Fatima Meer, a South African academic, public intellectual, and activist, was a tireless fighter for social justice and human rights—for which she various suffered banning and detention by the apartheid government. After the end of apartheid, she declined a parliamentary seat, choosing instead to continue her advocacy work. She did, however, subsequently serve the ANC government in several capacities. She died in 2010, at the age of 81. In Fatima Meer, Shireen Hassim deftly weaves a narrative in which Meer's distinctive individuality unfolds. This serves as an apt context for the second part of the book, which presents Meer's ideas in her own voice and makes palpable her belief in a common humanity.

Enige land se geskiedenis lewer figure op waarvan die grootsheid nie deur tyd en vergetelheid gestroop kan word nie. In die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks is Marthinus Theunis Steyn so ’n figuur: ’n man wat hom selfloos aan sy volk gewy het en bereid was om alles vir sy mense se vryheid op te offer. Die leser word op boeiende wyse betrek by Marthinus Theunis Steyn se kleurvolle lewensverhaal: hoe hy nooit sy herkoms as Vrystaatse plaasseun verraai het nie en selfs as president in voeling met die eenvoudigste Boere gebly het; hoe hy sy uitmergelende siekte met volharding bly beveg het en hoe sy geloof in God en sy liefde vir sy gesin en sy erfgrond hom in tye van beproewing staande gehou het.

Shortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize 2022 for Nature Writing - Highly Commended Winner for the Richard Jefferies Award 2021 for Best Nature Writing 'A rural, working-class writer in an all too rarefied field, Chester's work is unusual for depicting the countryside as it is lived on the economic margins.' The Guardian 'An important portrait of connection to the land beyond ownership or possession.' Raynor Winn 'It's ever so good. Political, passionate and personal.' Robert Macfarlane 'Evocative and inspiring...environmental protest, family, motherhood and...nature.' Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground, Costa Novel Award Winner 2021 Nature is everything. It is the place I come from and the place I got to. It is family. Wherever I am, it is home and away, an escape, a bolt hole, a reason, a place to fight for, a consolation, and a way home. As a child growing up in rural England, Guardian Country Diarist Nicola Chester was inexorably drawn to the natural landscape surrounding her. Walking, listening and breathing in the nature around her, she followed the call of the cuckoo, the song of the nightingale and watched as red kites, fieldfares and skylarks soared through the endless skies over the chalk hills of the North Wessex Downs: the ancient land of Greenham Common which she called home. Nicola bears witness to, and fights against, the stark political and environmental changes imposed on the land she loves, whilst raising her family to appreciate nature and to feel like they belong - core parts of who Nicola is. From protesting the loss of ancient trees to the rewilding of Greenham Common, to the gibbet on Gallows Down and living in the shadow of Highclere Castle (made famous in Downton Abbey), On Gallows Down shows how one woman made sense of her world - and found her place in it.

Ndangwa Noyoo was Head of the Department of Social Development at UCT from 2018-2020.

This book exposes corruption and malpractices at UCT, which the author witnessed during his tenure as HoD there, before he was ousted by a group of lecturers in his department. The former had been aided and abetted by senior administrators at the faculty level.

It is a personal account that is evidence-based, as the claims the author makes in the book are documented in various reports, communications and eye-witness accounts that span a period of five and a half years.

Handelsryk in die Ooste is die tweede deel van ’n vyfdelige reeks oor vroeë blanke vestiging aan die Kaap.

In dié deel beskryf Karel Schoeman die totstandkoming en bestuur van die Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) se uitgebreide handelsnetwerk in die gebied van die Indiese Oseaan gedurende die sewentiende eeu. Vir die meeste Suid-Afrikaanse lesers wat maar min kennis van die VOC het, bied hierdie boek besonder baie insigte en word die stigting van die klein verversingspos aan die Kaap die Goeie Hoop in 1652 in konteks geplaas. Dit gee byvoorbeeld aandag aan die groot intra-Asiatiese handelsnetwerk wat selfs voor die koms van die Portugese en Spaanse ontdekkingsreisigers in die gebied bestaan het, aan die wedywering tussen die seevarende moondhede Portugal, Nederland, Engeland en Frankryk om vastrapplek in verskillende Oosterse lande te kry en aan die soms bloedige stryd om monopolieë in die handel met kosbare produkte soos speserye, tekstiel en porselein te verkry.

