This acclaimed book by Steven Pinker argues that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less violent over millenia and decades. Can violence really have declined?

The images of conflict we see daily on our screens from around the world suggest this is an almost obscene claim to be making. Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker shows violence within and between societies - both murder and warfare - really has declined from prehistory to today. We are much less likely to die at someone else's hands than ever before. Even the horrific carnage of the last century, when compared to the dangers of pre-state societies, is part of this trend.

Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage' and an over-simplistic Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually making us better people.

The Thabo Mbeki I Know is a collection that celebrates one of South Africa’s most exceptional thought leaders. The contributors include those who first got to know Thabo Mbeki as a young man, in South Africa and in exile, and those who encountered him as a statesman and worked alongside him as an African leader.

In The Thabo Mbeki I Know, these friends, comrades, statesmen, politicians and business associates provide insights that challenge the prevailing academic narrative and present fresh perspectives on the former president’s time in office and on his legacy – a vital undertaking as we approach a decade since an embattled Thabo Mbeki left office. Edited by Miranda Strydom and Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, The Thabo Mbeki I Know provides readers with an opportunity to reassess Thabo Mbeki’s contribution to post-apartheid South Africa – as both deputy president and president – to the African continent and diaspora – as a highly respected state leader – and to the international community as a whole.

Dogtag Memories is a raw, darkly humorous memoir that follows Jon Goetzsche’s chaotic journey through South Africa’s military machine.

Drafted into the Defence Force in 1977as a carefree seventeen-year-old, Jon’s tranquil schooldays are abruptly replaced by the brutal regimentation of army life. What begins as naive indifference soon spirals into a struggle against authority, misfortune and the absurdities of war.

After surviving the gruelling training to become a Parabat, Jon is court-martialled for assaulting a fellow soldier and sent to Detention Barracks. Reassigned to an ordinary infantry battalion, he completes five months of training and is sent to the border for the rest of his two years’ national service, followed by several camps. Through the laughable rules, harsh punishment, grinding boredom, fatal mishaps and clashes with enemy guerrillas, he endures with wit, irony and a stubborn refusal to surrender his humanity.

Told with unflinching honesty and biting humour, Dogtag Memories transcends the typical border war narrative. Decades later, Jon reflects on how those formative years shaped him, offering a poignant, irreverent and deeply human account of camaraderie, hardship and resilience.

Illustrator Amylee Weeks has combined her trademark style artistry with Biblical verses familiar to kids to create a faith-filled colouring book to enchant your girl.

Join in the fun - the perforated pages make this a shareable pastime. When you're finished, hang your artwork for constant encouragement.

The glossy hardcover volume features embossed text and designs and a 2.5 cm coil binding.

• Perforated One-Side Printed Sturdy Pages
• Designed for Fun & Inspiration
• Includes Gift Tags, Bookmarks & Cards to Colour
• Presentation Page for Gift-Giving
• Bible Scripture & Christian Content
• 18 x 26 cm
• 50 Designs Plus Extras
• Suitable For Ages 7 & Older

The second edition of Media ethics in the South African context explores the dynamic and potentially explosive field of media ethics from a South African perspective. Grounded in ethical theory, the public philosophies of communication and media performance norms, this text provides guidelines for the individual's ethical decision making; for both media practitioners and media groups. Cutting edge analysis of the South African normative context under the previous and present political dispensations makes this book essential reading for media policy formulators and students alike. Changes in the normative context are presenting the South African news media in particular, with new challenges.

Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was a man on a mission, whether as an academic, opposition politician, democratic facilitator or businessman. When he famously led a delegation of leading Afrikaners to Dakar in 1987 to meet the exiled ANC, many saw it as a breakthrough moment, while others felt he had been taken in. And yet his reputation – for honesty, integrity, wit and courage – still towers above many of his contemporaries.

An academic turned politician, Slabbert brought unusual intellectual rigour to Parliament, transforming the upstart Progressive Federal Party into a force that could challenge the National Party. Disillusioned by South African society, he resigned in 1986 to explore democratic alternatives. Sidelined during the democratic transition, he continued to pursue a broad range of initiatives aimed at building democracy, empowering black South Africans and transforming the economy.

