Vintage books Why We Drive. On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control Crawford Matthew

Soap Saves Lives. But did you know that excessive use of soap and skin-care products is harming our health and the environment? Apart from in hand-washing there is no need to use soap on our bodies at all? • Doctor and preventative medicine expert James Hamblin gave up showering five years ago and only ever uses soap on his hands. In Clean, he takes us on an irreverent and entertaining journey through our complex relationship with our bodies and cleanliness. Drawing on the latest science, he introduces a new way to think about cleanliness - one that is cheaper, simpler and better for our skin, our immunity and the world in which we live

These interlocking essays uncover art as an active force in the world - neither elitist or remote, present to those who want it, affecting even those who don't. Winterson's own passionate vision of art is presented here, provocatively and personally, in pieces on Modernism, autobiography, style, painting, the future of fiction, in two essays on Virginia Woolf, and more intimately in pieces where she describes her relationship to her work and the books that she loves

We are living in the anthropocene – an epoch where everything is being determined by the activities of just one soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species • How do we make our way through the ruins that we have made? • This anthology tries to answer this as it explores new and enduring cultural landscapes, in a celebration of local distinctiveness that includes new work from some of our finest writers. We have memories of childhood homes from Adam Thorpe, Marina Warner and Sean O’Brien; we journey with John Burnside to the Arizona desert, with Hugh Brody to the Canadian Arctic; going from Tessa Hadley’s hymn to her London garden to caving in the Mendips with Sean Borodale to shell-collecting on a Suffolk beach with Julia Blackburn

The definitive account of North Korea - its veiled past and uncertain future - from former White House adviser and Korea expert Victor Cha • ‘We killed Americans • We are killing Americans • We will kill Americans.’ • North Korean schoolchildren conjugating verbs • How did North Korea become The Impossible State, where citizens found humming South Korean pop songs risk being sent to a gulag, and yet a starving populace clings fiercely to its Dear Leader Kim Jong-un? What does the future hold for a regime with terrifying nuclear ambitions and an endless war with its southern counterpart? Former White House adviser and Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University, Victor Cha, pulls back the curtain on the world’s most isolated country to provide this unprecedented and timely insight into North Korea’s history, present and future

Now We Have Your Attention makes sense of what is happening in British politics by taking a radically different perspective: the people's • From a warehouse in Manchester to a pub in Essex, from the outskirts of Glasgow to a racecourse in Durham, Jack Shenker uncovers the root causes of our current crisis and the future direction of British politics through the lives of ordinary individuals. Taking us deep into communities hollowed out by austerity and decades of economic disadvantage, among a generation crippled by precarious work and unaffordable housing, he shows where the chaos at Westminster ultimately springs from - and how disillusionment with it is fuelling a passionate engagement with politics of a completely different kind: local, personal, effective and utterly fearless

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 young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China • A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau • The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’ • Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control • Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards

Nurses have never been more important • We benefit from their expertise in our hospitals and beyond: in our schools, on our streets, in prisons, hospices and care homes. When we feel most alone, nurses remind us that we are not alone at all • In The Courage to Care bestselling author Christie Watson reveals the remarkable extent of nurses' work • - A community mental-health nurse choreographs support for a man suffering from severe depression • - A teen with stab wounds is treated by the critical-care team; his school nurse visits and he drops the bravado • - A pregnant woman loses frightening amounts of blood following a car accident; it is a military nurse who synchronises the emergency department into immaculate order and focus • Christie makes a further discovery: that, time and again, it is patients and their families - including her own - who show exceptional strength in the most challenging times

An explosive and revelatory account about the British lobbying industry and how it affects us all at every level of our lives • Q. What's worth ?2,000,000,000, answers to no-one and operates out of public sight? • A. Britain's influence industry • The corporate takeover of democracy is no conspiracy theory - it's happening, and it affects every aspect of our lives: the food we eat, the places we live, the temperature of our planet, how we spend our money and how our money is spent for us. And much more • A Quiet Word shows just how effectively the voice of public interest is being drowned out by the word in the ear from the professional persuaders of the lobbying industry. And if you've never heard about them, that's because the most effective lobbying goes unnoticed

'Elegant and enjoyable...a thoughtful exploration of the twin delights of the piano and the Parisian life' Express on Sunday • T. E. Carhart, an American living in Paris, is intrigued by a piano repair shop hidden down a street near his apartment. When he finally gains admittance to the secretive world of the atelier, he finds himself in an enormous glass-roofed workshop filled with dozens of pianos. His love affair with this most magical of instruments and its music is reawakened • Packed with delicate cameos of Parisians and reflections on how pianos work and their glorious history, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is an atmospheric and absorbing journey to an older way of life

A spellbinding travel book, exploring the psychology of walking, pilgrimage, solitude and escape • 'An extraordinary, dreamlike journey through West Africa' Adharanand Finn • At the age of twenty-seven and afraid of falling into a life he doesn't want, Robert Martineau quits his office job, buys a flight to Accra and begins to walk. He walks 1,000 miles through Ghana, Togo and Benin, to Ouidah, an ancient spiritual centre on the West African coast • As he travels alone across rainforest, savannah and mountains, Martineau meets shamans, priests, historians, archaeologists and kings. Through the process of walking each day, and the lessons of those he encounters, Martineau starts to build connections with the natural world and the past - and, at last, to find the meaning he craves

This is the archetypal story of the American West. Whether it is cast as a tale of unmatched bravery in the face of impossible odds or of insane arrogance receiving its rightful comeuppance, Custer's Last Stand continues to captivate the imagination • Nathaniel Philbrick brilliantly reconstructs the build-up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn through to the final eruption of violence. Two legendary figures dominate the events: George Armstrong Custer and Sitting Bull. Those involved are brought vividly to life, as well as the history, geography and haunting beauty of the Great Plains • This book provides a thrilling account of what happened there - and why - at the end of June 1876