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.

Lady Gaga is a once-in-a-decade artist, and the rare instant celebrity whose appearance can become a cultural event. No other music star of the last decade combines the talents Lady Gaga possesses: she’s a genuine singer, composer, songwriter, designer, and performance artist, who uses technology and social media to shape her art and career. In the space of fifteen months, she has become a demographic-smashing pop icon with global reach and impact.

Not since Madonna’s breakout success in the mid-eighties has the world witnessed the advent of a pop-culture provocateur who mixes high-and-low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, “downtown” authenticity with the sheen of glamorous artifice. She has quickly formed a symbiotic relationship with her rabid fan base who have taken to dressing as she does, imitating her hair and make-up in tribute. Gaga, too, is a cultural shape-shifter, allowing her fans to project their needs, wants, confusions, and desires onto her.

This is a must-read for Gaga fans, who, devoted as they are, know next to nothing about who she is and how she got that way, as well as for anyone who has heard Lady Gaga on television and the radio and is curious about America’s latest over-the-top cultural success story.

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

From the former editor in chief of "Haaretz", comes the first in-depth, comprehensive biography of Ariel Sharon, the most dramatic and imposing Israeli political and military leader of the last forty years.

The life of Ariel Sharon spans much of modern Israel's history. A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, Sharon participated in the 1948 War of Independence, played decisive roles in the 1956 Suez War and the Six-Day War of 1967, and is credited here with the shift in the outcome of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

After leaving the professional army, Sharon became a political leader and served in numerous governments, most prominently as the defense minister during the 1982 Lebanon War in which he bore "personal responsibility," according to the state's commission of inquiry, for massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese militia. As a general and as a politician, he championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But as prime minister, he performed a dramatic reversal: orchestrating Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

Landau brilliantly chronicles Sharon's surprising about-face, combining the immediacy of firsthand reportage with the analysis and independent insight of a historian's perspective. Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006 and remains in a persistent vegetative state. This biography recounts the life of the man who is considered by many to be Israel's greatest military leader and political statesman, illustrating how Sharon's leadership transformed Israel, and how his views were shaped by the changing nature of Israeli society.

When Stephen Clingman was two, he underwent an operation to remove a birthmark under his right eye. The operation failed, and the birthmark returned, but in somewhat altered form.

In this captivating and beguiling book, Clingman takes the fact of that mark – its appearance, disappearance and return – as a guiding motif of memory. This is how we remember the worlds we are born into, how they become a set of images in the mind, surfacing and resurfacing across time and space. South Africa under apartheid was itself governed by the markings of birth – the accidents of colour, race, and skin. But what were the effects on the mind?

Here a further motif comes into play, for in the operation Stephen’s vision was affected, and his eyes came to see differently from one another: divided vision in a divided world. How, in these circumstances, can we come to a deeper kind of vision, how can we achieve wholeness, acceptance, find our place in the midst of turmoil and change?

In an enchanting and cumulative narrative set on three continents, Stephen’s memories make up the hologram of the book’s subtitle. It is a story that is personal, painful, comic, and ultimately uplifting: a book not so much of the coming of age, but the coming of perspective.

Lucy Easthope lives with disaster every day. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, she's the one they call. As one of the world's leading experts on disaster she has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades - advising on everything from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 7/7 bombings, the Salisbury poisonings, the Grenfell fire and the Covid-19 pandemic.

She has travelled across the world in this unusual role, seeing the very worst that people have to face, and finding that even the most extreme of situations, we find the very best of humanity. In her moving memoir she reveals what happens in the aftermath. She takes us behind the police tape to scenes of destruction and chaos, introducing us to victims and their families, but also to the government briefing rooms and bunkers, where confusion and stale biscuits can reign supreme.

With wisdom, resilience and candour When the Dust Settles looks back at a life spent on the edges of disaster and shows us that where there is terrible tragedy there is also great hope and that humanity and humour can - and must - still be found on the darkest of days.