Grundlingh offers insights into this most unlikely politician, providing new perspectives on a figure who even today remains an enigma.

Chrisanne Alberts het haar hele lewe gewerk om die bitterheid van die verlede en verwerping agter haar te los. As ’n grootwithaainavorser is sy gewoond aan die wêreld van wetenskap, maar sy dra swaar aan die verlies van haar ouers, haar broer, en die skuld wat daarmee saamgaan.

Nadat sy as voog van haar broerskind aangestel is, bevind sy haar op ’n nuwe lewenspad wat haar terugneem na die afgeleë dorp, Albatroshoek.

Hiér het sy en haar kleintydvriendinne, Reinet en Essie, saam grootgeword en trauma beleef. Wanneer ’n moordwalvis sy weg na Albatroshoek vind, bring hy verandering saam, en alles wat Chrisanne geglo het oor die balans van die see en haar eie lewe, word op die proef gestel.

Die kluisenaar van Atlaseiland, Ben Benade, lei haar op ’n reis van onthullings, en saam baklei hulle teen die uitbuiting van seebronne. Maar Chrisanne moet al hoe meer gewigtige keuses maak ... Wat gebeur met ’n vrou wat nie net haar mense verloor het nie, maar ook haar plek in die wêreld, en haar eie geloof betwyfel?

Soos ’n sluier wat stadig gelig word, ontsluit haar verhouding met die eilandkluisenaar al hoe meer van haarself. Saam soek sy en haar vriendinne oplossings vir hul kleintydtrauma terwyl die geheime van die dorp ontrafel.

En die vraag bly: Is jy die som van jou verlede en jou pyn, of is jy wie God sê jy is? Geroep, gesalf, geliefd.

Khamr: The Makings Of A Waterslams is a true story that maps the author’s experience of living with an alcoholic father and the direct conflict of having to perform a Muslim life that taught him that nearly everything he called home was forbidden.

A detailed account from his childhood to early adulthood, Jamil F. Khan lays bare the experience of living in a so-called middle-class Coloured home in a neighbourhood called Bernadino Heights in Kraaifontein, a suburb to the north of Cape Town. His memories are overwhelmed by the constant discord that was created by the chaos and dysfunction of his alcoholic home and a co-dependent relationship with his mother, while trying to manage the daily routine of his parents keeping up appearances and him maintaining scholastic excellence.

Khan’s memories are clear and detailed, which in turn is complemented by his scholarly thinking and analysis of those memories. He interrogates the intersections of Islam, Colouredness and the hypocrisy of respectability as well as the effect perceived class status has on these social realities in simple yet incisive language, giving the reader more than just a memoir of pain and suffering.

Khan says about his debut book: "This is not a story for the romanticisation of pain and perseverance, although it tells of overcoming many difficulties. It is a critique of secret violence in faith communities and families, and the hypocrisy that has damaged so many people still looking for a place and way to voice their trauma. This is a critique of the value placed on ritual and culture at the expense of human life and well-being, and the far-reaching consequences of systems of oppression dressed up as tradition."

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n keur van Jacqueline Leuvennink se rubrieke en artikels wat deur die jare in menige tydskrifte verskyn het. Jacqueline se fyn waarneming en vermoë om verwikkelde emosies en situasies in eenvoud te verwoord laat die leser opnuut verwonderd oor die skoonheid van ons wêreld.

Die skrywer nooi die leser om haar te vergesel op ver reise na interessante bestemmings en inspirerende ervarings.

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n unieke versameling artikels wat maklik en individueel gelees kan word vir lesers wat nie baie tyd het vir lees nie, maar steeds iets moois en voedsaam vir die siel op een slag wil lees.

This insightful portrait of Winston Churchill delves beyond well-known political moments, incorporating perspectives from various individuals who encountered him throughout his life.

From Bletchley Park codebreakers and Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin, through writers as varied as H. G. Wells and P. G. Wodehouse, to the likes of Harold Wilson, Mahatma Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II, these lesser-known interactions reveal glimpses of the man behind the legend.

