Society & Culture

To improve the state of women is to improve the state of the world. Global events continue to reveal the importance of understanding how women live across continents and cultures.
Using maps and graphics in this new revision of her eye-opening book, Joni Seager uses up-to-the-minute research and data to show what shifts... read more

The social revolution that in 1959 brought down the bloody Batista dictatorship began in the streets of cities like Santiago de Cuba and the Rebel Army’s liberated mountain zones of eastern Cuba. The unprecedented integration of women in the ranks and leadership of this struggle was a true measure of the revolutiona... read more

In Think, Lisa Bloom examines the stark paradoxes that American girls and women live today, including excelling in education but obsessing over celebrities and tabloid media, in outperforming male counterparts in employment yet spending more time and money on appearances.
Bloom wonders: How did we get from the Equal Pay... read more

Is there any truth to the epidemic of sex addiction? Are our children really getting sexualised younger? Are men the only ones who like porn? Brooke Magnanti looks at all these questions and more - and proves that perhaps we've all been taking the answers for granted. Brooke Magnanti is no stranger to controversy. As Belle... read more

The idea of evolution is the most life-changing concept to have emerged in modern times, but most people know of it only in fragments. The evolution of the universe, of planet Earth, of life and of human culture is a truly breathtaking story that can be told in many ways. In one continuous story this book combines cosmologica... read more

Possibly the only drawback about the bestselling "How To Be A Woman" was that its author, Caitlin Moran, was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman. "Moranthology" is proof that Caitlin can actually be 'quite chatty' about many other things, including cultural, social and political issues which are usually the prov... read more

Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication - even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and... read more

'Bad Science' hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess. Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to mak... read more

In 'The Office: A Hardworking History', Gideon Haigh traces from origins among merchants and monks to the gleaming glass towers of New York and the space age sweatshops of Silicon Valley, finding an extraordinary legacy of invention and ingenuity, shaped by the telephone, the typewriter, the elevator, the email, the copier, t... read more

Does your real age match the age you feel? When do we reach middle age? And when, if ever, are we old? The way we age and the way we perceive age has changed radically. As we embrace new experiences, relationships and gadgets, we barely stop to look at our watches let alone consider whether our behaviour is 'age appropriate'.... read more

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains why we are experiencing such destructively high levels of inequality - and why this is not inevitable.

This astonishing, brilliantly written book brings us to places we could otherwise never go as it unfolds a riveting contemporary drama: A group of remarkable people striving to better their lives in an age of bewildering global change.

'The Big Questions' series is designed to let renowned experts confront the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. In 'The Big Questions: Mind' the explanations behind the 'mysteries' of our unique minds - including how they differ from our brains and how they create ou... read more

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you, you lose a family member, you can't pay the bills. But it can be pretty great, too: you've had the hottest sex of your life, you get that plum job, you muster the courage to write your novel. Everyday across the world, people go through the full and glorious gamut of life - but some... read more

This book tells the stories behind the disappearances of some of our most famous works of art - and some that never existed at all. Like Sherlock Holmes' dog in the night time, sometimes the true significance of things lies in their absence. Rick Gekoski tells the very human stories that lie behind some of the greatest losses... read more

The World Wide Web is the most revolutionary innovation of our time. In the last decade, it has utterly transformed our lives. But what real effects is it having on our social world? What does it mean to be a modern family when dinner table conversations take place over smartphones? What happens to privacy when we readily sha... read more

The digital age. An age of isolation, warped communication, disintegrating community. Where unfiltered and unregulated information pours relentlessly into our lives, destroying what it means to be human. Or an age of marvels. Where there is a world of wonder at our fingertips. Where we can communicate across the globe, learn ... read more

London is a centre of cutting-edge fashion - in Buttoned-Up, the creators of 'the best fashion mag out there', Fantastic Man, tell the story of London style through the history of the button-down shirt - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tub... read more

Richard Mabey, one of Britain's leading nature writers, looks in A Good Parcel of English Soil at the relationship between city and country, and how this brings out the power of nature - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. P... read more

From Lucy Wadham, the bestselling author of The Secret Life of France, Heads and Straights is an autobiographical tale of bohemians, punk, the King's Road in the 1970s and family - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. Praise ... read more