This is a new and updated edition of a book which was a major bestseller in the UK in 2004. The author met Prince Philip some forty years ago when they were jointly engaged in charity work, and they became firm friends. Building upon Gyles Brandreth’s acclaimed 2004 book, this extraordinary account is fully revised, presenting new information about the last twenty years alongside previously unpublished royal correspondence.

This is the story of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - the longest-serving consort to the longest-reigning sovereign in British history. It is an extraordinary story, told with unique insight and authority by an author who knew the prince for more than forty years.

Philip - elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous, sometimes irascible - is the man Elizabeth II once described as her 'constant strength and guide'. Who was he? What was he really like? What is the truth about those 'gaffes' and the rumours of affairs? This is the final portrait of an unexpected and often much-misunderstood figure. It is also the portrait of a remarkable marriage that endured for more than seventy years.

Philip and Elizabeth were both royal by birth, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, but, in temperament and upbringing, they were two very different people. The Queen's childhood was loving and secure, the Duke's was turbulent; his grandfather assassinated, his father arrested, his family exiled, his parents separated when he was only ten. Elizabeth and Philip met as cousins in the 1930s. They married in 1947, aged twenty-one and twenty-six.

Philip: The Final Portrait tells the story of two contrasting lives, assesses the Duke of Edinburgh's character and achievement, and explores the nature of his relationships with his wife, his children and their families - and with the press and public and those at court who were suspicious of him in the early days. This is a powerful, revealing and, ultimately, moving account of a long life and a remarkable royal partnership.

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy.

It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few.

This anthology contains twelve key stories from the first two years of Spider-Man's publication history (from 1962 to 1964). These influential adventures not only transformed the super hero fantasy into an allegory for the pain of adolescence but also brought a new ethical complexity to the genre-by insisting that with great power there must also come great responsibility.

A foreword by Jason Reynolds and scholarly introductions and apparatus by Ben Saunders offer further insight into the enduring significance of The Amazing Spider-Man and classic Marvel comics.

The Deluxe Hardcover edition features gold foil stamping, gold top stain edges, special endpapers with artwork spotlighting series villains, and full-colour art throughout.

This book is not just for the romantics among us; because what are we here for, if not to love?

A book for the passionate and warm-hearted among us, LOVE explores every type of affection and helps us to nurture our most precious connections. This collection invites us to keep space open for the love in our lives and to remember that it can be found in the most unexpected places.

From familial ties to friendship and romantic love, these poems show tenderness as a powerful force - even towards yourself.

A Dangerous Love is an exhilarating, true love story that plays out in the chaos and lawlessness of the political turmoil that was South Africa in the late 80s and early 90s. The mayhem and desperation of a country whose social fabric is unravelling is mirrored in Karen Daniels’s own life, and hers is an up-close-and-personal account of life as a young woman of colour in the anarchy of early post-apartheid South Africa.

Karen Daniels was only 21 when she met Martin, a mysterious, dangerous man who, at 22 years of age, had the world at his feet. Captivated by this man, she was soon caught up in a love affair that turned into obsession and violence. Gutsy and charming, Martin wasn’t born into a life of crime and drugs, but his greed and passion soon pulled him into the underworld and he was overcome by a darkness he could not escape.

Hold your breath as Karen takes you with her on a roller-coaster ride into an abyss of armed heists, crime, and violent abuse. Her story shows how having such intense and conflicting emotions for a man – loving him and being petrified of him – is only a few heartbeats away from hate.

Karen’s eventual escape from this life is a success story that has taken her to the heights of the corporate world, and encouraged her to become an advocate for human rights and women empowerment. Her story is one of human resilience, courage and determination. It offers hope to those struggling to break free from their circumstances, and will inspire anyone who wants to live their best life and go from surviving to thriving.

"A tightly coiled story of obsession and crime that plays out in an era of lawlessness" - Terry-Ann Adams, author of Those Who Live in Cages.

The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.

This is the first work of its kind to bring together a wide range of studies of major sociolinguistic issues as they concern the languages of South Africa.