We meet Churchill the exuberant schoolboy thug with an early mania for bull-dogs, and Churchill the elder statesman shedding a tear in the House of Commons smoking room. Other incidents include a young journalist rudely dismissing a call from Churchill as a prank, and a visiting Dwight D. Eisenhower dreaming of being strangled, only to awake entangled in Churchill’s borrowed nightshirt.

The book showcases the profound transformations during Churchill’s lifetime, which ran from Benjamin Disraeli’s premiership to the release of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Route 66’, and the shift from steam to atomic power. Examining controversial aspects of his legacy, this multifaceted portrait challenges preconceived notions, inviting readers to reconsider the complexities of Churchill.

Why is it that so many Christians find it difficult to develop a vibrant and exciting prayer life? Even though prayer is foundational to the Christian life, many are intimidated or uncertain about how to talk to God. Prayer feels quaint and old-fashioned to some, sacred and uncomfortable to others. It's not a lack of inspiration--there's plenty of that. And it's not that Christians don't realize prayer is important--they know it is. So what's the issue?

Pastor Chris Hodges has spent years studying the prayers of the Bible and the models of prayer that the scriptures provide for Christians. Now, he shares with readers the teachings and methods he's used to successfully help hundreds of thousands of people understand how to spend time in conversation with God--and enjoy every minute.

Pray First will help readers:

• Gain the understanding and tools to make prayer work--and bring the joy back into their time with God
• Take a journey through the prayers of the Bible, which reveal how to make prayer more personal and powerful
• Learn about fasting, an often overlooked but powerful discipline that's a vital companion to prayer
• Follow proven, biblically grounded methods for making prayer a priority, not an afterthought

Written in the personable, relatable, and always biblically based style that has become Hodges's hallmark, Pray First is a revolutionary how-to manual for all Christians who want to experience a dynamic, intimate prayer life with God.

Noni Jabavu was the first black South African woman to publish books on her life. Her memoirs Drawn in Colour and The Ochre People have been compared to Zora Neale Hurston's work.

A cosmopolitan, free-spirited woman, she returned home in 1977 and wrote a weekly column in the Daily Dispatch. 

This book is a compilation of these cheeky, insightful and hilarious columns for a younger audience of empowered women. 

An instant Number One New York Times bestseller, Humans of New York began in the summer of 2010, when photographer Brandon Stanton set out on an ambitious project: to single-handedly create a photographic census of New York City. Armed with his camera, he began crisscrossing the city, covering thousands of miles on foot, all in his attempt to capture ordinary New Yorkers in the most extraordinary of moments. The result of these efforts was "Humans of New York," a vibrant blog in which he featured his photos alongside quotes and anecdotes.

The blog has steadily grown, now boasting nearly a million devoted followers. Humans of New York is the book inspired by the blog. With four hundred colour photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, and a distinctive vellum jacket, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that will appeal not just to those who have been drawn in by the outsized personalities of New York, but to anyone interested in the breathtaking scope of humanity it displays.

Heartfelt and moving, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of a city.

Are you compelled to tell your side of the story?
Do you fight thoughts of suspicion or distrust?
Are you constantly rehearsing past hurts?
Have you lost hope because of what someone did to you?

The Bait of Satan exposes one of the most deceptive snares Satan uses to get believers out of the will of God--offense. This trap restrains countless Christians, severs relationships, and widens the gulfs between us. Jesus said, "It is impossible that no offenses should come” (Luke 17:1). Although you will encounter offense, you can choose how you will react.

In this new twentieth anniversary edition, John Bevere shows you how to identify the traps ahead of you and escape the victim mentality. With declaration-style prayers and testimonials from people whose lives have been changed by his message, this book will inspire you to stay free from offense and its destructive power.

Don’t let anyone affect your relationship with God!

Never have seven people been so hunted. By assassins. By journalists and lawyers in search of the truth and then TRC investigators wanting justice for the victims’ families.

