In The War with Hannibal, Livy (59 BC-AD 17) chronicles the events of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, until the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. He vividly recreates the immense armies of Hannibal, complete with elephants, crossing the Alps; the panic as they approached the gates of Rome; and the decimation of the Roman army at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Yet it is also the clash of personalities that fascinates Livy, from great debates in the Senate to the historic meeting between...

'This is a blast of fresh air' Jonathan Clark, TLS'Thank goodness for Gottlieb' Daily Telegraph'A joy to read' EconomistThe author of the celebrated The Dream of Reason vividly explains the rise of modern thought from Descartes to RousseauIn a short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark on Western thought. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosoph...

'A work of exhilarating scope and relevance ... What a rare and powerful experience to feel a book in your very body' Naomi Klein'Health is not something we can attain as individuals, for ourselves, hermetically sealed off from the world around us. An injury to one is an injury to all.'Our bodies, societies and planet are inflamed.

In this boldly original book, renowned political economist Raj Patel teams up with physician Rupa Marya to illuminate the hidden relationships between human health...

A BBC Top 100 Novels that Shaped Our WorldEffia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow.

Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gr...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James"I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?"This edition contains two of Henry James's most popular short works. Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks a...

'The first of Hardy's great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his best fiction is remembered' Margaret DrabbleThomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with evocative descriptions of rural life, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships. Its heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, takes up her position as a farmer on a large estate, where her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the soldier-sed...

Ovid's witty and exuberant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked Greek and Roman myths and legends in which men and women are transformed, often by love - into flowers, trees, stones and stars.

For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe’s transition to the modern world: Byzantium. An audacious and resilient but now little known society, it combined orthodox Christianity with paganism, classical Greek learning with Roman power, to produce a great and creative civilization which for centuries held in check the armies of Islam. Judith Herrin’s concise and compelling book replaces the standard chronological approach of most histories of Byzantium.

Instead, eac...

A statistical national treasure' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2'Required reading for all politicians, journalists, medics and anyone who tries to influence people (or is influenced) by statistics. A tour de force' Popular ScienceDo busier hospitals have higher survival rates? How many trees are there on the planet? Why do old men have big ears? David Spiegelhalter reveals the answers to these and many other questions - questions that can only be addressed using statistical science. Statistics has p...

A magisterial, one-volume history of political thought from Herodotus to the present, Ancient Athens to modern democracy - from author and professor Alan RyanThis is a book about the answers that historians, philosophers, theologians, practising politicians and would-be revolutionaries have given to one question: how should human beings best govern themselves?Almost every modern government claims to be democratic; but is democracy really the best way of organising our political life? Can we m...