Written by specialists in their fields, the contributions deal with such topics as language contact, language loss, the formation of pidgins, Creoles and social dialects, and language policy and planning.

The book is aimed chiefly at all students of linguistics and language, and will be of use and interest as well to historians, sociologists, speech therapists and anthropologists.

In his best-selling Strictly English Simon Heffer explained how to write and speak our language well. In Simply English he offers an entertaining and supremely useful A-Z guide to frequent errors, common misunderstandings and stylistic howlers. What is the difference between amend and emend, between imply and infer, and between uninterested and disinterested? When should one put owing to rather than due to? Why should the temptation to write actually, basically or at this moment in time always be strenuously resisted? How does one use an apostrophe correctly, ensure that one understands what alibi really means, and avoid the perils of the double negative? With articles on everything from punctuation to tabloid English to adverbs and adjectives, Simply English is the essential companion for anyone who cares about the language and wants to use it correctly.

Sir Alex Ferguson's compelling story is always honest and revealing he reflects on his managerial career that embraced unprecedented European success for Aberdeen and 26 triumphant seasons with Manchester United.

Sir Alex Ferguson's best-selling autobiography has now been updated to offer reflections on events at Manchester United since his retirement as well as his teachings at the Harvard Business School, a night at the Oscars and a boat tour round the Hebrides, where he passed unrecognised.

The extra material adds fresh insights and detail on his final years as United's manager.

Both the psychology of management and the detail of football strategy at the top level can be complex matters but no-one has explained them in a more interesting and accessible way for the general reader than Sir Alex does here.

My Autobiography is revealing, endlessly entertaining and above all inspirational.

Two months into a planned solo source-to-sea navigation of the Amazon River, adventure Davey du Plessis was ambushed and shot within the isolated jungles of Peru.

The adventure turned into an intense moment-to-moment struggle to survive as he made his way, wounded, through the dense jungle, seeking rescue and safety.

Choosing To Live is Davey's personal account of his Amazon experience. He retells the remarkable story with an endearing openness, while sharing unique insights into the power of compassion and his ability to maintain motivation in his balance between life and death.

Good Morning, Mr Mandela tells the extraordinary story of how Zelda la Grange’s life, beliefs and prejudices were transformed by the greatest statesman of our time.

It is the incredible journey of an awkward, terrified young typist in her twenties who was chosen to become Nelson Mandela’s most loyal servant, spending the greater part of her adult working life travelling with and caring for the man she would come to call ‘Khulu’.

This is a book about love and second chances. It will touch your life and make you believe that every one of us, no matter who we are or what we have done, has the power to change.

This set of essays analyses the work of Isabel Hofmeyr, globally recognised as one of South Africa’s foremost literary and Indian Ocean scholars. The essays elucidate Hofmeyr’s path-breaking studies of transnational histories of the book, African print cultures, and cultural circulations in the Indian Ocean world.

This book draws together reflective and analytical essays by renowned intellectuals from around the world who critically engage with the work of one of the global South’s leading scholars of African print cultures and the oceanic humanities. Isabel Hofmeyr’s scholarship spans more than four decades, and its sustained and long-term influence on her discipline and beyond is formidable.

While much of the history of print cultures has been written primarily from the North, Isabel Hofmeyr is one of the leading thinkers producing new knowledge in this area from Africa, the Indian Ocean world and the global South. Her major contribution encompasses the history of the book as well as shorter textual forms and abridged iterations of canonical works such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. She has done pioneering research on the ways in which such printed matter moves across the globe, focusing on intra-African trajectories and circulations as well as movements across land and sea, port and shore.

The essays gathered here are written in a blend of intellectual and personal modes, and mostly by scholars of Indian and African descent. Via their engagement with Hofmeyr’s path-breaking work, the essays in turn elaborate and contribute to studies of print culture as well as critical oceanic studies, consolidating their findings from the point of view of global South historical contexts and textual practices.