In 1986, seven young men were shot and killed by police in Gugulethu in Cape Town. The nation was told they were a ‘terrorist’ MK cell. An inquest followed, then a dramatic trial in 1987 and another inquest in 1989. Finally, the fact that Eugene de Kock’s Vlakplaas unit plotted and drove the operation was revealed at the Truth and Reconciliation ten years after the murders but Vlakplaas’s real agenda remained shrouded in mystery.

Hunting the Seven tells the story of the hunt for the truth of the Gugulethu Seven in cinematic style. It took a decade to get to the bottom of the killings.

Sifting through the evidence and original interviews with those involved, Roos-Muller reveals that it was Vlakplaas’s only operation in the Western Cape and an elaborate state-sanctioned snuff movie designed to keep the money rolling into the death squad’s slush fund.

Journalist Lesley Mofokeng investigates the life of his remarkable grandfather, Mongangane Wilfred Mofokeng, a prominent Dutch Reformed Church evangelist, who built a thriving community out of the dust of the far Northwest.

The journey takes him from Joburg’s Marabi-soaked townships of the 1930s to his childhood home of Gelukspan near Lichtenburg and then to the rural Free State and the remote mountain kingdom of Lesotho. In what becomes a spiritual quest, he traces the inspirational footsteps of his ancestors and the legendary King Moshoeshoe.

In the process, Mofokeng proudly claims his heritage and also uncovers a long-lost chapter of South African history and the church of the apartheid regime.

Hierdie is 'n biografie in konteks en lees soos 'n roman.

Die jaar is 1700, die plek Amsterdam. Die bruid is 21 jaar oud en inderhaas getroud met 'n wewenaar wat oud genoeg is om haar pa te wees. Wie is die Franse vrou wat kans sien vir 'n pionierslewe op 'n verre voorpos? Marie Buisset is 'n vlugteling, 'n weeskind uit Sedan, Frankryk, gebore tydens die felste Hugenootvervolging. Sy word die stammoeder van die families Du Plessis en Smith in Suid-Afrika. As vroedvrou - later op die loonlys van die VOC - word Marie (later genoem Maria) die hulp van die kwesbares: 'n verkragte meisietjie, 'n tiener wat geboorte gee en verskeie vroue wat deur hul eienaars, minnaars of eggenote verniel is.

Die leser ontmoet talle bekende name in die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis. Dis 'n verhaal van politieke stryd, ontbering, politiek en liefde. Dis 'n storie oor mense en die uitdagings wat hulle aanpak.

Uit skrapse oorblyfsels soos hofverslae, mediese rekeninge, veilings en testament onthul Joan Kruger 'n ryk en boeiende verhaal, vol humor en patos. Wieg: die verhaal van Maria du Plessis, née Buisset, (1679 - 1751) Hugenoot en vroedvrou is a vonds vir historici en lesers wat nuwe lig werp op 'n gedeelde verlede. 'n Kragtoer.

South Africa’s pre-eminent historian explains the spectacular rise – and probable demise – of the numerical minority that dominated 20th-century South Africa.

The Afrikaners are unique in the world in that they successfully mobilised ethnic entrepreneurship without state assistance, controlled the entire country, and then yielded power without military defeat. Award-winning author Hermann Giliomee takes a hard analytical look at this group’s dramatic ascent and possible disappearance as a nation in a series of well-argued thematic chapters. Topics range from ethnic entrepreneurship, the ‘coloured vote’ and ‘Bantu’ education to Nelson Mandela’s relationship with the last Afrikaner leaders.

It ends with a final chapter on the most likely future for this sometimes admired, often reviled group, which undoubtedly left the largest imprint on South African history in the 20th century.

You’ll never think of flying in South Africa in the same way again.

This is an insider’s tale of the South African airline industry over the past thirty years, as told by Glenn Orsmond, and particularly the story of the dramatic collapse of Comair in 2022.

Orsmond, who was twice the CEO of Comair and the founder CEO of 1time, takes the reader on a wild ride through the ultracompetitive sector of low-cost airlines that boomed in this country after South African Airways’ stranglehold on the skies was loosened in the 1990s. Comair – which operated both Kulula and British Airways – and 1time were at the forefront of this new wave of airlines that saw domestic flying and tourism take off.

