The Sixth Extinction
Reporting on threatened species connects present environmental change with earlier mass extinctions and humanity's growing impact on life.
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The Guardian: 100 Best Nonfiction Books (2017)
Explore Robert McCrum’s 2017 Guardian selection of 100 nonfiction books, presented in the source’s reverse chronological order, with notes and links to fine editions from our shelves.
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The Year of Magical Thinking
A writer examines the disorienting experience of bereavement and the habits of thought through which grief resists ordinary explanation.
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No Logo
An investigation of global branding examines corporate power, labour conditions and movements resisting the dominance of major consumer brands.
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Birthday Letters
A sequence of poems revisits a marriage and its aftermath, examining intimacy, memory and the difficulty of speaking about shared experience.
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Dreams from My Father
A future American president reflects on family history, racial identity and the search for belonging across different communities.
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A Brief History of Time
An introduction to cosmology considers space, time, black holes and the effort to understand the universe through physical theory.
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The Right Stuff
An account of American test pilots and early astronauts examines courage, professional rivalry and the public manufacture of heroism.
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Orientalism
A critique of Western representations of the East examines how scholarship and culture can reinforce imperial power.
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Dispatches
A reporter's account of the Vietnam War brings together battlefield experience, soldiers' voices and the uneasy position of the observer.
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The Selfish Gene
An account of evolution uses the gene's perspective to explain natural selection, cooperation and the persistence of inherited traits.
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North
Poems connect personal and collective memory with history, landscape and the violence of Northern Ireland.
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Awakenings
Clinical accounts follow patients briefly reawakened by a drug treatment after decades of profound neurological impairment.
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The Female Eunuch
An argument for women's liberation examines how social expectations, family structures and restrictive sexual roles limit female autonomy.
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Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom
An energetic account of popular music traces the sounds, personalities and cultural changes surrounding the rise of rock and roll.
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The Double Helix
A participant's account of the discovery of DNA's structure reveals the competition, personalities and contingencies behind a scientific breakthrough.
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Against Interpretation
Essays on art and culture question habitual approaches to criticism and the impulse to reduce an artwork to its interpretation.
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Ariel
A collection of intensely charged poems explores identity, anger, mortality and the unsettling transformations of personal experience.
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The Feminine Mystique
An examination of American domestic ideals challenges the assumption that marriage and homemaking alone can fulfil women's aspirations.
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The Making of the English Working Class
A history of working people explores how shared experiences, political struggles and cultural traditions shaped class consciousness in England.
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Silent Spring
An investigation of pesticide use connects environmental damage with the need to question the consequences of apparently beneficial technologies.
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Silent Spring - Rachel Carson - Folio Society - 2021 1st EditionView sold edition
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
An account of scientific change argues that periods of established research are interrupted by transformations in the frameworks through which knowledge develops.
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A Grief Observed
Reflections written after a wife's death confront the disruption of grief and its challenge to religious certainty.
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The Elements of Style
A concise handbook sets out principles of English usage, composition and prose style, combining practical guidance with forceful editorial preferences.
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The Affluent Society
An economist questions the priorities of prosperous societies, contrasting private consumption with neglected public needs.
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The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life
An account of working-class culture considers the pressures exerted by commercial entertainment and changing forms of mass communication.
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Notes of a Native Son
Essays connect personal experience with questions of race, belonging and the tensions of American cultural life.
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The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art
A study of the nude in Western art examines the changing ideals and artistic conventions through which the human body is represented.
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The Hedgehog and the Fox
An essay on Tolstoy uses a distinction between two styles of thought to explore historical understanding and intellectual temperament.
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Waiting for Godot
Two men wait for an absent figure, turning repeated conversations and routines into a drama of uncertainty and endurance.
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A Book of Mediterranean Food
Recipes and descriptions introduce Mediterranean ingredients and cooking traditions, presenting food through a vivid sense of place and daily life.
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The Great Tradition
A critical account of the English novel advances a selective argument about the writers central to its moral and literary achievement.
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The Last Days of Hitler
An investigation reconstructs the circumstances of Hitler's final days and the evidence surrounding his death in Berlin.
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The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
A practical guide to raising children combines medical advice with an emphasis on parents' confidence and attention to individual needs.