With the flair for narrative and the meticulous research that readers have come to expect, in The Diamond Queen Andrew Marr turns his attention to the monarch, chronicling the Queen’s pivotal role at the centre of the state, which is largely hidden from the public gaze, and making a strong case for the institution itself.

Arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, Marr dissects the Queen’s political relationships, crucially those with her Prime Ministers; he examines her role as Head of the Commonwealth, and her deep commitment to that Commonwealth of nations; he looks at the drastic changes in the media since her accession in 1952 and how the monarchy has had to change and adapt as a result. Under her watchful eye, it has been thoroughly modernized but what does the future hold for the House of Windsor?

This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new introduction and a new chapter that sets out to answer that crucial question. In it, Marr covers the Queen’s reign from the Diamond Jubilee to the run-up to the Platinum Jubilee in 2022, taking in the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles’s plans for the future of the monarchy and examines what Elizabeth II’s lasting legacy might be.

The definitive biography of Her Majesty The Queen by one of Britain’s leading royal authorities.

With original insights from those who know her best, new interviews with world leaders and access to unseen papers, bestselling author Robert Hardman explores the full, astonishing life of our longest reigning monarch in this compellingly authoritative yet intimate biography.

Elizabeth II was not born to be queen. Yet from her accession as a young mother of two in 1952 to the age of Covid-19, she has proved an astute and quietly determined figure, leading her family and her people through more than seventy years of unprecedented social change. She has faced constitutional crises, confronted threats against her life, rescued the Commonwealth, seen her prime ministers come and go, charmed world leaders, been criticised as well as feted by the media, and steered her family through a lifetime in the public eye.

Queen of Our Times is a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal, spanning abdication, war, romance, danger and tragedy. It is a compelling portrait of a leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne aged twenty-five.

"My name is Samantha and I’m an alcoholic. At the time of writing, I’ve been sober for 13 years, 11 months and 16 days. And yes I still count. I promised I would never speak about it publicly until my children understood what that meant, that mommy was an alcoholic. I think they may have understood long before I did."

From Whiskey To Water is the no-holds-barred memoir by one of South Africa’s most loved radio talk show hosts, Sam Cowen. Having kept her alcohol addiction well away from the public eye for over 14 years, in this tell-all tale, Sam finds the courage to talk about her struggle with her addiction to whiskey, food and finally to a passion that saved her life – marathon swimming. Told in her characteristically hilarious dead-pan style, this is one of the bravest books you’ll read this year.

"So this is a book on how I stopped drinking? No, it’s not. It’s how I stopped drinking, started eating, became clinically severely obese, stopped eating (everything that wasn’t nailed down) and swam my way to freedom. No, it’s not. It’s actually about addiction and learning and sadness and anxiety and love and drive. It’s about channelling the unchangeable into the miraculous. It’s about dragons and learning how to put them to sleep when you can’t slay them. It’s about being my own Daenarys."

This manga recreation of Shakespeare's text transfers the action from Ancient Rome to a future Iraq, once again facing dictatorship after its prolonged struggles to establish a democracy. Part of the successful Manga Shakespeare series, a fusion of classic Shakespeare with manga visuals.

This is the story of a Kavango tracker who served for six years with Koevoet ('Crowbar'), the elite South African Police anti-terrorist unit, during the South West African -Angolan bush war of the '80s. Most white team leaders lasted only two years; the black trackers walked the track for years. Sisingi Kamongo tells the story of the 50 or so firefighters he was involved in; he survived five anti-personnel mine and POMZ explosions and an RPG rocket on his Casspir APC vehicle; he was wounded three times; he tells of the trackers looking for shadows on the ground, facing ambush and AP mines at every turn; he tells of the art of tracking...where dust can tell time. Kamongo's story is supported by two accounts from renowned Koevoet team leaders, Herman Grobler and Francois du Toit- a powerful collection of experiences from South Africa's most successful counter-insurgency unit. The first-ever account of the bush war by a non-white member of the South African security forces. A unique, previously untold perspective of the bush war, by an on-the-ground tracker. A powerful, harrowing read; the tension is palpable.

"Warm, honest and true--A Woman Makes A Plan is full of insight as well as a good dose of humor, offering readers a lifetime of hard-won advice." --Diane Von Furstenberg The international supermodel shares personal stories and lessons learned from a life of "living dangerously--carefully"

Maye Musk is a fashionable, charming, jet-setting supermodel with a fascinating and tight-knit circle of family and friends--and is 71 years old. But things were not always so easy or glamorous--she became a single mom at 31, struggling through poverty to provide for her three children; dealt with weight issues as a plus-size model and overcame ageism in the modeling industry; and established a lifelong career as a respected dietitian, all the while starting over in eight different cities across three countries and two continents. But she made her way through it all with an indomitable spirit and a no-nonsense attitude to become a global success at what she calls the "prime of her life."

As everyone who follows her obsessively on social media knows, Maye is a fount of frank and practical advice on how the choices you make in every decade can pay off in surprising, exciting ways throughout your life. In A Woman Makes a Plan, Maye shares experiences from her life conveying hard-earned wisdom on career (the harder you work, the luckier you get), family (let the people you love go their own way), health (there is no magic pill), and adventure (make room for discovery, but always be ready for anything). You can't control all that happens in life, but you can have the life you want at any age. All you have to do is make a plan.

This official souvenir publication celebrates the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II through 70 photographs chosen to illustrate memorable events in the reign of Britain’s longest-serving monarch.

Delightfully informal family photographs of The Queen as a young girl, as a young wife and mother, on holiday and enjoying the company of her children and dogs are joined by more formal images illustrating the official life of the monarch, on grand state occasions, such as the Coronation, the State Opening of Parliament and Trooping the Colour – not to mention her memorable encounter with James Bond and her dramatic arrival at the ceremony marking the opening of the 2010 London Olympics.

Each photograph is accompanied by resonant quotations from speeches given by The Queen over the years, from her wartime Children’s Hour radio broadcast at the age of 13 and her first televised Christmas Day broadcast in 1957 to her speeches welcoming Commonwealth leaders and US Presidents to Buckingham Palace or responding to the warm hospitality extended to her on state visits to India, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean.

Love of family, fondness for animals, a keen sense of humour, staunch belief in the Commonwealth as a force for good in the world, and gratitude to all the people around the world who go out of their way to help their communities – these are among the themes that come across from this photographic journey through a remarkable life of duty and service.

In this entertaining and insightful biography, award-winning writer Andrew Morton, author of Diana, Her True Story and Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, takes you behind the scenes to uncover the woman and her world.

For years she prayed for her mother to give birth to a son. She longed to be spared her destiny as Britain's future Queen. Her dream was to live in the country surrounded by children, dogs and horses.

But Elizabeth did her duty, the young princess pledging before her people that she would dedicate her whole life to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth. She hoped that that day would be a long way off. It was not to be. Only twenty-five when she became Queen after the premature death of her father, King George Vl, Elizabeth has become the stuff of superlatives: the longest reigning, most travelled and, for a shy woman, the Queen who has shaken more hands and made more small talk than any other monarch in history. She has been seen and believed by millions, either in person, on television or film.

Elizabeth was set firmly on the road to becoming sovereign because of the D word - divorce. In 1936, her uncle David, King Edward VIII, wanted to marry a twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. When he couldn't, he abdicated. Since that national trauma, divorce and the fall-out from divorce has shaped her reign. She has witnessed her sister Margaret, three of her children and several grandchildren divorce. And she has lived long enough to see the wheel turn full circle, watching as another American divorcee, Meghan Markle, walked down the aisle with her grandson Prince Harry.

While her reign has been defined by divorce, her private life has been moulded by an irascible husband, an extravagant mother and a querulous eldest son. In the winter of her reign she refereed a war between two of her grandsons, brothers William and Harry who were once inseparable friends. As she celebrates her platinum anniversary, the first monarch to reign for seventy years, she has, during a once in a lifetime pandemic, become the reassuring face of hope and optimism, the grandmother to the nation.