A gripping and deeply researched exploration of the hidden influence of organized crime on the global economy that reveals the mafia as an uncredited architect of modern society.

In Mafia: A Global History, Ryan Gingeras takes readers on a fascinating journey into the shadowy world of organized crime and its far-reaching impact on contemporary society. From backroom deals to global power plays, this compelling narrative spans two centuries, unraveling the complex ties between crime syndicates and law enforcement—and how these relationships have reshaped both sides in unexpected ways.

Drawing on over a decade of in-depth research into the global drug trade, Gingeras profiles legendary figures like Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, El Chapo, and Dawood Ibrahim, bringing their stories to life while exposing how these mafias have tested the boundaries of state power. By challenging the law, these criminal networks force governments to adapt, leaving an indelible mark on governance, society, and the global economy.

Gingeras identifies three key spheres of transformation: the legal limits tested by mafias, their economic activities reflecting the Western bloc’s dominance in global trade, and their undeniable presence in pop culture. As crime syndicates continue to evolve in the 21st century, Gingeras highlights the alarming blurring of lines between gangsters, corporations, and political leaders—a trend that threatens to destabilize the global order.

For true crime fans and history buffs alike, Mafia is a must-read. With echoes of Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo and Sam Quinones’s Dreamland, Gingeras delivers a masterful blend of storytelling and meticulous analysis that will leave you questioning just how much of the world around us is shaped by those operating in the shadows.

An unforgettable testament to hope and the bonds of brotherhood, Miracle reveals the untold story of the boys who escaped the gas chamber in Auschwitz, the only known group of Holocaust survivors to walk away from the jaws of the Nazi killing machine.

Early on the morning of October 10, 1944, eight-hundred boys, aged between 13 and 17, were taken out of Block 11 at Auschwitz. The night before, during a visit by Dr Josef Mengele, their identification cards had been stamped with a solitary German word – gestorben – 'died' in English. They were then marched by 25 bayonet-wielding SS men to Crematorium 5, stripped, and herded into a gas chamber.

This book is the story of a true-life miracle of the fifty-one boys who were pulled from that gas chamber – the only Holocaust survivors known to have escaped such a close brush with the Nazi killing machine – and given a second chance at life. A life, of course, that would be so horrifically snatched from those around them.

Based on the first-hand testimonies of six of the boys, six survivors whose stories are shared in this book for the very first time, Miracle interweaves the lives of the boys and the grander sweep of history in which they were held. The result is an unforgettable tale of hope, faith and fortitude in the face of one of the worst crimes against humanity.

In a world where loneliness, burnout, and disconnection have reached crisis levels, Jennifer Breheny Wallace offers a transformative solution: mattering. Through vivid storytelling and groundbreaking research, Mattering: The Secret to Building a Life of Deep Purpose and Connection reveals how feeling seen, needed, and valued isn't just a nice-to-have―it's essential for our wellbeing and society's future.

Filled with stories of individuals who have discovered the power of mattering, from the story of a fire chief who re-energized his emotionally exhausted team by helping them see their long-term impact, to a woman who transformed her grief into a movement helping thousands rebuild their lives, Wallace shows how mattering can be cultivated in every sphere of life. She demonstrates that when people feel they truly matter―that their presence and contributions are noticed, needed, and missed when they aren’t there―everything changes. Productivity soars, relationships deepen, and communities strengthen.

Drawing on compelling research and intimate portraits of people who've discovered the power of mattering, Wallace provides a practical blueprint for creating lives of deeper meaning and connection. She reveals:

• How small acts of recognition can transform workplace culture and prevent burnout
• Why helping others often energizes us rather than depletes us
• How to build "mattering spaces" that foster genuine connection in our communities
• Practical strategies for navigating life transitions while maintaining our sense of purpose

Perfect for readers of Brené Brown and Adam Grant, this timely book offers both hope and concrete solutions for our modern crisis of disconnection. Mattering isn't just another self-help guide―it's a revolutionary framework for rebuilding the connections that make life meaningful and creating positive change that ripples outward from ourselves to our relationships, workplaces, and communities. With clarity and compassion, Wallace shows us that the antidote to our cultural crisis of isolation isn't to turn inward, but to recognize how much we matter to each other. This book will forever change how you think about your role in the lives of others and offer a path to a more connected, purposeful life.

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Ghost Wars, this is the inside story of America's long and ruinous relationship with Saddam Hussein.

The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein.

Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme, Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives through understanding his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader - a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of many more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances in his paranoia, resentments and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly high.

Using unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam's own transcripts and audio files, The Achilles Trap is a remarkable picture of a dictator who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, it is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft: ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change our political landscape.

Women’s freedom is in jeopardy. Misogyny is everywhere. Courtship, duty and marriage are dying phenomenons – nails in the coffin to female happiness. Our bodies are an inventory of pain and weakness. Evidently, it is a very bad time to be female.

Or so we’re told.

In Good Slut, Zoe Strimpel examines the myths that submerge women in narratives of victimhood and fragility, instead offering a much-needed dose of realism. Because while women’s agency is increasingly under threat by the return of ‘traditional’ values, fuelled by fear-mongering discourse from both the political left and right, it’s unequivocally never been a better time to be a woman. It may be complex terrain, yet women’s pain, injustices, experiences and achievements are taken more seriously now than ever before. What’s more, the opportunities in free societies are endless: whether sexual freedom, bodily autonomy or financial independence, women can, should and will – if they desire – have it all.

Courageous, defiant and incisive in its approach, Good Slut argues that liberation – true liberation – comes not from fear or shame, but from making the most out of the intertwined forces of money, power, and, of course, sex. A fierce celebration of female agency and choice, it is a timely reminder to get back in touch with the joy and freedoms available to us – if only we dare to grasp it.

In the next twenty-five years, Africa’s population is predicted to double in size to 2.5 billion, so that by 2050 one in four people on earth will be African. How can Africa accommodate and benefit from this huge demographic shift?

In The Invisible People, former MTN C EO Phuthuma Nhleko calls for a new African renaissance based on three pillars. The first involves building a confident common identity, rooted in Africa’s long and rich history, and celebrating its fundamental contributions to modern civilisation, religion and culture.

The second is unleashing the kind of economic development that has so far eluded Africa, by leveraging its significant assets and resources, abandoning outdated and inadequate economic models, and carving a new path grounded in a Pan-African vision and based on
technological and economic leapfrogging.

The third pillar involves bolstering Africa’s geopolitical influence, by redefining its relationship with the US and C hina, and embracing a strategic path in its own interests, to take its rightful place in world affairs as home to a quarter of humanity.

An insightful and inspiring journey through history, economics and geopolitics, The Invisible People will change the way that people view the future of Africa and the world.

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.

Land is one of the most emotive and symbolically powerful issues in Africa. In rural contexts, the collision of history, class, race, gender, time and space has made meaningful efforts to overcome economic inequality complex. In South Africa, the end of slavery and its subsequent creation of ‘buffer communities’ for military purposes in the 1850s all collided with the stalled emergence of a relatively self-sufficient Black peasantry. The dismantling of this Black agrarian class in the twentieth century involved the incubation of white producers and their favourable positioning within product markets. In a programme of statecraft, that explains our country’s prevalent inequality and widespread economic inactivity.

‘New’ Settler or ‘Old’ Tenant? explores how this past continues to shape the present. Using a rich body of archival, news, census, legal and primary sources spanning almost two centuries, the book traces the construction and reproduction of racial hierarchies in land, labour and product markets. Across the rural Eastern Cape – from the lands between the Fish and Keiskamma rivers moving further north towards Kat River Valley, Sada (Whittlesea) and the Glen Grey area – this journey reveals the origin stories of enduring rural economic conflicts and the heavy and tormenting legacy these struggles impose on the present.

From the agrarian reforms of the 1830s, designed to secure labour after the end of slavery, to the failed Ciskeian experiments to ‘remake’ a Black commercial agrarian class as a ‘buffer community’, and the mass resettlement of people into marginal lands, this book follows the long arc of history. To find multi-generation stories of change. At its heart are labour tenants, so-called ‘squatters’ and ‘relocated’ families – historical actors in an over century-long struggle over land and livelihoods. In the democratic era, these communities, once marginalised and displaced, now stand as landholders (or tenants?) and citizens. Who await different futures on the land. In this life. Before heaven. <>P> Ayabonga Cawe challenges us to reckon with how the deep and enduring economic insecurity of rural life in South Africa undermines attempts at redress and the promise of overcoming agrarian duality and inequality.

In Klipkoud kyk sy weer na die dossiere van vermiste mense. Sy heroorweeg die leidrade en luister weer na die onderhoude wat sy gevoer het. Baie van hierdie inligting is nog nooit voorheen bekendgemaak nie.

In ’n poging om ’n mate van afsluiting te bied aan die slagoffers se geliefdes, laat val Engelbrecht die soeklig op sowel ou as nuwe onopgeloste sake. Hierdie sake wissel van ’n onbekende vrou wie se oorskot onder ‘n swembad ontdek is tot ‘n jong man wat deur die gevangenisstelsel se krake geval het; van ‘n sakereis wat dodelik ontaard het tot ‘n meisie wat reg voor haar huis ontvoer is.

Engelbrecht neem die leser saam in haar deurtastende soeke na die waarheid.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Young Forever, uncover the powerful web of corporate interests that are hijacking our food, our health—and our future.

This is not a diet book. It’s an indictment. Food Fix Uncensored is the fully revised and expanded edition of Dr. Mark Hyman’s bestselling 2020 wake-up call, now more revealing than ever. In a world where food is engineered more for profit than nourishment, every bite you take matters—not just for your health, but for the future of our planet. Dr. Hyman invites you to question:

• What if the chronic diseases we accept as normal… aren’t?
• What if our broken food system was designed to protect power and profits rather the health of the public?
• What if the solution to our biggest health crises isn’t more medicine—but better food?

The shocking stats you read about Americans' declining health are not the result of personal failures. They’re policy failures by design – the result of a system rigged by Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma to keep you sick and addicted. Food Fix Uncensored rips the veil off the multibillion-dollar machine hijacking our bodies, our brains, and our children’s futures, and hands you the tools to take it all back.

Balancing cutting-edge nutritional science with unflinching journalistic investigation, Food Fix Uncensored doesn’t just ask you to eat differently. It dares you to see differently. After reading this, you’ll never look at your food the same way again.

A data-driven, scientific account of our need for speed—exploring a wide range of topics including evolution, transportation, and technology

In a world obsessed with efficiency, perhaps nothing is valued as highly as being fast. Some of our greatest achievements include building planes that break the sound barrier and creating computers that process data at the touch of a button. With signature clarity, Smil offers accessible explanations of every major speed category, from wind erosion to hunting cheetahs, from Boeing 747s to America’s war time industrial mobilization to the speed of global energy decarbonization.

But as Smil argues in this paradigm-shifting book, speed isn’t just a metric to optimize. In Speed, Smil expands on our traditional, human-centric understanding of speed to explore phenomena of space and time, evolution, and human achievement. What was the speed of planet formation? Of the development of different life forms? What happened in the collision of humans and the limits of natural speed, and what has emerged from our incessant desire to push those boundaries?

Lauded for his“compelling, fascinating, realistic” (Steven Pinker) portraits of the modern world, Smil knows that we can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t abandon our collective need for speed. But as good devotees of speed’s eminence, we must understand it, its value, and its cost. Rich in historical and contemporary data, Bill Gates’s favorite scientist’s latest work is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary guidebook for science readers living in the fast lane.

The Chaos Precinct presents a compelling, brave – at times, lyrical – narrative of how migrant Ethiopians have shaped a trading post in Johannesburg’s inner city.

On maps it is defined as the eastern edge of the original administrative area of Johannesburg. Those of us who have encountered the area of the city centre roughly bounded by Plein, Troye, Pritchard and von Brandis Streets have coined various names for it. The Ethiopian Quarter, Little Ethiopia and Little Addis are phrases we exchange in animated conversations about this unique entrepreneurial explosion. This exoticises a booming makeshift shopping hub that emerged without any formal planning intention or support. Municipal officials speak informally of the area as the ‘Chaos Precinct’. But the traders in the area call it by the hallmark road – Jeppe. For them it is a place of opportunity and fevered trade – in which the annual revenue generated is twice that of Africa’s wealthiest shopping mall. Jeppe is a dynamic, exuberant nerve centre that fosters entrepreneurship.

Fortunes are made, loved ones back home are supported and commodities flow across Southern Africa – particularly fast fashion. Local and cross border traders arrive on buses and taxis to buy shoes, t-shirts, dresses, underwear, jeans, suits, wallets, belts, nail clippers and cosmetics. Though situated on the dry Highveld, Jeppe is an entrepôt which bears a close resemblance to major port cities.

isiXhosa edition translated by PROF PETER MTUZE, with input from PROF SIMPHIWE SESANTI and DR ATHAMBILE MASOLA

After years in the making, the iconic I Write What I Like has been translated into isiXhosa, a long-awaited project for the Biko family and the Biko Foundation.

Ndibhala Intando Yam features the writing of the famous activist and Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko. Before his untimely death in detention at age 30, Biko was instrumental in uniting Black Africans in the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa.

This edition features a new Foreword by Nkosinathi Biko as well as the material of the original 2004 Picador Africa edition: a collection of Biko’s columns entitled I Write What I Like published in the journal of the South Africa Student Organisation under the pseudonym of ‘Frank Talk’; other journal articles, interviews and letters written by Steve Biko at the time; a Preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and an Introduction by Nkosinathi Biko; and a moving memoir by Father Aelred Stubbs, which pays tribute to the courage and power of this young leader who was to become one of Africa’s heroes.