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Hiroshima
The experiences of six survivors reveal the immediate destruction and enduring human consequences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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The Open Society and Its Enemies
A defence of open political institutions challenges philosophical traditions that subordinate individual freedom to supposedly inevitable historical destinies.
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Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth
An autobiographical account of a Southern childhood examines hunger, racial oppression and the development of an independent literary consciousness.
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How to Cook a Wolf
Essays on food during wartime scarcity connect practical ingenuity with the pleasures and emotional importance of cooking.
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Enemies of Promise
A critical and autobiographical inquiry considers the influences and distractions that prevent promising writers from producing lasting work.
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The Road to Wigan Pier
An investigation of industrial poverty in northern England leads into a contentious examination of class and the prospects for socialism.
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The Road to Oxiana
A travel diary through Persia and Afghanistan combines architectural observation with encounters and the frustrations of an extended journey.
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
Practical lessons in communication and personal relationships emphasise attentive listening, understanding others' interests and reducing unnecessary conflict.
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Testament of Youth
An account of a young woman's wartime service and personal losses examines the destruction of a generation's expectations.
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My Early Life: A Roving Commission
An autobiographical account follows an upbringing, education and early military adventures before the author's parliamentary career.
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Goodbye to All That
An account of childhood and military service explores the rupture created by the First World War and the rejection of inherited loyalties.
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A Room of One’s Own
An argument about women and writing examines the material independence and intellectual space required for literary creation.
Available nowEditions of A Room of One’s Own
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A Room Of One's Own - Virginia Woolf - Folio Society - 2017View edition
The Waste Land
Fragmented voices and cultural references create a poem of spiritual exhaustion, disrupted inheritance and the search for renewal.
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Ten Days That Shook the World
A journalist's eyewitness account follows the events and competing political forces of the October Revolution in Russia.
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The Economic Consequences of the Peace
An economist's critique of the postwar settlement warns about the economic and political consequences of imposing punitive terms on Germany.
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The American Language
An investigation of American English explores its differences from British usage and the forces that shape a living national language.
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Eminent Victorians
Four compact biographies use irony and selective detail to unsettle the reverential treatment of prominent Victorian figures.
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The Souls of Black Folk
Essays combine history, sociology and personal reflection to examine Black American experience and the continuing consequences of racial division.
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De Profundis
A prison letter reflects on suffering, artistic identity and the author's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.
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The Varieties of Religious Experience
Lectures examine religious experience through individual testimony, considering belief, conversion and the psychological varieties of spiritual life.
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Brief Lives
Informal portraits preserve memorable details, anecdotes and eccentricities from the lives of seventeenth-century figures.
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Personal Memoirs
A former Union commander recounts his early life and military campaigns, providing a participant's account of the American Civil War.
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Life on the Mississippi
Memories of working as a riverboat pilot combine with observations from a later journey along the Mississippi.
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Travels With a Donkey in the Cévennes
A walking journey through southern France becomes an account of landscapes, local encounters and the difficulties of travelling with a donkey.
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Nonsense Songs
Playful songs and verse invent unlikely creatures and relationships, using rhythm, absurdity and verbal surprise to overturn ordinary expectations.
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Culture and Anarchy
A cultural critic argues about education, social authority and the role of intellectual cultivation in a divided modern society.
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On the Origin of Species
An argument for evolution through natural selection explains how variation and the struggle for existence can transform living species.
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On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin - Folio Society - 2010View sold edition
On Liberty
An argument for individual liberty examines the boundaries of social authority and the importance of freedom of thought.
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The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands
A Jamaican-born traveller recounts her business ventures and work caring for soldiers during the Crimean War.
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The Life of Charlotte Brontë
A biography draws on letters and personal testimony to reconstruct the circumstances and literary development of Charlotte Brontë.
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Walden
An experiment in living beside a Massachusetts pond becomes a reflection on independence, material needs and attention to nature.
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Walden - Henry Thoreau - Folio Society - 2009 1st EditionView edition
Thesaurus
A systematic arrangement of English words by meaning helps readers find alternatives and explore relationships between ideas.
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London Labour and the London Poor
Interviews and observations record the working lives, precarious livelihoods and distinctive voices of Victorian London's poor.
