Profile: 418 books
The Art of Understanding Art
A new perspective
Language: English
Release Date: December 3, 2015
Have we completely missed the point of the modern western revolution in the arts? Hugh Moss thinks so, and here he presents a refreshingly original and thought-provoking new approach to understanding art. It not only makes sense of western art over the past century or more, but applies equally to...
Clarks: Made to Last
The story of Britain's best-known shoe firm
Language: English
Release Date: April 11, 2013
Clarks' reach extends to all corners of the globe and yet it remains a family-owned business firmly rooted in its Quaker origins, (unlike other well known Quaker firms like Cadburys, now part of US giant Kraft.) Founded in 1825 by two brothers, Cyrus and James Clark, the company began as a rug-making...
by Leonardo Da Vinci
Language: English
Release Date: May 26, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: May 26, 2011
A dazzling array of invention, insight and observation from perhaps the greatest genius of Western civilisation. Towering across time as the painter of the Mona Lisa, forever famous as a sculptor and an inventor, Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest minds of both the Italian Renaissance and Western...
Armchair Nation
An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV
Language: English
Release Date: August 22, 2013
But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features...
On Roads
A Hidden History
Language: English
Release Date: December 9, 2010
In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favourite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, and spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing,...
Novartis
How a leader in healthcare was created out of Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz
Language: English
Release Date: April 3, 2014
The Swiss pharmaceutical industry is world-famous, and of today's top five global pharmaceutical businesses, two are Swiss - Roche and Novartis. Novartis was created in 1996 from a merger between three other major companies, Ciba, Geigy and Sandoz (the merger was the biggest ever in business history...
The Reality Test
Still relying on strategy?
Language: English
Release Date: September 5, 2013
How is it that the most carefully-laid business strategies can go horribly wrong when put into practice? Robert Rowland Smith's answer, based on years of experience in high-level consultancy, is that 'reality eats strategy for breakfast': strategy, based on projections and assuming business is a rational...
Engel's England
Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one man
Language: English
Release Date: October 23, 2014
England, says Matthew Engel, is the most complicated place in the world. And, as he travels through each of the historic English counties, he discovers that's just the start of it. Every county is fascinating, the product of a millennium or more of history: still a unique slice of a nation that has...
HMRC - Her Majesty's Roller Coaster
Hints on how to survive a tax investigation
Language: English
Release Date: September 4, 2014
Most people are happy to pay their taxes. But just how much we have to pay is not always straightforward, and it is frighteningly easy for a non-specialist to get the sums wrong or to overlook some significant item.
Written with wit and humour, HMRC: Her Majesty's Roller Coaster takes the reader...
Medici Money
Banking, metaphysics and art in fifteenth-century Florence
Language: English
Release Date: August 22, 2013
The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to...
Billions to Bust and Back
How I made, lost and rebuilt a fortune, and what I learned on the way
Language: English
Release Date: November 27, 2014
Thor Bjorgolfsson is a self-styled adventure capitalist with an addiction to debt and an insatiable appetite for business deals who became Iceland's first billionaire. After 10 years establishing his financial empire with alco-pops and beer in the lawless 'Wild East' of newly-capitalist Russia in...
From Village School to Global Brand
Changing the World through Education
Language: English
Release Date: June 14, 2012
Can education be run as a profitable business and still be driven by a humanitarian vision? SABIS® shows the answer is yes. Now with 60 schools in 15 countries and over 60,000 students, SABIS® is a global education company committed to improving lives. The book is a journey through time - tracing...
Adventurers And Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus
The Great Scottish Exodus
Language: English
Release Date: July 23, 2010
'The Scots have always been a restless people', says leading Scottish historian Marjory Harper 'but in the nineteenth century their restlessness exploded into a sustained surge of emigration that carried Scotland almost to the top of a European league table of emigrant exporting countries.' This is...
The Railways
Nation, Network and People
Language: English
Release Date: September 24, 2015
Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2015
Currently filming for BBC programme Full Steam Ahead
Britain's railways have been a vital part of national life for nearly 200 years. Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As...