finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, blows the lid on his battle with EU officials over the Greek debt crisis • Varoufakis sparked one of the most spectacular and controversial battles in recent political history with his attempt to renegotiate Greece’s relationship with the European Union. Yet despite the mass support of the Greek people, and simple logic of his arguments, he succeeded only in provoking the fury of Europe’s political, financial and media elite • Exposing the real business taking place behind the EU’s closed doors, Varoufakis reveals all in this fearless, personal account. Adults In The Room is an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion and betrayal that will shake the European and economic establishment to its foundations

Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the human spirit and the competence of ordinary people by the bestselling author of The Case for Working with Your Hands • Once we were drivers on the open road • Today we are more often in the back seat of an Uber • As we hurtle toward a 'self-driving' future, are we destined to become passengers in our own lives too? • In Why We Drive, the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford celebrates the risk, skill and freedom of driving. He reveals what we are losing to technology and government control in the modern world, and speaks up for play, dissent and occasionally being scared witless