Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. This title tells the story of these voyages.

Why do so many swear words involve topics like sex, bodily functions or the divine? Why do some children's names thrive while others fall out of favour? Why do we threaten and bribe and seduce in such elaborate, often comical ways? This title looks at how the relationship between words and thoughts can help us understand who we are.

At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism.

What makes a house truly beautiful? Why are many new houses so ugly? Why do we argue so bitterly about sofas and pictures - and can differences of taste ever be satisfactorily resolved? This book explores one of our most intense but often hidden love affairs: with our houses and their furnishings.

A short and accessible analysis of the mental processes at work in the struggle to get to sleep, combining pop culture and historical anecdotes in its mythbusting pursuit of the answers behind insomnia.

'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?

Every inch of Grayson's childhood bedroom was covered with pictures of aeroplanes, and every surface with models. But as Grayson enters art college and discovers the world of London squats and New Romanticism, he starts to find himself.

New York Times Bestseller

"Dolnick brilliantly re-creates the circumstances that made possible one of the most audacious frauds of the 20th century. And in doing so Dolnick plumbs the nature of fraud itself . . . an incomparable page turner." --Boston Globe

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren man...