’n Aantal hoofstukke word gewy aan Batavia, die VOC se administratiewe hoofstad: Vanuit die VOC-kantore is die retoervlote gekoördineer; hiervandaan is verkenningstogte na die binneland onderneem; het die amptenary en ryk handelaars ’n swierige lewenstyl ontwikkel en het kosbare Oosterse meubels en tapyte modieus geword. Ten slotte word ook aandag aan die verskynsel van slawerny en die invloed wat dit gehad het op die koloniale lewe, ook aan die Kaap.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Plato's Republic has influenced Western philosophers for centuries, with its main focus on what makes a well-balanced society and individual.

'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before.

A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die.

They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago - and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

A book for finding purpose and strength in times of great despair, the international best-seller is still just as relevant today as when it was first published.

Man's Search for Meaning is more relevant than ever, Viktor Frank's message provides hope even in the darkest of times. It has sold more than 16 million copies in fifty languages. A reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

This comprehensive, beautiful book delves deep into the complex but fascinating story of our relationship with colour throughout human history. Colour is fundamental to our experience and understanding of the world. It crosses continents and cultures, disciplines and decades. It is used to convey information and knowledge, to evoke mood, and to inspire emotion. This book explores the history of our understanding of colour, from the ancient world to the present, from Aristotle to Albers. Interspersed in the historical story are numerous thematic essays that look at how colour has been used across a wide range of disciplines and fields: in food, music, language and many others.   The illustrations are drawn from the Royal College of Art’s renowned Colour Reference Library which spans six centuries of works and nearly 2,000 titles, from a Gothic manuscript on the composition of the rainbow to hand-painted Enlightenment works on colour theory and vibrant 20th-century colour charts, including many fascinating examples not  seen in other books. Delving far and wide in this fascinating and varied subject, this book will help readers find new layers of meaning and complexity in their everyday experiences and teach them to look closer at our colourful lives.

This book uncovers the complex interconnections between politics and finance in the midst of the French Revolution. Charting the trajectories of members of the financial elite between London, Paris and Amsterdam, this study reveals the ever-shifting relationship between market actors and the political world. The French Revolution paved the way for bankers, especially those working in international finance, to occupy a new position within not only the economic framework of the time but also on the political stage. The profession of banker went through a series of transitions in its relationship with the political authorities. These changes affecting the social, economic and political status of bankers led to increasingly active interactions between politics and finance that have become a feature of our modern societies. Using a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, this book highlights how during the Age of Revolution there emerged a dynamic which is still present today: the financial world and the sphere of politics became strongly intermixed while actors from both sides made efforts to overpower their counterparts. In this way, it provides an ideal perspective for bridging the gap that has long separated economic from cultural history in the study of the French Revolution.

Who are the greatest villains, the direst leaders and most offensive personalities to have spread their regrettable influence throughout the modern world? Be it through politics, war, sport, culture or just their general idiocy? Well, take your pick… From Adolf to Zuckerberg – via Mao and Mountbatten, OJ and Osama – 50 People Who Stuffed Up The World is filled with the nastiest names from the 20th century and beyond. These are men of infamy (and a handful of women) who have steered our good ship Humanity towards the World-War-fighting, smart-phone-tapping age we are mired in today, be it through their totalitarian visions of global dominance (Stalin, King Leopold II), ruinous warmongering (Hideki Tojo, George W Bush) or tragic megalomania (Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein). But the obvious political despots and historical heavy-hitters are just the half of it; there’s also the archetypal modern terrorist (Carlos the Jackal), the man behind the global obesity epidemic (Ancel Keys), the clothes-less emperor of modern art (Charles Saatchi), the world’s most notorious drug baron (Pablo Escobar), the father of the A-bomb (Robert Oppenheimer), architects of a failed social experiments (DF Malan & HF Verwoerd), the less expected sports villains (Lance Armstrong, Diego Maradona), the talentless icons of modern celebrity-dom (Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber) and our current surreal car-crash-in-motion (Donald Trump, of course). The result is a book with global appeal that is part popular history, part social commentary, and all entertainment.