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Household Education
An argument about children's learning places everyday experience and family relationships at the centre of education.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
An account of enslavement and escape connects the struggle for literacy with a powerful argument for abolition.
Available nowEditions of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass - Folio Society - 2022View edition
Essays — RW Emerson
Essays explore self-reliance, experience, nature and the individual's relationship to society through a distinctive American philosophical voice.
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Domestic Manners of the Americans
A British traveller's observations of American life combine descriptions of daily customs with sharp criticisms of national manners.
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An American Dictionary of the English Language
An American lexicographer's dictionary records vocabulary and usage while advancing a distinctive account of the English language.
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
An autobiographical account of opium use explores pleasure, dependence and the disturbing transformations of dreams and memory.
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Tales from Shakespeare
Shakespeare's plays are retold as prose narratives, introducing younger readers to their characters, plots and central conflicts.
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Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa
A traveller's account of journeys in West Africa records encounters, difficulties and the attempt to investigate the course of the Niger.
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
An unfinished autobiography connects a printer's rise to public prominence with reflections on self-improvement, work and civic life.
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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
An argument for women's education challenges assumptions about female inferiority and the dependence encouraged by prevailing social arrangements.
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The Life of Samuel Johnson LLD
A biography combines recollected conversations, observations and documents to create an extensive portrait of Samuel Johnson's character and intellectual life.
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Reflections on the Revolution in France
A response to the French Revolution defends inherited institutions and warns against attempts to reconstruct society through abstract political principles.
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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
An autobiography recounts enslavement, maritime travel and the purchase of freedom while arguing against the transatlantic slave trade.
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The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
Letters and observations record the plants, animals and seasonal changes of an English village and its surrounding countryside.
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The Federalist Papers
Essays advocating ratification of the American Constitution examine representation, government structure and the distribution of political power.
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The Diary of Fanny Burney
A writer's journals record family life, literary society and experiences at court through an observant and often intimate personal voice.
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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
A multivolume history examines the changing institutions, conflicts and religious forces associated with the decline of Roman imperial power.
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The Wealth of Nations
An inquiry into economic life examines labour, exchange, markets and the conditions affecting a nation's prosperity.
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Common Sense
A political pamphlet argues for American independence and challenges the authority of hereditary monarchy.
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A Dictionary of the English Language
Definitions illustrated with literary quotations create an influential account of English vocabulary and the ways words are used.
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A Treatise of Human Nature
An investigation of human understanding examines perception, belief, emotion and the foundations of moral judgement.
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A Modest Proposal
A deliberately shocking proposal exposes the cruelty of treating poverty as a purely economic problem.
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A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain
Journeys around Britain record places, commerce and changing economic conditions in an account of the country's everyday life.
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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
An inquiry into knowledge examines how ideas arise from experience and what limits follow for human understanding.
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The Book of Common Prayer
A collection of prayers and services helped establish the language and forms of worship within the English Reformation.
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The Diary of Samuel Pepys
A private diary records Restoration London's public events alongside work, domestic life and candid observations of personal behaviour.
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Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk
The discovery of ancient burial urns prompts reflections on mortality, remembrance and the fragility of human efforts to endure.
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Leviathan
An argument about political authority considers why people establish sovereign power and what protects society from violent disorder.
Previously soldEditions of Leviathan
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Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes - Folio Society - 2012 1st EditionView sold edition
Areopagitica
A defence of unlicensed printing argues that intellectual freedom is essential to the pursuit and testing of truth.
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Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Meditations arising from serious illness connect bodily vulnerability with faith, death and the interdependence of human lives.
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The First Folio
An early collected edition preserves Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies, including plays that might otherwise have been lost.
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The Anatomy of Melancholy
A wide-ranging inquiry into melancholy combines medical discussion, literary quotation and reflections on human desires and habits.
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The History of the World
A history written during imprisonment surveys the ancient world while reflecting on power, providence and human ambition.
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King James Bible: The Authorised Version
An English translation of biblical texts combines religious significance with a lasting influence on literary language and expression.
Available nowEditions of King James Bible: The Authorised Version
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The Bible with the Apocrypha, KJV - Limited Edition - Folio Society - 2011View edition
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Bible, The, with the Apocrypha, King James Version - Folio Society - 2008View edition