But after some incredible highs and lows, Comair crashed under Orsmond’s watch despite the company’s 75-year unblemished profit history. The pandemic’s impact, the grounding of aeroplanes after a questionable regulator investigation and poor management decisions all contributed to its downfall.

You can expect tales of industry legends and innovation but also of competitors trying to gut each other, battles between pilots and accountants, unions and bosses at loggerheads, and warfare between shareholders and directors in boardrooms.

As the West struggles against attempts to destroy it from within and without, key lessons in resilience from its Jewish parent can enable both Christianity and civilization to survive.

Western civilization is facing a critical moment. Foreign enemies sensing its weakness are circling. Internally, the West is being consumed by division, decadence, and demoralization. The October 7 attack on Israel presented it with a choice between civilization and barbarism—a challenge the West has failed. But this damaged society is far from lost if it takes advice from an unexpected source.

Western culture is based upon Christianity, whose own foundations in turn lie in Judaism. The unique survival of the Jewish people offers both the West and its struggling Christian church, as well as secular people who shun religion, priceless lessons in resilience that they must learn if their culture is to survive.

The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens.

For the last 100,000 years, humans have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive?

NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.

A moving journey of discovery into the unexplored continent that is often our families’ past. It can be read as a reconstruction of one’s own Jewish and at the same time European-South African roots, but through these micro-histories we arrive at the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust to the level of macro-history.

Egonne Roth’s work brilliantly illustrates the complex mechanism of intergenerational, communicative memory and cultural memory (described by Jan and Aleida Assmann, among others). On a feminist level, it is also a personal history of the daughter-father relationship, leading to a kind of purification, a catharsis.

The detective-like reconstruction of the multi-ethnic segments of the family’s history has as its backdrop the arduous completion of one’s own biography from scraps of documents, accounts of the now few witnesses, secrets, and traumas hidden for decades.

In 2018, at the end of a speech Rod Dreher gave in Genoa, an artist gave him an engraving by his own hand. In broken English, the artist explained that he was in his studio that afternoon when the Holy Spirit told him that he should come hear Rod Dreher, and give him a particular drawing of an obscure medieval saint. None of this made sense to Dreher until two years later, lost in depression and confusion, the saint - a Tuscan hermit named Galgano - appeared in Dreher's life again under circumstances that did not at all seem coincidental, sending Dreher on a search for God's will for his life.

A lifetime of experiencing mystical events and collecting stories from others has solidified Dreher's Christian faith, and convinced him that God reveals himself to us all the time - but we in the modern West have lost our capacity to sense God's presence. How did this happen to us, but not to other peoples in the world? Can it be reversed? If so, how?

LIVING IN WONDER tells the story of how the West became "disenchanted", and gives practical advice - based on history, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience, as well as the testimonies of monks of the ancient Church - on how to regain one's sense of wonder and awareness of the divine. Told through real-life stories of people who experienced miracles, visitations by saints and angels, and in some cases wrestled with demons, this book will open your mind to the reality that the material world is not all there is, and that God is not as silent and as elusive as you might think. You just need to learn how to see with clear eyes.

Join Rod Dreher as he explores why 'contemporary' Christianity seems so empty, and why so many young people are walking away from it. He argues that the enchanted sacramental vision of the church of the first millennium is still true, only hidden, and that the experience of God is something that can happen to anyone - if they are willing to take the risk.

At a time when democracies seem paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward, award-winning journalist John Kampfner travels to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination.

- Taiwan's health system achieves 90% patient satisfaction at a fraction of the cost of the British NHS.
- Moroccan solar panels in the Sahara produce enough clean energy to power two million homes.
- Estonia has transformed itself into a digital pioneer in a single generation - becoming the world's first fully digital government where 97.6% of citizens access state services online.
- Costa Rica has tripled its economy while doubling its forest cover, proving that green policies can pay direct dividends.

What unites these countries, and more, is a refusal to accept that difficult problems are unsolvable. The places showing true innovation are often those with their backs against the wall - not wealthy nations assuming they have all the answers.

Braver New World is an urgent reminder that solutions exist. The question is whether we have the courage to learn.