Some argued it would save the U.S. after 9/11. Instead, the CIA's enhanced interrogation program came to be defined as American torture. The Forever Prisoner, a primary source for the recent HBO Max film directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, exposes the full story behind the most divisive CIA operation in living memory.Six months after 9/11, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah and announced he was number three in Al Qaeda. Frantic to thwart a much-feared second wave of attacks, the U.S. rendered him to a secret black site in Thailand, where he collided with retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell. Arguing that Abu Zubaydah had been trained to resist interrogation and was withholding vital clues, the CIA authorized Mitchell and others to use brutal "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would have violated U.S. and international laws had not government lawyers rewritten the rulebook.In The Forever Prisoner, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy recount dramatic scenes inside multiple black sites around the world through the eyes of those who were there, trace the twisted legal justifications, and chart how enhanced interrogation, a key "weapon" in the global "War on Terror," metastasized over seven years, encompassing dozens of detainees in multiple locations, some of whom died. Ultimately that war has cost 8 trillion dollars, 900,000 lives, and displaced 38 million people--while the U.S. Senate judged enhanced interrogation was torture and had produced zero high-value intelligence. Yet numerous men, including Abu Zubaydah, remain imprisoned in Guantanamo, never charged with any crimes, in contravention of America's ideals of justice and due process, because their trials would reveal the extreme brutality they experienced.Based on four years of intensive reporting, on interviews with key protagonists who speak candidly for the first time, and on thousands of previously classified documents, The Forever Prisoner is a powerful chronicle of a shocking experiment that remains in the headlines twenty years after its inception, even as US government officials continue to thwart efforts to expose war crimes.Silenced by a CIA pledge to keep him imprisoned and incommunicado forever, Abu Zubaydah speaks loudly through these pages, prompting the question as to whether he and others remain detained not because of what they did to us but because of what we did to them.

This brilliant new book explores the lives of eight generations of the greatest kings and queens that this country has ever seen, and the worst. The Plantagenets - their story is the story of Britain. England's greatest royal dynasty, the Plantagenets, ruled over England through eight generations of kings. Their remarkable reign saw England emerge from the Dark Ages to become a highly organised kingdom that spanned a vast expanse of Europe. Plantagenet rule saw the establishment of laws and creation of artworks, monuments and tombs which survive to this day, and continue to speak of their sophistication, brutality and secrets. Dan Jones brings you a new vision of this battle-scarred history. From the Crusades, to King John's humbling over Magna Carta and the tragic reign of the last Plantagenet, Richard II - this is a blow-by-blow account of England's most thrilling age.

When was the last time you spoke to a stranger? In our cities, we barely acknowledge one another on public transport, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we carefully curate who we interact with. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we've never met. But what if strangers, long believed to be the cause of many of our problems, were actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane discovers the surprising benefits that come from talking to strangers, examining how even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. Warm, witty, erudite and profound, this deeply researched book will make you reconsider how you perceive and approach strangers, showing you how talking to strangers isn't just not a way to live, it's a way to survive.

“Brilliant, ambitious, and often surprising. A remarkable contribution to the current global debate about Empire and a small masterpiece of research and conceptual reimagining.� —William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire An award-winning historian places the corporation—more than the Crown—at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today. Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power. Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago. Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

First published in 1935, this book provides a valuable contribution to the history of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. Written as a recollection of the experiences and knowledge of Sir Arthur Newsholme, the book covers a period in which phenomenal progress was made.

This book is the product of many years’ research by Lodge, whose Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (1983) established him as a leading commentator on South African politics, past and present.

2021 will mark the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and today’s South African Communist Party (SACP, founded in 1953 after the proscription of the CPSA) will be extremely fortunate to have the milestone marked by a scholarly work of this calibre. Since 1994, many memoirs have been written by communists, and private archives have been donated to university and other collections. Significant official archives have been opened to scrutiny, particularly those of South Africa and the former Soviet Union. It is as if a notoriously secretive body has suddenly become confiding and confessional! While every chapter draws upon original material of this sort, such evidence is supported, amplified, illuminated and challenged by the scholarship of others: the breadth of secondary sources used by the author reflects what may well be an unrivalled familiarity with the scholarly literature on political organisations and resistance in twentieth century South Africa.

Lodge provides a richly detailed history of the Party’s vicissitudes and victories; individuals – their ideas, attitudes and activities – are sensitively located within their context; the text provides a fascinating sociology of the South African left over time. Lodge is adept at making explicit what the key questions and issues are for different periods; and he answers these with analyses and conclusions that are judicious, clearly stated, and meticulously argued.

Without doubt, this book will become a central text for students of communism in South Africa, of the Party’s links with Russia and the socialist bloc, and of the Communist Party’s changing relations with African nationalism – before, during and after three decades of exile.