"The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing craft lessons in his father's workshop and playing among the sycamore, oak, and Scots pine that bordered his home. In time he became his father's apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects.

"During the Second World War, Elżbieta Zawacka--the courageous resistance fighter known as Zo--was the only woman to cross almost a thousand miles of Nazi-occupied territory to reach Britain as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. After completing her London missions, she became the only woman to parachute behind enemy lines in Poland, as the only female member of the Polish elite special forces, the Silent Unseen.

The first time Lara Marlowe interviewed Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko in Ukraine in 2023, Marlowe realized that the 28-year-old woman army officer was one of the most extraordinary people she had encountered in 42 years of journalism. Mykytenko was born in Kyiv in July 1995. She co-founded the 'female squad' of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the 2013/14 Euromaidan protests, which overthrew the corrupt, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

"A father of three with a stressful job, Tyler Moore felt his life resembled an overstuffed closet: disorganized and overly busy behind the tidy, closed doors. When it all became too much--for their 750-square-foot apartment and his nerves--he set out to unpack the physical and emotional mess around him. Chronicling his progress as "Tidy Dad" on Instagram, he learned that tidying is about so much more than the aesthetics and decluttering of a physical space.

"Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power.

"Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse--offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster.

"Lucy Caplan explores Black opera in the first of the twentieth century, before the "golden age" inaugurated by Marian Anderson. Early Black opera was decidedly countercultural, fostering aesthetic innovation and antiracist activism, as artists found in opera's grandeur resources for expressing the complexity of Black life and diasporic experience."-- Provided by publisher.

Wiseguys and the White House explores the influence of the mob on presidential power throughout American history. The book examines instances where connections between gangsters and presidents have shaped political outcomes and decisions. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Joe Biden, the mob has been involved in various activities such as assisting with political campaigns, carrying out covert operations, and influencing presidential actions.

Details General William T. Sherman's 1864 march through Atlanta to Savannah, highlighting its impact on the Civil War and the self-emancipation of enslaved people who joined his army, addressing the initial Reconstruction efforts and the challenges faced by newly freed individuals amidst ongoing racism and opposition.

"Tiffany Midge's hilarious and biting collection of essays, written during the COVID-19 pandemic, brims with satiric insight from a Native American perspective. The Dreamcatcher in the Wry entertains while it informs, gleaning wisdom from the incongruities of everyday life and turning over the colonizer's society and culture for some good old Native American roasting"-- Provided by publisher.

"A sustainability apartheid is emerging. More than ever, urban residents want to be green, yet to cater to their interests, a green-tech service economy has sprung up, co-opting well-intentioned concerns over sustainability to sell a resource-heavy and exclusive "lifestyle environmentalism." This has made cities more unsustainable and inaccessible to the working class. The Sustainability Class is about those wealthy "progressive" urbanites convinced that we can save the planet through individual action, smart urbanism, green finance, and technological innovation.

"From the author of The Shallows, a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society. From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story.

"More than half of all Americans have difficulty falling or staying asleep. Drawing on the science that has made her the go-to expert on the connection between food and sleep, Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge pairs her comprehensive strategies for getting a good night's sleep with Kat Craddock's 75 recipes.

"A neuroscientist's powerful framework for enhancing quality of life through the regulation of four key hormones: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins (DOSE). You have everything you need to optimize your brain chemistry--this groundbreaking book shows you how"-- Publisher description.

"A groundbreaking exploration of the four modes of learning, revealing the root causes of student stress and apathy--with effective parenting strategies for kickstarting teens' inner drive. Some students advertise their disengagement openly, responding to their parents' questions with conversational dead ends like "My day was fine" and complaints like "What is the point of history? I will never use this in the real world!"

"Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living," yet take no steps to live examined ones. We know that he was tried, convicted, and executed for "corrupting the youth,"

"The end of the Second World War is in sight. Following the Western Allies' overwhelming victory on D-Day, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin are all prepared to shape the future, and Operation Market Garden is Britain's attempt to beat the Russians to Berlin and be the first to help craft the new world order. With 10,000 men dropped intoArnhem and another 20,000 in Grave, the British are set to secure the area and declare victory.

"We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.

"Foxglovewise is, at its core, a response to the singular experience of the loss of one’s parents. It begins at an Eastern Orthodox Epiphany ritual in Florida and ends in a cemetery in Los Angeles. Yet, as with Ange Mlinko’s other books of poetry, the collection uses geography as a trope for the ways in which we try to map out our lives and make them legible, even as poetry, music, and paintings suggest that much of what happens, or matters, to us is “not on the maps” (not to mention “the apps”).

"During the 1600s--between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment--Europe lived through an era known as The Age of Reason. This was a revolutionary period that saw great advances in areas such as art, science, philosophy, political theory, and economics. However, all this was accomplished against a background of extreme political turbulence on a continental scale, in the form of internal conflicts and international wars. Indeed, the Age of Reason itself was born at the same time as the Thirty Years' War, which would devastate central Europe to an extent that would not be experienced again until World War I. This period also saw the development of European empires across the world, as well as a lucrative new transatlantic commerce that brought transformative riches to Western European society. However, there was a dark underside to this brilliant wealth: it was dependent upon human slavery. By exploring all the key events and bringing to life some of the most influential characters of the era--including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV, and Charles I

"From the founder of the Women of Rock Oral History Project, an exploration of women in the '90s rock scene, featuring original interviews with Liz Phair, Shirley Manson, Kristin Hersh, Donita Sparks, Tanya Donelly, members of Hole, Luscious Jackson, Veruca Salt, Babes in Toyland, and more. In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented.