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'There to fill the Sapiens-size hole in your life' Observer

In this groundbreaking global overview of philosophy, Julian Baggini travels the world to provide a wide-ranging map of human thought.

One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call 'philosophy' in the West is not even half the story.

Julian Baggini sets out to expand our horizons in How the World Thinks, exploring the philosophies of Japan, India, China and the Muslim world, as well as the lesser-known oral traditions of Africa and Australia's first peoples. Interviewing thinkers from around the globe, Baggini asks questions such as: why is the West is more individualistic than the East? What makes secularism a less powerful force in the Islamic world than in Europe? And how has China resisted pressures for greater political freedom?

Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and paying as much attention to commonalities as to differences, Baggini shows that by gaining greater knowledge of how others think we take the first step to a greater understanding of ourselves.

Lyrical, dark, comic or iconoclastic, the Irish short story has always punched well above its weight. Anne Enright has brought together a dazzling collection of Irish stories by authors born in the twentieth century - from Mary Lavin and Frank O'Connor to Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry. With a pithy and passionate introduction by Enright, The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story traces this great tradition through decades of social change and shows the pleasure Irish writers continue to take in the short-story form. Deft and often devastating, the short story dodges the rolling mythologies of of Irish life to produce truths that are delightful and real. Also includes stories by: Maeve Brennan, Roddy Doyle, Mary Lavin, Colum McCann, William Trevor, John McGahern, Colm T ib n, Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry.

Since the 1970s people have been murdering their neighbours in Northern Ireland. This book is the true account of the small-town violence and terror which lies behind the headlines.

Richard Ford, one of the finest American novelists and short-story writers, introduced the first Granta Book of the American Short Story, which Granta Books published in 1992.

It became the definitive anthology of American short fiction written in the last half of the twentieth century. In the fourteen years since, Ford has been reading new stories and rereading old ones and selecting new favorites. This new collection, again of more than forty writers, expands Ford's original choice to include stories that he regretted overlooking first time around as well as many by a new generation of writers, among them Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Deborah Eisenberg, Nell Freudenberg, Matt Klam, Jhumpa Lahiri and Z. Z. Packer. None of the stories (though a few of the writers) was in the first volume. Published to critical acclaim in hardback in 2007, this book is an essential companion volume to the first collection.

Equations lie at the heart of many of the most extraordinarily successful scientific theories. Here, some of the greatest living scientists unpack the best known equations so that they become understandable, and we are entertained and enlightened by a knowledge of how it was arrived at, what it can do and what remains to be understood about it.

The 'How to Read' series is an introduction to some of the most influential and challenging writers in history, exploring the minds and philosophies of those who have shaped our intellectual and political landscape.

Hercules has been portrayed throughout the ages as the original hero - half-god, half-man. However this new biography puts his actions in a different light and reveals, in Hercules, some of the darkest recesses of human nature.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1459-1527) is one of most influential modern political thinkers. His works, above all The Prince, The Discourses on Livy, The Florentine Histories, and The Art of War, are still passionately discussed in the intellectual community and continue to suscitate new visions of political action. Against the trite commonplace that Machiavelli was a teacher of evil who justified political immorality, Maurizio Viroli shows, on the basis of a rigorous study of his texts, that Machiavaelli taught instead the best way to attain true glory through political action and that his works were inspired by a profound love of republican liberty. Extracts are taken from the whole corpus of Machiavelli's works, including his personal letters.

A history of Britain's long love affair with wool, told through a year of knitting garments from around the British Isles.

Over the course of a year, Esther Rutter - who grew up on a sheep farm in Suffolk, and learned to spin, weave and knit as a child - travels the length of the British Isles, to tell the story of wool's long history here.

She unearths fascinating histories of communities whose lives were shaped by wool, from the mill workers of the Border countries, to the English market towns built on profits of the wool trade, and the Highland communities cleared for sheep farming; and finds tradition and innovation intermingling in today's knitwear industries. Along the way, she explores wool's rich culture by knitting and crafting culturally significant garments from our history - among them gloves, a scarf, a baby blanket, socks and a fisherman's jumper - reminding us of the value of craft and our intimate relationship with wool.

This Golden Fleece is at once a meditation on the craft and history of knitting, and a fascinating exploration of wool's influence on our landscape, history and culture.

Andrew Brown lived in Sweden in the 1970s and 1980s, marrying a Swedish woman and starting a family. His marriage and his country fell apart during the 1980s. 20 years later, he travelled the length of Sweden in search of the country he had loved, and then hated, and now found he loved again.

It has long been known that Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke and many other Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina. In this book, a courageous Argentinian writer shows exactly how it was done, and reveals that the escapes were organized with the enthusiastic support of President Juan Peron.

Even at this late date, when so much is known about the complicity of the Catholic Church and Allied intelligence agencies in the flight of the Nazis, Goni's material still has the power to shock. The paperback edition of The Real Odessa includes a revised introduction and conclusion, with a new afterword containing material that Uki Goni has recently researched and which focuses on Vatican complicity in providing sanctuary for war criminals.

A journey through Cambodia to the soundtrack of its lost rock'n'roll.

In the swinging 1960s, after nearly a century of colonization, Cambodia had gained its independence and was ready to rock. Young musicians from the countryside flocked to the vibrant cosmopolitan capital city of Phnom Penh. Teenagers cycled along the Mekong River, guitars slung across their backs, on their way to rehearse Khmer covers of The Beatles or Pink Floyd. The city was a melting pot of sound: old fashioned rock'n'roll, early heavy metal, crooners and swooners and love duets. The music stopped on 17th April 1975: the Khmer Rouge army captured Phnom Penh, ending the civil war and beginning the genocide. Around 90% of the musicians died in the killing fields. But a few fled, to the US or France, taking what remained of their music with them.

In Away From Beloved Lover, Dee Peyok travels across Cambodia, piecing together the story of the country and its golden era of music. She interviews surviving superstars and their relatives in places as disparate as a traditional house on stilts by a rice paddy, an artist's studio deep in the ancient forests, and a cafe in the new, divided Phnom Penh. Away From Beloved Lover is a musical travelogue that tells the story of Cambodia, past and present, in a thrilling new way. It is an immersive exploration of a country set to a soundtrack too long silenced, and finally able to play.

Rudolf Maier, a young microbiologist working on a plague vaccine, is summoned to Moscow to deliver a progress report to his superiors. Inadvertently, he carries the virus with him from the lab. When his illness is discovered, the state machinery turns with terrifying efficiency, rounding up dozens of people. But for many, the distinction between this enforced, life-sparing isolation and the constant churn of political surveillance and arrests is barely detectable, and personal tragedy is not completely averted. Based on real events in the Stalinist Russia of the 1930s, this gripping novel, written in the late 1980s and rediscovered by the author during lockdown - and never before translated into English - surfaces uncomfortable truths about the current Russian regime and the pandemic crisis.

Includes a new afterord by the author.

Humans have always used their hands to create the world around them. But now most of us have gone from being practitioners to theorists, from being producers to consumers.

What happens to our society when we are so divorced from the act of making? What happens to us as individuals when we limit the uses to which we put our hands?

These are questions that preoccupy Siri Helle when she inherits a small cabin, without electricity, inlet water, or a loo, and decides to build an outhouse herself. Without any previous experience of building anything, she has to learn on the job and what she learns is not just about how to lay a floor and construct walls, but about what she is capable of and about craft and about the satisfactions to be found in making things by hand.

Written with humor and insight Handmade is the inspiring story of someone who tried to do it herself - and did.

Ziauddin Sardar, whose acclaimed 'Desperately Seeking Paradise' demystified Islam, gives his humane, sharp and witty perspective on the experience of being a British Asian.

Sofka Zinovieff had fallen in love with Greece as a student, but little suspected that years later she would return for good with an expatriate Greek husband and two young daughters. This book is a wonderfully fresh, funny and inquiring account of her first year as an Athenian. The whole family have to get to grips with their new life and identities: the children start school and tackle a new language, and Sofka's husband, Vassilis, comes home after half a lifetime away. Meanwhile, Sofka resolves to get to know her new city and become a Greek citizen, which turns out to be a process of Byzantine complexity. As the months go by, Sofka's discovers how memories of Athens' past haunt its present in its music, poetry and history. She also learns about the difficult art of catching a taxi, the importance of smoking, the unimportance of time-keeping, and how to get your Christmas piglet cooked at the baker's.

We navigate our interactions with strangers according to a host of unwritten rules, rituals and (sometimes awkward) attempts at politeness. But what if the people we meet were not a problem, but a gift?

When philosopher and traveller Will Buckingham's partner died, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people. Now, as we reflect on our experiences of the pandemic and its enforced separations, and as global migration figures ever more prominently in our collective future, Buckingham brings together insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature to explore how our traditions of meeting the other can mitigate the issues of our time.

Taking in stories of loneliness, exile and friendship from classical times to the modern day, and alighting in adapting communities from Birmingham to Myanmar, Hello, Stranger asks: how do we set aside our instinctive xenophobia - fear of outsiders - and embrace our equally natural philoxenia - love of strangers and newness?

For readers of Rutger Bregman and Adam Philips, a timely, humane and uplifting exploration of how our history of welcoming strangers can offer a vital antidote to our increasingly atomised world.

In these, the latest chronicles of triumph and disaster from the celebrated author of 'The Smoking Diaries', Simon Gray intertwines scenes from his adult and his child self to produce counterpoints to life's unsteady progress.

'A Country in the Moon' is the result of Michael Moran's fascination with Poland. Honouring a deathbed pledge to his uncle, he gives an insider's view of a country embarked on wrenching change after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the confrontation of ghosts from the wartime and communist past.