The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. This book shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Failures in business, politics and other aspects of experience are found to be due to an absence of 'skin in the game', referring to the presence of something to lose in the issue at a personal level, in this assertive corrective to uncertain times from the author of "Antifragile".

The extraordinary adventure-filled story of how England came to own Manhattan in the seventeenth century

An intimate reflection on Japanese art and architecture from one of the country's greatest novelists. This is an enchanting essay on aesthetics by one of the greatest Japanese novelists.

In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed.