A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland?

Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.

After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

From the bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, and the Number One international bestseller The Wager, comes a true-life murder story which became one of the FBI’s first major homicide investigations.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Community development both a collective effort and an achievement driven by individual facilitators with the aim of lifting a community out of poverty. The sixth edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty continues to be a definitive guide for community development workers, students and practitioners alike. The book contextualises poverty and explains the process of community development.

It pays attention to the development environment and explains concepts such as asset-based community development and the social enterprise sector. In addition to context and process, the book details the skills required by a community development worker to function in the field. It also explains how to empower the development worker to train others in order to build capacity in the community and work towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

This edition of Community Development: Breaking the cycle of poverty is strengthened by the inclusion of extensive support material. More practical case studies, specifically relevant to the South African environment, have been added and questions on the case studies are included in the book.

The 1930s and 40s were tumultuous decades in South Africa’s history. The economy declined sharply in the wake of the Wall Street crash, giving rise to a huge number of poor whites and the growth of a militant and aggressive Afrikaner nationalism that often took its lead from the Nazis in Germany.

A Perfect Storm reveals how the right-wing’s malevolent message moved from the margins to the centre of political life; how antisemitism seeped into mainstream political life with real and lasting consequences. Milton Shain, South Africa’s leading scholar of modern Jewish history, brings into sharp relief the ‘Jewish Problem’, detailing the rise of influential organisations such as the Grey Shirts and the New Order, which fanned the flames of antisemitism. He devotes considerable attention to the Ossewa-Brandwag, which, by 1941, constituted the largest yet mobilisation of Afrikaners.

The National Party itself contributed to the climate of hostility to Jews. It was instrumental in ensuring that only few of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and elsewhere were permitted as immigrants. The National Party contributed to the prevailing climate of Jew-baiting. Indeed, some of its worst offenders were accorded high office after 1948 when the National Party came to power.

This South African story is an invitation to enrich conversations that could lead to social transformation and social cohesion in racially polarized world.

The book implicitly acknowledges that many white people have sought to be part of the journey towards racial harmony, but in most cases, it has been done without a paradigm shift on the part of white compatriots. It has been done with very limited understanding of the black world and with many assumptions.

The author is honest and raw, without placing judgements on his childhood experiences, simply telling it like it was. There are moments of brilliant humor, one can be laughing aloud, and minutes later, are hit like a punch in the gut by something unjust that happened or was observed. The art and power of effective and excellent storytelling is on display in this book. The storytelling is masterful.

The book leaves one with a feeling of challenge, a dose of hope-filled reality -- not just reality, and not false 'peace' talk -- but a discussion of hope-filled reality.

"South Africa's most notorious female serial killer since Daisy de Melker".

In 2021, South Africa was introduced to notorious serial killer, Rosemary Ndlovu. Rosemary worked as a police sergeant in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni. Despite taking an oath to serve and protect, in court it emerged that she had arranged the murders of her lover and at least five members of her family. For some murders she hired hitmen, others she carried out herself.

Regarded as our nation's most significant female serial killer since Daisy de Melker, Rosemary killed for money.

Coping with your role as counsellor takes a heavy toll, whether you are a trauma counsellor, a nurse in an HIV/Aids clinic, a teacher, a policeman, or a human resources manager. This concise, and highly readable book, built on case studies and real-life experience, and drawing on the best theory and research, provides the guidance needed to stay reflective, healthy, and effective. It discusses issues of containment and expectation, effectve listening, HIV/Aids and trauma counselling, cultural difference, and balancing your counselling role with day-to-day responsibilities. This is essential reading for all students of psychology, counselling and social work.

Every decision we make is a decision about the future. We constantly make choices that affect the next week, year or decade, but get blinded by what we want or expect the future to be. Cognitive traps lie everywhere: failing to question our assumptions; believing in greater certainty and personal control than life allows; or missing signals because we’re distracted by the noise.

The post-2020 world demands a revolutionary way of looking ahead, and in these unpredictable times, the key to good futures thinking is good thinking. The goal of constructive futurism is not to forecast specific events, but to plot a series of scenarios that show what could happen. Consequently, we can work towards the future we want, avoid the ones we don’t, and be prepared to manage the risks and opportunities no matter what.

In Thinking the Future, scenario specialists Clem Sunter and Mitch Ilbury teach us the futurist’s art of decision-making, where the flexibility of thinking like a fox plays a key role in adapting to a complex and interconnected world. The book rejects the appealing but misleading self-help narrative that you can decide your future through sheer determination in pursuit of your goals and replaces it with a more dynamic approach.

Isaac Newton said: ‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ By reimagining seminal concepts thought up by some of history’s greatest thinkers, the authors detail the dos and don’ts for thinking the future and handling its uncertainty in a constructive way.

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy despite major changes in the workings of the global political economy in the post–Cold War era—changes in which they are themselves deeply implicated.

This pathbreaking volume, edited by anthropologists John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, explores the reasons behind the increasingly assertive politics of custom in many corners of Africa. Chiefs come in countless guises—from university professors through cosmopolitan businessmen to subsistence farmers–but, whatever else they do, they are a critical key to understanding the tenacious hold that “traditional” authority enjoys in the late modern world.

Together the contributors explore this counterintuitive chapter in Africa’s history and, in so doing, place it within the broader world-making processes of the twenty-first century.

A searing investigation that challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is a national emergency: one in four Australian women has experienced violence from a man she was intimate with. But too often we ask the wrong question: why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: why did he do it?

Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators – and the systems that enable them – in the spotlight. See What You Made Me Do is a deep dive into the abuse so many women and children experience – abuse that is often reinforced by the justice system they trust to protect them. Critically, it shows that we can drastically reduce domestic violence – not in generations to come, but today.

Combining forensic research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do radically rethinks how to confront the national crisis of fear and abuse in our homes.

The book behind the headlines. The story the powerful hoped would disappear.

Written by the world's bestselling storyteller James Patterson, this is the original and definitive account of how Epstein built his fortune, abused his power, and evaded justice for years - hiding in plain sight among the global elite.

Drawing on original police interviews, court documents and victims' testimonies, the book traces the earliest investigations, Epstein's guilty plea and the shockingly lenient sentence that allowed his crimes to continue. Filthy Rich is also a chilling examination of how power protects itself - and how institutions failed those most vulnerable.

An instant New York Times bestseller and the basis of the hit Netflix documentary series, this updated edition includes a new introduction covering Epstein's final arrest and death in custody.

After matriculating from a top Jewish school, Nikki Munitz finds herself in the clutches of a heroin addiction. She's sent to a remote rehab, run by a pastor who brandishes a tattoo of Satan. There she meets the handsome son of a wealthy Afrikaans family. Lured by the illusion of her ‘happy-ever-after’ she marries him. But the facade soon crumbles.

Money is in short supply. Nikki takes on a job at a reputable law firm. Encrypted passwords are entrusted to her. She begins to siphon small, undetectable amounts from trust funds of loyal clients. The amounts increase. Caught red-handed, she's fired. By the time the law catches up with her, Nikki is clean and sober. On the advice of her lawyer who reassures her she will never go to jail, she pleads guilty to all 37 counts of fraud. After a gruelling 2-year court battle, she's found guilty.

Fraud is a powerful memoir about a young woman who is forced to face her life of deceit in a prison cell where she ultimately finds her freedom to fly.

A powerful, eye-opening account of how social welfare, distributed in the form of cash transfers, shapes inequality in contemporary South Africa.

In a narrative style, following individual stories, Erin Torkelson challenges the widely held belief that simply giving money to the poor can solve poverty. Cash transfers are often presented as a straightforward, humane solution embraced across the political spectrum, from global development agencies to progressive academics, to alleviate poverty. But this deeply researched and compelling book reveals a far more complicated and troubling reality.

Drawing on seven years of immersive fieldwork in South Africa — from grant payment queues and grocery stores to Parliament and the Constitutional Court — Torkelson shows how a flagship antipoverty programme became entangled with predatory finance. Instead of offering relief, cash transfers are often leveraged bylenders as collateral, pulling recipients, especially Black women, into cycles of debt. The very survival strategies people are pushed into are later framed as personal failings rather than the result of long-standing structural inequality. In the process, individuals are racialised as inadequate managers of money and marked as risky financial subjects.

The book also traces how civil society campaigns forced the state in 2018 to reclaim control of the payment system from private companies. Yet even this victory revealed new challenges: austerity, weak infrastructure and ongoing financial pressures continued to expose recipients to hardship in new forms.

Blending sharp analysis with vivid storytelling, Predatory Welfare offers a bold rethinking of welfare, development and racial inequality. It argues that social grants cannot be understood as neutral or purely benevolent and that economic justice requires far more than cash alone. A timely and urgent intervention, Predatory Welfare asks readers to reconsider what real economic justice looks like — and what it will take to achieve it.

A hybrid narrative, blending memoir with social commentary and political analysis.

Always in search of "home", the book tracks Ismail Lagardien's vast experiences of a deeply lived life, always against a backdrop of "unbelonging" - first as a reporter in the turbulent 80s, to studying economics at the LSE, then achieving a doctorate at the University of Wales, to working as a speechwriter at the World Bank in Washington.

A unique and brilliant read.

'I do not hate boys, I hate men.'

This provocative statement sets the stage for a searing exploration of the complex relationship South African society holds with its Black and Coloured men and boys. Dr Mzamo Masito's urgent new book, This Country hates Our Boys, confronts the pervasive 'cold and hot love' that often translates into collective male guilt. When a child goes missing, a collective sigh of relief by men is heard when the blame points to maternal filicide, such as headlines like 'South African woman guilty of kidnapping and trafficking daughter aged 6' (BBC).

The widely accepted phrase 'amadoda zizinja' – men are dogs – is more than a colloquialism; it's a symptom of a society where positive masculine role models are scarce. This linguistic shortcut flattens the nuanced reality of masculinity into a single, simplistic concept of patriarchy, obscuring the complex, chaotic social issues at play.

Through the vital work of African Men Care, a non-profit organisation, Dr Masito unpacks the interlocking crises facing Black boys and men: educational disparities, mental health struggles, pervasive violence, and fractured relationships. More crucially, the book illuminates a clear path forward.

'Every man is every boy' is not merely an observation but a powerful call to action. The struggles of adult men today are often rooted in the unaddressed needs and unrealised potential of the boys they once were. The lament 'awekho amadoda' (there are no men) serves as a stark warning: without decisive intervention, we risk losing entire generations. This book reveals how individual trauma metastasises into a collective crisis. When boys lack robust interior lives and positive identity models, the repercussions echo through families, schools, and communities. Hurt boys mature into hurting men, perpetuating cycles that impact everyone, including the girls and women in their lives.

¬This Country Hates Our Boys is essential reading for men, educators, policymakers, community leaders, parents, and anyone committed to breaking cycles of hurt and forging futures where all young people can thrive. The ultimate goal is revolutionary in its simplicity: to empower both girls and boys, ensuring no child is left behind.

As a child, Thabo Abram Molefe, along with his family, is impelled into the apartheid era tradition of rural to urban transition. Moving from a farm to a multi ethnic and vibrant township in the heart of Heidelberg, the birthplace of Eugene Terre’ Blanche’s AWB, proves to be both a challenge and an adventure as he works to evade the nickname that has followed him as a result: "maplazini", Sotho for a dumb country bumpkin.

Native Boy explores a young man’s complex relationship with identity and race, seen through the lens of township life. Moreover, it is about his journey to escape the socio economic trap of the apartheid regime to forever limit the black man to a life of hardship.

This new and revised edition of Sociology: A South African Perspective introduces sociological concepts and theories, and demonstrates how important these are to understanding South Africa, and what it means to be South African. It contains updated content on politics, culture, gender, family, religion, education and race, and the chapters on subjects crucial to the South African identity – health, sport, work, media and group dynamics – have also been revised.

This second edition of Sociology: A South African Perspective is essential reading for all students taking sociology courses. It also helps those who would like to further examine forms of social structure and how they affect human attitudes, actions and opportunities within South Africa.

A timely and powerful guide to masculinity, purpose, and responsibility.

In Father of Man, author Dr Najabulo James Nkosi delivers a compelling and deeply reflective exploration of what it truly means to be a man in today’s world. Drawing on faith, lived experience, and moral leadership, the book offers a blueprint for shaping men who lead with integrity, compassion, and accountability.

At a time when conversations around masculinity are increasingly complex, Father of Man cuts through the noise with clarity and purpose. Dr Nkosi introduces five core ideals that speak directly to men as fathers, leaders, partners, and members of society. These ideals challenge destructive patterns while offering practical guidance for personal growth, strong families, and healthier communities. Rooted in values of responsibility, self-discipline, respect, and service, the book is both a call to action and a source of encouragement. Dr Nkosi addresses the absence of positive male role models and the consequences this has on families and society, while firmly asserting that men have the power - and obligation - to redefine their legacy.

Written in an accessible yet thought-provoking style, Father of Man will resonate with:

• Men seeking purpose and direction
• Fathers and future fathers
• Faith-based readers
• Mentors, educators, and community leaders
• Anyone invested in raising principled, emotionally grounded men

Growing up with a parent’s addiction leaves ripple effects that can be felt well into adulthood. The trauma of familial dysfunction can weave into the fabric of your life, affecting relationships, parenting and work, and even leading to you questioning your own worth, mistrusting intimacy and feeling disconnected from yourself.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. In this nurturing book, clinical psychologist Dr Tian Dayton draws on expertise from decades working with adult children of alcoholics, as well as her own personal experience, to empower you to embrace recovery and break the chain of intergenerational dysfunction. She will guide you as you examine how addiction shaped your family, understand the imprint it left on your childhood and discover tools to heal and thrive. You will learn to process attachment wounds, reconnect with your body, regulate emotions and move towards post-traumatic growth.

Grounded in research, enriched by client narratives and filled with practical exercises based on Dr Dayton's own Relational Trauma Repair (RTR) model, this book will allow you to recover from buried hurt and give your inner child a voice, illuminating the path towards a better future for yourself and your loved ones.

Johannesburg was - and is - the Frontier of Money. Within months of its founding, the mining camp was host to organised crime: the African ‘Regiment of the Hills’ and ‘Irish Brigade’ bandits. Bars, brothels, boarding houses and hotels oozed testosterone and violence, and the use of fists and guns was commonplace.

Beyond the chaos were clear signs of another struggle, one to maintain control, honour and order within the emerging male and mining dominated culture. In the underworld, the dictum of ‘honour among thieves’, as well as a hatred of informers, testified to attempts at self-regulation. A ‘real man’ did not take advantage of an opponent by employing underhand tactics. It had to be a ‘fair fight’ if a man was to be respected.

This was the world that ‘One-armed Jack’ McLoughlin - brigand, soldier, sailor, mercenary, burglar, highwayman and safe-cracker – entered in the early 1890s to become Johannesburg’s most infamous ‘Irish’ anti-hero and social bandit. McLoughlin’s infatuation with George Stevenson prompted him to recruit the young Englishman into his gang of safe-crackers but ‘Stevo’ was a man with a past and primed for personal and professional betrayal. It was a deadly mixture.

Honour could only be retrieved through a Showdown at the Red Lion.

Evolution is a series of bets, and no animal gambles the way humans do. This has led us to unprecedented ecological dominance, via the steepest odds and unlikeliest of outcomes, but our winning streak cuts both ways: the secret to our success may yet be our downfall.

The Gambling Animal offers a revelatory retelling of the human story. Drawing on their unique research into the risk psychology of humans and other animals - including our most impressive rivals, elephants - Don Ross and Glenn Harrison reveal the hidden logic of our rise.

Even before the dawn of civilisation, we bet the Earth on our ability to keep doubling down. But with an ecological crisis on the horizon, how long will our winning streak continue?

Mosibudi Mangena has been a life-long member of the Black Consciousness Movement, which led to his incarceration on Robben Island from 1973–8. After his release, he went into exile in 1981, spending time in Botswana and Zimbabwe, before returning to South Africa in 1994.

Triumphs & Heartaches provides fascinating insight into Mangena’s varied life, including his time as the leader of AZAPO and his service in government as the deputy minister of Education and then the minister of Science and Technology.

Mangena provides an insider’s view of life in exile as a political refugee, followed by the hardships of repatriation and the hard-won successes of democracy. He reflects eloquently on the role of Black Consciousness and its potential place in the future of South Africa, and does not flinch from exploring the disappointments of the liberation struggle and the challenges that lie ahead for the country.

Suid-Afrika se skoonheid en koloniale geskiedenis het seker gemaak dat verskeie bloubloediges deur die eeue heen sterk bande met die land ontwikkel het. Só is daar byvoorbeeld die Nederlandse prinses Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld, met haar groot liefde vir die Karoo, wat hard baklei het teen skaliegas-ontginning deur die Nederlandse petroleummaatskappy Shell.

As godsdienstige of politieke leiers - dikwels van adellike afkoms - in die Oosterse kolonies té veel geluide begin maak het, is hulle na die Kaap verban, wat 'n deurslaggewende rol gespeel het in die land se slawegeskiedenis: Hiervan getuig die verhale van sjeg Joesoef en die radja van Tambora. Watter spoor het die Napoleons in Durban agtergelaat? En George Rex, stigter van Knysna, wat dan nou op 'n druppel water soos koning George III van Engeland gelyk het?

Hoe het dit gekom dat prinses Anne van Brittanje se oorkrabbetjie dwarsdeur 'n volstruis se pens gegaan het? Konstantyn II, die laaste Griekse koning, prinses Charlotte van Liechtenstein en die Karadjordjević's van Serwië het hulle eie bande met Suid-Afrika - en die kroonprins van Albanië praat Afrikaans! Hoe het dit alles gebeur? En hoekom lui die naam lady Juana Smith 'n klokkie?

Blou bloed: koninklike spore in Suid-Afrika gaan soek antwoorde op hierdie en nog baie ander vrae.

On the 14th October, 2020, Angelo Agrizzi, one of South Africa's foremost whistleblowers, leaves home at 6am to attend a routine bail court hearing at the Palm Ridge Magistrate Court. After being informed to first meet at the Brackendowns Police Station, he finds himself locked up in a military tank, under special forces guard, accompanied to court by a massive convoy of blue light brigades. He is told that this is for his own "protection".

Agrizzi is at first unperturbed – he's far more excited at the prospect that his explosive Bosasa tell-all memoir, Inside The Belly of the Beast will be going to print by lunch time. In a sinister turn of events, the court denies him bail on the unfounded basis that he poses a flight risk. Agrizzi is ferried off to notorious Sun City, Johannesburg Central Prison. On hearing the judgement broadcast across the media, his publishing house inexplicably pulls the book. And so as the wheels of (in)justice start turning, the printing press grinds to a halt. That night, alone in his filthy prison cell, now in the very clutches of those he exposed at Zondo, an attempt is made on Agrizzi's life.

Surviving The Beast exposes the highest echelons of power's involvement in dirty tricks, corruption, boardroom assassinations, lies, deceit and cover-ups. There are murders and the swopping of bodies. It is also a compelling memoir of one man's victory over death.

In this sequel to his bestseller, Inside the Belly of the Beast - The Real Bosasa Story, Agrizzi's new book explores, in bone-chilling detail, the failings of the Commission of State Capture and why so many big fish still swim free. Substantiated by irrefutable proof, medical records and key witness statements, Surviving The Beast uncovers what really happens to those who expose the powerful and corrupted.

Renowned South African photographer Ranjith Kally captured iconic scenes throughout his career, such as his portrait Umkumbane, which has come to symbolise the shimmering jazz age of African townships in the 1950s.

When Miriam Makeba returned to Maseru, Lesotho, for a concert for black South Africans at the height of apartheid, Ranjith, too ventured to Lesotho and returned home with a remarkable image of an exiled singer poised between joy and heartbreak. And in a series of unflinching portraits, he documented with probity the horror of the forced removals in Natal.

As one of our country’s most prolific photojournalists, Ranjith’s pictures provide us with a glimpse into the tensions of the past and the events that shaped our future.